I was read a post at Shoemoney that talked about the ten worst mistakes he ever made. He thought it was important to list your failures, as well as your successes. I'm all for the concept, so here's my list as well. It won't necessarily be limited to ten.

1) You can't make money blogging. It's not that there isn't money to be made. It's that 99.9% of the people reading this are probably thinking they are going to be the next internet millionaire. Of the remaining 0.1% that are actually wiling to work at it a bit, only a quarter will probably make any sort of livable income. If your first question is how much money will you make, you probably don't have what it takes.

2) List your successes as well. If you don't know them, nobody else does either.

3) Don't start a website you don't have any business starting. I came up with an idea a few years back. It was for a marketing company. Now, you could take my entire wealth of knowledge about marketing and stick it on the head of a pin, and you'd have enough left to write the Lord's Prayer. But this was a solid enough idea. The problem is, I didn't know how to get it launched. I had absolutely no business starting that site.

4) Don't neglect an idea just because you don't know anything about it. I know, this is in direct opposition with #3. With that same website, I should have patented the business method, and made my money that way. And I would have made money. See, about 6 months after that, the biggest name in that type of internet marketing got the exact same idea. Patent infringement can cost big bucks. :) What irritated me is that they said they were the first to offer it. Uhhh, hello?? What made me laugh is that they've had just as rough a time with it as I did, and they know what they're doing. :D The point of this is not to negate number 3, but add to it. If you don't know anything about your site idea, you need to either learn or focus on the things you DO know.

5) Political sites are a bad idea. I started a political website. But A) after this election, I'm fairly sick of talking about politics. B) I only get spam comments there. C) I'm one of about 20 million people who feel qualified to speak about politics, which means I get lousy traffic. The best I can hope for on this site is to make a quick buck selling the domain name.

6) Experiment with your marketing. This was my first blog. When I came here, the holy grail was to reach Adsense payout. When I started my original fashion site, it was to reach payout even faster. lol When I started my next blogs, it was to do paid posts. They were paying much faster than Adsense. When I started my gardening site, it was to completely get rid of Adsense and do affiliate. When I started the political site, it was to sell t-shirts with a catchy slogan. But now, for all my sites, it's to do what's right for that site. See, my goal isn't to use and abuse any one method. My goal is to eventually make a six figure income from my websites. If I realistically face facts, that will not happen with Adsense. That will not happen with Payperpost. That will not happen through affiliate income. As they say on Wall Street- diversify.

7) Passion about a subject is great. If it's not a subject that you regularly discuss with your friends, you probably shouldn't start an entire blog devoted to it. Immediately kill any site that instills a sense of dread when you think about it.

8) Don't work for free. And for the record, free is a relative term. I've got one site where I write where they pimp the hell out of my articles. They don't pay me a cent, but I can count on the editors there to give me lots of links across all their various sites, and talk me up at every possibility. They're good people. I've got other sites that pay me, and I still loathe doing anything for them. Nothing is linked, I can't really promote it in any way, and my contribution to the site has done nothing other than make someone else rich or lazy. If I'm going to make anyone rich and lazy, it's myself.

9) Don't expect others to work for free. I'm going to eventually start a new site that I think is based on a pretty interesting concept. Getting talented writers isn't a problem. Paying them is. If I can't afford to pay, I'll at least link to them and promote their latest project, but even then, I feel bad that I can't slip them some cash. It's very simple. If I don't pay you, I don't get to set deadlines, and I should expect a complete piece of crap that I really can't use. If I pay you, you're my bitch. :D

10) You need a private blog, but keep it private. That's a place where you can go dump all of the bullshit, and you don't have to worry about what the advertisers might think. That doesn't mean you can't be friendly on your paid blogs, but don't invite people into your life and your business there. If your goal is to make money on that site, then by all means, make money. If your goal is to talk about how your day went, then leave the money off of it. I have one private blog that has three readers. I consider these people friends, and I would feel like a heel if I complained about being low on cash and had ads anywhere on the site. I don't give a damn if I ever get traffic there. That's not the purpose of that blog.

11) Never stop planning. I've got at LEAST 4 other blogs I'm planning. This is on top of the 11 or so blogs I already have. I recently registered 3 domain names, and I'll cry if I have to start designing another site right now, let alone writing for it. I don't even have anything solid for one of them. It was just a cool domain name. :) And I can already tell you what I think will happen with each. One will take a long time to get off the ground, but may eventually break big. If it does, I'll get a few death threats and may burn in hell. One will start off fairly big, and I think it's got some enormous potential to be an insanely massive site. Which means I'll be disappointed when I don't pull in 500 readers on the first day. lol The other one will be a half-baked idea the whole way through, before I finally put it out of its misery. But at least I'm thinking about what I want from each site...

11) Quit reading my list and make your own. Some people can start sites that have ads all throughout their personal business, and they make a killing doing so. Others start very successful blogs where they talk about things that they have no knowledge about. Some people will ask "How much money will I make" and they will bring in a six figure salary within a month. You've got to figure out what works for you.