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One common complaint that I’ve continually heard from bloggers is that after a strong start, their blog begins to fade away. This is a common problem that almost always revolves around a few common mistakes. Once you’ve started getting traffic to your blog, taking a hands off approach is the worst thing one could do. A successful blogger would tell you that great blogging takes a certain amount of dedication and effort.  Many people work so hard during the initial beginning phase that they get lazy after the traffic starts flowing.

Below I’ve included a few tips to help you avoid that common blog rut that so many of us run into.

1) Lack Of Updates - When you first start your blog you’re more than willing to update it as much as possible. But like anything, after a while it becomes a mild chore. You need to continually keep your content fresh with no less than a few postings a week. This not only keeps you interested in the blog, but your readers as well. And unless you’re a large blog missing a week or so of postings could be catastrophic for your blog so make sure you always have solid content. It doesn’t need to be a massive article, but just something to keep your blog going.

2) Graphical Overload - While you might have amazing content on your blog one thing you need to avoid is filling your blog with graphics. Not only does it take away from your content but it can be an eye sore to your blog readers. Keep everything simple and clean. Try to avoid the “homemade” look. There are plenty of sites out the internet that provide free “professional” looking blog themes.

3) Too Much Advertising - Let’s face reality - at some point during your blogs life, the thought of making money on your blog will creep into your mind. Many people take the plunge, especially those with smaller blogs and end up filling their sidebars, headers, footers, and even text boxes with advertisements. You usually can’t make enough money just having one or two of those items so you need to include all of them to make the profit worthwhile. However, all of those advertisements are quite a turn off for readers and not only do they avoid clicking on the advertisements, they simply leave the blog as well.

4) Inappropriate Content - This can be a variety of things, be it pornographic images/thoughts or vulgar language. There are ways to get your point across other than using vulgar language. Much like you would in real life, you need to use your manners when creating blog postings on your blog. Most of us talk to our friends in a different way than we talk to our bosses, etc. and this is the mindset you need to apply when it comes to keeping your blog professional.

If you keep these simple steps in mind, your blog will have a much better chance at having a LONG, successful tenure in the blogosphere.

CopyBlogger.net has a great article that talks about keeping your blog content fresh as well (click here to visit)

If you’re an experienced blogger, you might not have too many difficulties installing Wordpress. However, if you’re new to blogging you might run into trouble - and don’t feel bad, I was there as well.

There are a few ways to get around the manual instillation of Wordpress on your blog, one of which would be sign up with a website hosting company that offers “Fantastico”, which is a one click install of Wordpress. The most popular host that uses this service would be GoDaddy.com.

If you are not using a host that offers “Fantastico” though, there are other options that can be looked at, as explained by DailyBlogTips.com:

Not all hosting companies offer Fantastico, though, and maybe you already signed up on one and can’t change now. For those people there is a new tool called EasyWP Install. It is basically a PHP script that you need to upload to your server and execute by accessing www.yourdomain.com/easywp.php. The script will then download all the WordPress files automatically and put them on your server. After that you will just need to finish the installation by going through the WordPress setup.

To read the full article, click the following link - DailyBlogTips.com

As somebody who has installed the Wordpress software using all three of these methods, I would recommend using a host that uses a “Fantastico” script which will allow you to have a one click instillation of the software. If you do choose a host without the ability to use the “Fantastico” script, then using the EasyWP Install would be your next best option, especially if you’re new to the software.

One of, if not the most important pieces of advice that I can provide to a blogger would be to backup their blog. I unfortunately have been on the wrong side of this advice more than I’d like to recall and it took me a while to learn from my mistakes. George Passwater has posted an amazing article on the importance of backing up your blog at BloggingTips.com. Below, I’ve included a small piece of the article:

Backup Frequency

One question often asked, “How often should I backup my blog?” The answer is, “it depends”. If you make changes frequently, then backup your blog as frequently as you make changes.

When you make changes to your theme, modify plugins or link in other files, you should backup your blog. Put simply, if you make a change, back it up.

Whether changes are made often or not, at a minimum, a backup should be performed at least once every other week. This will insure you have at least a few revisions of your blog backed up for use if the need ever surfaces. When you have multiple revisions of your blog, you have more flexibility in your restore options.

Basic Export

When you log into the WordPress dashboard, on the left-hand panel, under tools, there is the option to export. Selecting this option will export your WordPress blog into an XML file; the XML file can easily import back into WordPress via the import option on the dashboard.

This option will export out the comments, custom fields, categories and tags of your blog; this option will also export the page and post content. The export will not export the WordPress theme or any plugins that were installed or modified.

This option is available on the self-hosted version of WordPress along with the managed version at WordPress.com.

As George is quick to point out in his article, many of us take the time to backup files on our computers, etc, so why do we not take the time to backup our blogs? We spend hours designing them, we spend longer creating content, and we endlessly market them - yet we can’t take 5 minutes out of our day to run a quick backup.

DailyBlogTips.com, The Blog Doctor, and BlogBroke all chime in on the importance of blog backup and recovery.

One of the most notorious difficulties when it comes to blogging is spam. Companies launch these text “robots” that will ping your comments, filling them up with useless and annoying advertisements that you will spend hours removing. And be aware, these “robots” do not only attack large and popular blogs, they will also attack new and low visited blogs as well. It’s a big problem that can grow out of control if not properly addressed.

Thankfully though, there are now a few ways to stop the spread of these robots, aka SpamBots. One of the best weapons to fight the spam attack would be the Akisment Spam Blocker, which has been very successful at DailyBlogTips as seen here.

Another very solid way to stop spam would be to install the Simple TrackBack Plugin. This plugin will prevent SpamBots from attacking your comments section, but be aware that the Simple TrackBack plugin is only for Wordpress.org platforms.

If you’re using Blogger, right now, you’re out of luck. Blogger does currently have their own spam protection software interlaced with the Blogger platform, but many are unhappy with the current results. The easiest way to prevent spam on Blogger platformed blogs would be to simply turn off the comments section or require authentication of the blogger in your settings.