Browse 300 blogs in a day and you’ll quickly stop reading. That’s because at certain times of the year, everyone seems to start writing about the same topics. Readers only want to read it once.

It matters little whether you are able to give a topic a ‘fresh new take’, avoid writing a post on thes topics!

• Pagerank. Whether it when up or down or did a loop-de-loop, we don’t care and many of us have the google toolbar so can see for ourselves.
• “Sorry I haven’t posted in a while.” Honestly, we can see that and if there’s a shiny new post there, so be it. Make it a good one, not a “Look everybody I’m back!”
• Pictures you took off another blog. If they’re on one blog, they’re probably already seen, especially if you use the same social networks (eg Entrecard)
• Lists of interesting facts that aren’t true.
• Endless complaints about mild inconveniences some free service has caused.
• The same old ‘make money with adsense/bidvertiser/payperpost/other well established organisation’ story that provides no new insight, humour, feedback or experience.  

Fresh, original content is what the internet wants. News, not Olds.

This review is for It is nap time, a self-hosted blog of a stay at home mum.

Now I’m not a parent myself and I don’t know much about it, but I do know that white font on a pale blue background may be a nice colour scheme, but not if you actually want to read the text. And medium blue text on a brown background is also painful to read.

And my goodness, would you look at that! There’s 40 posts on the main page! 10 posts is the high end of normal, but 40!

There must be a better layout out there somewhere, surely there are free blogger templates around? It needs to change. Fix the colours, reduce the number of posts displayed one page, decide whether you really need all those plugins and widgits in the sidebars and generally tidy up. The blog will be much more approachable and readable then.