Blog Design Caveat: Fastest Way to Slow the Growth of Your Blog

As I told you in Blog Design Engagement, I’m addicted to tweaking the look of a blog. I spend hours upon hours looking for ways to modify a simply line of code to make a design a little more unique, even when I start with a Wordpress template. I’ve learned so much and I am very grateful for it.  There is one caveat: by getting sidetracked in tweaking element after element, I am not spending time putting out contact or products.

For anyone new to blogging or struggling with the growth of their blog, I want to warn you of what I’ve learned through my Mistakes. Mistakes are a great thing as long as we learn from them. Don’t confuse the idea of building trust slowly with the idea of this article.  Trust is built slowly online and sometimes you can get so wrapped up in in blog design that you interfere with providing great content to your readers. Here we go!

Fastest Way to Slow the Growth of your Blog

I am beyond guilty in this respect and it was at the expense of my blog’s growth.  It’s almost like an addiction to keep tweaking, and changing the look of your blog. New themes come out all the time and they entice you to grab them.  What held me back for the longest time though, was trying to fix or change a free Wordpress theme.

STOP MESSING WITH YOUR BLOG DESIGN! BE HAPPY WITH 80% TO START

I would spend hours upon hours searching the free themes on Wordpress.org and try to find something that looked okay.  Once I installed it, I would want to change graphics, headers, colours, and slideshows.  I would spend a day or two trying to figure out how to code something new.   I had very little experience with coding and Wordpress was a new breed.

Do What You Do Best

Quit playing around with the blog’s design.  If you’re going to go with a free theme, you better love it out of the box and you better be ready for it to break when Wordpress updates it’s software.  Some theme developers will help update their free WP themes, but you cannot be sure.  If you find yourself spending hours trying to learn how to change an element on your blog, forget it. I sincerely believe that your time will be better spent by doing your thing: building products, services, putting out content to build trust in your community.

Put the I in ROI

There are so many choices for outstanding premium themes to use with Wordpress or other blog platforms. Your blog will seriously Thank You for spending a little money.  From WooThemes and Thesis to Themeforest and Headway – you’re going to find a design that costs $25-$90. You probably spend more on lattes in a month.  You have to make that investment in yourself and in your blog to be able to see any type of ROI – return on investment.  Without it, you can make any kind of return.

Once I finally stumbled upon WooThemes, I was reluctant to spend the money. I went with something cheaper and got frustrated. The frustration came from trying to learn how to understand their coding and trying to modify it.  I went back to WooThemes and bought.  I now have a developers subscription, access to new themes right away, and contribute to theme ideas and beta testing before release.  I’ve learned a lot about how their themes work.  The same is true with the Thesis theme. I have a developers license there and I play with it.   I would get stuck for hours, but it was worth it when I figured something out. With these premium themes though, you don’t need to do this kind of customization. You get a pro blog right away, support, and free updates.  It takes away any sort of worry when a Wordpress update comes along. Wordpress 3.0 is coming in a month, I believe – you can follow the progress on their roadmap.

What’s the opportunity cost?

I did all of this learning at the cost of growing my own blog.  Instead of putting my energy on coming up with new content, or shooting more photography, I was tweaking anything and everything or working on a design of a new blog idea.

If your blog is not about blog design and you’re not a designer, don’t waste your time.  Get your blog design to a point that you’re happy.  A lot of blogs have killer content because they got a premium theme and concentrated all of their time and energy on growing their readership with content!

If you can’t get your blog design to a point where you’re happy, stop anyways.  If I were to go back in time, I would have hired someone like me (that had gone through all of this already), and got them to work on tweaking the design while I worked on content and photography.  Of course, I don’t regret the path I’ve taken but I believe it is important for you to know.

Remember this One thing

If you’re the DIY Type, get happy with 80% of your blog design.  Work on the other 20% slowly over time,give a list of the final issues to a designer/developer to do in a no time, or probe your audience for what they feel about your design.   Your mind and body will thank you.