The following is an answer from Theron Parlin from Thought Mechanics responding to my one question interview question of what he’d do differently if he had to start his blog over again.
When I started blogging, I was a bit neurotic.
It was like I had O.C.D. and couldn’t settle on a blog, so I ended up starting a bunch of them. I started with theronparlin.com, then went on to projecttalk.us, then bionicjive.org, then I tried blogger, then went back to theronparlin.com, then setup thoughtmechanics.com , then I closed it, then I opened it again, etc, etc.
Needless to say, it was a rocky road of unreliable behavior. If I had to do it all over again, I would pick a blog and stick with it for the duration. Had I done that from the start, I would be way ahead of the game now.
Could be true. But then again, a one blog philosophy leaves you with all your proverbial eggs in one proverbial basket. One false move and your dreams shatter.
OCD refers to doing the same thing over and over and over. Give somone with OCD a floor rug with string fringe around its edges and you’ve occupied him for a lifetime. Not terribly productive.
I suspect Theron’s progession of blogs and starts and stops and restarts was more similar to Edison’s path toward inventing the light bulb. When asked why he continued experiementing after 999 failures, Edison replied, “Because I now know 999 ways not to invent the light bulb.”
My first blog was horrible. I didn’t get it at all. My second one was better and each one since then (11 or 12, but who’s counting) has improved or taught me a valuable lesson. Many times, my failures have led to my greatest successes.
So, what would I do differently? Simple. Start, stop, restart, experiement, ask for forgiveness, and start again as frequently as possible. After all, anyone who claims to have this blog-thing figured-out is trying to sell you something!
Scott
Yes I know this feeling :-/
‘Had I done that from the start, I would be way ahead of the game now.’
this leads to the next question: What is the game?
Tell me about. I finally landed on the blog theme, topic, platform, and schedule that works for me. It’s not easy to find your place and rythmn.
I tried Blogger, Typepad, and then finally WordPress.
I was even more neurotic when it came to deciding what model to use for creating Internet income. We’re doing great now, and that is what gave me the time to get down on this blog thang….
-Terry
I thought about this question before. I have had many missteps with different blogging platforms as well as attempts at creating content…However like some of you guys I think that each step helped me become a better blogger.
You know one can sit down and try to plan out exactly what one wants to do or simply jump into the middle of it and try. I am glad I planned, but I am more glad that I just tried and tried…
Now…I gotta get back to starting a few more blogs…just kidding…LOL…
I am glad that I had failures to build off of (now I’m glad, I wasn’t then), my worst fears were based on screwing up and being publicly criticized for the screw-ups and when it happened twice and I survived I was able to take bigger risks.
I am on blogger, but now branching out and trying wordpress.
Planning is good, but all the planning in the world won’t help unless you do something with it.
I thought I was the only one who couldn’t decide what to blog about, where to blog(TypePad, WordPress, etc) and how.
It’s been about a year now that I’ve been blogging and I still make mistakes here and there. Athough I wouldn’t call my move from TypePad to WordPress a mistake, it’s how I did it. As a result, I’m still dealing with dead links, images missing, etc on some of my older posts. WordPress is more labor intensive for beginners like me who don’t have the coding background, but I definitely enjoy the freedom WordPress offers.
Another thing I would have done different(and still working on it) is lay out a clear set of categories to focus on.
Besides that, I’d say I’m happy with my blog and I’m proud to say I still blog for me and if others like it, great. If not, at least I have interesting posts to read in the future. Too many people forget to blog about their passions and interests. Because of that, their blogs lose their uniqueness and spark.
Planning is important. It can also be the enemy of “good enough.”
¿Qué harías diferente si tuvieras que empezar tu blog de nuevo?…
Con la pregunta que adorna el título, ProBlogger está realizando una serie de artículos preguntando a distintos blogs de cierto renombre en la comunidad anglosajona y dedicándole una entrada a las respuestas de cada blogger, de momento ha recibido …
[…] I was asked by Darren Rowse of Pro Blogger if I would participate in his one question interview series. Being that I’m a media whore, I promptly agreed and answered my one question. The question was: What would I do different if I had to start my blog over? It actually took me a little time to answer because I had to think back throughout my long and winding road of blogdom to figure out what exactly it was that I did in the first place. Anyway, here’s my one question interview answer, enjoy. […]
I am starting– and as a part of the process I have a catagory on my blog called the Blogger Chronicles in which I am letting everyone peek over my shoulder as I step off into the blogosphere. My first observation is that in the beginning you don’t need tons of traffic.