You Know That You Are Micro-managing Your Blog When….

The blogging phenomenon has worn off.

All right, let me rephrase my statement: blogging’s initial sheen should have worn away, at least within six months of when you started blogging.

So, how come I see people micro-managing their blogs as if they just started blogging? You know what I mean — people who spend too much time on the things that don’t matter and neglect the things that really do. Like providing interesting and useful content for everyone else to read.

To help set these egregious offenders straight I am offering my unsolicited advice to remedy the situation. Of course, there is a certain amount of humor included, but I’m sure someone will be offended!

Instructive Lists — You have to love them, numbered lists whereby the blogger instructs readers how to accomplish a certain task. “5 Reasons Why No One Reads Your Blog,” “8 Steps to Better Blogging,” “14 Ways to Link to Everyone and Anyone,” you get the picture. Sometimes the advice is good, other times, well….

AdSense Nonsense — Yes, you can still make money from AdSense. No, I don’t want you to slap them on your blog and block off content until I click through to read the ad. Of course, some of the content I’ve found is so shallow that the Hairclub for Men ad looks rather appealing! Uh, oh, I get it….

125×125 Ad Mazes — I don’t mind block ads, but I do mind seeing more than two rows of them. I go to your sidebar looking for blog categories and other relevant links, not to find myself scrolling up and down trying to move past your advertisements. Please, some of the ads on your site are just plain stupid.

Plug-in Party — How’s the new plug-in working for ya? Must be doing quite okay because I see them all over the place. Sure, some plug-ins work quietly behind the scenes (my favorite) while others get in your face. For instance, I hate it when bloggers trick me to subscribe to a thread and I am notified three months later that someone else finally replied to my comment.

Theme-A-Day — Okay, I’m exaggerating here. I haven’t found a blog yet where the theme is changed on a daily basis. What I have found are blogs which are updated but something is left out in the update. Yep, the login for people who want to leave a comment. Better yet — don’t require your readers to register in order to leave a comment. Please!

Too Lazy To Post, Eh? — This one could also be filed under “Lack of Originality” or some sort of term. “Monday Matters,” “Wordless Wednesdays,” and “Freaky Fridays” may sound like appealing categories to you, but I seem to remember that those same cutesy sayings were used when I was in junior high school.

Photo Fantasia – Those are nice photos on your site, but couldn’t they have been cropped? Oh, by the way, your photo gallery isn’t working either. At least not in Firefox. You see, I really don’t like Internet Explorer and I’m not about to test your blog to see how it looks with other search engines. That’s right, it’s your job.

That’s it for now — an unnumbered list of seven, count ‘em seven points for the person who looks a bit too closely at their blog but misses some key aspects not lost on their readership. Wake up!

Knowing When To Fold Em

And Knowing When To Hold Em

I am by no means a gambler — I don’t even buy lottery tickets — but I am familiar with the Kenny Rogers song that implores, “know when to hold em, know when to fold em.” The Gambler is one song that many people take to heart when they hit the slot machines or play Saturday Night poker with the guys (or gals!).

Knowing when to fold em is also something I take quite seriously when it comes to managing my many online enterprises. Since I began my personal online enterprise in 2002, I have built scads of sites including forums,web pages, and blogs. I’ve also closed several down of the same or sold a number of them off.

Saying Good-Bye To My Writing Blog

Last month, I took a hard look at my flagship site, The Article Writer, and decided I needed to make an important move. For more than two years I ran a pair of blogs on this same url — one covering freelance writing and the second one cars. Sure, it is unusual to have two blogs on one URL, but it worked for me. Then again, if I were to do it all over again, the automotive blog would have been given its own site.

The writing blog I launched in December 2005 followed two months later by the car blog. I’ve always blogged more often with the car blog, but it wasn’t until the beginning of this year that I stepped up my automotive writing and finally cut back my other blogging to three days per week.

Additional Business Opportunities Have Come My Way

The result? More business for me, particularly from automotive industry clients which now make up half of my current clientele. I knew that when I took a hard look at my writing blog that shutting it down would be the best decision for me to make, but it wasn’t a money maker either.

Some of my readers know how passionate I am about my writing and were stunned to see that the blog was closed. I believe I have even said that I had no plans to shut it down, but it became obvious to me that shutting down that blog while retaining the related web pages and the other blog was the best way to go. Besides, it wasn’t as if I was deleting what I had written — The Article Writer is well indexed and the pages will live on.

Leaving On A High Note

The best part of shutting down my blog when I did is that I ended it on a high note — traffic was up, I achieved a PR5 ranking, and it helped to bring in additional business. I hate to shut anything down with a whimper, but going out in a flame of glory is the best way to end any endeavor we have in our hands.

And now I’m moving on….

Photo Credit: Special Thanks to Hashir Milan of Sri Lanka