One Year Later: Lessons Learned

Technically Easy is my first attempt at blogging. I had designed web sites in the past, but never took up the task of blogging, especially on a regular basis. I have learned many lessons over the past year, and now know what it takes to make a better blog.

I have written posts in the past about what not to do with regards to web sites, but this post will share my experiences of what I have learned over the past year as well as provide a few resolutions that I will try to achieve in the future..

Lessons Learned

When I started blogging I wanted to know how best to go about managing a blog. Many people are so hung up on traffic generation, making money, and pagerank, that they will do anything to achieve that success. For me, I wanted to do more with Technically Easy than just quickly reach huge traffic amounts or generate large sums of money. I wanted a stable, well-written, blog that will eventually generate stable traffic.

Over the past year, I have managed to generate a good deal of traffic slowly. With each month, Technically Easy receives more visitors than the previous month. I am hoping this will continue in the future. During this time I have learned a few things with regards to managing my blog, which I have listed below.

1. Content will make or break a blog/web site. The point about unique content is discussed whenever someone asks about generating traffic. People that visit your blog come to read what you have to say, not what others have said on twenty other sites. Although traffic was very low when I first started Technically Easy, as I wrote more content I continuously received more traffic. The secret to getting more steady traffic is content.
2. When starting out, don’t work about advertising. Many people want to earn money from their blog or web site. Unfortunately, many of those starting out decide to display advertising in every empty spot on each web page. I began displaying ads on Technically Easy too early, and earned nothing from it. When you first start out, concentrate on your content to generate traffic, and then display ads. There is no point displaying ads with little visitors (less than 100 a day), since no one is there to click the ads.
3. Make navigating around your site easy. I have visited many sites that provide too many links and sections on a single page. This made it confusing when I wanted to find specific information. When I designed Technically Easy I wanted to create a simple design that easily allows people to find specific information.
4. Update your content regularily. This point is very important for blogs. Those that subscribe to your blog do so because they enjoy reading your content. Don’t leave them waiting too long for more content by not updating on a regular basis. You don’t need to update on a daily basis, but a few times a week is good to keep your subscriber numbers up.
5. Spell and grammar check your content. My first few posts contain several spelling mistakes as I didn’t have a formal publishing process in place. Today I always proofread my posts before publishing them to ensure that I have removed many of the spelling and grammar mistakes, although a few may slip through now and again.
6. Reply to comments. I admit I still need to do some work in this area, but if you can, try to reply to comments left on you blog. Comments are a good vehicle to open up a discussion and may get people to return to provide more comments.
7. Be active in online communities. Joining and participating in online communities is a great way to start generating traffic. I haven’t been as active as I would have liked, which I’m hoping to change.

Future Resolutions

I have learned a lot in the past year, but there is still room for improvement in managing Technically Easy. Below is a list of items that I plan to work on over the next year.

1. Be more active in forums and online communities. A great way to generate traffic, next to writing content, is to be active in communities online. I haven’t been as active as I would have like in the past, but I’m planning to change that in the future.
2. More images in the posts. My posts usually contain much text with very few images. I plan on including more images in future posts to add colour to my blog.
3. Publish more how-to articles. I started out publishing several how-to articles, but haven’t done many recently. The how-to articles are the biggest generator of traffic to Technically Easy. I plan on writing more over the next year.
4. Don’t change designs so often. Last year I changed my design four times before settling on the current theme. I’ll keep the theme as is, minus a few tweaks now and again.

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