A Bloggers Retrospective of 2012

As the year is coming to an end (and now that the world did not actually end), I thought it would be wise to sum up all of what happened to my ever-growing passion of  blogging and what are some of the mistakes that I did and how I plan to change my focus for the upcoming new year – 2013.

I also asked this question to some of the well known bloggers out there and you can read their personal experiences down below. I hope this consolidates all our thoughts on how to move ahead with our blogs without actually repeating any of the mistakes that we did and how to continue with our blogging careers.

Mistakes I could have avoided in 2012 

The very first and important mistake that I did this year was to monetize my blog without consulting my attorney!!!!!! Can you believe what I just told you? If you are a blogger and want to make money out of your blog, first and foremost you need to think is how you will receive the revenue and how you will disclose your returns on the income earned. Believe me, I have done some research on this and faced several hard facts regarding the same.

Of course this may not apply to all the bloggers, but it is always better to play it safe. To give you a summary, as most of you are aware by now, I am a citizen of India and have migrated to the US for pursuing my work career. I am here on a work visa and working for a consulting firm who runs my payroll. I get my W2 from my employer and file my taxes without fail every year through a tax consultant.

What I wasn’t aware of was that as an immigrant, I am NOT supposed to earn any sort of income other than from what my employer pays me (refer to this article on Murthy.com). Lot of my friends have opted to earn some extra money by getting themselves into blogging or even worse some of those pyramid schemes which are a strict no-no when it comes to USCIS and their immigration laws.

If you are in some sort of a similar situation, please do not waste any more time, call your immigration attorney and seek advice at the earliest, better late than never!!!! It is nice to earn a few extra bucks at the end of the day, but one has to consider “at what cost?”.

Having a Disclaimer – I never thought this would be a big deal until recently, when I read about this in a couple of articles around. What if you write about a specific food habit or recommend a restaurant for a particular dish that you liked there, and one of your readers actually tried it out and had some negative impact on the same? Is he liable to sue you for publishing the content online? What protects you from such liability?

So, having a disclaimer (something like this – DMC Disclosure) will actually protect you and limit the liability with your blog alone. That means, even if you end up in a legal tiff, your personal belongings will be safe and all that is at risk is your blog.

Email Subscription List – Recently one of my readers approached me and asked me to promote his eBook via a newsletter and was certain that I will have a good amount of subscribers to my updates.

I had to admit then and there that creating a subscription list was the last thing on my mind and asked if I could promote his book by any other means like writing a review or hosting a giveaway.

It was then that I decided to use the ‘MailChimp‘ service to see if anyone would actually like to get my subscription service…and just in a matter of a couple of months I have gained 119 subscribers in my list :-).

Also another important reason why I decided to move up the Email Subscription option on my sidebar is after I had my blog reviewed by Marya from Writing Happiness. She recommended that my existing option to subscriber to my RSS was not noticeable and asked me to move it to a prominent position on my home page.

Blog Review – Now that we are on the topic, I should say that Marya’s review of my blog was an eye-opener in several areas of improvement to my blog and I was astounded by all the loopholes she could point out with my current design and focus.

She actually summed up all my mistakes and sent me a 5-page PDF which went in detail about the various areas of my blog like content, menus, sidebars, blog vision and focus, guest articles etc which has helped me to a huge extent to re-think of how my blog is presented to my readers.

What Other Bloggers Had To Say –

Now let us see what some other bloggers had to say when I asked them

“What are the most important lessons you learnt in your blogging career in the year 2012? And how are you planning to implement this new found wisdom in 2013?” 

Hajra Khatoon –

“That writing (and posting) more is the way to keep pace. I am hoping I write more often in 2013. “

Vidya Sury –

“I realized the importance of an editorial calendar and planning in advance.  While there might be lots of ideas in our heads, it needs some planning to convert them into good posts. If we want to build a community, it is very important to share and interact in social media. Best of all, it is fun!”

Leora Wenger –

“Important lessons –
1) I can write both technical and non-technical posts if more (the majority) are non-technical and are friendly, warm and encouraging.
2) Just because a blog gets a lot of comments doesn’t mean it ranks higher than a blog with fewer comments in traffic.
How to implement?  Hm … working on it.”

Sue Neal –

“Main lesson – the importance of building relationships with other bloggers through commenting and responding to comments on my own blog. Also that I should have started building a list ages ago – I’m planning to have that actioned by the New Year. I also aim to continue developing links with other bloggers – and, as Vidya says, to keep having fun!”

Barry Wells –

“Having spent the majority of this year off sick the main lesson I learnt is to “try” and have posts written in advance… Although I would’ve needed loads to carry me through this length of time.
I agree with Sue Neal the importance of building relationships. I’ve been strong on this for the last few years and by doing so I’ve had some fantastic support from my blogging friends, who’ve come to my aid and written guest posts for me. They’ve all continued to leave me comments and share my posts even though I’ve not been able to return the visits as i normally would.
Without the support of my blogging friends this year would’ve a complete nightmare.
My plans for next year: Once my issue has been resolved I’ll pick up where i left off. Update 2 of my products and continue to build relationships with like minded people. 🙂 “

Adrienne Smith –

“The most important lesson I’ve learned in that relationships are the key to having everything you want.  Just to add a comment or visit someone’s blog is not enough.  Get to know your readers and help them as things come up.  You will soon learn that they’ll keep coming back to you time and time again because they know you are someone they can count on and trust.  I hope everyone will learn this valuable lesson as we venture into a new year. “

 Atish Ranjan –

“Blogging is all about learning and If it comes to me then I would like to tell you that I had started blogging just to learn only as I didn’t know it can earn me money.
In 2012 I have learnt that if you want to succeed in blogging you must have to build strong relationships with your readers and fellow bloggers. Apart from this I came to know that personal branding is as much important as blog’s branding. It might help in your future endeavors.
For 2013 I am planning to reach out to more bloggers and build healthy relationship with them. My ultimate goal is to come into full time blogging so will be implementing 100’s of stuffs. Learning is always be there in my life. 🙂 “

Carolyn Nicander Mohr –

“What are the most important lessons you learnt in your blogging career in the year 2012? My blogging lessons were about subject matter. Don’t worry about what you think will bring you the most traffic or what others are writing about. Write to help people. The topics you think may generate the least traffic may, in fact, generate the most.
And how are you planning to implement this new found wisdom in 2013? I have started using a calendar to plan my topics. I can spread out topics so I don’t write about too many apps in a row, for example. I have color coded my topics so I can see instantly whether I am covering a lot of one subject in a short period of time. I like to spread out my topics so that people get a variety of tech information at The Wonder of Tech. “

Now these are some wonderful thoughts and some interesting feedback from these bloggers. I do know many of you will have something to share on similar lines, please do leave a comment and make this post more interactive and informative to all the readers.

Have a wonderful new year ahead!!!!!

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