Top 5 Sins
By: Susan Driggers
There are a lot of things you can do right when you first start blogging and even more you can do wrong. Since I am a fairly new blogger I haven’t experienced all the things one can possibly do wrong but I certainly have committed each of the Top 5 Sins I have listed below. Yes you heard right, I admit I have made a mess, and perhaps continue to make a mess, of my blog. Luckily I met several great people on my journey from newborn to infant blogger, and they were nice enough to point out the errors of my ways without too much condemnation.
If you take only one thing away from reading this post I hope it is that you will make mistakes. We have all made mistakes. Most do not cause the death of your blog as long as you realize them and work to correct them. While we, or at least I, will never have the perfect blog or skyrocket to the top of the A-list, I hope that I can at least learn to improve and not commit any of these cardinal sins yet again.
In order from least terrible to absolute worst:
5. Putting post count before content (gluttony) – I believe this is the easiest one to fall into and is more of a cycle than a continuous way of running your blog. You have a great idea and you pound out twenty posts on the subject one right after the other. What readers you have are quickly over run by the number of posts and more than likely miss the majority of them. Your traffic and comment count suffer as readers try to keep up. You have to space your posts out to give readers a chance to read and comment on each one before the next one pops up to the top of the front page.
4. Becoming a fanboy/fangirl (envy) – This is one I committed right away I don’t mind telling you and have worked hard to avoid ever since. You find an “A-list†blog or one that has great traffic and everyone is posting comments on saying how great they are and what wonderful knowledge they are imparting. Soon you become obsessed and all your posts are about how great this blog is, how talented the author, and how much you learned from them. Unfortunately there are a hundred or so other blogs out there pounding out the same posts. Yours are buried along with all the others and no one really reads them.
3. Failing to faithfully update (sloth) – On the other side of excessive posting is not posting often enough. If your blog is set to be a daily poster and you only post once a week, then readers might lose interest. Finding a happy medium is always hard and it can change from time to time you just have to remember that whether it is once a week or once a day, make your posts count.
2. Placing profit above all (covetousness - greed) – Monetization, the godsend and bane of blogs. When done right it can be great for a blog, when done poorly it can chase away readers faster than you can get them back.
1. Ignoring your readers (pride) – Your blog exists for the readers heed them or perish as the saying goes.
Now for those of you who were keeping track there are actually seven cardinal sins and I only mentioned five. Well to be honest I haven’t, at least I don’t think I have, committed the other two when blogging lust and anger. But there is still time! Just kidding!
I actually limited this to the Top 5 in order to meet the requirements of Problogger’s Top 5 – Group Writing Project. If you haven’t heard about Problogger.Net then you are missing out on a great source of helpful information. That isn’t a suck up to try and get more points in the contest, but of course if it works then it was definitely meant that way. Anyway, even if I don’t take the trip over to his site I do religiously read his RSS feed and suggest you do the same.
Networking is an integral part of growing your blog and I love to meet new bloggers and exchange ideas, hopefully you do as well. Now why not take a few minutes and write your own “Top 5� Even if you don’t want to join the group writing project I would love to hear what they are. Send a trackback here or add them as a comment. Part of doing projects such as this is to learn about new blogs and new bloggers and whether I have met you in the literal sense or the electronic sense or not, I certainly value your opinion and your comments.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Very creative and great entry for Group Writing Project!
May 7th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Oh a neat way of doing the writing project!
I’ve had moments where I just don’t feel like posting for a while. I have also thrown up a couple short posts. I think I did this first to see what it was like and something I was trying to sign up for needed a minimum post requirement.
May 7th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
WW-Success and Tyler,
Thanks for the kind words. I can’t wait to read what everyone else has put together.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
nice post, would you continue post other sins since it’s relevant for me
off course in other post to make your top 5 still eligible for problogger contest
May 7th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
neat ’sins’ to avoid
am a very new blogger and need to learn a whole lot but I am excited.. my first sin i can already see is to start with blogspot..;) but I am learning .. nice entry for problogger project..
oh and i did start to put all widgets in place before i have any content haha
May 8th, 2007 at 1:33 am
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May 8th, 2007 at 3:16 am
good analogies. check out my post if you have time on http://robinsongo.com/2007/05/08/top-5-tips-to-be-the-next-darren-rowse/ if it qualifies as a fanboy/fangirl type of post.
May 8th, 2007 at 8:40 am
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May 8th, 2007 at 8:47 am
Lots of solid information here - go forth and sin no more!
May 8th, 2007 at 9:23 am
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May 8th, 2007 at 10:26 am
Great list and all so true.
Suggestion: Please make your header image a link back to the home page!
Thank you again for the list.
May 8th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Such a great post!
I really like how you associated the 5 out of 7 deadly sins with 5 common mistakes in blogging.
Most bloggers often make these mistakes (or sins, as you put it), including me.
I am more like a sloth. Especially if I am a little caught up with my studies. Although lately i am starting to change that attitude so that more readers would appreciate my blog. ^_^
A nice read!
If you have time, why don’t you drop by my post:
http://mobileko.blogspot.com/2007/05/snatch-top-5-tips-on-how-to-be.html
It’s also an entry for the problogger top 5- group writing project. ^^ Goodluck to us all!
May 8th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Interesting way of making connection for these top 5 sins and blogging habit
May 8th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
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May 8th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
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May 8th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
[...] Top 5 Sins by Susan. She’s talking about blogging sins, not life sins, but still. You can’t be too careful. [...]
May 8th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Wow, and it is so true too. Good post!!!
May 9th, 2007 at 8:16 am
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May 9th, 2007 at 10:46 am
If those are the top 5 sins, who is the God ?
May 9th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Very interesting way of thinking about blogging sins, they really do go together with life sins. I think those 7 can correspond with any great thing in life.
May 10th, 2007 at 7:01 am
Allen,
Excellent suggestion.. your wish is my command.
May 10th, 2007 at 7:01 am
Everyone
Thank you so much for your compliments on the post. I think it has been the most popular yet! Can’t wait to read more of what everyone else has written for this project.
May 11th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
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May 12th, 2007 at 2:08 am
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May 12th, 2007 at 2:20 am
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May 12th, 2007 at 6:25 am
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May 12th, 2007 at 6:42 am
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May 12th, 2007 at 8:14 am
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May 12th, 2007 at 10:26 am
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May 12th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Great list! I happened to have written about the Seven Deadly Sins earlier this week:
http://bleedingespresso-sognatrice.blogspot.com/2007/05/meme-monday-all-about-things.html
May 12th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
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May 12th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
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May 13th, 2007 at 12:35 am
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May 13th, 2007 at 2:05 am
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May 13th, 2007 at 7:21 am
Hi Susan,
I liked your submission; it’s very honest and I’m sure there are thousands of bloggers who have committed the ’sins’ you describe. (When I say I’m ’sure’ let me tell you that some bloggers just don’t realise what havoc they reek upon us!
‘2. Placing profit above all (covetousness - greed).’ Yes, there does seem to be a lot of bloggers who are actually just ‘gold-diggers’ who’ve jumped on another bandwagon of another possible lucrative future.
Your blog is called, ‘Life is risky’…Can you please elaborate on what you mean exactly? Do you come from the philosophical perspective in that the only way of truly living life one has to take risks? Or are you so deeply affected by the fear-based mainstream media of this era that you feel that going outside and ‘living’ is a risk unto itself?
Charles Darwin said it first (we think), ‘Only the strongest survive.’ The idea of evolution implies that life is often a competition where ‘dog eats dog’; the Tasmanian Tiger went extinct because of human hunting…Yes, in this respect, life has always been a risk-but without risk life would become stagnant, boring, and predictable. Wouldn’t it? Isn’t it better to attempt fulfillment of your dreams, rather than sitting comfortably numb in front of the TV?
True ‘life’ needs to be a risk.
May 13th, 2007 at 7:26 am
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May 13th, 2007 at 7:39 am
Oh yeah,
The fact that Problogger tells us all about how he’s earned over $240,000 from just one of his income sources doesn’t help the matter (for people in the #2 category). Or does it? Could the hope of an income actually work to bring better content to the Blogosphere?
May 13th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Very creative and thought-provoking post. Thanks for sharing the sins to avoid.
May 13th, 2007 at 11:11 am
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May 13th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
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May 13th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Great top 5, Susan! Very creative treatment… I’ll be watching your future path… for those other two.
Stop by and check out my Top 5 contribution…
May 13th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
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May 13th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
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May 13th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
[...] checking out some of the ProBlogger Top 5 entries, I visited Susan Drigger’s Top 5 Sins post, and while there noticed a nice little icon, “No Nofollow, fight spam, not blogs” [...]
May 14th, 2007 at 4:53 am
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May 14th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
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May 14th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
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May 16th, 2007 at 4:28 am
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June 3rd, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Nicely done! At the risk of becoming a fangirl (ohhhh I’ve sooo been there done that!) I like your style!
June 10th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
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June 11th, 2007 at 10:57 am
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July 25th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
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July 26th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Great ideas, I’m going to have to make sure to keep them in mind.
August 3rd, 2007 at 6:05 am
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August 12th, 2007 at 1:32 am
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August 18th, 2007 at 5:02 am
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November 4th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
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