Stupid Mostly Online Mistakes

In no particular order here are a list of blogging mistakes I’ve made (and wished I didn’t) or have watched friends make (and secretly laughed at them wished they didn’t).

Use a “dot com” domain without hyphens, funky misspellings, or other associated nonsense. Keyword domains are great, and exact matches do help, but non misspellable made up, or seldom used words work just fine too.

Limit the the blog to 6 or 8 real subject categories. Okay 10 if you like but that’s it. You can go to eleven if you need a miscellaneous one but that’s it, I mean it really.

Try to imagine if you are ever going to take client jobs and if you do blog from your company domain. It’s saves some explaining and weird glances down the line.

Women, don’t even try and understand them, it’s just not possible, all the software in the world, can’t override the male hardware, and make it work. The best you can hope for is knowing when to do or say absolutely nothing.

Choose a unique and non common nickname and stick with it. It’s really annoying to have to wonder if those embarrassing pictures finally managed to get on the web, or if someone really is looking for Graywolf Corsets.

Keyword centric nicknames are iffy. You’re going to have to put up with a lot of crap, in the begining, and actually know what you are talking about if you want any street cred.

If you are going to do email marketing use a generic address. Don’t spam from your main address. People get annoyed and flag you as junk and the real email messages never get answered.

Build every website with the intention that you might have to/want to sell it some day. Really, you may never have to but if you “built it” with that as an option it saves some headaches if you ever decide the price is right.

If you end up in jail, don’t call me.

Trademark domain names, just say no. It’s all fun and games and easy money, until some corporate tight ass attorney who gets paid by the billable hour starts hounding you down, and is less than amused by your confusingly similar domain name, and purely co incidentally similar look, feel, and color scheme, on an MFA site. The last one was actually interested in being a real hard nose and inflicting pain and suffering and not not satisfied to just have the domain transferred over for free within 24 hours and putting the issue to bed quickly and easily.

Don’t be a jerk, doofus, idiot, schmuck, dingus, dingbat, or less than considerate person. If you make a mistake apologize right away, and in public if need be.

It’s better to have people love you than hate you. It’s better to have people hate you than not know who you are. Once they know your name then it’s time to work on making them stop hating you, and start liking you.

Don’t be afraid to try new things, and experiment now and again. Unless of course it could result in you burning the entire second floor of your house down, because chances are your parents will not be amused, and you might actually get first hand experience with the phrase grounded for life.

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3 Responses to “Stupid Mostly Online Mistakes”

1. Steve Says:
   April 5th, 2007 at 1:43 pm

   Re: “Trademark domain names, just say no. It’s all fun and games and easy money, until some corporate tight ass attorney who gets paid by the billable hour starts hounding you down”

   One way to offset this - if you can muster up a lot of traffic before having to give it up - is to build an email list from the site. That way you still have access to those very targeted subscribers after you lose the domain.

   However I actually have a potentially lucrative, and thus potentially vapid, site with a trademarked name and am now proactively trying to think of ways to combat having to give it up.

   I wondered if you had any case studies or advice about that… making it a parody site *might* do the trick, from what I’ve seen, and one or two other possible angles…

   Any other suggestions?

   Great article as usual!

2. Jestep Says:
   April 5th, 2007 at 5:54 pm

   “It’s better to have people love you than hate you. It’s better to have people hate you than not know who you are. Once they know your name then it’s time to work on making them stop hating you, and start liking you.”

   I love this one…

   Don’t be afraid to be controversial, especially if you actually know what you are talking about. It’s one of the best ways to gain love, hate, and popularity on all levels.

   Nothing is worse than seeing someone who has so much potential but is afraid of being great because they wont create controversy. Controversy is interesting, agreeing with everyone is boring.

3. Lord Matt Says:
   April 5th, 2007 at 6:02 pm

   Oh the problems I had with categories. Never thing=k well that’s a good topic let’s open an entire sub-blog for it (NucleusCMS supports unlimited blogs out of the box). By the time you’ve realised what a cock up it is and trimmed and murgered it all back even Technorati has no idea what is going on and lists you as max blogs plus two. Total mess.