Struggling to write

When most authors are struggling to writer, [ironically] they often write a post about what to do when you get ‘writer’s block’, hoping it will kick-start their writing back into gear.

I am struggling to write, as you may have noticed from the sparsity of posts this month – this is only post 9, and we are already 25 days into February.

Ideas lightbulbThe typical ‘writer’s block post’ will contain thoughts and ideas on how to stimulate that fantastical, creative chunk of your brain that is responsible for your ideas and your best works.

My problem isn’t that that part of my brain is taking a nap, quite the reverse: its in overdrive!

Many bloggers give the famous advice “find your niche and stick to it”. I like to defy the trend though, and we are a different sort of blog, hence we can take a different sort of approach to blogging. As a writer for Technology Bloggers, you are literally spoilt for choice when it comes to what to write about. You could research innovating new technologies, explore how the internet is changing our lives, educate on the world of SEO, discuss blogging practices – you get the picture, we aren’t just technology!

With so many topics, how do you choose what to write about? Do I aim to help you with a ‘how to guide’, wow you with a ‘facts and stats’ post, inform you with my take on a breaking news article, teach you how something works, what do I do?

You have no idea how many posts I have started to write, saved as a draft and then abandoned because something more interesting has sprung to mind.

I am going to focus. You can expect more. A few weeks ago I wrote about what I perceived to be the the blogging dilemma: quality vs quantity, and you should have taken from that post that I will only ever post stuff that I think you (or someone else) will want to read, and stuff which I believe is ‘quality’.

Enough said. Now to get writing proper posts.

Your Input

On a final note, do you have any suggestions/requests? Is there anything you want me to explore? I will gladly take ideas for posts. I won’t always run with them, but if I like the idea, I shall try.

Anything unclear about how we run things, or what you can expect?

Have faith, we shall battle on!

P.P.S

On a [final] final note, do you think my writing is getting too casual and informal?

I notice I am changing the way I write, and part of me likes the change, but another part is anxious that I may loose my credibility. You know me right?

Anyhow this is blogging, not literature!

P.P.P.S

The above ‘P.P.S‘ was going in another post, but I thought it fitted in here better 🙂

The top 5 mistakes I have made in blogging

About a year ago, I started blogging on a niche topic, hoping to earn some income from it just like many other bloggers out there today. However, nothing comes easy and I have been through a lot in that one year period. In this entry, I would like to share the pain when I started out, by telling you the five biggest mistakes I made.

1. Meaningless domain name

I started out by naming my blog and want to find a domain name as close as possible to the name of my blog. On top of that, I have the fear as well to have a long domain name because it is difficult to remember. As a result, I ended up creating a totally meaningless domain name which I still have the regret today. People find it hard to determine the niche of my site just by reading the domain name. The lesson learned here is to have a domain name which can represent your niche as close as possible.

2. No keyword research

Wrong!After I had gained some experience in blogging and internet marketing, I begin to realize the importance of keyword research. It does not only help you to define the objective of your blog, but also identify your competitors. Keyword research can be pretty boring and that is why I made a mistake to skip it first, research later. The lesson which I learned here is to research first, write later.

3. A niche topic without focus

My niche is IT security and I know that I am going to write about security. Why is that not good enough? Because it is too general. During my first month, I had been writing everything about IT security such as news, tips and tricks, reviews, network security, computer security, internet security and many more. Readers that come to my blog can’t see the purpose of the existence of my blog and I think I failed terribly there. The lesson which I learned here is to start a topic in a very focused way, even if the target audience size is small and grow slowly from there.

4. Spamming dofollow backlinks

Everyone here knows the importance of “dofollow” links. In order for anyone of us to rank well in Google and other search engines, you have to build a lot of “dofollow” links. I build plenty of them from “dofollow” forums and none of them give me any boost in SEO. The lesson I learnt here is to spend more time writing quality content, which other bloggers will want to link to.

5. Started out with Blogspot

Have any of you tried migrating your blog from Blogspot to self-hosted WordPress? It is not really difficult but can take a lot of time to amend your previous posts to fit into your WordPress theme properly. If you really want to blog seriously, invest into web hosting and a domain name because they are not really that expensive.

What about your blogging mistakes? Have you done anything which you still regret today?