After coming on for a decade of running this blog, ten basic rules that others doing (or thinking of doing) this crazy thing may want to consider:
1. The blogger is always right. Always.
2. Remember at all times that nobody is forced to read your blog or your content.
3. There is no substitute for content. High fashion presentation, cool address, posting frequency or all the SEO tricks in the book don’t matter a jot if you can’t offer up some decent and original content.
4. Do not have a comments section.
5. From life experience I estimate that around 99.9% of people in the world are good, fair and kind. However, 98% of those won’t ever contact you. This leaves a ratio of people who will contact you the blogger at around 20 nice people to 1 non-nice.
6. If your blog works out well you’ll make a lot of virtual and real-world friends, it’s the single best benefit of the activity. However, if you don’t make enemies or annoy some people, you’re not doing it right.
7. Immediately remove from your life anyone who tries to exert editorial control over your blog, criticizes your opinions without offering constructive alternatives (see rules 1 and 2), uses overt or implied insults against you. Life is too short.
8. When haters turn up in your mailbox/facebook/twitterstream/anywhere else, it’s best not to answer them. If you are in the position where you must, state your opinion but don’t swear at them. Then let them have the last mail, it makes them feel better and they’ll leave you alone afterward.
9. WordPress is a fine platform, so is Google Blogger/Blogspot. You may think you’re getting to be more independent by choosing WordPress but you’re not. I strongly recommend Google Blogger, it’s reliable, easy to use, flexible and easy to customize, has a ton of features and is virtually unhackable.
10. Seriously, the blogger is always right.