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Today I was reading at techcrunch about guy Fred Wilson and his failures of businesses. And that is where I come up with an idea to write about blogging plan today.
There is many bloggers that fail to succeed in blog world today, and that is just because they think blogging is only about posting, posting and make money from posts. After 6 month’s they figure out that money isn’t comming in, and they spend all their budget money on advertising.
As blogger you should ask you self some critical questions even before you pick you domain name.
If you are new to blogsphere here are some questions I would like you to ask your self and also for bloggers that already own blog it wouldn’t be bad to go over these questions and make sure you are aware of them:
1. What is blog or blogging? – Answer your self how much do you really know about blogging?
2. What is domain name? – Yes you are right, ask your self what is domain name! How do domain names work? Does it matter if domain name is long or short? Should I pickup domain name that is funny or business related? Is domain name that I am going to pick out something that people will remember? etc.
3. How am I going to blog? - Will you chose wordpress or nucleus or drupal? What is the difference between them ? Which is most appropriate for my needs? How many options do I have? Should I hire freelancer to build blogging system just for me?
4. Do I have any backup plan? – How about my your backup plan, what if you get hacked and your database crash? How will you backup your posts? How often will you do blog backups? What do those backups cover only database or files too?
5. Who should I host with? - For past 10 years of internet hosting I have switched 3 different web hosting companies and the one that I am with right now (Lunarpages) I will probably stay with. Do review on web hosting! Do you need unlimited bandwidth? How many sub-domains can you get? Do they offer backup plans? How fast is their bandwidth? Do they offer free domain name? Compare your hostings make sure you don’t miss anything.
6. SEO SEM SERP what else? – Do I know anything about SEO SEM or SERP? What is Page Rank? What is meta tag? Where can I SEO my blog? Can I do it my self or How good am I with SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
7. How many times should I post? – This is one of the most common questions people ask online AFTER they created their blog. Should you post every day or every week? I don’t know, what do you think? How much quality content can you give per day per week per month?
8. What are some Blog Advertising differences? – PPC CPC what is that? Yes what is that? Which method is better for you? What is the payout rate? How much commission or referral can you get?
9. Are you nicher or not? – Will you blog about niche topics and keywords? What is niche? Do you really need to blog about popular stuff? Do you know anything about most searched stuff (niche)?
10. Links Link-Bait Linking or Blogroll? – Linking is important part of the blogging and now ask your self should you link to other blogs just for fun or will you change for each link you post on your blog? What is backlink? How will you get backlinks?
11. What if you die? Who will take care of your blog? – Have you think of that? You make $20.000 per month with your blog and NOBODY knows who you have money account with, what is your blog password and now what?
12. What if you get banned from google? - Your blog traffic is about 60% from google search and they ban you, what wil you do? How will you reach to out to that 60% of visitors? Go sue google? 
Dear blog friends, I could go probably for another 2 hours finding all kind of questions about pre-blogging, and yet you could fail even if you would know everything about them. Now some people just read 1 article online how people make money with blogs and the next hour you see them buying domain names like professional. And those people are exactly the bloggers I was telling you about above, that fail after 6 months or less, because they did not ask them self at least 10% of the questions I posted.
Blogging for business purpose is hard these days , and to make it work outsmart others , read a lot of material, find blogs that you think are relevant to what you would like to write about, don’t take them as your competitor. You think if Darren Rowse, John Chow, Guy Kawasaki, JohnTP, Mark Wielgus wouldn’t exist in blogsphere that you would make more money? HELL NO! You would probably make even less money, because people like Darren Rowse know what he is talking about, he gives you advices on how to succeed not only with blogs but your own “business”, same goes for the other 4 gentleman
I hate see people fail in any business, but you know what it’s their own fault for not thinking about that failure. I am not saying that people fail in blogsphere because they didn’t read or don’t know much about blogging, there could be a lot more to it. Sometimes people get crazy, sometimes people just get outsourced by competitors , or simply you could get banned from major search engines like google, yahoo, msn etc.
Anyways if you are serious about blogging or make money from blogging, or open blog for your company, consider the 12 main questions bloggers ask every single day.
Do me a favor and post some of your questions in comments I might miss some that I haven’t ask my self?
Horaayy..there are 5 comment(s) for me so far ;)
nice stuff here mate…
one question that I feel should have been included though is what kind of value am I adding with my blog? If I decide to put a price tag on my post how much would it be?
These two questions really help you evaluate on whether one should take plunge into blogging or not…
This is sort of a “doom and gloom” post. I think bloggers/businesmen NEED to go in with a more optimistic look than this–a look towards your blog winning out! Yes, I think this is a good outline (a pessimistic one) but a good outline to refer to. I think a lot of time why businesses fail (blogging or otherwise) is because they get mired in the details and spend too much time looking for unexpected (and oft-times create demons in their own head that don’t exist). A list like this can create a paranoia.
Supposedly the # 1 reason businesses fail is because of lack of start-up capital. But the next (in my humble opinion), is getting bogged down in minute details and not seeing “the big picture.” A part of starting a business is risk. That’s why most people don’t start businesses because they don’t want to take on the risk. Only a small percentage of people are willing to risk the luxury of a 9-5 and be self-employed. Hence the term entrepreneurship, “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise” (merriam-webster). Minimizing that risk as much as possible is, of course, a part of a business person’s game plan. But you MUST go in with a positive attitude or else nothing is going to work. Analysis-Paralysis and paranoia will set in. You’ll never leave your house. Yes, consult a business plan before you begin. But at some point you’ll have to chuck it or readjust/adapt it. But assume the best–not the worst. Cheers, mate. I’ve subscribed to your feed. Rock on!
These are good questions. I wish I could go back and change my domain name. When you do something that will be permanent, you almost always regret doing it week later
I have to agree with fc about adding questions about what types of value you are creating for your readers.
Thanks for the list, I think I will have to re-look at my plan (if there was any?) Seriously, I love your blogs and I am feeling addicted now.