Randy Charles Morin who unsubscribed from Hmm in a huff the other night lists what he calls “10 mistakes made by my blogging friends” Since I’m probably not high on his friends list at the moment and more importantly because I disagree with a number of things in his post, I’ll go ahead and list 10 mistakes he made in his post. This technique is bound to move your position in a friend’s list.

1. His #5 point contradicts #1. Randy is advocating not to block image serving to third party sites and then use Flickr for image hosting if you are worried about bandwidth? So you are supposed to pepper your posts with hotlinking? Er, no. We’re supposed to use a third party to serve images on our sites? What if Flickr is attacked, slow or down? Any time you link to a third party site, you give up a little piece of page loading speed. Any graphic, any file, any widget. Yeah, it’s a small amount and the images will be cached by the browser and so is the bandwidth if the picture size is small. Uncompressed pictures can become expensive bandwidth-wise.

But this isn’t an issue of bandwidth, it’s an issue of control and promotion. He laughs it off as your images aren’t important unless you are Picasso. Let him talk for his own pictures, not mine or yours. A serious site, especially a business, should want to control their own fate and not rely on some third party site to be up or down. Or suddenly cap the amount of hotlinking bandwidth you can use (great for the archives to have third party “sorry bandwidth used” images). All these sites that claim unlimited bandwidth are full of crap. There is no such thing as unlimited anything in the hosting world. If the site doesn’t cap the bandwidth, the host will do so. That’s why most of these services make rules about the types of images you can and cannot use. Like on Flickr if you use too many Second Life screenshots they won’t show your pictures in the search results. Who wants to worry abou what will and won’t show up? Or if you use too much of their bandwidth? Host them yourselves and follow who is linking to you.

And by keeping your images on your own site and by using an image with your URL you are actually encouraging clickthru to the website where more money is made than in the RSS feed or some email program where very little money is made by you, the publisher. Keep in mind that an image explaining where the original image is located when hotlinked can be very effective advertising.

This isn’t saying that you shouldn’t allow readers to read your RSS feed with images in their favorite RSS reader. If some new, hot reader comes out, you can add that to your accepted list.

Note to readers: if you are unable to read this blog in your favorite reader than now is your chance to identify the reader the images are showing up as unauthorized and I’ll look it over in the comments below. Hopefully you will actually give me the information unlike Randy did.

None of this is saying you shouldn’t use to your advantage third party sites like Flickr and Zooomr. Heck, I use those sites too. Thomas Hawk promotes his photos on these services and seems to do quite well. Just depends on what your business is like and how you use these services. Don’t depend on them as much as your own first party hosting. I trust the multiple dedicated servers we pay for more than Yahoo, and I own Yahoo stock.

2. Disclosure alert (#4). Randy is wise to recommend Rmail along with Feedblitz (that’s what we use here) but when I challenged him about disclaiming his Rmail conflict he said it was “ridiculous” to disclaim this in other blog comments. I would generally agree with him except when he’s complaining about a problem on another blog and he’s the vendor and doesn’t say that.

Apparently, it’s ridiculous to disclaim this in his own blog posts too. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You should disclaim your own products and services by adding the word “my” or “our” at the very least to posts. The person reading might be a brand new reader. Same with affiliate links. It is important to be straight with readers.

3. More failed disclosure alert But wait, Randy doesn’t tell readers about his program Rmail using the publisher’s categories as keywords to point to his own search engine (kbcafe) either. The content is made to look like it’s part of the post (above the fold) as I pointed out to him. What did he do? Tell me to “have a nice day.” Here’s a screenshot showing what I’m talking about:

The links to tags for gaming and Xbox 360 appear to be part of my post here, but they aren’t, they lead to search results at kbcafe:

Rmail is welcome to promote Randy’s search engine, after all he’s paying to shuttle around all those RSS to email notifications, but it should be done below the post fold so it doesn’t look like it is part of the publisher’s post and authorized by them. Certainly isn’t authorized by me. Deceptive in its current incarnation.

4. “Your best bet is to use FeedBurner from day one.” Actually, I’d agree with this one, but only with a little further clarification. For your own domain this could be a mistake long term. I would agree with this if it were a third party hosted blog like blogspot or typepad or like we did with our VTOR blog at blogcharm because the ultimate goal for those sites, the ones doing this for more than fun anyway, should be to get to your own domain. As Randy aptly points out, you’d be leaving your RSS traffic behind. That’s not the end of the world though, because look at Scoble. He managed to get people to follow him. It could also be a good way to find out your true active reading list.

First party hosted blogs can still use Feedburner, as we do here for category feeds, but the main feed should be hosted by the blog for the same reason I mentioned above: control. You want to control that your blog isn’t having garbage added to the feed that the readers believe is coming from you.

Also, perhaps worse are those annoying Feedburner clickthru URLs that are being sent through Feedburner to have the clicks counted. Good thing you have to actually turn that on (don’t do it). Take control of your own feeds and do not use the Feedburner count clicks function which obscures your permalinks. There are tons of scripts out there you can download and use that will count clicks and the links will be on the same domain as your blog.

Keeping your URLs at a reasonable size is another thing to consider so they aren’t run through shorter URL services.

5. “If you have a belligerent troll, then your best bet is to encourage him to leave.” Not always. Look at one of the most prominent trolls on Robert Scoble’s blog: Christopher Coulter. He adds to the conversation and often has good points, albeit they are sometimes very brutal to read. Most label him a troll, including me, but I’ve seen comments from other readers of Scoble’s blog point out that the comments are some of their favorite part of his blog. Just because Randy doesn’t like reading trolls, doesn’t mean some of his readers might.

I think when you start deleting the comments of those who disagree with you, even if they do it harshly, you might as well turn off the comments altogether. It’s a one-way dialogue. It’s better to edit down the harsh parts if you can and let the troll’s counterpoints come to light. You can always encourage the troll to get his/her own blog and write the really nasty stuff there if they like.

Are there instances when trolls go too far? Yes. I’ll delete despicable comments about my family. That is an off-limits area to me and I’m not going to pay for trolls to abuse my family in any manner here. As for myself, it’s open season as long as it isn’t completely off topic. One comment I remember deleting awhile back talked about how the commenter in detail wanted to give me AIDS. Um, no.

So I don’t completely disagree with Randy’s point, but it’s a mistake as a general rule to get rid of a belligerent troll. The troll might actually add interest to your comments area. Yes, you’ll have to get a thicker skin, but the web isn’t a nice place overall.

6. “I’ve even played with some trolls, discovering their IP address and forwarding their requests to other rather nasty websites.” No, most trolls based on my own research and experience aren’t using static IPs, so this is hopeless in most cases. You might show them a 404 page or send them somewhere on the same site like here if you can’t contain or promote their activity. If your goal is to grow the interest level and traffic at your site, do you really want to send a troll away? Some would say the troll does more harm than good. I don’t think that’s always the case.

Look at Slashdot. How many trolls are there? Digg? Fark? Trolls abound in the comments. Boing Boing doesn’t allow comments or they’d have trolls too.

If your site is entertainment-oriented then you might try getting in and mixing it up with trolls once in awhile, it can actually help raise the interest level of your comment area. I’ve said before that some of the comment sections are more valuable to me than the post and I mean that.

If the trolls are so passionate that they will stalk your comment area, they are helping you from having zero comments versus at least one which may earn a click from a passerby. I point to Coulter again who I believe has helped Robert Scoble more than he’s hurt, despite the number of people who have commented negatively about Coulter’s presence.

7. “… and commenting negatively about their own readers.” I’m not sure if Randy is talking to me or not on this one, but if he is, uh oh, here I am commenting about a (former) reader negatively.

Look, readers aren’t sacred cows or untouchable glass figurines. Neither are you or I as the writer. I would rather read somebody honest than somebody who claims they are honest and behind my back wishes I’d go away or thinks I’m full of shit and won’t tell me so. Yeah, sugar and honey get further than vinegar (most of the time), but it is wrong to kiss people’s asses when you disagree with them simply because they are reading or subscribed to your blog. And you aren’t doing them any favors if you are nice to their face and totally disagree behind their back. Being critical of someone or something doesn’t mean you personally dislike them.

For example, I like Randy as a person although this post will probably come across to him as some kind of personal attack. If that’s the case, then that would be another thing we’d have to disagree on.

I disagree with him on a number of business-related things, including the context of our 15 comment dialog the other night and I’m specifically addressing comments and actions in this post, I’m not saying his mother wears army boots.

The converse is Randy was the first to comment about my wife on her surgery day. I appreciate that and thanked him accordingly. He seems like a real good guy that I’d probably hit it off with over a cold/warm beverage. I can disagree with someone passionately about something and still like them, but that doesn’t mean I’ll never write something critical on my blog about something they have said or done. Readers/subscribers do not get that kind of pass and if they want one, then they need to look elsewhere. That’s not being real, sorry.

I do agree with Randy on the first part though and hopefully I’m not talking about how great I am here ever (I’m not) — and trolls and non-trolls please slap me around if I ever should do that — but the second part of Randy’s statement is completely bogus. If your reader says or does something you disagree with, why should you avoid commenting on this just because they are your reader? Screw that.

8. “… most a-listers have 100 people linking to them daily and it’s highly unlikely your post will catch their eye.” I doubt very few of the top blogs have 100 people linking to them daily. The top 25 A-listers have more than that but it falls well below that number after that. I’d be surprised to learn of Scoble getting 100 people linking to him every day when Technorati shows 19,170 links during their entire analysis period. 100 x 365 days = 36,500. If that period is only six months, then he’s there as Randy suggests but he’s definitely part of a very small minority. I’d doubt there are any non top 100 blogs getting more than 100 links from other sites daily. I’d like to see Randy share some stats that prove his numbers.

Therefore, I think you have more like a 1:10 or 1:25 chance of getting noticed by these people. Those odds improve dramatically if what you have to say is different, unique and creative. I’ve unsuccessfully argued this point with Seth Finkelstein and he disagrees that extraordinary content has any better chance. I’ve seen other people say it’s all about being buddy buddy with those at the top of the chain. I recently saw Kent Newsome say if he could buy his way into conferences he’d see more link love but he doesn’t have the time.

Perhaps I’m in a very small minority who still strongly believes that if you write good content and work continually at improving the material you will eventually attract your own audience who enjoys your own view of the world. In today’s crowded blog wilderness it might take years instead of months or days, but hard workers eventually get noticed for their efforts. Hopefully not posthumuously.

Take a look at Mike Arrington and the rise of TechCrunch. He started by focusing on a niche and was empowered by his contact list in Sillicon Valley. Look at him now burning up $100 bills in print.

9. “If a reader is leaving regular comments on your blog, then subscribe to his blog, find out more about him, so you can engage with him more completely.” This isn’t a mistake for others, but it is for Randy, I agree with him completely here. However, I’ve read, commented and linked to Randy’s blog and he didn’t find out enough about me to even get my name right. But he’s in good company, Google still thinks it’s “david” too.

10. “Not using a spellchecker and a grammar checker.” This is BS. Whether or not you use a spellchecker or grammar checker will have very little bearing on your blog’s success. I see some blog styles which intentionally don’t capitalize the first letter of every sentence. Blogs can have highly polished posts, be more instinctive, reactive and raw or be some combination of both. The art of editing is an entirely different discussion. It is a mistake and in fact gets in the way of being a productive writer using too many tools that keep your work in editing mode.

(gasp, horror!)

No, I’m not suggesting that misspellings and poor grammar are good things, but your blog isn’t going to be relegated to the trash heap because you are a lousy speller. It’s one of those rules that even Randy admits he doesn’t follow, but the grammar checker thing is overly anal for the vast majority of blogs. Unless it’s your English teacher’s blog. Exceptions to everything. You may completely ruin a good post with too much editing. And throw away the thesaurus, please. Showing readers a big vocabulary unnaturally is a far greater sin than a post with a couple spelling errors.

Everybody makes mistakes, including me
Now somebody else can list the mistakes I’ve made in this post and we’ll have a post about mistakes with a post pointing out the mistakes with a post pointing out the mistakes of the mistakes post. She sells seashells down by …

(rimshot)

Nothing like a mistake chain blog letter. Like any other advice gleaned for free from a blog, do what works for you in your business.

Related Posts

• Image hotlinking blocked by default
• First comment thread at Hmm reaches 100+ comments and gets derailed [site news]
• Getting suggestions from a third party site with Should Do This
• Debating what is/isn’t spam in comments sections
• Another hotlinker caught red handed
• Script School mascot sets record straight on DirtyCinema.com