Facibus On Blogging

Darren Rowse asks: What do you wished that you knew before you started blogging?

My comment was as follows:

Hi Darren,

basically, what John Wesley, Bowrag, Lori, tejvan and Rami said.

And not to be too big a suckup about it, but I wish most of all that I’d read your blog (and Yaro’s, and Steve Pavlina’s) for about two months before I wrote my first post - but I guess that there are some lessons that are best learnt through error.

Best regards, Andrew

I’d like to expand on that.

John Wesley wrote:

I would have thought more about niche and branding. In the beginning I didn’t understand how important those things are so I had to adjust as the site developed. Having a plan from the start would have helped a lot.

I couldn’t agree more. If I’d planned and found my niche right at the start then I would have been a lot better off. I know this because when I did nichify my numbers went up. 

Bowrag wrote:

Differently:1) set the theme before I began… I have changed too many times and need to change again.
2) Name the blog the same as the domain name I had. I had an old domain name and used it but the blog is different.
3) FIND traffic

Yes, yes, and yes. I’ve wasted far too much time fooling around with widgets, theme hacks, poor headers, you name it - I should have spent this time writing quality pillar posts. And as to domain names - Facibus Reviews (my first attempt at serious blogging, and therefore the least niche-specific) has appeared under no less than three different URLs in the past three months - I’ve finally settled on something I can use. Bowrag’s third point is especially helpful - getting out there and commenting on other people’s posts, actively contributing to social networking/community sites, sharing some link love - all these things are lessons that I’ve had to learn through not doing them initially.

Lori wrote:

Great question..as a 3mth newbie, I would do many things different. But the one thing that stands out is I wish I would have made a plan and researched my niche before jumping right in. I was so excited to get started that I didn’t research anything…hec, I didn’t even know what blogging was when I started. RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH!

Three very powerful words there If I’d taken the advice of blogging gurus then I would have done a lot better. Find the right niche, set up a useful blogging platform on a server with a relevant domain name, write quality content, network, you know the drill. If I’d known it three months ago and researched for two months, I know I’d be ahead of where I am now with considerably less effort.  

tejvan wrote:

Use the best blogging software and try to avoid wasting time messing around with design and getting the blog to function. I learn’t through experience Wordpress is the best blogging software

Absolutely. Find the right platform, set it up, and don’t mess with it every day. Sounds so sensible to me now

rami wrote:

I’d focus on one topic only per blog.

Yes It sounds so simple, but is so hard to do. I found myself writing on a whole heap of different subjects on Facibus Reviews: restaurants, marketing, customer service, consulting, information architecture/classification, recipes, basically whatever popped into my head. Of course, once I learnt the “one topic only per blog” I started more blogs (at last count, there are nine of them) and I really only contribute to two of them as often as I should.

As to the last part of my comment:

And not to be too big a suckup about it, but I wish most of all that I’d read your blog (and Yaro’s, and Steve Pavlina’s) for about two months before I wrote my first post - but I guess that there are some lessons that are best learnt through error.

I have to reiterate: the biggest single thing that I wished I had done differently was to research for a month or two to learn how to do it properly. I’m still learning - at least I’ve learnt enough now to know that I need to learn a lot more I’ve read a heap of ebooks that have come from respected sources and I’ve joined Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind mentoring program.  I have every faith in Yaro that he will teach me a lot more.

Is there anything that I’ve missed? Let me know