Four Blogging Mistakes I Should Have Avoided

Posted in Blogging, Book Reviews by Douglas Karr
Saturday, July 5th at 9:13 pm

This afternoon I spent a few hours at Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble is much closer to my home, but I have to admit that Borders is much better organized and books are easier to find. I’m constantly ‘walking the aisles’ at Barnes and Noble looking rather than spending time reading.

Anyways, I picked up my favorite magazine, Practical Web Design (aka .net) and finally picked up Darren and Chris‘ book, Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.

I don’t think the title of the book does it justice. Although a lot of the book is about monetization and Darren’s success at it, the book’s advice extends well beyond. I’d recommend it to anyone from a strategy guide for blogging as well. It differs from some of my other favorite books on blogging, like Shel and Scoble’s book, Naked Conversations, in that it’s more tactical in its approach rather than strategic. This is a book to get you started at successfully blogging.

The book reinforced many of the techniques and tactics that I have spoke of on this blog, but I should share with you the largest flaws in my blogging:

My blogging isn’t always consistent due to my work schedule. This hurts my momentum since readers aren’t always assured of quality content each day.
My site is branded more to me than Marketing Technology and many of the posts are me sharing personal anecdotes that may not have anything to do with Marketing Technology. My readers have come to expect that from me, but I know that many readers have walked because of it.
My blog could probably be diced up into multiple niche topics that are more targeted… perhaps Online Marketing, Social Media, and Web Development. I still may work one day to dice up the content, but that’s a tough (very tough) job. If I were to start over, that’s definitely the direction I would have taken.
My domain name would not be douglaskarr.com. Once again, this blurs the blog between me and my actual topic. It also makes the blog impossible to sell, since I don’t want to sell my name. I am keeping an eye out on some domains, though! If I can find some good ones, I’ll look to splice my content and disassociate my blog with my name.

Looking forward to Chris and Darren’s reaction to this post. If you’re not blogging yet, be sure to pick up Darren and Chris’ book to get you started on the right track. Great read!