While there is certainly something to be said for having a unique blog, you should not sacrifice visibility.
Tiny text and poor color choices are a common issue!
Make sure you test your new blog design in various browsers under default settings. If you don’t, you might be driving away your potential readers simply because your blog is hard to read.
It is amazing to see the state of some blogs that are submitted to our directory. Often they have only an introductory post detailing what the author may actually post about in the future.
Why are they adding themselves to a directory already?
What do they think they have to offer?
In the rush to gather readers and display advertising they seem to have forgotten that it takes content to have a useful blog. Please, before you submit your site to any directories, spend a few weeks developing it and writing quality content.
It will improve the chances of being listed dramatically!
What is it with all these people that try to show hundreds of posts on a single page? The search engines will still direct people to your blog even if something you wrote is no longer featured on the home page!
Please, cut your visitors some slack. Limit the number of items you display on the page. This will make sure your page doesn’t freeze the users browser for an extended period of time. Seriously, nothing stops me from bookmarking a page that I might otherwise have liked, as having it clog things up or crash my browser.
The same goes with blasting up hundreds of ad banners and other externally served items. These all take time to download as well. Get rid of it. Make your site popular by writing thoughtful content, then you won’t have to bury it with advertising in order to commercialize it, assuming you decide to go that way at all.
We review a lot of blogs. Really, we do.
Something that beginners should keep in mind is simple readability. It doesn’t cost you anything to put a blank line between paragraphs, but it will break up a large chunk of text and help your fickle reader stay interested in reading your blog. In short, don’t make reading your blog any more work than it has to be.
