It is surprising to me how many people do not know how to properly charge their battery. Yes – there is a procedure in simply charging your battery. Besides the usual precautions of using rechargeable cells e.g. not discharging all the way to zero, not charging/uncharging too frequently, etc there is one more subtle but very common way that users seem to abuse their electronic cigarette battery: they fail to screw it in all the way.
This causes a loose contact or even worse – a poor contact. What this does is wreak havoc and severe damage to your battery. When the contact is not proper it causes sparking and though the battery charges it creates intermittent surges that basically fry your battery. There is no proper way to diagnose this problem (e.g. heating of the battery is normal). So the only remedy is to actually ensure that the battery is screwed in all the way the first time.