After reading literally, thousands of blogs over the past year ,I’ve noticed some glaring trends, if you will. Mistakes I made when this very site was a freshman. Mistakes I wish someone would have pointed out to me.
But, I learned by reading other blogs far bigger than mine. Now, I want to pass the on the love.
So behold, my dear blogging freshmen…
Mistake #1: Teeny Tiny Pictures
Many a blog I’ve stumbled upon has this going on:
Notice the impact when it’s made larger.
If you are on blogger, use the extra-large button when you right click on your photo in draft. If you are on wordpress, make sure before you upload your photos to the media section, you size your photos to be as large as possible!
Mistake #2: Shooting with Flash. Don’t do it. Ever. The pictures will look crappy like this:
See the glare? So, shoot with natural light. Period.
I’m sure many a newbie reads some of the mega-bloggers, and pines after their fancy cameras. Sure, I’d like a…
Santa ignored my pleas. So, I rock with my iPhone 4, natural light, and photo editing ala iPhoto, PicMonkey, and Picasa.
You can still take big-blogger worthy pictures without a $1,000 camera.
Have some fun with all the free photo-editing out there. You can still have decent pictures for your site, without spending a mortgage payment on a camera.
I know, I know.
I still want the fancy camera too.
One day, dear grasshopper, one day soon.
Mistake #3: Blog headers with heights below the fold. Above the fold is consider the first 768 pixels of your site. Otherwise known as “prime real estate” for your future advertisers. You don’t want your header to overwhelm. To show you I was once totally ignorant of this, here’s a header before I knew the “standard”.
Way too high. Blog headers should be no more than 200 pixels in height. God, I still love those photos.
Here’s my current one.
Mistake #4: Hard to read fonts. Please save your readers’ eyes!
On many teacher blogs, I’ve noticed this font all too often:
Save the cutesy fonts for headings or printables. Not your main text. Look at the big blogs. They have readable fonts, right?
Mistake #5: Music on your site. It’s not myspace circa 2005. It’s annoying. FYI: Some of your readers may be reading blogs undercover at work and forget to turn their sound off on their computers. Let your words be their music. Don’t get them fired.
Want more of my two cents on blogging?
Here’s the first installment on: Blogging Tips for Beginners
Thanks for reading,
Nicolette
Sharing @ 504 Main
Yes! I agree with your tips and I’ve made many of those mistakes. My current site isn’t perfect (will it ever be?? umm, no, probably not…)but I’m happy with the readability on it. I too have great luck using my cell phone or my Canon point and shoot and photo editing software for my images. I like Picasa and use it to make collages and do general editing. Sometimes when I feel the need to be fancy, I use Gimp, which is also free
Oh- I started writing all this to say: I like your current header and headshot- very striking!
These posts are great (just read the other one) such great tips.
I’ve never understood why some bloggers say you should find a niche and stick to it, I much prefer the blogs with a wider range of topics.
Oh and the whole camera hohaa, I’d rather like a nice fancy camera, but I can barely use my point and shoot, and with all the free photo editing you can spruce up photos rather well!
How cute is your old header? And sleeping baby in snowman pjs! Adorable photos.
Sweet tips. I’ve been blogging for years, but these are still great advice for newbies and not so newbies.
Such good tips! Heading over to Classroom Creative to follow! Now that is’ summer I’m having a much harder time keeping up on all my blog reading:)
Jessica
stayathomeista.com
Nice tips!
I’m wishing that Santa would bring me a new Nikon too…or even a Canon Rebel would a step up!
These are all Such Great Tips!! The small photos drive me batty … and I had them in my very first post. It really is amazing how much photography is a part of a blog…and fonts.
This freshman really is appreciative of your insights. 
I’m so glad I’m not the only blogger without the super fancy, expensive camera. I’m often outside on my front porch using my little point and shoot to photograph a lot of my posts. The neighbors probably wonder about me, but i agree– natural light is the way to go!
I just found your blog via a link to my own for “Paleo Donuts” and I’m really enjoying your site! This post is especially useful to me because I’m relatively new at blogging. I do happen to have the fancy camera (that I don’t know how to use to its full potential yet) but my header is clearly WAY too big. Now if I only knew how to change that…. Thanks again for the info and I look forward to reading more of your posts. (Great blog title BTW)
Perfection. I love this post!