Stop Tweaking the Blog Design and Start Writing Already
Author: MoneyNing | Categories: Blogging | Posted on July 21, 2008
With the launch of this blog and a refocus of a few others, I’ve been addicted to tweaking blog designs. From knowing nothing about Photoshop and only very basic HTML, I can now create basic graphic designs and rearrange/add features on my blog through tweaking CSS and PHP codes. I find all this fascinating and fun but perhaps more importantly, time consuming.
Even though I’m starting to spend much more time on my blogs, I find myself running out of hours in the day. From the minute I wake up, I’m consumed with working on different things to improve my blogs. This morning might be about making the title look better on OC Golf Course, while the afternoon’s agenda might be moving the content from being in the center to the left on MoneyNing.
While all these changes turned out great and I’m glad I made them, I seem to have forgotten that content is what blogs are about. Great designs might be what initially get a visitor to read the first article, but valuable and interesting information is what turns the visitor into a reader. Insightful information is what turns the reader into a subscriber and subscribers are the foundation for readership growth.
If your blog design is always being improved without new and great content, then change your focus now and start writing already!
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I spent months on one blog’s design. It’s not as bad as it sounds, because I had limited time to do it. But as I was nearing the end I realized I had to make the choice for it to be the end. I could have spent just as long tweaking and getting things just right after I saw the end point. Now, I fight the urge. If it needs work, it can wait. First, I must write.
Stephan: Looks like we share the same views. With design, you can get consumed into this and just spend hours tweaking and adjusting but really it’s the content that keeps readers coming back!
These days, I will block out certain hours for blog design but the content has got to come first.
Ok this post thorough cracked me up. I have had my blog for 2 months and changed the design 4 times lol. After I settled on my latest theme, I realized it was easier for me to play and tweak than it was to sit down and write, write write.
Thanks for a good nudge in that direction!
Sheepleblog: I totally know what you mean by design! Writing is very hard but at the end of the day, you have a blog and people come because of that.
If you think about it, blog content stays for the life of the blog but blog design time is lost everytime there’s a complete design overhaul.
Build the articles with good content, traffic will come.
I love designing themes and tweaking site designs. But I limit myself to a major overhaul every six months instead of ever other day. Thankfully, even that doesn’t take long now I’m familiar with the process. In fact, now days people pay me to do the tweaking or theme designs for their own blogs or sites. That’s win win for me. lol
But it is very easy to use the design aspect as a procrastination technique. Writing is a great deal harder and the reward is less immediate. I love your idea of focusing on content first. In a way your opportunity to work on design is a reward for having put in the time to generate fantastic content.
Rebecca: Great to hear that people are contacting you for help
Design is great and I agree that the reward is much more immediate. Long term however, content is what brings subscribers to you so I would definitely work on that more than the design.
[...] presents Stop Tweaking the Blog Design and Start Writing Already posted at Busy Blogging Dot Com, saying, “With our blogs, sometimes we spend way too much [...]
Thanks for including this in our recent blog carnival - everyone who’s seen this post on the list has loved it!
Deborah: You are welcome
I’m glad people like what I write!!