October marks the official four year mark of me being self-employed which is CRAZY! I have so much to say on that topic, too, but I’ll save that for another post. It also marks the four year mark for me really truly blogging. While I’ve been blogging on and off for over ten years now, October of 2014 was the first time I did it with the intent of more than an online journal (Oh, LiveJournal and Xanga – how I miss thee.) Looking back at the past four years, I can see so many mistakes I’ve made as a Blogger. I’m sure I have plenty more mistakes and lessons ahead of me, but I figured I’d take a walk down memory lane with these 25 mistakes I made as a new blogger – some of which, I still make. Whomp whomp. At least I recognize my mistakes, right?
And because I don’t want anyone reading this, laughing at me and the ridiculous things I did, I figured I’d ensured you can laugh with me with a little inner commentary.
Enjoy your Tuesday!
- Not learning how to format pictures properly within a post – oh, alt tags mean something? who knew?!
- Not learning SEO or how important it is – you mean I have to help people find my content? that’s bananas
- Not knowing how easy it can be to take decent photos/edit them even without a fancy DSLR or Photoshop – hey fotofuze, you’re a life saver!
- Wishing I could be like another blogger or have their claim to fame – I so let the green-eyed monster ran rampant for years
- Thinking that being a “big” blogger meant more than it actually does – I’ve fully given up on understanding what it is to be a “big” blogger
- Blogging about things that were trendy even though I had little to zero interest in them – no words, just shame
- Holding myself to everyone else’s rules or standards even though they didn’t work for me – you know, because I’m such a rule follower outside of blogging
- Not taking the time to adapt the blog when I changed – this happened frequently and stunted my growth as a person and a blogger so many freakin’ times I lost count
- Letting blogging come before my personal life – biggest all time fail. if I could tell every new blogger (or even more seasoned bloggers) one thing not to do as a blogger, this would be it
- Thinking that people would read my blog without me dedicating time and effort to marketing it – see #2 response
- Not understanding how important interaction on your blog, email or social media can be for a blog – it matters, I promise. probably even more than your blog itself
- Thinking I needed to read every big lifestyle blog to make a name for myself – did anyone else ever play the Lemmings game growing up? I apparently learned follow the leader from there. And I usually died. Lesson learned
- Not taking the time (or money) to invest in a solid design for my blog – sometimes you just need to pay for a damn design instead of obsessing over the code for hours only to hate what you did
- Spending my money to advertise on blogs that A) weren’t a good fit for me and B) had little interest in promoting me – I see a trend here. And shame still follows.
- Not protecting my blog from spam comments right away – I was so excited the first time I hit 20 comments on a post. And then I looked at them and found out that 18 of them were trying to sell me knockoff Gucci bags
- Not understanding the importance of an about page or the about blurb in the sidebar – I know they’re important now – I just suck at writing them
- Commenting on other blogs even when I hardly had anything to say, just so I could comment – Oh I miss the days when I had time to do this.
- Saying yes to too many things when I should have been focusing on a select amount of things I could do well – I’m still a master at this.
- Blogging when I had nothing or very little to say – Now I can’t shut up and post every day. You’re welcome.
- Neglecting the importance of post titles – oh, you mean they’re supposed to be relevant and eye-catching and under x amount of characters and have great SEO? I just like talking about food
- Focusing on giveaways being a main part of my marketing plan – truth: I got a ton of followers this way. It felt awesome for about 2 seconds until they either unfollowed me or never interacted with me.
- Advertising on blogs even though I wasn’t 100% confident with my blog – how the $!*$ do I expect someone to promote me when I’m not 100% comfortable with what’s being promoted?
- Focusing on making money with my blog before I was ready for it – see above. also see: how to generate only pennies because no one wants to pay you when you’re still “trying to figure the whole blogging thing out”
- Writing reviews for anyone and everyone that contacted me to do so – I’m just going to link to this post and sulk
- Forgetting that almost everyone truly did start in the same place I did – this one is still easy to forget because, well – sometimes people are jerks. And they act as if they’re an overnight success which is kind of like a sucker punch to the gut after you’ve eaten your weight in spaghetti.
what are some of your biggest mistakes as a new blogger?
think this post is worth a read? please share! I’d greatly appreciate it :)
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