Last Updated on April 20, 2020

What would you call a blogging mistake? I suppose you have a whole list of “to do not” things, which you try hard to avoid when it comes to blogging.

Maybe a blogging mistake is that action which takes your blog to a lower level, or which does not raise it enough according to your objectives and standards. I don’t know what exactly blogging is, so I cannot define blogging mistakes. Let’s take the most common places:

1. Not having an “about” page.

Doest it really matter? If you, my reader, land on my blog with a problem and I show you solutions, why should you care who I am?

2. Not keeping a constant posting frequency.

What are we, time bombs? If I check your blog and I don’t find a new post every Wednesday, 9 o’clock, Pacific Time, I’m going to drop my bombs all over your blog (or your hosting provider) and I’m not going to read your blog again! Do you really believe I care? I only remember to read your blog every now and then, so take your time, don’t feel pushed from behind, because I’d rather read what you have to say, than an every day bullshit served for the sake of “posting frequency”. I don’t care about your posting frequency, all I care is the quality of your content, and what’s in there for me, your reader.

3. Making grammar errors.

I’m not a native English speaker. I probably make grammar errors in my posts, and I cannot detect most of your errors for sure. If you have amazing things to share, people will tend to ignore your lack of grammar knowledge. The best example is Shoemoney, whose grammar skills are rather poor, and still has an amazing level of readership. Maybe that’s because he has something interesting to say…

4. Monetizing your blog too early.

As if I cared about that! Either I’m ad-blind, or I use an ad blocker, so go ahead, monetize from day one! If I need your content, I don’t care if it is surrounded by all the advertising in the world! If I don’t need your content, I’ll be happy to quit your blog via one of your ads, which could solve my problem. Please don’t be shy: if advertising did not exist, how would we have found out how to make money online, or what is a hair conditioner, or why we need to eat healthy stuff? Advertising is good, so offer it to your readers.

5. Not using a smart permalink structure.

I’ve seen so many good blogs with shitty permalink structure, that I started to ask myself if it really matters. If you don’t aim for search engine users, it doesn’t matter at all. So if you build an authority blog, with a steady, loyal audience, you don’t have to worry about permalinks. Those are for people who chase search engines traffic.

6. Underestimating the power of RSS.

I’m too old to get used with the RSS technology. I know by heart what blogs I want to visit every day. Although I subscribed to a ton of blogs, I never open my feed reader. I don’t find it user friendly at all. I’m in my late 30s. I buy a lot of things online and I can easily be influenced by a well-written article. How many of your readers are like me? I’d have one thing to say to you: don’t overestimate the power of RSS!

7. Not commenting enough on other people’s blogs.

How can you tell what’s enough? Did you count how many readers you get from commenting on other blogs? And what kind of readers are those? If this wouldn’t be such a strong belief, blogosphere would be a better place. I receive so much spam lately, that I’m seriously thinking of turning off comments on this blog. If you don’t have something to say, please don’t comment at all.

8. Not using blog carnivals.

And if you use them, what? Do you know what to do after you submit your post there? I host a blog carnival here every two weeks, and I can tell you that people don’t know how to behave when they’ve been linked to. If you submit some post to a blog carnival, please follow up, stumble, digg, bookmark the carnival post, because it is also in your benefit. Blog carnivals should be teamwork: the host and the authors should act as a team, thus making the most out of that carnival. Otherwise, it is a waste of time to submit, if you forget it 2 seconds after.

9. You lack long term vision.

As if I read all things you have in your archives! All I care about as a reader, are my today’s needs, my needs in this moment when I’m online, looking for answers. If you give me solutions each time I have a need, then you can have no vision, I’ll be your loyal reader till death (or offline life) do us part 🙂

I could continue like this all night long. I choose not to. What I wanted to emphasize here is that there are no mistakes in blogging. There are only lessons. You are better with every day which passes, with every post you write, with every thought you materialize on paper (or rather on screen). Forget mistakes and do everything like your next post would be the last one. And enjoy it or let it go!