The Five Biggest Things I’ve Learned from My Blog Failures

If I’ve managed to convince you that our current success just sort of fell out of the sky and into our laps without any prior failed attempts, you’ve been duped. Of course, we didn’t mean to trick you into believing that we are just amazing human beings, naturally skilled in All Things Online. It just never came up.

But there have been failures. Many, in fact. There was that time that I attempted to sell gourmet food mixes at craft shows. There was the fiasco with the makeup sales. There was the eBook that never got finished. The etsy research that was never complete. My dreams of becoming the next Warren Buffet. But mostly, there were the blogs.

One year in fact, I dedicated an entire twelve months to a blog that eventually gained only 150 subscribers. In a year, that’s pretty sad. I made approximately $32.50 from that blog. At one time I was running three unsuccessful blogs at the exact same time. I was pretty much convinced that I belonged in the cesspool of blogkind. But I guess Thomas Edison really was right — sometimes success requires failure. In my case, it required quite a bit of it.

The good thing is, I owe quite a bit of my current knowledge to all of those failures. Yes, I’ve read the books. I have the education. But down-in-the-trenches know-how only comes from being…yes, that’s right…down in the trenches. Here are the top things I’ve learned from my blog failures.

1. Commenting on other blogs sometimes helps. But most of the time it doesn’t.

   I was going to say that commenting on other blogs never helps. But it has for me once (out of about ten thousand million times), so I can’t say that it never does anything. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t comment on blogs. You should. One, because it’s nice to be involved in other people’s conversations. Two, because when you have something interesting to say, you should say it. But don’t make it your core strategy. On a scale of one to ten, commenting on other blogs ranks about a one in terms of marketing effectiveness.

2. Bribery will only get you so far.

   If you do not have an audience, do not do things that only bloggers with large audiences should do. For example (completely hypothetically, mind you), do not hold a huge blog carnival competition, try and recruit a bunch of sponsors to contribute prizes, choose TEN winners, and work yourself half crazy trying to promote it. Because if you only have 80 subscribers, it’s just going to be stinking hard. And you might end up buying all of the prizes and paying for the monstrous shipping all on your very own. Not that I’ve done that. Ahem.

3. Good design does not a blogger make.

   Here I go shooting myself in the foot again. I SHOULD be saying “Great design will solve all of your problems! Hire a designer! Hire me!” But then you might get your fab new site, get all gung-ho in your writing efforts, and be absolutely astonished at the crickets that can be heard every time you say something.

   The point is, getting an audience is more about having a proven marketing plan than anything else. It means getting your hands deliciously filthy in networking. Doing things that are both EFFECTIVE and will not take thousands of years to implement. Blogging for keeps requires your total commitment, just as any other startup venture.

   Sure, you can run a blog in an hour a day, but that just means that your blog will be a slow grower. If you are one of those people who doesn’t need to have results to keep your motivation going strong, then by all means, do it. But it’s been my experience that most people with that strategy quit before they even have a toehold.

4. Don’t blog about something that doesn’t naturally fit into your life.

   I’m on the computer all of the time. I’m not stuck here. It’s more like I’m magnetized in its general direction. So for me to blog about something like…ummm…all of the local restaurants in Virginia Beach, say…pretty much destines me for failure. Why? Because I’m not AT all of the local restaurants in Virginia Beach. My glamorous life is lived largely online (wow, that sounds sad).

5. Don’t promise anything before you’ve actually written/received/purchased it.

   I was always thinking big with my blogs. Because coming up with ideas is what I DO. It really gets my blood pumping.

   But the next time you’re tempted to tell your readers about your upcoming twenty-part series on how THEY TOO can own a Pomeranian, hold off until you’ve actually written it. You might just realize in part three that there really isn’t that much to say about your topic. Or you might get bored with it and just know that if you have to write another word, you will involuntarily implode. It’s never fun to tell your readers (again) that no, you will not be following through.

I still can’t say that I’m the best blogger of all time. But I CAN tell you that I am purposefully not. Getting a billion subscribers is not my primary goal. Writing good content with no expectations or guilt attached is. So I guess it all depends on how you define success.

Top Ten Web Predictions for 2009

TaDA! First video cast EVER. I created this especially for the participants of the Startup Princess retreat, since I wasn’t able to be there and didn’t want to waste my amazing insight and speaking ability [insert loud guffaws here]. Without further ado, my top ten web predictions for 2009…

[update: You can also view this over at StartupPrincess.com]

I’m a Twitter moron…I’ll admit it right now

This article alerted me to a concept that I hadn’t thought about before — Twitter has a culture. There’s an etiquette there that you must follow or be ostracized (or at the least, laughed at.)

Such as: don’t follow a bunch of people unless you’re followed by a bunch of people. I hadn’t thought about it, but I guess it makes sense. It keeps you from looking like the desperate pseudo-popular girl in school.

And, of course: don’t just link to yourself all the time. It’s the equivalent of trying to be in EVERY yearbook picture. You know the ones.

I guess most of the rules that the article suggests boil down to one thing: don’t be an internet vampire, looking for what YOU can get out of every relationship. Authentically enjoy the medium for what it is.

Google Alerts: Must be something in the water

You ever have one of those ideas that just keeps getting thrown at you from all kinds of different places? Say for instance, you think to yourself that you should check the coolant in your engine. Just a passing thought. No reason for it. Then you come across an article about how important checking your coolant is. Then your dad asks you, “Hey, have you checked your coolant lately?”

When that happens, you know you better be checking your coolant.

That’s what it’s like for me and Google Alerts this week. My new friend Lori (an advertising smarty-pants) mentioned it to me, and then I read about it somewhere else, and then I read this article over at Duct Tape Marketing. In it, John Jantsch explains how to set up an alert to find out when someone links to your blog.

And what use is that? Well, it’s cool for one thing. And sometimes WordPress doesn’t detect it correctly, but the all-knowing Google will. And Lori informed me that it’s a great way to get to know the people who are writing about you. That, and the fact that I’ve heard about it three times in the past three days lets me know that I better go sign up right about now.