I can tell you my initial blogging failure stories from 14 years ago.
I started blogging pretty much on and off in 2000.
But I only became truly serious about it in 2005, all the way up to 2008 around there.
I use 2008 as some sort of cut-off because, after that point, I began to figure out things that enabled me to become a more consistently successful blogger.
One failure story I can share with you involves picking your niche.
When I first started out I had a hard-on for this sub-niche.
I thought everybody in this dog would jump all over that niche, because how can I not?
It just seemed to make so much sense to me.
I was that passionate about it.
I haven't discovered dictation blogging yet.
So as writing everything by hand, I believe I just cranked out 50 posts within the space of three to four days.
I was that passionate.
But I made several mistakes.
The most obvious, which anybody reading this could easily pick out is that I did not validate my niche.
This is fatal.
Seriously, don't do it.
If you're going to blog at all, make sure you blog about stuff that people actually care about.
There has to be an existing demand for the stuff that you're going to be blogging about.
It doesn't get any simpler than that.
But aside from that monumental screw-up, I also messed up because I wasn't paying attention to my competitors.
There's a reason why they talk about certain things in a certain way.
Don't fight this.
This is Darwinian evolution.
Because there is such a thing as an industry-standard regarding the blog niche that you're in.
And if you are going to be this messianic figure that's going to just somehow buck the system and come up with something revolutionary and earth-shattering.
Forget about it.
The chances of that happening is quite low.
The fact that I would say based on heart experience, is that it's nonexistent.
Instead, pay close attention to what they're doing and copy how they approach their themes, pay close attention to the topics that they focus on, and focus on those as well.
At the very least, this gives you some baseline.
So you can then tweak and adjust based on the results that you're getting.
But you have to evolve your site based on actual user behavior.
If you screw up royally enough and just go off on a tangent in terms of niche selection, you won't have much of a base to work with.
