12 Things to do to Your Brand New Blog
Posted on July 6th, 2007. 21 Comments so far. You next?
Starting a brand new blog can be hard. The first time I did, I thought writing everyday would be no problem. I had a lot to say? Or did I? That first go was short lived, mainly because I had no idea what I was doing. If I could go back and tell myself to do these things, who knows where I could be now?
- No Post > Crappy Post. Writing everyday is great, but if you don’t have any ideas, or just don’t feel like writing anything, don’t post. Not posting will be better than a short, useless one.
- Use WordPress to your advantage (if you use it). Go into your Permalink Options and choose the fancy URLs, tweak your template, learn to theme it, and get the most out of your software. Get all the cool plugins and hacks and extend your blog.
- Sign up to absolutely everything. FeedBurner, Technorati, Digg, del.icio.us, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pownce, all kinds of forums and communities, every bookmarking site, every network site. Not only do you need to claim and build your identity on the web, but these things can be leveraged for traffic.
- Don’t ask your readers questions until you know they exist! There’s nothing more discouraging to a fresh, new blogger than asking “what do you think?” or saying “leave a comment” to no response. Plus, it looks pretty bad to potential readers.
- If you’re going to use a free theme, don’t use a popular one. I touched on this in a new article I’ve written for Devlounge, “5 Reasons I Don’t Read Your Blog and How to Change That“. There are great free themes for all platforms that aren’t used like crazy.
- Email other bloggers asking for links. Out of every ten you email, you could get 2 or so solid backlinks. I shot up to PR5 pretty quick, so I had something offer, but if you write good stuff, people won’t be shy. Also, if you have a good amount of posts on a new blog (say 8-10) and they’re well written, reflecting your style, it also improves your chances.
- Don’t dwell on the feed numbers after a while. Seeing 5 people subscribe is awesome, but when you start getting up into the 20s-30s, seeing it drop is disappointing. It all depends on the client readers are using to subscribe. I actually touched on this back in June, with “How Strong is your Subscriber Rate?” If it drops, just try to be happy and watch it go back up the next day.
- Comment on other blogs, as much as you can. You build relationships with other bloggers, get your voice heard by their readers, you might get a little bit of traffic and maybe a return comment.
- Link out in posts often. When a blogger gets a trackback or link back that isn’t spam, they’re likely to visit the link along with some of their readers.
You can get huge traffic boosts if you catch a post with Digg FP potential and link to it early on, this way your link is right at the top for the thousands of visitors. - Save yourself from looking bad/stupid/dumb. If you have to think about whether you should publish a post, sleep on it. If it could be a bad idea, or in any way set you back, it’s probably not worth it.
- Don’t serve ads or monetize for at least 6 months. I’ll personally never monetize this site, but too many new bloggers are starting right out of the gates filled with ads. All this does is cheapen what you have to say, because you stop wanting to produce quality content and start writing link bait to make a quick buck. If you wait 6 months, I guarantee you’ll more in than 7th month than those first 6 combined.
- Everyone can use a little viral traffic. I’ve only ever had one piece of social media traffic, and it was from MacSurfer way back in February. The problem with that was my design and writing at the time was “worth” about 20 readers. I didn’t even know what link bait was, but when I shot up to over 100 subscribers for a day, it faded away very quickly. A taste is nice, but don’t depend on it.
Getting on your way to having a successful blog is pretty difficult, but with the resources available today you can always have a head start. It takes time, so patience is key if you want to see those numbers rise.
19 comments
July 6th, 2007 at 1:09 PM
I saw pownce in there. I signed up for it but can you invite me? me and henrylegge.co.uk thanks.
Some nice reasons. I will definatly be asking you for advice when my blog opens. I reckon it will in a week once i fix this bug. As its now summer holidays :D.
July 6th, 2007 at 1:17 PM
Invite sent, to (me at henrylegge.co.uk). I hope that’s what you meant.
July 6th, 2007 at 1:25 PM
Yes it was, thanks.
I will be using your blog a lot when i open mine :D, you have one of the best blogs i’ve read.
Hey 90 subscribers! Good going.
July 6th, 2007 at 1:33 PM
Nice post Connor. I should probably apply these to my blog, along with posting more! >.
July 6th, 2007 at 1:51 PM
A couple of notes on #11:
1) Good linkbait is by definition quality content. If it’s not you will just have a high bounce rate.
2) If you monitize early your readers will not revolte later. Look at the reaction on Coding Horror to Jeff’s announcement that he was adding (very limited) ads to his site.
Kevin
http://technogeek.org/
July 6th, 2007 at 2:01 PM
All link bait has a high bounce rate. Essentially, thats what you want from it anyways.
I can’t say I was familiar with Coding Horror, but at 64000 subscribers I’d say his readers are fine. And when did he introduce those ads?
July 6th, 2007 at 3:49 PM
Nice article, Connor!
July 6th, 2007 at 5:35 PM
This is a pro article. I’m impressed.
I think .11 is more true to personal blogs. But is a different story when it comes to niche blogs.
Like, if you’re going to start a blog about canoeing (just the first thing I thought of) it would be, in my opinion, totally acceptable to show a few sets of google ads text ads and have some other larger ads related to the outdoors.
July 6th, 2007 at 5:42 PM
Yeah, totally. Niche blogs are half expected to be monetized anyways
July 7th, 2007 at 1:36 AM
Jeff announced on Coding Horror near the end of last month. See this post:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000893.html
I would also agree that there is a big difference between monetizing a personal blog, and a niche one.
Kevin
July 7th, 2007 at 1:51 AM
Very informative post. Glad to reaffirm that I’m doing most things right.
July 7th, 2007 at 4:18 AM
I think your site is very useful but I need to adapt some of it to suit my own and my readers’ requirements. A little as you go is my motto.
July 7th, 2007 at 8:37 AM
Who is that? and agreed.
July 7th, 2007 at 12:00 PM
Who is who? Who are you?
July 8th, 2007 at 11:44 AM
I waited for 4 months rather than 6
… but i only put the adsense on the single post page rather than on the main page and my main page post in full no tag.
July 8th, 2007 at 11:32 PM
I agree on most of the stuff here, unfortunately I can’t reply to each and every one.
But one that stood out is comment other blogs as much as you can- this is a very good thing to do. I think this helps you set your identity up because once you make good relations with the blogger more advantages to come. Although commenting blogs as much as you can could be good, but you don’t want any spam looking comments such as “nice post”. Well put and said.
September 16th, 2007 at 9:28 PM
Point 2 says use wordpress to your advantage. One thing I have found is that my blog is hosted on a windows server, which will not allow permalinks. So I think I will have to change my host.
April 4th, 2008 at 6:44 AM
Great Article, I followed your advice on the ‘Sign Up For Everything’ part, it has only sent me small amounts of traffic so far, but as my latest blog is young, I can wait.
I’m a bit dubious about asking outright for a link, but I have tried emailing a link to an interesting post, to see if they’ll link to that.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:29 PM
I definitely agree that modifying the permalink structure works amazing for SEO — I’ve noticed some almost immediate results in traffic from this simple tweak. Be sure to include category AND title in the url.
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