Comments on: What do You Know Now About Blogging that You Wish You Knew When You Started?

By: DaveLu

DaveLu — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 04:18:24 +0000

If i had to start again. I’d go with wordpress, and from day 1 dedicate time to leave valuable comment on blogs that i liked or visited. Visiting a blog and not leave comments is unproductive. Becoz 50% productivity comes from the social aspect of blogs and another 50% for knowledge building.

By: Toby

Toby — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 04:28:44 +0000

Took me months before I knew how to turn on and use trackbacks.

By: JB

JB — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 18:25:13 +0000

i wish i knew how to make my comments “do” follow when i started. and i wish i knew how much this would encourage other bloggers to link up to my postage and participate in discussions on my blogs.

By: My Rock Channel

My Rock Channel — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 02:23:48 +0000

1. Have a catchy name for my blog. Due to the nature of my blog (rock music), a funky (maybe some sarcasm) name will rhyme a lot better in the rock music sphere. Only my 2 cents.

2. Identify and further understand my niche market before jumping in.

By: Leo

Leo — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 00:07:49 +0000

Have a Brand Identity to your Blog.

…and make sure that the brand (name) you choose is conected to your blog´s theme.

Leo Pallotta

By: betshopboy

betshopboy — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 07:17:34 +0000

The one thing I’ll do differently if I could start my blog all over again is to get my own domain name and host the blog on wordpress instead of my current blogspot platform, with subdomain name.

Blogging with subdomain will always be a poor cousin to blogs with own domain name, no matter how “killer” your blog posts are.

By: LintCollector

LintCollector — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:23:48 +0000

Like Vincent in comment 51, I wish I’d used a better permalink structure from the beginning. I accepted the WorPress defaults and have post URLs like:
domainname/wordpress/archives/118

If I were starting again, I’d set defaults to something more meaningful and search-engine friendly like:
domainname/title-of-blog-post/

I know it can be changed during the life of a blog, and there’s a plugin to redirect old links, but it would have been much better to use a better structure from day one.

By: BenQ

BenQ — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 01:49:27 +0000

Not to ever worry what friends and family think!

Basically…

I wish I would’ve known straight from the beginning not to be scared to blog about certain subjects. I was very worried when I started my blog to write about subjects like shamanism & personal experiences about taking psychedelics.

I was so worried about family seeing these posts and now, for the greatest irony, after ‘coming out’ with my blog, I was shocked to learn that no one in my family even visits it, save for that one and only initial visit, their response of which was “Wow, this is a REAL website.” (Followed by an Unspoken thought: “And I don’t have time to read it.”)

By: Eternalsoul

Eternalsoul — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 22:13:24 +0000

Just started a while. I got a long way to go and learn marketing techniques. As of now, I have zilch income but blog with a passion. I guess that is important for starters.

By: eye prefer paris

eye prefer paris — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 21:04:20 +0000

I wish I would have known how hard it was to make $$$$. would have maybe started another kind of blog.

By: Catherine, the redhead

Catherine, the redhead — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:08:41 +0000

Like you, I tend to believe hindsight is always 20/20, so looking back is often a waste of time. However, with that said I would have started with my own website in the beginning. I used AOL, and I know, I hear the laugh-coughs, but I have a huge group of Irish friends there and needed something simple to use. I was very ill at the time and the simplicity of AOL allowed me to focus on writing. The writing helped me get well, and I gained experience with writing on a regular basis. Once I was sure of my content I began to think of branding. I purchased my website name, migrated the blog over to the new site and never looked back. I wrote for two years on AOL and did once wonder where my branded site would be today if I had started with it in the first place … but then again … would I be well?
Catherine

By: Chris @ Martial Development

Chris @ Martial Development — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 19:14:42 +0000

I wish I had known that your choice of niche will affect your contextual ad revenue by a factor of 100! And that certain niches can therefore never, ever be profitable with Adsense!

That critical fact gets too little attention in the advice of certain pro bloggers (I won’t name names ;) ).

By: Antonio Howell

Antonio Howell — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:35:22 +0000

There are about 5-10 very successful blogs that use blogger and other free blogs like for example (seth godin, postsecret, etc).

They are not on wordpress and still have tons of readers and subscribers.

I think that content is what makes the blog not the platform.

So to answer the question: I wish I would have started blogging in 2001 instead of 2006.

-ah

By: Laurie Harshbarger

Laurie Harshbarger — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:46:08 +0000

I wish I’d started out using WordPress.

By: Online Cash Flow

Online Cash Flow — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:53:30 +0000

Hey Darren: Posted a little answer and explanation here: http://www.onlinecashflow.org/2020-hindsight/ – Take a look!

By: sara

sara — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 13:38:49 +0000

I wish I had known about Wordpress when I started my website. I was posting all my content as separate pages, and any time I wanted to change the design of my site I’d have to go fix each page individually. Now Wordpress makes it a lot easier.

I also wish I’d looked into all the different hosting sites out there instead of just going with the first one I saw. Now as my website’s growing, I have to keep watching my bandwidth and other stats. I don’t want to switch hosts because my site will be down for a few days and who knows how loyal my visitors are.

By: tanya

tanya — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:33:49 +0000

I wish I knew that it takes so much time. It’s different when youre in school – you have that time, but with a full time job and two blogs at which I “should” post daily – I’m tired all the time.

I also don’t use Wordpress – I use Movable Type and I have no regrets about that. I don’t mind all the Wordpress love, but I’m just throwing something else out there that’s pretty good too. I think MT is more customizeable if you dont want to rely on a free theme (in my experience), but I am jealous of all those cool WP plugins.

By: Sreejith

Sreejith — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 10:57:36 +0000

I wish I knew Problogger when I started blogging. I find real utility with Darren’s advices.

I wish I knew what Social Media is, when I started blogging.

By: Alvin

Alvin — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 08:51:24 +0000

I’m quite new to blog. I always regret for what I do not know when I started. If I knew it earlier, I would be saving much of time.

First of all, I wish I knew how important is a domain for a blog. I cry for it… If I knew it earlier, I would be in a better domain now instead of SUBdomain.

Moreover, I also wish I knew how powerful is email-subscription. Email subscription could bring me back lots of old readers.

By: Ankur

Ankur — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 07:13:08 +0000

Well I wish i had considered ad placement an important task in Adsense….just by making a slight change in my ad location …i have seen my revenues growing 6 times.