Differentiation and The Blogosphere
Posted on January 14th, 2008 by Conrad in Uncategorized
This post will be a little more of a free-flowing stream of thought on a topic that has been heavy on my mind recently, and one that many of my readers (most of whom are beginner bloggers as well) will find interesting.
As some of you may have noticed, I have not posted an article in about 8 days. The reason for this is that I have decided…that I will start a new blog!
I know how funny that sounds, but actually it makes perfect sense to me, and I know that it is the right decision. After spending a lot of time writing and setting up this site, I hate to just shift my focus like this. But the point of me starting a new blog is to get a fresh start with a great concept that I know will catch on really well.
I do plan on keeping conradhees.com active and still posting my personal progress and any articles that I want to write that may be off-topic with my new blog. I plan on posting here about once a week…I really hope that you all will stay with me.
Lessons of a Beginner Blogger
Although I have just started, I did have a few things that I was not happy with concerning this blog. Starting a new blog will help me to quickly take advantage of some of the lessons that I have learned so far, as well as allowing me to correct certain mistakes I have made in the past.
Here are a few of the beginner mistakes that I have made with ConradHees.com, and how I have learned from them:
- I am unhappy with ConradHees.com’s theme. I paid $114 for this simple, average theme, simply because I did not want to put the time and effort into looking for a good, quality, free theme.
I will not say the name of the site or the person from whom I purchased this theme (it is not hard to tell if you want to find out), but I will say that they are fairly prominent in the theme design industry, and I am puzzled as to why. They decided to take advantage of me by charging me an extra $35 for a change that literally took 30 seconds to make, and were disorganized and unprofessional.
I purchased this theme because it looked pretty good compared to other free themes I had seen, and I believed that no really good looking themes were free.
I was wrong. I have since learned that with a little surfing around the web, it is possible to find entire lists of great, free themes. For my new blog, I will get a free theme that looks much better than the one I am currently using.
If you are a new blogger, do not buy an ‘exclusive’ or ‘premium’ theme! Put in some time, and you will definitely find a great, free theme that fits your purposes.
- I did not like blogging under the domain name ConradHees.com. Although I am definitely an advocate for getting your own name as a domain, I also quickly realized that differentiating myself from the literally millions of bloggers who blog under their own names would be difficult.
If you want to have a popular blog one day, writing under your own name is a mistake. There are simply too many other people doing it, and many are mediocre writers. If you want to have a successful blog, think of a good, unique name that is relevant to your topic. That is the only surefire way to differentiate yourself from the get-go.
My new blog will have a pretty cool, unique name that is relevant to my topic. I think that it will work very well and separate me from the pack. I will reveal it soon, once I announce the launch of my new blog in an upcoming post.
- I did not like the diverse nature of the content on this site. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of my articles on here, and I have gotten a great response from them, but the content was not focused enough.
As I describe briefly in My Story, I started off wanting to write about personal development, then wanted to mix it with marketing, then went to marketing only, and now for my new blog, I have picked a specific niche of marketing that I believe is exciting, interesting, and will provide for some very useful, powerful, valuable content.
The point is that in order to have a popular blog that really meets its potential, it is very important to tighten up the focus of the blog, and make sure that you are not trying to cover too many bases.
It has been shown time and again that people gravitate towards content that is very targeted on a specific topic. That is how you gain a passionate audience that keeps coming back for more. Write on too many subjects, and you will have a lot of people who don’t feel particularly strongly about more than one or two posts on your blog, and the result is…no subscribers, and little recurring traffic.
My new blog will be very focused, and I am sure that I will hit a nerve with a very passionate audience when I launch it.
Those are the three main problems that I had with my blog, and the lessons that I learned from having those problems. I know that they are issues that many beginner bloggers go through, and I urge you to quickly resolve them if you are experiencing those same problems.
Final Thoughts (and LinkLove)
I hope that that little breakdown was beneficial for you. I truly hope that everyone here will follow me on my blogging journey and help me get my new blog off to a rockin’ start by visitng and subscribing. Remember, I am not really leaving this site behind, I am simply continuing my posting on another blog.
With all of that said, I thought that I would give you some links to some pretty cool stuff I have found this week on the web. These are all links to some of my new friends I have met recently online, and they are great writers with a lot of cool stuff to say. I hope that you will visit at least one of these sites…I promise they are a good read. Thanks for visiting and leave any comments you may have below!
Here are the links:
My good friend Brad Spencer, SEO extraordinaire’, has started a great new blog on quick, daily SEO tips for the everyman. Check it out here.
The ever-incredible and always remarkable Christine O’Kelly, aka Self Made Chick, is definitely the blog that you should be reading if you aren’t yet.
My friend Hunter Nuttall wrote a great post this week about the readability of blogs…definitely an interesting read.
My friend JEMi has written a great post all about the touchy subject of money and your family and friends; read here to see her suggestions.
Hello! My name is Conrad Hees, and I am an entrepreneur and writer from New Jersey. I write about how to promote and market yourself, your blog, and your business in todays current environment of new mediums and stiff competition. My mission for this site is to create a community of people who want to get ahead of the curve and learn how to elevate their status quickly and efficiently. I am working hard to make sure that this blog is a must-read for anyone who is serious about their success.
January 14th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
*tee hee*
thats the giddiness of the blogger in me
thanks for the mention!
about the new blog - cool, I shall follow ya
it can be a little tough to tighten up on a niche.. for instance - I write about personal development however
personal development is a pretty big topic. I feel like it gives me the room to talk about all the things I would like to touch on however I can see how the focus can change too drastically
nevertheless.. youve got an awesome blog - i look fwd to see what other goods you’ve got stored.
once again -thanks for the mention *silly grin*
January 15th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Hey JEMi! You’re welcome for the link, nice article!
Yeah it is tough to differentiate, especially in the personal development topic. That is partly why I decided not to write on that anymore. But differentiation is a NECESSITY if you want to survive, trust me. There are soooo many people out there writing “15 Ways to Be Happy” and stuff like that in Pers.Dev.
For you, I honestly feel like you should lean almost exclusively towards women. With your name (Inmyheels) you are turning away most men as it is, so I feel like a pers. dev. blog geared strictly towards women would have a great appeal, maybe even potential to turn into an online magazine of sorts…you never know.
BTW I think that Inmyheels is a great name for a blog
Keep up the great work and hope to see you here (and on my new blog) again!
January 15th, 2008 at 12:41 am
Conrad, you stole my advice for JEMi!
I was going to say that if you’re not focused on a specific topic, you can try to focus on a specific audience. For example, Steve Pavlina has “Personal Development for Smart People.” A little harsh, but it differentiates him. For you JEMi, I think focusing on women is a great idea.
And Conrad, regarding using your own name as a domain, I partly agree with you. People have been successful blogging under their own name, such as Steve Pavlina, John Chow, Seth Godin, and Skellie. I think Yaro and Tim Ferriss should blog under their own names as well.
However, I agree that blogs named after a person are usually mediocre. I think a big part of that is because if the domain doesn’t specify a topic, they feel free to write about whatever they want (even the great Darren Rowse did this in his early days). But if you have a domain name like ProBlogger.net, you’re not going to write about anything other than that topic.
If you have a niche topic, then a memorable domain related to that niche can result in terrific branding. I can’t wait to hear what domain you got!
Finally, I have never ever in my life seen a web page that validated successfully. Not even once. When I see a post titled “Nag Alert: Make sure your site is W3C compliant (or you are just tossing traffic away),” it’s awfully ironic that the post fails validation with 10 errors!
January 15th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Hey Hunter! Thanks for the comment!
I definitely agree with what you said about it being possible to get big using their own name as a domain, I just don’t think it is probable. All of your examples were great, but they are also all very unique individuals with unique stories. That is a big factor in making them successful, and kind of overpowers their lack of a ‘blog name’. BTW, is Skellie her real name? I don’t think so honestly…..I kind of got the impression that was an alias.
Speaking of John Chow, all I will say is that I have never seen a man have so much success just filling his entire site up with ads….very obnoxious.
I think that if you are planning on doing something very closely related to your personal business (i.e. network marketing) then you should use your name as a domain. With everything, each situation is different.
In regards to Brad’s site, I think that he was just trying to pass along a good tip with a catchy title…I don’t think it was meant to be taken %100 literally. But you should leave him a comment and tell him your findings…I’m sure he’ll be interested. For a guy like me with little technical knowledge, I am finding his tips quite useful.
Thanks again for the comment Hunter and keep turning out those great posts!
January 15th, 2008 at 1:55 am
I thought Skellie might be an alias, but I wasn’t sure. Anyway, it might as well be her name now, because more people know her as Skellie!
John Chow’s design cracks me up. You can barely even tell that a post is there under all those ads. Do you know if that’s how it’s always been, or if he started doing it after the money started coming in?
January 15th, 2008 at 2:25 am
Conrad,
Great post- as always. Take as many breaks as you need if you are going to keep putting out good advice like this!
In reply to Hunter: Hunter makes a good point about my advice for today on Daily SEO (Validate Your Blog, Or You are tossing away traffic). And he’s right that the site itself doesn’t validate. Unfortunately, I don’t always follow my own advice and there are always people who will get uptight about it. It’s still good advice, from my humble experience, but you don’t have to validate if you don’t want and validating can be really hard to do if you don’t know exactly what semantically correct code looks like. That certainly doesn’t mean its impossible to validate. And while I believe that Hunter may have never seen a site that validates, I am equally as certain that there are millions of pages that validate as perfectly as my teddy bear fits into my armpit while I fall asleep to dream of SEO.
I’m just being silly though, validating is a bitch and as with most of SEO, you can argue till the cows come home about what is right and what isn’t. Conrad, keep the awesome posts coming and I’m looking forward to Marketing Rockstar.
-Brad
January 15th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Hi, Brad. I think you’re right about validation being a good idea but also hard. When something as simple as an unclosed tag could make it difficult for search engines to parse your site, that’s worth paying attention to. Then again, maybe Google can be a little accommodating since their own home page has 47 errors!
I haven’t converted my site to valid code yet, but I probably will at some point. My least favorite thing about valid HTML is that target=”_blank” isn’t allowed in links (although there’s a near-equivalent in javascript).
January 15th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Hey Conrad,
I’m excited to see what you come up with for your name and the rest of the blog! Let me know, if I forget to stop by here.
-Andrew
January 15th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Hunter,
I’ll give you that, there certainly are some shitty parts of “valid” code. I think Matt Cutts, the google engineer, says it best on this page:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/the-web-is-a-fuzz-test-patch-your-browser-and-your-web-server/
After explaining that 93% of webpages fail validation, Matt concedes that Google won’t penalize a site for not validating, but he does go on to say:
“These numbers pretty much put the nail in the coffin for the “Only return pages that are strictly correct” argument, because there wouldn’t be that many pages to work with.
That said, if you can design and write your HTML code so that it’s well-formed and validates, it’s always a good habit to do so.”
But in all honesty, I’ve testing out validating some of my sites and they usually do better in traffic from the SE’s afterward.
Also, it’s funny that you mention target=”_blank” because I’ve been wondering if using that would effect rankings. It would seem that always opening new windows for links isn’t great on the user-end. Maybe the SE’s recognize this and consider it?
Any thoughts?
-Brad
January 17th, 2008 at 1:32 am
ok I’m typing this as I read
- about focusing on women.. I flirt with the concept.. I sometimes say it but then I get these messages from men saying “heyyy.. its kind of not fair that you say this is for women.. we can use this too!” which is great lol.. they are welcome and so I just mentioned this on my blog. But Conrad you have my dreams for this site posted in your commentary.. I am hoping- nope - planning for it to become this go-to site for women. I thought I could use the brand InMyHeels for big things. You can’t imagine my giddiness the night I thought of it and discovered no one took it from Go Daddy
- Buying your name as a domain.. You mentioned a couple of names there - ( I love Skellie and I’m not crazy about John Chow)
I do think its important to own you own name.com.. using it for a blog.. I dont know yet. I always felt like I was going to be a hot shot one day and I’m going to need it to showcase all my ventures like Tyra Banks lol (I’m .. not really kidding, dont let my LOL fool you)
I think that someone CAN be very successful using their name for a blog.. its a matter how you create it into a brand. I’m no marketing major but I see it can be done. For instance, ConradHees.com - I remember it pretty easily as well as *shrugs* it just felt like you were an authority on your niche. Now all you need is a couple more.. thousand of people to feel the same way I do and look, another household name!
- you lost me on the validation thing (yes, im still that new) and so I’m going to do a little bit of googling..
ok.. this Post of a comment ends here
January 17th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Hey JEMi, great comment. Sorry i got to it a little late.
It is tough to exclude a certain group, but in the end it will strengthen your brand. Men can read too, and you don’t have to exclude them, but make it known that it is a blog with a feminine focus. If that’s what you want I mean.
If men are interested, they’ll read anyway, just like I read my GF’s magazines sometimes when noone’s around 
haha.
Thank you for saying that I seem like an authority…that is a big compliment. I must say that I really love your confidence, ambition, and enthusiasm. I, too, am the type of person who wants it all, and I think that it’s great that you have no problem letting people know that you are serious about your big dreams. VERY cool quality.
Keep up the great work and stay in touch!
January 29th, 2008 at 1:36 am
Conrad, I think its a GREAT idea! You recently gave me some good advice for my blog, http://www.mamaneedjava.com. I was already at that time starting up a new blog, http://www.vivianwrites.com, that would be more focused in topic (primarily geared towards telecommuters and work-at-home parents) and have a free theme I liked better. I really appreciated your advice and all of your posts here, and I will certainly be a big fan of your new site for women!!!
Thanks again, and good luck!!!
January 29th, 2008 at 2:15 am
You are welcome for everything Vivian, and thank you!
I think that you have me confused with the womens’ site though…I am not starting a women’s blog, the commenter I was talking to has a women’s blog.Unfortunately, I don’t understand women enough to write about them :).
Thank you though, and I checked out your new site…very cool! It’s good that you decided to focus you’re blog more. I’m sure you’ll do great!
February 1st, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Yep, I’ve noticed that your posts are coming in like a flood because though I love reading it I’m actually having a bit of trouble keeping up!
As a note, I like to do pro bono work sometimes, so I can reskin your blog if you’d like.
February 1st, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Hey Nico, thanks for the offer! I’ll talk to you over email though…you’ll here from me this weekend!
Keep up the great work on your blog as well!!!
February 4th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Well, I’ve been catching up on your blog because I wanted to investigate what I could do - and it seems you use WordPress just like I do, so I can have some ready-made themes for you straightaway! Well, depending on how tightly knit I can make it without making the code very heavy.
Also, the “flood” I was referring to was me starting at the beginning of your blog because I am actually taking notes. Heh.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Very noble of you to share your lessons with us. I am also on the look out for a custom domain these days. I will remember to keep your advice on mind.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Hi Conrad! I’m a new reader of your blog.
I think one day you’ll do a lot more than 35 readers and wish you all the best.
Thanks for passing on the things that you learn on your blog.
Like, the free site design when starting is a good idea.
What are you going to call your new site?
I’ll be checking back here for more good ideas, as I’m not real versed yet on the computer, and looking to learn about blogs, ads, pay per click, SEO, ect.(as in what is it and how does it work?)
Thanks for your sharing attitude!
Todd
April 30th, 2008 at 9:37 am
I loved this article. I am translating it into spanish to show it in my blog. Hope you don’t mind!
May 21st, 2008 at 12:18 am
Starting a new blog could be a good way to get a fresh start. It is good to write what you are feeling as this what good blogging and bloggers are all about. Keep up the promising writing.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:59 am
Great post! Thanks for sharing all these
insights, tips and resources. I will
surely take note of all of these. I have
in fact bookmarked this. Thanks
August 28th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Well I never thought of the number of subscribers, but I think your right. I mean the more people are reading the blog, that means the more important/interesting it is. So If I was the average reader, yes I might look at the subscribers.
Great post, all the advice given is right.