The great thing about blogging is that no matter how off topic and bad your posts get, you always have the power to smite them into oblivion by putting them back into ‘Draft’ status or completely deleting them altogether. The satisfaction of such an action ranks up there with finding a great parking spot in a crowded mall, or beating the lunchtime/dinnertime rush at your favorite eating spot.

Anyways, it’s been exactly 6 months and 1 day since I started getting serious about this blog, and I’ve learned quite a bit about blogging along the way. For example:

• Never try to direct traffic to your blog by self-promoting your posts via Digg unless you’re uber-popular. Yes, I admit that I tried doing just that during the early posts and was sent back with my tail between my legs. Lesson learned: a mediocre blog remains a mediocre blog whether it’s read by 1 person or an audience of 53,651.
• For Google Page Rank sakes, stick with 1 domain name! I thought I was doing readers a service by allowing them to type in http://closetblog.com instead of http://theclosetentrepreneur.com. It turns out that you lose valuable and useful user tracking information in the process. I also found out that there’s a chance that Google treats theclosetentrepreneur.com and www.theclosetentrepreneur.com as separate sites and may ding me for generating duplicated content. I’ve found a few methods for redirecting visitors and am hoping to get that fixed as soon as I get a chance.
• Another thing I learned is that a post which requires multiple edits or leaves you struggling to find the next sentence is a post that shouldn’t make it on your blog. I’ve found that there’s nothing worse than spending an hour or more laboring over a post only to find out that you’re having issues making your original point.
• Blogging is a great way to meet individuals, set/achieve goals, brainstorm and daydream, and share valuable information and experiences.
• Along with the learnings noted above, I have also found that blogging is all about your passion and pouring yourself into your posts. That may sound obvious, yet I’ve always found myself walking a straight line and not trying to be too outspoken in the fear of upsetting or insulting someone – in the process, the posts have become sanitized to the point that they’re not completely representative of what I think or feel. I’ve also been too quick to shoot down something that I find entertaining and fun to write about, yet fear that someone might not find value in it because it’s not serious.

To this point, blogging has definitely been a positive experience. For starters, in the last 6 months the site has achieved a Google Page Rank of 3 and doing a Google search for “closet entrepreneur” lands the site 2nd to lifehack.org in search results – I’m totally cool with that (for now). In addition, the networking has been incredible. It’s nice to be able to chat with individuals who are out there making great things happen on the web.

Still, I know that there’s much to improve on. In the last 3 weeks, I’ve seen an increase in traffic due to a post about Morning Sidekick’s “My Cubicle” parody. Unfortunately, not many people have stuck around – a prime indicator that posts on this blog could be better. So in the next 6 months, I hope to 1) continue to work towards becoming an actual business owner and share in that experience, and 2) breathe more life into these posts so readers have something worthwhile to read and enjoy.

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

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