Remarkablogger is powered by Headway
The Headway WordPress theme framework gives you total control over the appearance of your WordPress site without writing any code.
- Create a color scheme "automatically" based on your header image colors with Headway's Quick Start Wizard
- Headway's Visual Editor lets you build your site live and watch it happen
- Everything managed easily via drag & drop
- Use, create & save your own style sets and templates to easily change the look of your site without code
- Social media integration and search engine optimization built-in
- Friendly Headway user community with active forums and outstanding support
- "Plain English" documentation (including lots of screenshots and videos)
- Automatic updates
- 100% GPL-compliant
Headway lets you design your site your way. It's about control, not code.
Check out Headway now to see the full list of features and showcase gallery.
Where to start?
- I wouldn’t have included the date in my blog’s post slugs
- I wouldn’t have dozens of categories on my main blog
- I wouldn’t have used WordPress.com
- Wasting time trying to get to Digg.com’s front page
I could go on…
Mark, I can relate to the categories thing. Same here.
I'd be really interested in knowing more why you wish you hadn't used categories. Do you have a blog post on that topic?
I don't, and I don't really think it's worth one, honestly. Certainly I
Just because I don't care about them, that doesn't
could do with fewer categories, but the lazy in me loves the idea of no
categories at all.
mean others don't. Many do, so why should I make my site more frustrating
for such a large segment of my audience? That's not cool, so the categories
will stay.
Thanks, Michael…in re-reading Mark's post–and your reply indicated agreement with it–I realize I misunderstood and thought he was saying he wished he hadn't used categories at all. I believe his original thought was wishing he hadn't used so many categories. Thanks for the clarification. Since I'm just starting a blog, I wanted to learn from those of you with experience.
For me, it would have to be building an email list. I fell into the classic trap of not bothering at all, then choosing a free service, before finally realising that a professional email service was the only place to start to build a marketing list.
The mistake cost me at least 3 months in my quest to create a genuine full time income. And the trouble is you can never really recover those “lost” subscribers.
Yup, same here, although I'm happy to say I realized a list management
service was needed from the start. The next best time to start is always
NOW, yes?
Which one do you use, Aweber, MailChimp?
Aweber.
Whoops, I almost forgot: I would not have registered a domain name with a hyphen in the middle.
I wish I had known how easy it is to set up AWeber and get started building a list. I made it into a huge scary thing in my mind and avoided it like the plague. When I finally experienced how easy it was to set things up I thought, “I've been scared of THIS???”
Funny how a lot of things are like that, actually.
Me too.
Michael, I really wish I had known about search engines and keywords from the beginning. Oh boy! I would have saved myself a few years in getting known, getting found and probably getting new clients. I naively thought if I wrote about what I knew, then “they” would find me. Never mind that I had a domain name that didn't work in those days, and that I didn't focus on 2-3 keyword phrases. I now know that search engines are dumb, you actually have to help them out a little. Thanks to you, I'm repenting, I'm “saved” and I'm a believer, now! Hallelujah! Thanks Michael for all your help.
Be healed!
This is common, and people just don't get until they get it, and it seems
everyone reaches that point in their own way. The best we can do is go
forward with what we now know.
G'day Michael,
My blog will be “up and running” within the next two weeks. It's taken four months. I'll admit that my ignorance has been a factor. But here are a few things that would have reduced the set-up time.
*a glossary of blog and blog associated terms that I could've referred to so that I could understand what tutorials and training were talking about
*quality instruction on how to use WordPress and Headway. The instruction is still poor. At the very least both WordPress and Headway should review commitments about ease of use stated in promotional material. And Headway desperately needs a professional support desk.
*somebody to tell me that as a relative newbie, I would need help, where to find it and how to get full value from it
*some sort of site/directory that could direct new bloggers about where to go to find out about those aspects of blogging they may need help with from domain name to blog/Facebook interface.
Now there's an idea for some enterprising blog entrepreneur!
Well…..you did ask
Regards
Leon
Glad to hear about the imminent launch of your blog, Leon. Looking forward
to seeing it. And thanks for the idea.
I wish I'd focused on it instead of chasing other things. I've learned a LOT in the last year about internet marketing and copywriting and what I want to be doing (and some of those lessons were expensive mistakes) but if I'd plodded away at updating Inventing Elephants every week and the reading and thinking and writing that would have been involved with that then I'd be in a better position today to move on instead of just around.
Unfortunately, hindsight only helps the current situation so much. I'd probably still be better off if I put more things on hold and focused. But it's like trying to take home just one kitten. The five of them are each cute and valuable and important and soooo much cuter when playing together. At least I'm not looking at all the other animals anymore.
Beth, I know how you feel. I briefly started down my current path in 2005
but did not stick with it. I changed my focus and didn't come back to this
until 2007. I kick myself to this day wondering where I'd be now if I had
stuck with it before.
My domain name – horrible!
I also wish I would have figured out keyword research a lot earlier.
It's possible to move everything to a new domain and redirect all existing
backlinks. That's what I did in 2009 when I switched my domain over from
michaelmartine.com to remarkablogger.com.
I'm making the move in a couple of weeks to a new domain. I'm worried about loss of $$ but it's better to do it now (although I wish I had done it 2 years ago).
What kind of search engine traffic drops did you experience (if any)? How long did it take to get back to “normal”?
Hi Mike,
I did this a while back when I moved to erica.biz. Alert Google using Google Webmaster Tools (there’s a thing in there where you can tell them you’re moving the domain.) And make sure your 301 redirect is set up correctly. If you’re moving WordPress.org->Wordpress.org, there is a plugin that will do the redirects for you. I forget its name, but you can search for it. (Look for moving your blog on the plugins search page…)
Good luck!
I lost Pagerank for a while (4-6 months), but my search engine rankings recovered pretty quickly.
-Erica
Because I essentially redirected all previous domain URLs to their new
equivalents at the domain level, I didn't experience any drop in traffic.
Using FeedBurner for my RSS feeds meant I didn't lose any RSS subscribers.
I've been developing websites since 1999 and took a little break from it when I was in college from 2002-2005. When I came out, I was still used to building websites using tables. It wasn't until maybe 2007 that I realized everything that you're able to do with CSS. Goodbye aggravating tables! I wish I could have know about CSS earlier, but I've finally gotten a good grip on it the past few years.
Yeah if you don't keep your skills updated in this area you're not out of
work right away, but it's a slow death as clients eventually no longer want
what you offer.
Even in 2010 there are still a lot of well-meaning designers out there with
horribly outdated skills, foisting deprecated website on blissfully
unsuspecting clients. Some of those clients become my clients, and
experience an unfortunate but needed awakening.
I agree with the rest and say wish I knew how to grow and nourish a list.. starting one is just the beggining.
Also wish I knew how much work bloggin can be..lol and how addictive it can be.
[...] Hall from Get Paid To Write Online Michael Martine has started an open discussion on his blog: what do you wish you’d known earlier? Since it’s always good to see where you are and what you’ve learned, I thought [...]
Setting up my email list on Aweber instead of using Feedburner. I still have ~700 subscribers getting those Feedburner emails, and I can't send them additional emails or send them stuff because they're not really on a list. Kicking myself for taking so long to switch over to Aweber.
It really depends on the niche, but I'd say that 80% of business owners who
blog should focus more on email subscribers than RSS subscribers. The big
exception to this is when your audience is extremely tech-savvy. And even
then, my opinion is that you should have email as a separate and valuable
channel.
I wished I knew how to use enticing or thought-provoking statements much sooner. I nonetheless know it takes a very long time to have the skill to do this.
It takes practice, for sure, and how long it takes a person to become good
at writing great headlines and content varies greatly because of the
person's abilities and circumstances.
Training helps shorten the learning curve considerably by helping you make
better mistakes from which to learn at a faster pace.
I wish that I would of had the money back in the late 1990s to buy a ton of domains. It's very hard to find a short and decent keyword for one. I feel Mike's pain. However, I am sure all of the big brands that can afford those names and the domain squatters are doing just fine.
I don't have any real numbers on how many domain squatters have either been
sued, prosecuted, or settled, but it seems to me that lobbying pressure by
companies has had an effect on domain squatting somewhat. This is my
perception based overall on news articles I've read over the past year or so
and sort of mentally aggregated into an understanding of the domain name
“industry” on the one-person-business level.
But yeah, I have thought the exact same thing. I would have risked it all on
great domain names in order to have access to that kind web real estate now.
Hmmm, the thing I would have done, which by the way I STILL have not done is niche my blog nice and tight. Trying to be all things to all people just doesnt cut it.
No it does not. Start niche-in', buddy!
I wish I'd known that blogging is addicting as f*ck… would never have gotten myself into this insanity.
But now that I'm here, I'm kinda glad.
Other than that, not much. I was lucky enough to choose WP. I mean I saw Blogger, WP & TypePad and I'm like… well WP looks prettier, I'll go with that. I think the whole experience where you just screw shit up, and pull a few all nighters pulling your hair out help you grow and really understand the ins & outs of this little venture. Also forces your to change your hair style for the better. (But I guess you don't have to worry about that one eh Michael? haha)
Wouldn't change my process for the world.
Yeah, it's pretty addicting, isn't it?
I never really thought about it that way, but it is a never-ending
compulsion.
One thing I always say is that I wasted my best content on my own blog. I should have given away more of my really good content as guest posts. In fact I recommend people start out with 10-15 posts of their own and then try to give away as much content as possible.
Some of my best writing has been guest posts. It's some of the best
marketing you can do for yourself.
I wish instead of setting up a blog to help other bloggers, I'd just rocked what I know on my own competitive blog and kicked everyone's butt in my niche. Sort of. I'm conflicted about that.
I hear that.
There is so much I learned just TODAY….can we define earlier?
!
Well, I do wish I had moved to Thesis earlier (I moved in Aug2009) and I wish I had started even sooner to get to know the fab blogging community instead of blogging in a vacuum…(don't worry I'll make up for lost time)…..
Yeah it's like that sometimes, isn't it? A single day makes a big
difference.
- I could have included nice and easy navigation theme
- I could have focused focused blog posts – short and simple
- I could have written contents more beautifully focusing only 1 or 2 keywords in each post.
- Give an option like you did of “Open Discussion”
- More information on About Us page with the links to my main website
Please suggest more if you can think of…
Nice post here…Thank you
I did have the foresight to register a domain name and secure my own hosting, I wish I had focused more on creating quality content frequently, commenting, and design. I have worked on those items in the past few months and it has helped a lot.
It does help a lot, and thankfully you can simply do it. Carving out
dedicated time in your schedules helps with this a lot.
Well the things I would wanted to know earlier is what “trackbacks” are and how usefull and vital the prettylink plug in is..
I had no trackback option on my blog, so I missed out on great links from other blogs. So now I have obviously implemented it. But still something puzzles me, I have one trackback from a site, that seems to add a trackback everytime a new article is posted. Is this a spammer? or is this normal. It doesn't seem to happen with the other trackbacks I have?
Check the site content to see if it's spammy. Could be somebody's got some
messed-up blogging/pinging software/plugin.
I wish I had known the power of deliberate practice … I would be reaping the rewards now … it takes 10 years for mastery to kick in, right?
[...] other day Michael Martine (a.k.a. remarkablogger.com), had an open discussion, where he had asked the question “What do you wish you had known [...]
This is a good question. I decided to write a post about it. At least the first main things, Marketing List, Affiliate marketing, Jumped earlier in Twitter. Are my main questions, although there's a lot of stuff. We learn as we grow older.
Michael – I wish I had known more about writing posts that sell sooner. Still learning this one.
For some reason, I intuitively knew that I need to brand myself, both with a hosted website and my picture, and I knew I needed to do e-mail marketing. However, I did not know how to drive traffic to my website; so I wish I would have started with learning about keyword research and SEO.
Rick Samara
I would have pushed people to email instead of RSS earlier and started emailing my subscribers once a week.
Heh… me too.
I came across while surfing the internet. very nice page. Thank you to everyone who made.