Written on July 13th, 2009 at 12:07 am by Darren Rowse
What Were the Best and Worst Blogging Experiences You Had This Week?
What was the best and the worst thing that happened to you in your blogging this week?
Image by hebedesign
I was reading the blog of fellow Aussie blogger Mia Freedman this week and saw her weekly post ‘Best and Worst of the week‘ in which she asks her readers to share the best and worst things that happened to them during the week (as well as sharing hers).
I thought it was a cool idea and thought I’d give it a go here at ProBlogger – but with one difference. While Mia’s readers write their best and worst things from all areas of their lives I thought it’d be more helpful to everyone if we kept it to the topic of the best and worst things that happened to us as they relate to our online activities/blogging/social media.
I’ll share mine below and look forward to reading yours. Hopefully though this we’ll all learn a thing or two from one another about what works and what doesn’t work in building blogs.
So tell us your best and worst. I’m particularly interested in hearing what you learned through the best and worst of your week.
My Best – Forum Traffic
the best thing to happen to me this week was some big days of traffic on my photography site, particularly the photography forum area of it. Friday in particular was a great day with visitor numbers 3-4 times normal levels. The reason? Actually there were a few:
1. Friday is newsletter day – Friday is normally a good day (usually about double the traffic of other days) because it is the day I send out my weekly email newsletters to readers. The newsletter not only contains the latest posts from the blog section of the site but also hot threads in the forum. But that was only part of it….
2. Twitter – this past week I decided to expand what I was doing with the DPS Twitter account and not only promote new posts on the blog but highlight key threads in the forum. The result has been really promising with a definite bump in traffic from it (I’d say it’s accounted for an extra 10-20% in traffic depending on the day).
3. SEO – just over a week ago I installed VBSEO – a plugin for VBulletin (the platform I run the forum on) that optimizes the forum for search engines. By default and out of the box VBulletin is pretty horrible for SEO so this plugin is one I’ve wanted to install for a while. The results were very quick – within 3 days we’d seen search traffic up by between 25-40% (it varied a little from day to day).
What I learned? I guess there were a few fairly obvious lessons. Twitter and newsletters can be great for driving traffic, VB sucks for SEO by default etc.
The other thing that I relearned is about forums – while the DPS forum gets a lot less visits per day it drives a lot more page views per visit. For example in June the forum area of the site had only an eighth of the visitor numbers that the blog area had – but had about 60% of the page views. ie: Driving one person to visit a blog does not equal the same as driving one person to visit a forum.
My Worst – Comment Spam
This goes back beyond the last week but as a result in an incredible rise in comment spam I’ve switched comments off here at ProBlogger on any post older than 90 days old. I know this inconveniences some but it was the result of massive increase in comment spam getting through the filters/plugins that I was using. The filters were catching many thousands a day but hundreds and hundreds were getting though and it was taking quite a few hours a week to go through them all manually.
As most of these comments were hitting old posts and because 99% of the genuine comments here on ProBlogger were on new posts I took the decision to switch off comments on old posts. I’m hoping that this is a temporary measure and have the tech team at b5media working on some solutions.
So there you have it – my best and worst of the week.
What Were the Best and Worst Blogging Experiences You Had This Week?
What have been the best and worst things that have happened on your blogs or online experience in the past week? What have you learned? What will you do again? What will you do differently?
110 Responses to “What Were the Best and Worst Blogging Experiences You Had This Week?” - Add Yours
AWebFullOfCash
July 13th, 2009 12:43 am
Best? – My Traffic is on the increase
Worst? – My Submissions to DIGG.com are unread!
Joshua Elliot
July 13th, 2009 12:49 am
Well, till now there is no really a worst yet, but the best is that suddenly I have traffic coming in to my blog and comment.
I think that I have done something correctly that has got me the traffic to my blog.
Carrie
July 13th, 2009 1:14 am
best: after weeks of trying, i finally got google’s pagetracker tracking working so i can track where my rss subscribers are coming from
worst: the post i was most passionate about, put the most time into, and thought would get a great response has only gotten 1 comment in 5 days
James Sims
July 13th, 2009 1:22 am
The best part of my week came when I got a blogging account set up with the Huffington Post. My hope is to get my blogging voice out there more, although I still plan on maintaining my own blog. Looks like I will be writing up a storm to keep things going.
Mike
July 13th, 2009 1:25 am
Best – had several coffee companies offer to send me coffee to review on my blog. Very excited that they’re coming to me now to do reviews.
Worst – Traffic seems to have leveled out and optins slowed to a crawl last week.
Christine Smith
July 13th, 2009 1:25 am
Best: I enrolled in the program you endorsed, called “Become a Blogger” and paid for the entire year.I’m writing a blog for a Women’s Bible Study and the author of the popular book “Me, Myself and Lies” visited MY blog and posted her compliments.
Worst: I created a Westhost one click install account and I’m still confused about using the program. It’s time to hire an expert on that one.
Corey Freeman
July 13th, 2009 1:26 am
My worst blogging experience this week? Shutting down six blogs and closing out our newly formed network because our co-administrator decided we were being “too successful” and had reached our peak…after three weeks. Included in that could be spending hours coming up with a great technical and visual theme for six blogs that were shut down and are set to be sold.
My best blogging experience? Learning a few wordpress tricks, setting up a new blog, and getting a fresh start. Also the amazing support of other bloggers who have become great friends.
This was a dramatic week for me, haha. Then again, all weeks are dramatic for teenagers.
Christine Smith
July 13th, 2009 1:31 am
Best:Purchased “Build a Better Blog” eBook. After reading “Problogger” 37% of my sales now come from my blog.
Worst: Kids are home for summer vacation and the only time I can blog is at 4:00 AM or from10:00PM-1:00AM. Need S…L…E…E…P! Okay, coffee works great too.
DoreenatDMS
July 13th, 2009 1:35 am
At the risk of coming off a little flippant here, probably best/worst in past week is encapsulated in partic. comment that was submitted to our blog … clearly spam, but intriguing spam to say the least.
http://www.twitpic.com/9usaj
(sigh)
Holly Jahangiri
July 13th, 2009 1:40 am
First, let me just say to Mike that I’m jealous. Send me coffee and we’ll be friends for life…
Best: Being able to post that my daughter got to go to the Michael Jackson Memorial – and that I didn’t have to brave the crowds to take her.
Worst: “car car car car car” – ’nuff said? Good Lord.
Kosmo @ The Casual Observer
July 13th, 2009 1:43 am
Worst experience – having a low traffic day on the day I launch my eBook ( http://www.observingcasually.com/key-relationship/ )
Best experience – adding a great writer to the staff of The Casual Observer ( http://www.observingcasually.com/new-writer/ )
jan
July 13th, 2009 1:44 am
Best for me: I had tweaked something in my blog on my own using thesis hooks. I used to beg, threaten, sweet-talk my techy friends to do technical stuff for me, but this I summoned enough guts to strike it on my own. And I did well – I came out of the hood of my blog alive after all. Yeeha.
Worst for me: My gmail inbox is scaring me out of my wits. So many unattended stuff. Same with Google reader. Perhaps I should go back to Leo Babauta to snare that blogging zen again.
Anne
July 13th, 2009 1:45 am
Best, seeing that someone sited my blog just because she liked the post. Worst, not having time to finish a post I’m very interested in getting done.
Gary Arndt
July 13th, 2009 1:53 am
Best
- Hit a new high for subscribers.
- Got out some new articles after not being able to for quite a while.
- Very good results with a contest I’m currently running
Worst
- I’ve become a magnet for comment spam. I wish Akismet could set spam rules. If the URL in the comment is the same as the URL field, it is almost always spam.
InternetHowBlog
July 13th, 2009 1:54 am
This week, I realised that Bing really likes my blog. I started to get a lot of traffic from it lately.
Debo Hobo
July 13th, 2009 1:56 am
The best is that while I was on vacation my blog made me a few hundred bucks, which effectively paid for one night stay. The worst this week is that my comments have fallen off by about 25%.
Markus
July 13th, 2009 1:57 am
Hi Darren! Why not use hosted comments. Is that an option? DISQUS made everything much easier for me and I got more comments
Shajib
July 13th, 2009 2:00 am
Best in this week – Learnt many things about twitter also some awesome idea on offline marketting.
Shajib
http://www.ebooksdock.co.cc/
Dave Doolin
July 13th, 2009 2:00 am
Best: Starting to really get some traffic now. Not much, but Google knows my name now.
I’m thinking about disqus myself. So far I have had good experiences using it on other sites.
DB Ferguson
July 13th, 2009 2:07 am
The best thing that happened with my blog is that someone posted an amazing video of Stephen Colbert out of character on YouTube – it was a fantastic find and we have gotten tons of comments about it when we reposted it as a feature on our blog.
The worst is that this is a ‘Colbert Report’ vacation week, which means that our visitor count was really low, even with a link to a story featured on ColbertNation.com which is normally a very high traffic driver. Dark weeks are never fun.
se7en
July 13th, 2009 2:10 am
The Best: Two much bigger blogs asking my to contribute for them… I am just a small momblog and really not in their league!!!
The Worst: Knowing that I don’t actually have time to write more posts a week and how would I ever fit it in… I managed one and had to drop the other…
So 50 % greatness!!!!
Jannie Funster
July 13th, 2009 2:25 am
My best and worst thing this week was one and the same — an Anonymous commenter with a bogus link wrote on a recent post, “Your writing is atrocious. Quit while you’re behind.”
It hurt a bit (is it true?) but I tidied up the post, and it does flow better.
Thanks, Anonymous. I owe you one.
Sean Davis
July 13th, 2009 2:28 am
Let’s see… my best and worst experiences with my blog this week? Here we go.
Best – I made a post on my blog called “11 ways to make money online” which is a VERY cliche title in my opinion. However, I decided to do it. It turns out that this became my most popular post. I don’t get huge amounts of traffic yet but this one obviously go out there more than normal. I woke up one days and saw over that it had been tweet quite a few times and there were some trackbacks…. which really excited me as a beginner. SO, I immediately moved into monetizing that post. For each of the 11 ways (if I could) I made linked suggestions so the reader could follow the example. The links were affiliate links. :) I’ve already made money.
Worst – I stopped posting on a forum FULL of my potential readers and my traffic plummeted. This community accounts for more than half of my traffic. Never again…
Great post.
Salman
July 13th, 2009 2:46 am
My best experiences:
I planned to start a contest at my site http://www.tips4blogging.co.cc
my google link popularity has increased
my alexa rank also improved
My Worst experiences:
I did not receive expected traffic from link referral.
Nicole/MadlabPost
July 13th, 2009 2:46 am
My best experience blogging this week would have to be my Twitter recommendation. Although this is one of those things that occurred off of my blog, it helped to bring me recognition which is always good for traffic.
Another twitter user mentioned my profile in a FollowFriday tweet and I didn’t even know that happened until last night. So, that was cool.
The worst experience blogging this week is not being able to change the colors of links on my other blog and feeling ignored by the support staff that handles troubleshooting for the theme/blog template that I use on that particular blog.
Debajyoti Das
July 13th, 2009 3:00 am
My Best Experience had been the Good Amount of traffic I got from StumbleUpon for a post about Most Popular Antivirus Softwares of 2009.
And the Worst was … I had lost some feed readers.
Kelsey Steinke
July 13th, 2009 3:09 am
Best? I decided to start my own photoblog this week to go along with my flickr account and website that I am trying to set up.
Worst? That entails all the work of having never started a blog and trying to get one off the ground :P Mostly technical issues, I’m pretty good with CSS and HTML but I had never seen PHP so I need to learn this now! I’m still a newbie and reading about every post in this blog. I don’t plan on making money from mine though.
L-Jay
July 13th, 2009 3:27 am
Worst: I have a commenter that is trolling through my posts and leaving silly comments – problem is he is not really saying anything bad but he is just adding to tickle his own fancy and to be difficult.
Best: I wrote on some really quirky topics this week that I got a lot of fun out of – that’s what blogging is all about!
Andrew - WeBuildYourBlog
July 13th, 2009 3:29 am
The best…getting a guest post right here on Problogger! Thanks Darren. Which resulting in more traffic to my site. Would I do it again? Anytime!
The Worst…not really a blogging thing this week but I am creating a new product and it is already to go. But I keep changing my mind on the sales price and this has stalled me launching. Too low and I’m giving it away or too high and no-one buys. I just have to make that decision and go with it…
Andrew
teratips
July 13th, 2009 4:10 am
ye I receive mail from Dareen, This is best for me the Problogger, My hero, my fan Oh Gosh, What the experience
Blogging Tips, SEO and Money Making Tips by http://teratips.com
Zero 2 Hero Blogger
July 13th, 2009 4:27 am
Worst: this week I found an artifact on my blog that shows up in IE but not Firefox. IT drove me crazy for multiple hours
Best: Finding and fixing the bug was a moment of victory. Also I reached a halfway point to one of my goals on the blog.
Mrs Green
July 13th, 2009 4:36 am
What a fabulous idea for a thread – I’m going to be using this too!
My best – going away on holiday and having a weeks worth of posts stacked up that all posted themselves while I was sunning myself. I love how technology can serve us!
Worst – getting a crappy comment from someone which had a dig at one of our readers. But, on reflection, it’s our first one ever, so that’s pretty good going!
Rita
July 13th, 2009 4:40 am
What happened good this week is that I came up with a nice variety of topics for my baby boomer consumer audience: tattoos, food safety, addictive food, and beware of free offers for home alarm systems.
The bad news is that I didn’t have much time to work on marketing.
This is a great topic idea. I’ll be blogging about what was your best and worst consumer experience of the week.
Rita
I blog at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide at http://boomersurvive-thriveguide.typepad.com.
Rita
July 13th, 2009 4:56 am
I also blogged about how to cut your own hair.
Rita
Daz
July 13th, 2009 5:17 am
My first comment on here after many weeks of viewing the site, so Hi! (That could be classed as a “Best” couldn’t it?!).
The “Best and Worst” weekly post is also a very good idea.. I wonder how many other people will adopt it? I certainly am!
As for me,
Best:
Created my first lot of content for a new tech-based blog (tech news, reviews, tips, etc) and saw my first bit of traffic on there.
Worst:
People not signing up to the mailing list or RSS feed for updates, which has led me to change a few things after reading this site and others.
So really, the best has far outweighed the worst.. as I’m hoping more content and time will solve the worst!
Nicholas Z. Cardot
July 13th, 2009 5:45 am
I continued seeing strong growth and my RSS subscribers pushed over 100 for the first time. My site is less than 1 month old so I feel like that is great!
My worst is that I ran into a bug with the Wordpress rss and Feedburner interface. It took me a little while to create a workaround and then today’s feedburner email contained all ten recent posts instead of just today’s. Oops. Live and learn!
Anna
July 13th, 2009 5:48 am
Well, worst: one of my sites (which has several blogs) had its traffic go down. I realized that started when I began a posting a bit less on the blogs. Actually the traffic peaked and started to go down on the exact date that I got my first of two kittens. And I know they have been REALLY distracting for me!
The upside of this is I did learn from it and it shows that the daily posting I had been doing on that site’s blogs was making a difference.
The best – I actually found a plugin which has helped me handle the comment spam robots. My email is no longer flooded with moderation notices for bogus comments. Occasionally a spam comment still gets through, but much much less. And occasionally a legitimate comment is still spammed – but that’s rare as well. I would say that the number moderation emails for bogus comments is down to less than 5% of what it was.
The name of the plugin is NoSpamNX.
Zemalf
July 13th, 2009 6:28 am
Worst: Some spam bots got through AKismet and other spam filters I have set up and now i gotta keep an eye on what’s happening next week after I cleaned’em up this time.
Best: The internal SEO finetuning paid of, and traffic increased 43% from last week (not all from search engines thou, but good portion of it anyway) + My recent self-interview -post got tweeted around quite a bit, which was a pleasant surprise.
Patty Reiser
July 13th, 2009 6:30 am
I had two best moments this week. One photography blogger took me up on some advice a few weeks back and it really helped her and so she wrote about me and the advice I gave her and I saw an increase in traffic from her blog. Another moment came when another blogger asked me to write a guest post on her blog while she is on vacation. Being able to help others is always a good thing.
The worst moment came when a reader commented that there was nowhere on my blog to aubscribe with a RSS feeder. It was quickly fixed but still an Oops moment!
Jessica Who
July 13th, 2009 7:29 am
Best: The day I posted my first picture on my blog my traffic doubled, which was terrific because it’s showing the potential traffic down the road.
Worst: Realizing that adsense sucks and I have to find a new way to earn or I will eventually have to blog less :(
Steve
July 13th, 2009 8:39 am
Hard to believe that Akismet was letting hundreds of spam comments through. I thought it worked better than that.
Strength and Fitness
July 13th, 2009 9:30 am
Best: Two or three days with over 1,000 hits (that’s small to some, but not to me).
Worst: Still trying to decide whether or not to drop Entrecard–tough decision for me.
Isaac Yassar
July 13th, 2009 9:39 am
Worse: I had to deal with a flaming content thief.
Best: My Alexa ranking gets lower and lower in number somehow, lower is better..
Martin Malden
July 13th, 2009 9:54 am
My best and worst are related to the same thing…
Best: I moved my blog over to a new hosting provider – the transfer went smoothly and I’m delighted with the more stable and quicker load times
Worst: After moving everything over I found that strange nonsense characters appeared in all my posts.
I eventually worked out that they were caused because I draft my posts in Word, copy them to Notepad to remove Word’s formatting and then re-copy them to WordPress.
Unfortunately copying to Notepad doesn’t remove all the formatting – in particular apostrophes and dashes continue to cause problems. This is also the case when I copy Notepad stuff to CoffeeCup (my web builder), by the way.
So I’ve spent the last few days going through every post on my blog and removing the nonsense characters manually. :(
Lesson: either write posts in WordPress or use the ‘Paste as Plain Text’ button.
Benefit: I’ve been able to tidy up the posts on my blog, including removing some old ones that were just taking up space.
Cheers,
Martin.
krissy knox
July 13th, 2009 10:18 am
Best:
I had someone ask to guest post in my blog. I now have 4 guest posters lined up. I’ve also been asked to be a guest poster recently. :)
I’m getting ready soon to move from blogspot to Wordpress.
I’m considering ways to monetize my blogs. Or shall I say, I’m viewing blogging as a business now.
I’m coming up with new ideas for blogs (I’d like to start a couple new ones).
I’m going to finish up Darren’s 31 DBBB course (even if it’s on my own and takes a little while)!
I’m considering taking another blogging course.
I’ve been introduced to some great folks on twitter, and am networking more, and finding real friendships.
I’ve had a lot of growth from being involved in Twitter.
I’ve had commenters on my blog, even though I haven’t been able to update, due to illness in my family.
negative:
I haven’t had time to update my blog this week, due to the fact that I was temp. hospitalized. Also other family illnesses were in play. But I will do it!
krissy knox :)
follow me on twitter :)
http://twitter.com/iamkrissy :)
Ms Constantine
July 13th, 2009 10:45 am
Best: My traffic doubled on a couple of days this week and my readers seem to be leaving more comments.
Worst: Getting writers block because my house is a mess and I have so many ideas that my brain is becoming a mess.
Alex | Blogussion.com
July 13th, 2009 10:52 am
Best – Some people in need of freelance design work saw my blog, loved the design I did and contacted me for work.
Worst – My partner resigned, and my blog has been down all day today. Ughh.
Troy
July 13th, 2009 10:56 am
Best: Being approached to create an e-book for the upcoming Chelsea FC season, based on my blog posts
but’s that’s not the best thing! I was hit by a golden ray of light and stumbled upon an idea in my niche that had not been explored. Stay tuned…
Worst: Realising I’d have to say goodbye to my little blog if I was to go through with the BIG idea. But then I realised I could integrate them!
Disck Jockey
July 13th, 2009 11:48 am
BEST:
- Increased traffic thanks to the latest quality posts at my “DJ Blog”.
- Met really hot & smart girl thanks again to my “DJ Blog’. :)
WORST:
- Forecastfox add-on for Firefox screwed me with the Saturday’s weather forecast, and ruined the planned picnic. :(( :)
Ethan
July 13th, 2009 11:49 am
Best – Selling my blog for a decent amount of money!
Worst – Realizing that I have to start over.
Scott Drummond
July 13th, 2009 11:51 am
The best thing that happened to me online and on my blog this week?
Easily #manweek. It’s a great initiative by Reach Out and triplej to help men discuss what it means to be a man and to tell their stories.
The outpouring of touching, personal, honest and brave posts from male bloggers across Sydney and the rest of Australia has been an incredible example of the strength of writing in the Australian blogosphere and the courage and community sentiment that exists amongst Australian male bloggers.
Even better, off the back of the #manweek Twitter and blogging initiative, Mark Pollard and Gavin Heaton are putting together an eBook full of observations from men across Australia and some international contributors. I hope you forgive the link, but if you are a man and you’re keen to contribute, please check out: http://www.theperfectgiftforaman.com.au/2009/07/help-us-write-a-book/
It would be great to hear from more of Australia’s men.
The worst thing that happened to me online and on my blog this week?
I procrastinated again and didn’t post. To be fair I have been pretty busy, but every week that goes by without a post still feels like a week wasted. I think I need to pick up a copy of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog!
Kathryn Whiteley
July 13th, 2009 11:59 am
Best:
– A few people actually finding my blog even though I was offline for a week.
Worst:
- Depressed because there is so much to do just to get my blog set up — and no time to do anything with my 2 sets of twins home everyday since school is out.
- Wanting to “do things right” and realizing mistakes I’ve already made that will require me to go back and redo — which takes my time that I don’t really have.
Allison Reynolds
July 13th, 2009 12:01 pm
Best: Got back into teh swing of posting and did 3 in a 24 hour period
Worst: Offered an iPod as a contest prize at http://www.swbnetwork.com/blog/headline/win-an-ipodswbn-content-creation-competition/ and had ZERO entries….. cmon guys… anyone can win this!
Alison Kerr
July 13th, 2009 12:10 pm
Great Topic :-)
Best
- The Good Human accepted a guest post from me and called me a friend. That felt good!
- I’m really enjoying making good connections on Twitter.
Worst
- I’m still embroiled in changing from Blogger to Wordpress. Tons and tons of posts to fix categories on and I’ve not figured out the whole Google duplicate post thing so that I can clear out my old blog and release my new blog to be indexed. So right now I have ZERO search engine traffic.
- Nice give away on my blog has just one comment. I don’t get this one, it’s for a FREE subscription to a very useful service and quite a few have read the post.
导热油
July 13th, 2009 12:27 pm
Great heads think alike
Mia Freedman
July 13th, 2009 12:45 pm
Thanks for the mention & link Darren. Ironically, my overall worst/best of last week were actually blogging-related but I decided not to write about them on mamamia for reasons which will become apparent….
WORST: Watching the comments on several of my rather innocent posts deteriorate into an absolute slanging match that went for days.
Watching the battle unfold between a new commenter with strident (but not unreasonable) views and a large group of regulars who ganged up to attack her and continued their attack on Twitter.
Having to email the regulars to ask them to cut it out and having to delete more comments in one post than I have in all my posts over the past year.
Questioning what the hell I was doing.
BEST: Being forced to take an overdue look at what the hell I was doing!
I have been restlessly searching to tighten my own editorial brief and identify what exactly I want my blog to be for a while now.
I’ve been facing that familiar blogging dilemma of the increased traffic that (I think?) comes with a broad brief versus a narrower one.
With my best/worst post this week (the second week I’ve done it) comments exploded in a GOOD way and I was reminded EXACTLY what I want from my blog. To be a place where people can share their experiences and support one another. Not flame. Not fight. Not abuse.
I have emerged with a renewed resolve to try and continue to elicit the vibe of my best/worst post on all the posts I do this week.
Rachel
July 13th, 2009 12:47 pm
Best: got the company’s elder care blog up (thecarecompass.com), upgraded tweetdeck so i can tweet from multiple accounts, really found a groove in my personal twittering (schreiberwriter). Made some good connections with caregiving/senior bloggers.
Worst: real life has been challenging, the social media community has been where it’s fun
pip lincolne - meet me at mikes
July 13th, 2009 12:57 pm
Hello! Mia Freedman sent me!
Best – Deciding to add my Tumblr and my Recipe Blog to my main blog page so my readers can get heaps of good stuff every time they visit!
Worst – Seeing the comments on some poor people’s blogs turn into a bit of a high-school bitch-fest. Not nice or respectful.
Thank you for asking, Mr ProBlogger!
x
Persistent Blogger
July 13th, 2009 12:58 pm
Best: visitor stats rising, new commenter dropping by and sharing their feedback.
Worst: hours spent trying to add a Digg this button and failing, knowing I can’t keep doubling my visitor stats every month forever so I’m sitting here waiting for a crash!
Thanks for the post, the comments and good luck everyone!
Annabel Candy
Lois Melbourne
July 13th, 2009 12:58 pm
Worst – I worked on a blog to tie to lyrics of a song. But I was only working on the chorus. When I finished the blog, I went to check the full lyrics of the song and found that I couldn’t align with the entire song. So I had to give up the post. I wish I had done the research first. I felt stupid and I wasted time.
Aron Sora
July 13th, 2009 1:14 pm
Best: My E-book project, (Working title: 60 days to become a better space advocate) (I got the idea from Problogger’s 31 Days to a Better Blog), is gathering a lot of attention and support from the space community
Worst: I just added project wonderful and there have been ads that I’m not proud of. I’m still playing with the settings. I turn on “block NSFW ads”, but that didn’t do much. So, I just turned on the most strict filtering. It’s annoying and it’s not worth 10 cents a day.
Manrevo
July 13th, 2009 1:41 pm
No terribly bad experiences, but I like how I’m slowly gaining more traffic!
Jhay
July 13th, 2009 1:51 pm
The worst for me is still suffering from blogger’s block! It’s more of a nightmare really.
Game Site Builder
July 13th, 2009 2:14 pm
Best: Finished the css deign for one of my blogs.
Worst: I didn’t get a lot of what I wanted to do this week done.
Interesting to see how many page views your forum generates.
B. Durant
July 13th, 2009 3:32 pm
Worst: Assigned myself a project to create a database relating to snakes in all 50 of “these United States”. I went into it assuming it would be a snap once I created a 5 templates. My thought was to simply find the information and plug it in knocking out 15 or 20 a day. Reality is the templates took about 30 minutes to create but all the research is taking about 4 to 7 hours PER state.
I had planned to have it done by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. I just got finished with Delaware, the 8th listing and I began this last Wednesday.
Best: I was struggling getting visitors and from past experience on ablogaboutnothing.com a good technique to try is a contest. So I got a hold of one of the largest snake breeders in the US and asked if he’d co-sponsor a snake up to $400.00 value (me paying $250 and him discounting $150) and he said sure. It took a few days to get going, but as word has spread in the reptile community I’m getting flooded with visitors, comments, emails, etc.
Best 2: I finally spent some time optimizing my blog for load times and learning some of the inner workings of Thesis.
Josh
July 13th, 2009 3:54 pm
Best:
- Coming up with some great content ideas
- Finally happy with my design
- Locked down design and content for two ebooks
Worst:
- Traffic is slowing down and I’m not sure why, possibly my recent focus change
- I don’t know what I want to do first or what I should do first
- The lack of time to implement all of my great content ideas is annoying me!
Ahh.. what a nice way to vent :P
Real-e-money.com
July 13th, 2009 4:02 pm
This post is a great idea!
Best: I had a really nice ammount of affiliate sales this week, I had more and more visitors coming to my website clicking ads and my websites value was increased by a few dollars more.
Worst: I had a huge ammount of spammers using my contact form to send me useless messages. Some expensive affiliate programs I’m promoting sell more than my own cheap ebook called The Cheapest Money Maker Gold Edition and I’m really disapointed because I think people believe I’m selling junk just because the book costs only $1.97! I also had 2 big losing trades in my forex trading.
PraShawn
July 13th, 2009 5:25 pm
I had an unexpected amount of visitors to my blog without social bookmarking. Thanks for sharing. Great topic by the way. Great post.
Excel Matic
July 13th, 2009 5:31 pm
Even I recently had a worst blog-day, though am just a few months into blogging.
Actually I have been surfing around for some know-how about blogging. And, i came across a very good blog which really had some interesting posts on blogging.
I went through a good number of articles and this made me so excited about the blogging thing that same day only I posted around 4 posts, just on the tracks as suggested by the blog. But when I reviewed my blog the next day, what I noticed was that all those 4 blogs were just pieces of waste.
My mistake was that I did not give myself enough time to learn the concepts. I just read those concepts and tried to emulate them.
My suggestion to all new bloggers is – though you may take tips from such online tutorials, they are many a times good, but be patient ourself. Do not blog just for blogging. Have a reason for it and blog only about what you can blog about!!
Dean Saliba
July 13th, 2009 7:02 pm
What a great idea.
Best: I’ve abandoned using the stat plugins that were all giving me different readings, I am now using Google Analytics and I’m really happy with the spike this week in traffic.
Worst: I decided to install a new comment system called Intense Debate. I have found it to be a lot of trouble, sometimes more trouble than it is worth, and I’ve had to resist the urge to remove it and go back to the old way.
It looks nicer than the old one I had and it will nestle comment replies nicely. It just doesn’t catch as much spam as the old system, nor does it import all my comments at the first attempt and sometimes it holds onto comments so I don’t see them.
Alvin
July 13th, 2009 7:05 pm
Best: My blog design is almost look like yours.
Worst: The traffic never had improvement.
A Blog to Review Your Apple iPhone
Dominique
July 13th, 2009 7:57 pm
Worst blogging experience- getting my blog suspended by my former hosting for no apparent reason.
Best experience- meeting and gaining new readers (RSS) and friends
Chloe Alice Wilson
July 13th, 2009 8:55 pm
Best: I actually had 3 things – is that allowed!
1) my traffic has doubled in 3 weeks – yippee.
2) a well respected mummy blogger commented that she liked, no “loved” one of my posts – wow.
3) my mum liked one of my posts on bogeys of all things – that never happens!
Worst: my Tweet This plugin seemed to zap my home page this morning. I’ve no idea why but had to turn it off to fix it – any ideas anyone?
Cheers, Chloe
Slacker
July 13th, 2009 9:31 pm
Worst this week – registration spam. Some bot is registering again and again with the famous mighty morphin’ email addresses. Grrrr.
Best this week – Joined Networked Blogs on Facebook and saw a bump in traffic. That was easier than I thought!
Hubtonomy
July 13th, 2009 9:36 pm
I’d have to say it is when there are any hosting issues or when my hard drive dies losing a third or all my data that I hadn’t backed up for 2 weeks. Now I do daily grandfathered backups.
duşakabin
July 13th, 2009 9:41 pm
Worst blogging experience- getting my blog suspended by my former hosting for no apparent reason.
Joel Brown
July 13th, 2009 9:43 pm
Hmm interesting idea.
Best Thing – Would have to be that my twitter started to grow again, it had been a little stagnent, just floating around the same number of followers, but has started growing again.
Worst Thing – I shared a lot of content this week which has normally led to some good spikes in traffic, however i saw very little difference at all.
David Cain
July 13th, 2009 9:49 pm
Best: My traffic has stayed consistently higher than normal all week, mostly due to StumbleUpon.
Worst: I had two posts that did really well, then my last one got an inexplicably poor response, judging my the comments. I don’t know why it stung so much but it did.
Michael
July 13th, 2009 10:26 pm
Best: My traffic is up!
Worst: However much traffic I get I am always frustrated because I want more!
Tracy
July 13th, 2009 10:38 pm
Hi! It was interesting to read your forum experience, because I’ve had nearly the same. Using twitter, facebook and in some cases stumble upon to highlight certain threads or areas has been successful. The bounce rate is a little higher than I’d like to see, but those that get hooked, go on to read many pages and stay for a good bit.
We upgraded to IPB 3, which is supposed to be more SEO friendly than previous versions and it seems to have worked, search traffic is about 25-30% higher in just the week it’s been installed.
Only problem is, once folks are hooked on the forums, they’ve no time to read the blog!
Charles Chua C K
July 13th, 2009 10:40 pm
Best: There was a surge of readers from StumbleUpon to read my article: Positive Thinking – 10 Delightful Tips to Make You Happy (http://allaboutlivingwithlife.blogspot.com/2008/12/positive-thinking-10-delightful-tips-to.html)
Worst: My account with StumbleUpon was subsequently suspended because I bookmarked too many of my own articles.
Jodi
July 13th, 2009 11:02 pm
Best: Contest for a Tamron Lens got over 750 comments! Yay!!!
Worst: Not so much blogging – but I was unorganized as my mac was in the shop after having it one week, and my PC was a week out of date. Hard to juggle…
*** Darren – would you care if I try this on my blog sometime? Love the idea – but do not want to just copy you without permission. I was thinking I could do:
What is the best and worst client experience you have had this week… Or what is the best and worst photography experience you had this week…
Let me know please – email – jodi@mcpactions.com
Thanks for your great blog,
Jodi
Andy
July 13th, 2009 11:09 pm
Best: My Alexa Traffic Rank has improved in the past few days.
Worst: None for now
Sheryl Tuttle
July 13th, 2009 11:47 pm
Best – having someone link to my post, Handling Rejection, on my New Business Pipeline blog.
Worst – no participants in my WordProverb blog contest where I am giving away two free books!
Tim
July 13th, 2009 11:59 pm
As someone who is switching my blog from Blogger to a self hosted WordPress site, my best blogging experience was finally feeling comfortable with the WordPress Admin panel. I also met with a friend who is going to help me with the plug-ins and SEO. I am feeling excited about the new blog.
My worst blogging experience stems from my indecisiveness about which new theme to select. I know it is all about the content, but I want to have a design that I like and that my readers will like. So I’ve been going back and forth and probably over-thinking some stuff and driving myself crazy in the process.
Mrs. B. Roth
July 14th, 2009 12:20 am
The best was when a stranger wrote an on-line article about my blog.
The worst was when I made a lesbian very angry with my opinion and she wrote an open letter to me on her blog. I was very stressed about it at the time, but it was a good experience.
And both brought lots of people over.
Mikes Sumondong
July 14th, 2009 12:33 am
Best: I have updated my sidebar based on your inputs on a previous post.
Worst: I became so busy that I had not found the time to update my blog.
*sigh*
Rhea
July 14th, 2009 12:43 am
Worst: Watching my Technorati ranking drop into the 60s. It used to be in the 100s and 200s.
Best: Seeing a bunch of people link to me last week. ‘Cause I had good content. Yup, it’s true. It’s content, content, content.
Karen Chaffee
July 14th, 2009 1:14 am
Thank you for another great post! My best experience was a blog of mine being featured on Barbara Swafford’s “Blogging Without A Blog!” A complete and wonderful surprise to me.
My worst was my mind going “blank” for a new and decent post idea on my site.
Both are good learning experiences, though at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Karen
make money online
July 14th, 2009 1:48 am
I saw the 90 day limit on your posts which kinda sucks since I enjoy reading through your archives and like discussing the topics of older posts especially the marketing ones, but it of course is understandable with the amount of spammers out their and having to spend that much time sorting through garbage really hurts when it comes to blogging. Personally the best thing about my blogs this week has been breaking into technorati’s top 35k the bad has been lacking motivation with my posts.
Kris,
Tumblemoose
July 14th, 2009 1:58 am
Hey Darren,
Best: A “throw away” little blog of mine that normally sees about 50 visitors a day had a post go viral with nearly 5k hits over 48 hours!
Worst: Withdrew from a forum due to some yukky circumstances
Great idea here. Interesting to read all of the comments
George
Aron Sora
July 14th, 2009 4:24 am
Hey, for all those experiencing blogger’s block check out TED.com This is the website for the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference. Browse around a try to apply to ideas presented to your niche. These lectures are thought provoking so if these don’t get a blog post out of you, nothing will.
fas
July 14th, 2009 4:26 am
Comment spam is a ever growing problem. We need to be cautious of spammers. Drop in traffic and site moving slow are few of the worst blogging experience this week.
Ralph
July 14th, 2009 10:58 am
Best – I finally realized that purchasing te combo 31 day package did not mean a hardcopy of 31days. I researched and found instructions to download so I now have it in hand.
Worst- After revamping my blog with a weekly schedule and theme and making a real effort to provide value, I do see small increases in visitors and even smaller increases in repeat visitors. But nobody leaves comments even when the point of the post is to get visitor insight and opinion and even though I know something about the repeat visitors, I don’t know how they got there or why they come back.
Haris
July 14th, 2009 11:09 am
Good Darren, shield yourself. now i understand why suddenly you put this line ‘comments will be closed off…’ above the comment form. yeah, your blog is so well known so spammers are here and there. and might want to entertain you as well.
Blogger Make Money
July 14th, 2009 3:50 pm
Same like you, my blog is full of spam comments and I don’t know how to solve it because I use blogspot platform for my blogs.
Opinionated Ant
July 15th, 2009 6:36 am
best:
changed theme & cleaned up site (still cleaning ;).
I added feedburner and discovered Windows Live Writer. (thanks, darren) Which I used to do a huge batch posting (for my weeklies, like word of the week).
I’m hoping it will give me more time to focus on stories. [which was the point of my fictional blog until i got sidetracked.]
worst:
low readership, but it’s a quirky site and as long as i am enjoying it (and make a few giggle or suggest a doctor) then i’m happy.
like a few mentioned above, my problem has been spam. although it has been interesting and unique.
MsJosay
July 16th, 2009 6:42 am
So far 2 important ‘bests’ – (1) starting my blog, and (2) traffic to the blog is increasing as a result of learning how to promote it more effectively
No ‘worst’s so far but the week is only half over.
Keller Hawthorne
July 17th, 2009 1:33 pm
Definitely my best blogging experience of this last week was StudioPress officially sponsoring my Best WordPress Website Design of 2009 Contest! Brian will be giving his All Theme Package (worth $199) to the winner and one theme to each of the 5 finalists. It’s amazing to already have such a strong blogging relationship (my blog is only 2 months old).
My worst experience is I haven’t heard back yet from any of the other companies I requested sponsorships from. I really want to give away some awesome prizes to the winner and hope to bring on board at least two more sponsors. But, it is summer time and many people are on vacation. It’s probably time to remind myself of the virtue of patience.
I think this contest would greatly benefit many of your readers Darren. I’m hoping to have a lot of newbie bloggers enter. This is a great opportunity to get some attention and free traffic! I should be launching the contest in a couple of weeks. If anyone is interested in learning more, please check out my post: http://www.fresheventure.com/1256/questions-best-wordpress-website-design-2009-contest/
I hope it’s ok that I added a link to my blog :).
siobhan curious
July 18th, 2009 2:15 am
Best:
I’m preparing for a guest spot as a teachers’ “advice columnist” next week at Change.org’s Education blog (http://education.change.org/). A number of friends and colleagues have written brilliant letters requesting advice on teaching dilemmas. I’m very excited about launching this feature.
Worst:
traffic is down, no matter what I do to try to pick it up. I’m blaming the time of year – mid-July is teachers’ last chance to think about anything BUT teaching before the preparation for the new year begins in earnest. Here’s looking forward to a more active August!
Stef
July 18th, 2009 12:11 pm
Good: I’m getting lots of hits.
Bad: No comments and 2 RSS subscribers!
I wonder how I can improve the bad?
SURVEYS FOR MONEY
July 19th, 2009 3:12 pm
My best experiences this week was an increase in traffic each day of the week. I read and learned a lot about becoming a better blogger. My worst experiences was even though I’m gaining more traffic, I’m not getting any subscribers. That just shows that I have to write better quality and lengthier posts.
Nicole
July 22nd, 2009 5:34 am
Best – Traffic is beginning to rise again – I guess parents are planning those Birthday Parties
Worst – Having the kids home takes away from my time to Blog and promote – URGH
Iain Buchanan
July 22nd, 2009 9:55 am
I’m a new student of Alex Jeffreys – and although I did have a blog for a few months, I started with a blank slate a few weeks ago. I’m really looking at making a go of blogging now – and the pieces are starting to fall into place. I’m looking for all the feedback I can get and different peoples thoughts… With that in mind, here’s my best and worst bits of the week:
Best – getting to grips with blogging and getting some great comments telling me I’m offering some good content.
Worst – My dodgy first video blog post! And the second one wasn’t much better!
Iain
http://www.IainBuchanan.me
Ed Hardy bags
July 22nd, 2009 5:46 pm
Best – getting to grips with blogging and getting some great comments telling me I’m offering some good content.
Zahra
September 5th, 2009 5:56 pm
Good afternoon. Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
I am from Guinea and learning to read in English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “Making the males and countries of minutes will give toupĂ©e of lower artists of hormones with less closure of cocoa of majority ability.”
Thanks for the help :-(, Zahra.
wine of month club
September 23rd, 2009 8:54 am
I had a wine review gone bad, the winery wanted to edit literally everything that I said….1st amendment people lol
pertm
September 24th, 2009 7:13 pm
My blog is fairly new and in Norwegian. I have not had a lot of visitors. Last week ended with 3 days with 0 visitors. Late on sunday I posted a post with some pictures from a bikeride and on monday I got more than 40 hits. Before this I only had 16 or so hits as the best I had gotten on a day.
jeux pokemon
September 30th, 2009 9:04 pm
I have not really had a bad experiences when it comes to about this week day. But i don’t take much notice about this week. It’s just not that important to me..
dsl modem
September 30th, 2009 9:56 pm
The month my adsense suddenly dropped from $1200 a month to about $100. It happened to a lot of people but having company was no comfort.
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