It’s very easy to read the major blogs, and fall into the habit of following every piece of advice slavishly, continually tweaking and changing things, in an effort to move one more place up the Technorati ladder etc.

SEO blogs will lecture you on why you should do this, and shouldn’t do that with your links, ‘A-list bloggers’ will pronounce that you must never post about X, and that your blogs must be tightly focused on one subject, and one subject only. Doing blogging drivebys is bad, mmkay? Well, no it isn’t.

It’s all too easy to take the advice or instructions as gospel, especially if thundered down from on high in absolutes - ‘Your page rank will be diluted if you link to more than 3 blogs’ etc. etc.

But whose blog is it anyway?

For sure there are things you should do if you want your blog to become a major success, and there are things you need to do if you want to make money, but the bottom line is it’s your blog, and your rules - and everyone has the chance to make up their own.

If you want to link up to hundreds of blogs, do it.

If you want to write about every topic under the sun, go for it.

If you don’t want your own domain name, then don’t buy one.

Remember that it is all just advice, and that the most important thing is to be yourself, and to enjoy it - the chances are that you will receive the level of success that you deserve, and are ready for. There are an increasing number of blogs out there that seem to be merely clones of the successful ones, and they ape them in just about every way, which may bring short term gains, but doesn’t make for very interesting reading.

So if you’re blogging for fun, don’t obsess about every little tweak, and don’t break things that are working-be yourself and your originality could be the key to your success. Pick and choose advice depending on whether you feel it’s right for you and your blog. Learning from people’s mistakes and success is one thing, tying yourself in knots trying to copy everything they do is quite another.