How to Keep Your Sanity While Blogging

Owning and running a blog can be a lot of fun, but some new bloggers fail to realize how much stress can be involved as well.  Especially if your blog has hundreds or thousands of readers you will be faced with constant issues with webservers, spam, and grouchy readers.  Here are some ways you can keep your sanity while running an awesome blog that readers can't wait to come back to. Keep security tight Security is often overlooked on a blog because it is not a physical place that can be robbed or broken into.  But a popular blog is a prime target for spammers and you should do everything you can to protect your investment.  After all, your blog is a huge investment of your time and imagine how awful it would be to have all of your posts and comments erased suddenly.  Could you recover from this?  Well don't even tempt fate with this one and get regular backups of your blog, so even if it were magically erased all of a sudden you could be back up and running within a few minutes. But backups are not the only thing you should do to keep your sanity.  You should also use an obscure password with symbols and numbers and do not use "admin" for your username log in.  WordPress also has some great security plugins for protecting your database, shielding against a brute force attack, and blocking spam in general. Don't reward the spammers Keeping spam out of your blog is just a regular part of the job as a blogger.  Don't let this slip even for a moment.  The more you use Akismet and click the spam button on certain comments, the more protected you will be from spam attacks, but spammers can be a resilient foe.  Even blocking IP's will often result in a spammer changing their IP address and coming after you again.  Don't take it personally.  They just want to get their links on your site and they really don't hate you, even though their actions can be very annoying.  If you don't have a lot of comments on your blog it can be tempting to allow a spam comment through just so you can get some discussion going.  But rewarding those spammy links can just hurt the reputability of your blog and will get more spammers coming to get their links on your site too.  Just determine you are going to have an anti-spam stand on this kind of behavior and Google will reward you for not linking to bad neighborhoods as well. Take it with a grain of salt Not every reader is going to love what you have to say.  There are probably people even reading this post right now that don't agree with what I have written.  But don't let a little criticism bother you.  In fact, a little controversy can be good for your blog.  Let your readers battle it out in the comment section and allow readers to leave negative comments on your page.   But always be respectful of your readers and do not insult them, even if they deserve it.  You will earn more respect by taking the high road than by attacking any visitor who disagrees with what you have to say. Write about your passions A lot of bloggers get burned out by trying to write content every day that they care nothing about.  But if you truly love something it will not only be a lot easier to write articles on it every day, it will also come through in your posts and make them more enjoyable to read.  You will quickly lose your sanity if you try to write on topics that bore you to tears.  Keep your hair and your sanity by identifying your passions and expressing your opinions about them.  Chances are that if it is really your passion you will have that blog for many years to come and they will not have to throw you into the looney bin. Gina tries to keep her sanity with her blog and writes about cowgirl boots and everything that goes with them. Splashpress Media recommends Builder, your one-stop WordPress Theme Builder The extremely powerful Builder theme by iThemes.com is the perfect option to build themes for WordPress, even with little to none coding knowledge. Once you have build your WordPress themes, you can sell the themes in the Builder store. Builder also includes the $90 Billboard and Rotating images plugin as well as iThemes' Mobile plugin for WordPress, sold at $45 to regular customers. Find out more about Builder Theme for WordPress!

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