5 Things I’ve Learned Since Starting BrushPortfolio.com

BrushPortfolio.com is my great experiment. I created it to learn HTML, CSS, WordPress, and online marketing. When I started the site, I knew absolutely nothing about how to make a website. Now I’ve learned enough to know how much more there is to know.  Here’s five lessons I have learned since I started.

1. It’s a Dumb Idea to Set up your Blog as a Sub Directory

This one should be pretty obvious, but when I started this website I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was a totally stupid idea to host the site as a sub directory of our main site (i.e. www.libertiny.com/brushportfolio). I do now!

2. You Can’t Make Money Offering Free Photoshop Brushes Online

Sure, there are people making cash from their Photoshop brush galleries. It is pretty amazing how much traffic Brusheezy gets for example. Brusheezy was one of the first to organize the free Photoshop brushes online into a single website. It was a great idea and the site does a wonderful job.  But now hundreds of people have copied the same model and post the same content. Unless you are attracting Brusheezy-like traffic, it is going to be difficult to make money through advertisements.

3. People are Going to Steal Your Free Stuff

This one I totally don’t understand. All the brushes offered here are free for people to use for commercial or personal use. That is pretty straight forward stuff. The only stipulation I have in my terms is that if people want to host my brushes on their websites, they need to link back to my site. Seems easy enough to do.   Well, apparently not.

4. The Design/Blogging Community Online Rocks

I have met a lot of talented people since starting my BrushPortfolio experiment. I think the greatest thing is how willing people are to help others learn and succeed. Some of the people I admire most are Chris Coyier from CSS-Tricks (the first webcast I saw that taught me how to code my WordPress site), Eric from Photoshop Support (always full of great suggestions and encouragement), Nathan Brown from Room122 (I was lucky enough to get this great designer to develop my logo), and all the writers at CopyBlogger (I don’t have enough room to mention all the great lessons offered through this site).

5. You Need to Keep Learning and Trying New Things

The great thing about having a blog is the ability to try new things and see what works. I am working on a new project. It’s a website about Garden History and Design. It is going to be a membership site offering articles, garden plans, and a video cast of my personal garden redesign scheduled to begin Spring 2010. It’s going to be fun to apply all my lessons learned into the new project.

P.S. The image I’m using for this post was taken from the MorgueFile.