Last week I wrote a blog post about a new trick that I thought I had discovered for making Aweber Blog Broadcasts have an automated table of contents.
Here’s the thing:
- It worked in theory (the worst of all benchmarks ;-)
- It worked when I used Aweber‘s testing tools
- It broke badly when it got sent out live to my subscribers
Picture the scene. I wake up at 5am to catch an early flight to Melbourne, grab a quick coffee and check my email, and see my badly mangled blog broadcast that has just gone out to my entire list. And I can’t do anything about it because I have to get to the airport.
And worse still, I had already published a blog post trumpeting my awesome new trick and spread it around on forums and social networks.
I spent the entire time driving to the airport and sitting in the waiting lounge thinking about what I had done wrong. The critical step that I missed when I set out to solve that little problem of making my blog broadcasts look better.
I forgot to fully test it on my test site first.
You’ve got a test site, haven’t you? A second WordPress blog installed somewhere for you to try out new things before you put them on your real blog? I’ve actually got a few. I use them to test different themes, code samples, plugins, and I’m also supposed to use them to test things like changes to my mailing list settings. I didn’t this time, and the results were a bit deflating to say the least.
On that same plane ride I was listening to This Week in Tech, and one of the guests made the comment “Its the pioneers who have arrows in their butts”. Heading that made me think differently about what had just happened to me.
Now I’m no pioneer, not by a long shot, and thats not what I took from that quote. Instead what I really heard was “Its the people who take chances and try new things that get stung when things go wrong”.
I tried something new and it didn’t go well. But its really no big deal. Fix it and keep going. Sure I’ll probably be a little more careful about using my test sites first, but you can’t always test everything and sometimes you need to just put it out there and let the world see your mistakes. Otherwise you get stuck in a rut as you wait for the perfect moment to do anything different or new.
So take it from me, someone with a few arrows in his butt, keep trying new things to make your blogs better, because thats what this game is all about.
Image Credit: Flickr
About Paul Cunningham
Paul,
I appreciate your honesty big time. You’re the second person in the past 2 days who has mentioned a practice blog. I will get right on that.
You give good solid information.
Thanks,
Linda
High recommend the test blog. If you’ve only got one blog then there is just too much risk involved with trying out new plugins or editing theme files. Best to have a testing ground to do it in first.
Darn! It looked like such a cool idea too. Hope you can work out the kinks and relaunch it.
Meanwhile, you’ve reached “failure” category 2:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/07/a-hierarchy-of-failure.html
Sadly the technique doesn’t work and Aweber says thats the way its supposed to be. I’m glad Seth says its okay though :-)
PS, no idea why your comments always seem to get marked as spam. Maybe its your email address.
Haha, I laugh at things like this, because I am doing stuff like this all the time. If we are not constantly trying new things then of course we will not make mistakes like this – but that would be boring!
I do it far more than I admit publicly :-)
Do you know what I’m taking away from this lesson? Even the most successful bloggers make the simpliest mistakes. It is OK to make mistakes because even thebest bloggers do. :)
I guarantee you that every top blogger you see out there has made some major screw ups from time to time. Check out this post actually:
http://www.thelaunchcoach.com/insecurity-doesnt-pay-the-bills
Very instructive post! It was he perfect length in which to tell me all I really need to know, and make clear what I’d need to look for if I needed more info — and still carried your personal style and charming sense of humor.
I’m not a blogger, not your target audience other than being a student (of most things), but I so enjoy your newsletter and SO learn from your posts when I click through that I always wish I had more time to just read through ever one.
Thank you so much for suffering the slings and arrows — and living to let us learn from your noble wounds~ !
Your non-RT-clubbing pal,
~ GirlPie
Paul:
I got that e-mail, and was a little puzzled, but you know what? I just chalked it up to “technology” – something I guess you could say I have a “love/hate” relationship with. ;)
So don’t sweat it Paul. It really was no biggee.
What I take away from this is, so often when I obsess about a mistake I made, people don’t really care or notice. But you know what? I’ll probably obsess anyway. *Sigh*
Paul,
only people who takes risk usually have great success.just imagine what would happen if what you discovered actually worked…but it is also a great thing to test and make sure things actually work before they are published.
by the way,i have never thought of a test blog ,i think it is a good way to minimize mistakes .
even with that..mistakes are great…it shows we are human…and can help you discover other things