Start a blog. Get a domain. Get hosting. Install WordPress. Adjust blog settings. Install theme. Adjust the theme settings. Customize how the blog looks. Install plugins. Configure the plugins. Put RSS feed to Feedburner. Add Google Analytics. Create sitemap XML. Add blog to Google Webmaster Tools. Backup the blog. Secure the blog from hackers. Make the blog load faster. Make the blog SEO friendly.
...all that and more just to get started.
Did you get it all right? Are you sure that guide you read really covered it all?
You're Doing It Wrong
- You have a business, or you're planning to build one.
- You're setting up a blog to promote that business.
Maybe you're creating the blog, and plan that blog to be your business.
When there's something wrong with your car, you seek a mechanic... Or you "fix it" yourself, only to pay the same mechanic 3-4 times as much later when you find out your "expertise" fell a bit short.
Yet you insist on "fixing" your blog yourself.
If you'd be building a house, you'd hire a builder. Or risk the roof falling down after a year.
Yet you insist on building your blog yourself.
What Makes You Tick?
Ask yourself this:
- Are you in the business of setting up WordPress blogs?
- Are you making money for knowing WordPress inside out?
- Are you sure you're setting everything up as it should?
As you spend hours after hours scratching your head to get your blog, theme and plugins setup...
- How many customers you're helping?
- How many pieces of content you could've created instead of trying to to get that new plugin to work?
Should you be reading up on your industry, on the latest news related to your business, but instead you keep doing stuff inside your blog?
- Do you really want to know that much about PHP?
- Do you enjoy spending hours searching for info on how to get one plugin to work?
Focus On What Matters
If you're the kind of person who really likes technical things and enjoy reading snippets of code figuring out how things work, digging into WordPress is awesome and fun. But unless doing just that is your work and business, it's more of a hobby, or just plain procrastination.
If you don't like the tech-side of blogging at all, it's even worse. You both waste your time *and* get discouraged while doing it.
Either way, being under the hood of you blog is time off from stuff that matters: Time off from creating content, doing research, getting traffic, getting leads, getting new customers, doing what you do for a living, making sales.
I think this is why many blogs fail. Many beginning bloggers stop blocking before they even begin, because they get blocked by a tech issue. I believe that if all the energy that is wasted on getting things running would be used on creating content, more bloggers would see their blogs grow.
What about you? How much time you've spent setting up your blog, tweaking the settings, installing plugins? How many posts you could've done with that time instead?
