The 10 Greatest Mistakes I’ve Made Since Starting My Blog

by Matt on Feb.20, 2007, under Blogging

I think we can all agree that the 50 sites in 50 days campaign was an absolute disaster. Most of the sites created during that period are lying completely stagnant and it’s proving hard to sell them on for anything over $50. My advice now would be to concentrate on developing one or two sites that capture your interest and increase your revenue that way. If you’re just starting out and you don’t have any websites in your network, buy an established one off Digitalpoint.
At times I’ve been afraid to try new formats out like forums or wikis. Back in September I was absolute bored with webmastering because I thought it only entailed static websites and blogs. If you feel uninspired visit similar sites within your niche and gather new ideas from what they’re doing.
I regret not seeing all of my sites as assets. Everything you create is worth something and by adding content to it you’re inflating it’s value on the spot. It’s important not to see all of your inactive websites as failures, but as stock in your account which you can later trade.
I should have rid my portfolio of all of the “deadwood” at an early date. Think of this way, if you can sell two websites for $50 each, you can reinvest that money into developing a minisite on an extremely focused topic.
It’s my aim to be more adventurous in the coming months with trading. It’s important to keep your eyes open and your ears to the ground at all times because you don’t know when the next opportunity is coming around the corner. These things have a habit of trampling right over on your ass if you’re not careful.
I now realize that I should be running my development efforts as a business by keeping financial records. How am I meant to gauge how successful I am if I don’t have accounts? This is crucial I believe to achieve to success as it makes goalsetting that much easier and envisaging the bigger picture is a doddle.
Letting past failures interfere too much with my thinking was a mistake. If I struggled to complete a website I wouldn’t let myself move on and develop more websites until the other one was finished - even if I had no intention of completing it. You can put failure to bed now by focusing entirely on the present and creating something which excites both you and your visitors.
I should have recognised that “goofy sites” were my speciality from the start. Y’see, I struggle to write seriously and always feel the need to take the piss of something and for some reason or another I thought it was impossible to monetise fun sites, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I mean my biggest seller was emohairstyles.info which was a complete pisstake created in 2 hours and it went for $1000. $500 isn’t a bad hourly rate at all.
I created emohairstyles.info and punkhairstyles.info which were both popular in their own right but I stopped there for one reason or another. I should have created similarly themed websites like gothhairstyles.info, raphairstyles.info. In other words if you find an easy way to make money, replicate it over and over until you’re making big bucks.
I’m completely paranoid about grammar and spelling. I understand they are both important but I think they can be restrictive. I’ve deleted whole paragraphs at a time from my blog simply because I thought they read ackwardly, yet they were actually enlightening one way or another. Take Shoemoney’s lead and write in a way that’s comfortable for you. Remember : all grammar nazis are 45-year-old spinsters with 5 cats who often live on their own in a shabby apartment block in Kentucky. These are the same type of people who’d throw you out of bed for mispronouncing “fuck me!” during sex.

10 comments for this entry:

David Airey
February 20th, 2007 on 11:11 pm
If everything you do is right, you’ll never learn anything.

Seems to me like you’ve learnt a fair amount about trying your 50 sites idea, so it’s all good.
Jacob
February 21st, 2007 on 12:18 am
Uh uh! I am eighteen and I am a grammar Nazi! However, like David said, as long as you have learned about your mistakes, that is all that matters. Fifty sites in fifty days was an interesting idea. Unfortunately, running that many sites is difficult. So, congrats on your changing your opinion on things and I hope you can succeed in what ever you do!
Nate Whitehill
February 21st, 2007 on 9:03 am
Great post, Matt! Wow, that’s crazy that emohairstyles.info sold for $1000! I would be interested in hearing more about that. Feel free to contact me via skype (natewhitehill), if you get a chance.
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Mark
February 21st, 2007 on 9:31 pm
Good post. On the subject of goofy sites - check out http://www.LingsCars.com which is a humourous web site based around a serious business (car leasing). Despite the ‘in your face’ design and approach it seems to work as she is doing over $2 million a month in business (although her profit percentage is small) and she estimates her website and business as being worth $2 million (£1 million) based on 8 times gross profit and possibly worth 5 times that in a few years time!
Henry
February 21st, 2007 on 9:39 pm
Ha ha ha, great article I love the line you closed with. The 50 sites in 50 days has a catchy title, but I can understand how it did not work. You can not spread yourself so thin.
musicNmovies
February 22nd, 2007 on 3:23 am
One of the “mistake” or atleast can be called MISTAKE is choosing right interface for the blog too - THEME. If you run entertianment blog, make it like a entertianment blog, the color, navigation system and other system should look like that.

For your blog too, I am seeing RIGHT SIDEBAR being too much cramped. Even the bottom links seem to appear out of the column. Better try some simple nice themes like Alexified (which by the way I use) - Its just my choice though [www.musicnmovies.info].
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February 22nd, 2007 on 8:19 am
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alzack
February 22nd, 2007 on 1:45 pm
Interesting experiences that I can learn.
Thanks
Chris
March 5th, 2007 on 6:08 pm
All mistakes are a learning experience.

Who said something like ‘ those who never made a mistake never made anything’?

Horribly mangled probably, but a sound philosophy.