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Flipping Heck! Learning To Be Productive One Day At A Time

Je Ne Regrette Rien – Ha, I Wish!

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Je Ne Regrette Rien – Ha, I Wish!

Darren Rowse at ProBlogger is running a group writing project called “If I had to start my blog again“. I don’t usually take part in these things but this one peaked my interest.

I’ve been thinking about my blog and my blogging habits in general quite a bit recently and this is what I think I’d do if I knew then what I know now…

Figure out my niche

When I first started my blog about two and a half years ago it was because I wanted to practice my coding skills. I built the entire platform from the ground up and merrily started blogging away without a thought for
who I was writing for, I think it was just for me mainly.

My friends got to hear about it, then their friends and soon I had a nice little cult following eagerly waiting to hear of my drunken exploits over the weekend which was fine at the start but I realised that wasn’t
the way I wanted to go.

In retrospect I would have started my Productivity and Project Management posting a lot earlier
and set up a completely separate blog for the drunken anecdotes. Sure I still add them to this site occasionally but I’ve now found my focus it’s only a shame that it took me so long to figure it out.

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Have more confidence

I finally decided to do a series after reading “10 steps to writing a successful series on your blog“. I’d orginally steered clear of them because I thought I had nothing of real value to say or add. I wish I’d had the confidence sooner to say “Hey, actually I know something and I think know people will be interested in it”.

I know there’s an old adage “Publish and be damned”, but I think that I could maybe have been, and be, a bit less “middle of the road” when it comes to reviews and commentary, but I’m sure that’ll come as my
confidence grows.

Stop fiddling!

As I mentioned, I’ve built this entire blog platform from scratch and I can’t seem to stop fiddling with it from a back-end/coding point of view. The problem is that occasionally I focus more on the code than
the content – very naughty. I guess this wouldn’t have happened if I was using something like WordPress but at least I have complete control over everything that goes on – I just need to stop embracing every new fad that comes along.

What’s in a name?

When this blog was solely about my antics and stalking comedy stories, the “Flipping Heck” name seemed quite appropriate. Now I’ve changed the focus it doesn’t really fit in with what I’m writing about, I don’t want to change it though as it’s been linked to and indexed quite a bit so I suppose I’m stuck with it now…

From Passion To Profit

Don’t be so cheap

It’s a bit confusing, I wanted originally to keep the blog separate from my “corporate site” so I purchased the “flippingheck.com
domain, I was too cheap to pay for extra hosting (and regular readers will know I’m extremly cheap cheeky tongue) so I just forwarded the domain to a subfolder of this site. Bad idea! Not only does it tie my blog to me
(not a problem now but it was a really stupid thing to do when I was ranting and raving about my stupid Pointy Haired Boss), now I really want to sort the “Branding” out it’s going to be a nightmare.

When I finally host this website on it’s own brand-spanking new webspace I have to change all of the Google accounts over, run through the database to remove all references to this site, redirect the posts on the old site and then cross my fingers and hope Google realises what’s happend – nightmare! I shouldn’t have hosted it this way to start off with.

Don’t be ashamed to ask for money

I resisted Adsense, and any form of advertising for ages, I guess this goes back to the confidence thing – how could I ask people to click on an advert to give me money when I was writing drivel?

I wish I’d started it sooner

I admit I make next to nothing. Heck, I haven’t ever received a payment
from Google yet! But that’s not the point, with the topics I write about, I see the adverts as an “extra value service” for my readers.  Sure, people are trying to sell something but if it’s related to what I’m blathering on about then what’s wrong with that? I see it as an extra information resource.

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Crikey Katy, is it all worth it with those regrets?

Of course it is! I’ve finally found my path and the above points are nothing too major to deal with really.

Anyway, I don’t believe in regretting anything, sure I may have had a moan here but the above points aren’t regrets, they’re just what I’d do differently if I had my time again.

So, I’m still going to keep blogging – you can’t get rid of me that easily!

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About The Author
Katy is always trying to be more productive one day at a time! Whether it's analogue, digital, motivational or psychological who'll try any system that will help her get things done and get organised. As well as running FlippingHeck.com, she also loves making music and reviewing things.
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14 Comments

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    “Hey, thanks for the comment! I will try and post more about GTD (expect more this weekend).

    Also the series thing caught my interest, and gave me a couple of ideas for my own blog. Thanks!

    PS. Lets hear some drunken anecdotes!”

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    “Great site. Thanks for visiting my blog. As I’ve been reading several posts related to the writing group, I noticed a lot of people started out pointing to a sub domain. That in my opinion would be one of the first things I would start out with. It’s nearly impossible to fix that after years of using it.

    Good luck in the future. And by the way, using the words flipping and heck are very common in my community. Take care.”

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    “Thanks for visit my blog and commenting on it. I think that you could increase the amount of money you made on your blog, by removing the borders from the adsense ads and/or making them more prominent.”

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    “Thanks for stopping by Katy. There’s nothing wrong with being cheap. I like to think of it as just keeping expenses down so $$ can be used for other things.”

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    “Hey Katy, do you need to go to confession or something? Nice list to take away for advice to others in the same situation, work play on same host.

    I’m just starting a similar enterprise and have negtoiated a sweet deal on an extra slot domain with my current host. Bandwidth shouldn’t be a problem either with 800GB per month available!

    I like the look of your recent posts and featured content (seems like some interesting reading). The featured content section is a good way to make sure great posts from the past don’t slip between the cracks.

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    “Hey, I also like GTD stuff, gimmie more!
    I feel like a street junkie begging!

    What’s with the show email trick? Do you tick the box to *not* show email? Can you remove mine from the previous post?”

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    “Glad you left a link

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    “hi, katy

    i wish i could put together a site like yours.and have my own domain. Thing is i don’t know when this blogging fire in me will burn out. “

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    “Firstly, Thanks for all the comments and for stopping by… 🙂

    @Eric – You want drunken anecdotes? Okay, I’m off to London this weekend on a bender, I’ll see what I can do!

    @George – I did think of removing the borders around the adverts but I thought that was a bit “”cheeky”” (for want of a better phrase), I do find it annoying sometimes when adverts are embedded in posts and you think they’re content or inadvertanly click them.

    @Thom – The problem is also that I could redirect posts using a 301 header redirect which Google is supposed to understand but apparently is now doing all sorts of weird things with sites that use them – it’s a common tactic of blog spammers and splog owners apparently, which is a shame as it ruins it for the rest of us. The worst case scenario is I drop off their indexes for a while… ho hum!

    @Ken – It would be nice if I had the $$ to do other things!

    @dcypl – I’ve just set up my own hosting reseller account which is why I’m looking at moving. I love the people I’m with and the support department is great, the problem is it’s very limited as to what technologies they offer and I’m always looking at playing with new things!

    As for the “”email trick””, there was a bug – thanks for pointing it out. Because I don’t get many commentors I didn’t notice but it should be fixed now.

    @Damien – Why make a fool of yourself when you can wait for some else to do it and laugh at them, right? 😉

    @Costa – The blogging fire will never die out, it’s a raging inferno!”

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    “Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I consider myself very lucky that I started blogging when I did and could learn from other people’s wisdom and experience rather than stumble through on my own.

    Of course, now I’ll join those ranks, and I’m sure if Darren held the writing project again next year, I’ll have plenty more things to list 🙂 Nice blog! Love the clean layout.”

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    “I think it’s great that even tho we all have things to change, we can change them and focus in like you did, and it’s really such a flexible medium! We also joined in this project if you want to read – http://lilduckduck.com/archive/187”

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    “Hey,

    great idea getting onto a reseller program, and thanks for fixing the email issue!”

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    “Great blog! I’ve added a link to your blog on Blog of the Day under the category of Blogging. To view the feature of your blog, please visit http://blogoftheday.org/page/112332

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    “Wow! Thanks rob! Muchly appreciated :)”

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