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7 mistakes for your first week of blogging

pronetadvertising.com — The blogosphere is filled with millions of blogs and many of them are abandoned and collecting dust. The majority of these blogs did not succeed because they made crucial mistakes within the first 7 days of blogging. Here what you should do within the first 7 days of blogging so you don't fill the blogosphere with more dead blogs.

Who dugg this? Made popular Oct 17, 2006

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  • kuj007, on 10/12/2007, -6/+88Mistake #1: Assuming that anyone, anywhere gives a damn what you think about anything
  • pondster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+60Mistake #2 - dont post your story on digg if your site cant handle the traffic! lol
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+34Mistake #0 - you started blogging
  • markus941, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24"Add some flare to your blog"

    Now 15 pieces of flare are the bare minimum for any blog. And we encourage you to express yourself. You do want to express yourself, don't you?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Never forget that you can't go wrong with a little NSFW content. Ever.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11The biggest problem with this article is it assumes every blog is some sort of tech specialist or some sort of newspaper columnist.

    Where I come from blogs are social tools for communicating your thoughts and ideas to friends and family- not a bunch of strangers who found you on google.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9The only way to win is to not play.
  • NSMike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Innaccurate title - this is a list of things you SHOULD do in the first 7 days of blogging. According to whomever this is.
  • mercurysquad, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5So how is "Spice it up" a 'mistake'?? lol....
    and the linked site is 'pronetadvertising.com' ..... guess that says it all.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I break of have broken at least half of those rules, and I don't really care. It's my blog and I write in my blog for me. If people create a blog to get laid or become famous, then that's the first mistake.
  • Irco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@Haplo
    The first time you spammed was more than enough, plus artanis wasn't even asking you
  • artanis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Ok, then show us your successful blog that breaks any of those rules. I think that the author came up with a pretty good list. It might seem like common sense, but its easy to lose yourself when you're actually in the middle of it.
  • grotsasha, on 10/12/2007, -10/+13http://duggmirror.com
  • tadda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ busterbros:
    Agreed. Blog what you want, when you want. Hell, maybe even do it simply for the exercise of writing, rather that trying to blog to meet someone else's cirteria of success.

    Now, if you want a commercial blog, maybe this is advice to follow.

    But not everyone wants a commercial blog.
  • antdude, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Or http://duggmirror.com/tech_news/7_mistakes_for_your_first_week_of_blogging/ (if referrals are blocked/disabled).
  • Bioshocker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Agreed in the strongest terms.

    Before starting you should know exactly who you're writing for, and "who" should either be friends and family, or it should be yourself. If you can't write for yourself or for people who know you, there's no reason to believe that people you don't know would give a *****.
  • PAJK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You do NOT have 12,000 visitors a day to that blog. I highly doubt you have even 100. And considering you're just speaking crap on the thing (not even talking about Perl), you are likely to have no readership whatsoever.
  • akinder, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4You obviously don't understand the actual importance of blogging.

    Don't think of it as blogging, its just a webpage that is constantly updated with new content. Kinda... like.. Digg?

    I read Pronetadvertising's blogs, along with Megan Jack and SEOmoz. I used to be the same way you are "Ah, blogs suck, stupid 14 year olds talking about cereal", which is still true for most of Livejournal, BUT.. when professionals write about pointers from their careers, there really is some value to the writings.
  • Vortical, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I don't think I've made any of those mistakes, yet I still have no traffic.

    If anyone remembers me, I'm not a regular digg commenter, but I'm the pharmacology guy who chimed in a few weeks ago on the Get Drunk Without A Hangover article. I discussed how one can use the legal compound Phenibut to potentiate alcohol and people seemed interested. So a few days ago I decided to start a blog to talk about things like that because there are tons of things like that which I know about that most of the public is largely unaware of. I submitted my blog to many blog indexes and I haven't had ANY visitors or comments.

    I won't spam the link here but you can find the blog by searching for "vorticularity" at blogger.

    Point is, this article isn't very helpful. Or maybe I just don't know much about blogging.
  • Onwlyix, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4http://duggmirror.com/tech_news/7_mistakes_for_your_first_week_of_blogging/
  • astrodust, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Robots.

    Lots of robots.
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"If people create a blog to get laid or become famous, then that's the first mistake."
    Not really, if that's your goal, and you work on it, you might get there :-)
    In a way I have my current relation thanks to my site, and famous? When is one famous?
  • ronin9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Office Space FTW
  • martin77, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1" Well, 12,000 daily vistors can't be wrong (http://johnbokllma.com/ ) now can they? "

    I beg to differ. How in God's holy name do you get 12 000 daily
    visitors to that blog ?
  • dhuck, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1who cares if he can show a blog that doesn't break those rules.

    first - the premise is awful. if you think you can learn how to be master blogger by just reading 300 words, then you've got bigger issues to deal with. you're not going to learn how to blog successfully (i.e. gain an audience), in 7 days - or 300 words - or whatever.

    so nice try, but man you didn't help anyone. i wish i could bury as stupid.
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1To http://johnbokma.com/ ? Because you consider your view of the world unique and right. I am just showing you how wrong you are ;-) It's now 12 000 on average, it will be about 15 000 by the end of the year, and probably keep growing with 1 000 more each month.

    Do I care that you don't like it?

    No, since there are plenty of people who *do* like it :-)

    And instead of pissing on each and every blog, it's better to wonder why people are making money with stuff you piss on. And what does it give you? A pat on your little ego?
  • JuyLe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1We smart people already know most of that don't we ?
  • osbjmg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Haplo - I am confused when you say stay consistent and then go on to say that most readers don't care if your blog is about foo and you write about bar. Can you expand on that? I detected an oxymoron.

    Note: inline spell check is the best thing ever (Thanks Firefox 2.0!)
  • Crest444, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Gotta love that Digg effect! :)
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1"Ok, then show us your successful blog that breaks any of those rules."
    here you go: http://johnbokma.com/ see also my comment more up. As someone stated some time ago, I write about everything but the kitchensink :-D.
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1@osbjmg - the "Be consistent" is mentioned in the article: pick a topic, and stick to it.

    My experience is that this hardly matters since a huge number of the visitors I get comes via Google. The enter a phrase, hit search, click. So sticking to a topic is not that important in my opinion.

    Should have written clearer that the part after the - is my comment on the advice.

    And for those people who whine: "who cares about your blog", they probably look at the world with their own eyes, forgetting that what they hate others might love. Moreover, the lovers can be a majority :-). I hardly ever do read a blog, yet it doesn't stop me from writing my own and spending hours and hours in it. As for who cares? Quite some people somehow like to read how I found a tarantula under a rock, or that my scorpion got babies :-)
  • Crass22, on 10/12/2007, -11/+5Is there really some massive population of internet users out there that collected RSS feeds and read every bit of ***** all these bloggers are pumping out. I think the majority of people reading blogs are thoes that are writing them. This is gay and shouldnt have made it to the frontpage. Blogs are ghey, so are podcasts.
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2"Mistake #0 - you started blogging"

    Probably should have been, in your case, Mistake #1: you made a clueless comment on digg. Clueless, because blogging does make a lot of people happy, and provide some money for a lot, and an income for some. Why piss on something because you don't get it?

    Also, you don't have to love blogs and read tens of them to write a blog. I recall that a SF writer I like a lot (Jack Vance) stated once that he (almost?) never reads SF.

    I almost never read blogs, I have no time for it (alas). But I do have a blog, and I have visitors enough to make you look silly with your Mistake #0.

    The only mistake I see on this page is you and your whining buddies. Get a life instead of pissing on each thing you don't "grok".
  • Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Well, 12,000 daily vistors can't be wrong (http://johnbokma.com/ ) now can they? I started somewhere in 2004 with blogging now and then, stopped after some time for months. Then picked up again in 2005 and managed to double my number of visitors in a year.

    #2 Pick a topic and stick with it - just write about anything you like. A lot of readers will find you via SEs and really don't care that the topic of your site is Foo, and you suddenly wrote about Bar

    #3 Be consistent - frequency doesn't matter: add RSS and people know when you have added a thing, and again, see my comment on #2.

    #4 Don't expect the world - do expect the world, better, if you want to world, make that your focus. Learn what people like to read on your site, and what not. Don't become a copy / paste some random news blog. Check your referers, check the position in the SEs and think about how to improve it.

    If I can go from 2,000 visitors to 12,000 vistors in less then 18 months, why can't you? Moreover, I expect to have 30,000 at the end of 2007 and if that happens my blog will do more then pay the rent.
  • Nougat, on 10/12/2007, -14/+7Precisely.

    http://digg.com/tech_news/Fight_that_blogging_urge
  • chmod, on 10/12/2007, -12/+2Damn it. Beaten to it. Thank you moonwell.
  • busterbros, on 10/12/2007, -13/+3Awful
  • retral, on 10/12/2007, -15/+3Ditto.

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