29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging

As someone interested in building a blog and therefore most likely making money from blogging it is likely that you will be aware of Darren Rowse and the Professional Blogger site.

Darren’s site is worth a look but it often comes under criticism, some of this is arguably jealousy and entirely unjustified, other comments have been right on the money.  I don’t think it is fair to go into details here, this post is going to be much more constructive!

Darren recently put together an excellent list of 29 debates bloggers have about blogging.  These topics are the source of 1000s of blog posts all over the Internet, yet some are quite straight forward to address and there are some obvious approaches that new bloggers should adopt.

I therefore intend to cover each of these topics in more detail over the coming months and I look forward to settling some of the debates once and for all!

29 Debates that Bloggers have about Blogging:

1. RSS Feeds - Full vs Partial Feeds
2. Comment Sections – Comments vs No Comments
3. Post Frequency – Post More vs Post Less
4. How Many Blogs? – Focus upon One Single Blog vs Having Many Smaller Blogs
5. Domain Names – long vs short, hyphens vs non hyphens, .com vs other extensions (like .net, .org), local vs global domain extensions
6. Hosting – hosted vs self hosted
7. Post Titles – descriptive vs keywords
8. Content – Link content vs Original content
9. Paid Reviews – Happy to Write Paid Reviews vs Not Doing Paid Reviews
10. Design – Professional Design vs Templates
11. Links to External Sources – Should Open in a New Page vs Should Open in the Same Page
12. Ownership – Use Social Media vs Build Your own properties
13. Post Length – Long in Depth Posts vs Short, Sharp Posts
14. Topic – Niche vs Broad Topics
15. Dating Posts – Dates on Posts vs Non Dated
16. Blogger Name – Anonymous blogging vs Using Your Name
17. Subscribers – RSS is Best vs Email is Best
18. SEO – Writing for Search Engines vs Writing for Humans
19. Personal Blogging – Sticking to Topic vs Injecting Personality and Personal details
20. Comment Moderation – Highly Regulated and Moderated vs Anything Goes
21. Social Media vs Search – focus upon social media rather than search engines as traffic sources
22. LinkBait – Anything goes (e.g.. Personal Attacks) vs Strong Boundaries Around What is and Isn’t Acceptable
23. Bloggers Participation in Comments – Respond to Every Single Comment vs Let Readers Talk to Each Other and Don’t Interact
24. Blog Platforms – WordPress vs the Rest
25. Monetisation – Blogs Should Be Monetised vs Blogs Should Never Be Monetised
26. Affiliate Disclosure – Disclose every affiliate link vs Site Wide Disclosure vs No Disclosure
27. When To Start Monetizing – From Day 1 vs Once You Have an Audience
28. Text Links – To Sell them vs Not Selling Them
29. Outsourcing – Outsourcing content (or other aspects of blogging) vs producing your own.

And Why Should we Listen to You Mr. Blogercise?

Good question!

Of course I can’t claim to know the definitive answer as all of these topics have a little fuzziness to them.  In some cases the answer will be “it depends”.  But I can give you some help to decide which is the best course of action for you.

I have worked as an Internet professional for years, at the heart of one of the UKs leading consumer websites – forget 6 figure sums, we’re talking about 8 figures (and that’s in pounds, not dollars)!

I have successfully transferred this knowledge to personal projects which have provided an extra source of passive income.  I don’t claim to have bought a house and a Ferrari with the income, but then I’m not that kinda guy! But the money could cover a delicious family holiday, the latests sparkly gadgets, or even a sensible saloon car!

Of course you should always apply your own knowledge and experience, experiment continuously, and put the hours in but I hope this series will give you something to think about.

I won’t hold back on my thoughts and experience, and I have nothing to sell at the end of it.  If you find this series useful, please link to it.  Now sit back and enjoy reading 29 Debates Bloggers Have about Blogging.

Tagged as: blogging debates