darren rowse

How I Screwed Up My Blog in 2009.

I’ve been avoiding writing this post since last year.

So. In 2009, I had some severe problems that caused me to make some major screw ups online. I can’t talk about it but I can say, it affected me a lot. I spend half my time at my parents, helping out and babysitting, because thats the only useful thing I can do. I spend the other half trying to deal with the various emotions. Its tough. I dropped a lot of balls. I screwed up my blogs in just about every way possible.

This post reflects on the mistakes of the past 6 months and how, despite f**king up, I was still able to come out of everything with the respect of my peers.

Mistake 1: Broken Promises

Last year, I asked Darren Rowse if I could do weekly guest posts on Problogger. He agreed. I was unable to follow through due to family circumstances. Darren was very understanding but I still felt shit about it. Now, I see Kelly Diels has a weekly slot. Thats awesome – I’m so proud of her as I am still unable to make that commitment. I still feel sick about it though.

This story has been repeated many times over the past year. I have a huge backlogs of guest posts, reviews and interviews to fulfil. Most people have been cool about it. As things dragged on, I started telling more people about how hard things have been.

I learned that I should have been honest from the start rather than try to hide the problems. I also should have reduced my online commitments as soon as I started to feel overwhelmed.

Mistake 2: Confused Branding

I found that my plans for this site evolved as I started interacting more within the social media community. At first I was just targeting bloggers. Then it evolved to info product creators and small business types. It took a long time to decide that my main skill was teaching people how to connect with others online.

I messed up so bad trying to find a way to develop my brand. Initially I had a WPMU set up where I segmented my content into the three main sites: business book reviews, product reviews and authentic networking. I then moved all the content to the one site but tried to create 3 seperate blogs using funky wordpress coding thanks to my friend Matt.

These mistakes confused google, confused readers and make things really difficult for me. This mess lasted for months while I was busy dealing with other stuff.

Mistake 3: Assuming no-one was reading.

I did two launches of my blog in 2009. The first was in January, when I blogger as The Prolific Writer. This was short lived. I was suffering from extreme anxiety at the time and spent the next 4 months struggling to find the right medication.

In September, I did a MASSIVE post called 892 lessons from 36 bloggers. That post took about 7 weeks to do. It involved a lot of work and liasing with other bloggers. It was fun but extremely successful. It was around this time that my personal life became really stressful and I withdrew online.

I spent most of the next four months just adding product reviews. I didn’t think anyone would be reading. In reality, I’d probably picked up some readers but alienated them all by my irregular posting.

I’ve now moved all product reviews to a seperate site – Social Media Store – and have started posting again regularly. I’ll also be making more effort to get to know the people that engage with my content, and will target my posts accordingly.

Mistake 4: Being too scared to make money

I was so stressed out last year. It got to the point where I was too scared to earn an income because I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle it. I set up processes to earn an income but never really worked at it. I’d do guest posts but wouldn’t ask for paid work. I wrote an ebook but did no work to promote it. I threw up a basic services page and, because I didn’t put enough time into it, didn’t make any sales.

I don’t regret this. If I pushed myself, I may have become too scared to sell my products and services. However I probably would be thousands of dollars better off if I had gotten over the fear.

Mistake 5: Having no faith in myself.

Last year I was just so afraid of doing everything wrong. The fear made me too scared to do anything. I had a low self esteem which was, and still is, reflected in my writing. I was paranoid that people would hate me and flame me.

It took the help of some awesome friends to realize that I have something to contribute to the community. I remember crying when I randomly got $500 as a thank you for the work I had done that year for a friend. I also remember @rockyourday sending me a DM saying ‘psst, I’m proud of you’ and being unable to stop smiling all day.

Its the small acts of kindness that helped me pull through and be able to return to blogging.

Over to you

What mistakes have you made blogging? How did you get through them? I’d be very interested to hear about them in the comments.

Note: This post was really painful to write. I’d appreciate you guys going easy on me. This will be the last self indulgent post for a while

Interview with Problogger, Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse is a really busy man. He runs three blogs – Digital Photography School, Twitip and Problogger. He is co-founder of b5-media, co-author of the Problogger Book and father to two children. For his Melbourne fans, he regularly attends Tweetupmellers and is speaking at Marketing Now.

He was lovely enough to talk about his recent ebook, 31 Days to Build a Better Blog.

What motivated you to release this product?

The motivation behind 31 Days to Build a Better Blog was simply that I saw a lot of bloggers struggling for motivation with their blogs. Many bloggers start out with big ideas but a few months in are struggling for ideas to write about or are depressed that no one is reading their blog.

31DBBB is simply a way to kick start your blog – it includes practical 31 daily tasks (although they can be spread out over a longer period) that are all designed with different aspects of growing a successful blog in mind.

>Do you have plans to release further products?

I’m pretty sure I’ll do another one at some point for ProBlogger but my next one (possibly two) will be on my photography site.

You said that bloggers should build their network before they need it. How did this help you?

Having a network established before you want to sell something means that when you’re ready to promote it you already have a network of people who are in relationship with you, who find you useful and helpful and who hopefully trust you enough to buy your product. I see many authors start blogs or jump on Twitter the week before their book launches – unfortunately they’re probably too late to really capitalize on it.

Do you have any tips for new bloggers trying to build a network?

The main thing I’d advise is to spend time working out what type of person you want to read your blog – who is your target audience? This might be answered demographically in some cases but should also include things like ‘what problems and needs do they have?’

If you know WHO you’re looking to attract to your blog you’re better positioned to find them.

Once you know that ask yourself – ‘where are these potential readers already gathering and networking online?’ I could be Twitter, facebook, a forum, another blog. Your task then is to go and become a part of these communities and add value to them.

Your free course was widely publicized. Why do you think people were willing to pay?

In chatting to many people who’ve bought 31DBBB (and there have been quite a few thousand now) the main reasons include:

having it all in the one document – the free course was on my blog which was great at the time but all scattered on different posts now.
the updates – I added content to each day, extra tips, more teaching etc
having their own copy – many people wanted to do the challenge over and over (some have done it 3 times already and are doing it each month) – having their own copy helped this.

You’ve launched a number of things recently. What was the motivation behind problogger deals?

The @ProBloggerDeals Twitter account was a flash of an idea that came to me one day that I started within a few minutes. It’s really just a place for me to promote products, deals, discounts and competitions that people have that are relevant to bloggers. I get pitched 3-4 times as many of these as I can use on ProBlogger so thought I’d add them all there. It’s pretty ‘salesy’ but I’m up front about it and people seem to have responded well. I just need to find a little more time to promote it.

Is Darren Rowse.com the natural evolution of living room?

It’s not intentionally that – but in reality I guess it’ll be similar, although probably a little less focused upon Spiritual issues than the LivingRoom blog.

I’ve hung out with you a couple of times at meetups. How much importance would you place on physical networking?

I think it can help a little but it’s not essential. I’ve started businesses and written books with people I’ve never met in person (I still am yet to meet Chris Garrett who I wrote the ProBlogger book with) so it’s very possible to build a successful business in a more virtual way.

I find the ‘face to face’ can solidify relationships a bit (probably more so for some people than others) but there are other ways to do this through using instant messaging, video etc