My Top 5 Blogging Mistakes

I have been blogging for around 6 months now.  It’s safe to say I am hooked.  With this said, after some hansei, I have formulated the top 5 blogging mistakes I have made thus far.  If you are thinking of blogging, or are very new to blogging, please take note and learn from my mistakes lest you make the same ones.

1. Going cheap and starting with a free Blogger account.  I now realize how superior a self hosted WordPress blog is to Blogger but was clueless when starting out.  If you are serious about blogging don’t go cheap.  Start off with a self hosted WordPress blog and move on with your life.
2. Snapping at a commenter.  While it only happened once I got a little “snippy” with a commenter who didn’t see eye to eye with me.  There is no rule stating “all must agree with Ron” written anywhere.  I was wrong and apologized for my mistake. 
3. Not commenting enough on other blogs.  Other bloggers are often the best readers you will have.  So, you should take the time to comment on their blogs.  And don’t just leave a short comment like “great post.”  Really participate.  Then, this blogger is far more likely to do the same.
4. Focusing too much on SEO.  Perhaps this is not that big of an issue but I find myself worrying too much about SEO when I would be better served focusing on content.
5. Monetization.  I have experimented with some monetization methods such as Adsense and Amazon links to help pay for hosting and the design work I had done.  But again, this can easily steal the focus away from the only thing that matters which is finding ways to add value to the readers of this blog.  And nothing turns me off more than a blog with tons of banners, links, and ContentLink spam (which I tried for one day and then killed… thanks for the advice Mark) all over the place.

I am sure there are others I am leaving out.  But if a new blogger were to stay focused on not repeating these 5 mistakes they will be off a solid blogging start.

If you are a blogger feel free to share any additional tips or lessons you have learned along the way.

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Update: Irony is a real SOB isn’t it.  As soon as I plug WP my recent comments and posts plugins go on the blink. We’ll get to the bottom of it soon.  Sorry for the glitch!

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