Mistakes to Avoid When Blogging

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I have now been blogging since Early this year and I have made my fair share of mistakes along the way, therefore today I will try and give you a few insights on what to avoid doing so you repeat mine.

Not having a Self Hosting Blog

I first started of using a blogger.com platform, which was ok for it’s what I wanted to do, but after finding my feet I wanted to take my blogging to a higher level and I brought my own domain in April this year. Buy buying your own domain it will give you more creditability and authority with the community but again you will always find exceptions to this , like Millionnzdollars and Constructicle Boy which are a couple of my favorite blogs. A basic domain name can cost less than US$20 and monthly hosting in the regain of US$10 per month.

So for a small sum you can change your name from www.yeepage.blogspot.com to www.yeepage.com which does look a lot better and easier remember too.

But if you’re only into sharing your blog for personnel reasons like sharing with friends etc, then a blogger.com or likewise will be adequate.

Expecting people to visit your blog

When I first started blogging I thought I just publish and people will come and visit me. How wrong was I, Well I got my friends and family to visit but that was it. Now I know you need to attract readers, interact with them. Successful blogging involves time and effort and there a trick to it or a psychology behind publishing a blog.

Changing the location of my blog

When you start out this you must decide early, if your business is primary and your blog is an add on then a www.domian.com/blog will be fine but if you have your blog as your main point of contact then clearly it should be in your root directory and be the www.yeepage.com. This can affect your PageRank and Technorati if you decide to change at a later date.

Neglecting my article headlines

Most people new to blogging will spend hours writing a good article and spend 5 minutes on the headline, but remember if the headline does not attract my attention then I most likely will not read your article.

Brain of CopyBlogger has a good article or you can look at How to Write a Headline.

Not linking to others

You will see it here and in most blogs where we link to others in form of a anchor link within our posts. We do this cause we enjoy and appreciate there article and feel its worth sharing too all. The more links you put out to others the greater the chance people will return the favour in future.

Andy Beard as a great article on linking mistakes frequently encountered on blogs or Outward bound links good or bad?

Underestimating the time needed

When I first started out, I had no idea how much time blogging would take up, i spend only an hour a day doing my own articles on knowing of the other parts that make up a whole webmasters routine. Now with commenting on otherblogs, reading their blogs, working on design, SEO, and the social bookmarking sites it can now take up hours a day and i still have my regular day job too so time management is key to my daily routine now.

You will need to assess the hours you can put in daily or weekly to ensure you can maintain your blog.

Heres a few article that might interest you:

What i learnt form my 1st year of blogging

The top ten blogging mistakes i made in my first year

Ok, so heres my mistakes. Do you have any?

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November 12, 2007 | Filed Under Journal, blogging Tips

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Comments

6 Responses to “Mistakes to Avoid When Blogging”

constructicle boy on November 12th, 2007 8:11 pm

hi simon!thanks for the mention.it is true that getting a domain will be great to remember.I am currently looking into it and doing some research on some domain names as the usual suspects like godaddy has done down in efficiency according to a friend of mine online.
moneytalks on November 14th, 2007 12:16 am

good insight on what should anyone think of before starting a blog. we do make mistake and it is acceptable but there some mistake that can be avoided if we do think things first before doing something. hopefully others who want to start blogging could do some research and look around first.
rob stgeorge on November 14th, 2007 4:53 pm

Thanks for mentioning my site, yep have made lots of mistakes - to many to think of right now lol.
betshopboy on November 14th, 2007 11:00 pm

I started off on Blogger too and I wish someone had told me earlier to get my own domain name + self hosting from the start.
laby on November 16th, 2007 11:18 pm

when i traveled to china, realized the 1st point u mention. coz they disallow access to blogs!! since then i also knew why most of my frens from china use msnspace (which i don’t like).
laby on November 19th, 2007 1:48 pm

one more to add. i think the language used matters too. english blog typically attracts more readers.