What is a blog anyway?   

 

 

A blog, short for web blog, is a website maintained by a “blogger” who wishes to share his experiences, hobbies, interests, passions and other information with individuals interested in the topic of the blogger’s choice. A blog stands out from a website as it allows the blogger to easily post entries on his/her subject which in return can be commented by the visitors to maintain a conversation providing feedback, and possibly more information on the related topic. In other words, a blog is something anyone can express their interests, passions, or hobbies. It can be related to an online diary. (Making a search on Google for blog brings up around 2.6 billion results!)

Why blogging? Many people do it just for fun and many do it to make an income right from home!

Technorati which currently tracks down blogs, is tracking over 112 million blogs! What are these blogs currently about? Blogs are about anything! Cars, Travel, Making Money Online, Gaming, Entertainment, Fashion, TV, Sports, Books, Music, Aliens, and anything else you can think of!

Currently blogs may fall under these categories:
Personal blogs: Most traditional blogs are maintained by an individual to share his/her interests.
Corporate blogs: For business purposes.
Media Blogs: Of pictures, audio, video, or anything else media.

Some random examples of blogs are

·  JohnChow: JohnChow blogs about making money and has made $30k per month so far!

·  ShoeMoney: Another successful blogger

·  AutoBlog: All About Autos

·  BestWeekEver.tv: About pop culture and music

·  In other words, you can find a blog about almost anything! Check out Technorati use the BLOG SEARCH ENGINE here to see what I’m talking about.

So what’s the big deal about blogs anyway?

Well, many people enjoy sharing their interests, hobbies and passions in order to expand on their knowledge or simply share their experiences. Others blog about making money and become successful at it. There are many different incentives for blogging whether for personal reasons or monetary reasons.

How easy is it to start a blog?

Really simple. Simply head over to Wordpress.com and you can create one for free! I’ll posting up later how to make your wordpress blog look similar and have the same functionality as mine! How difficult is it? Not difficult at all. I’ll explain later how to make it look the way it is. For now I wanted to explain what a blog is.

What should your blog be about? I’d recommend something you can keep talking and talking about. Something you wouldn’t mind doing some research on in order to find more information. Try to find a certain topic or topics and focus on those. Generally, blogs that tend to try and cover everything fail as they fail to capture an audience. I’ll give tips later on how to choose the right topic.

Hopefully you all enjoyed reading this post as much as I did writing it. I encourage everyone to sign up for my mailing list to receive periodic updates from my blog! If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment.

Thank you.

Related topics

If you want to know how to make your blog popular and bring traffic to your blog be sure to check out this article which introduces Search Engine Optimization.
What is SEO?

                                                                                                                                        

 

Start your blog with Wordpress    

 

 

 

Why use Wordpress? It’s easy, user-friendly, powerful, and important figures in the blogging scene are using it! Did I mention it was also free? John Chow, ShoeMoney, WPDesigner, ProBlogger, and I. Wordpress.com has approx ~3 million bloggers using it as well! So why don’t you?

First of all, if you want a blog you have to decide what you want to blog about. Try to focus in a certain niche. Look at those previous blogs I mentioned and see how the range of topics they discuss. I would advise to write down all your ideas and narrow them down until you know what you want to blog about.


What about a title? Finding a title for your blog can be difficult especially if you are going to buy a domain to have your blog. It took me about a week to find the domain I have right now. I started with a cloud of words such as “Blog, Pro, SEO, Wire, Book” amongst others. I ended up settling with SEOBlogWire. Why wire? I’m pursuing a Computer Science degree and I hear about wires all the time! In other words, try finding something that will describe you, and your site. Try establishing a professional domain or name to establish authority and especially so visitors can remember how to spell your domain out easily. By having your keyword in your domain, or blog title, it will help with SEO as well!

So how do I get started with a free Wordpress blog?

Simple. Get it at Wordpress.org and download it (use the steps included to install it on your site) or create a free one with the following steps!

1. First of all head over to Wordpress.com.
2. Create a free account, and create a blog. It’s pretty straightforward.
3. Once you have created your blog, you will be sent to a page containing links and tools to manager your blog! *Yes, it was that easy.
4. Your blog should end up looking like this.

Where to get themes, and plugins

Themes are the presentation of your blog. Many can be downloaded for free, or can be purchased. Here are a few places to get free themes as well as premium themes (which have to be purchased).
1. 100 Excellent Free High Quality Wordpress Themes
2. Wordpress Designer
3. Wordpress Themez
4. Wordpress.net Themes

Plugins add extended functionality to your blog. These are a few I recommend.
1. All in One SEO Pack helps you out with SEO for your blog.
2. Wordpress Stats provides number of visitors, where they came from, and where they went!
3. Google Sitemap Generator creates a sitemap for your blog can be search engine friendly!
4. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade automatically upgrades your Wordpress Blog to the newest Wordpress with a simple click!
5. Sociable allows users to submit your articles to digg, bookmark your blog, among many other social bookmarking sites! Highly recommend it.
6. Get Recent Comments displays the most recent comments from any posts.
7. Similar Posts displays similar posts to the ones your visitor is looking at so they can go to other related posts of their interest. Extremely recommended!
Amongst others.

I’ll create later an extensive list as this is only an article to get you started! I encourage you to go to Wordpress.org Plugins for more plugins!

Final Notes on using Wordpress

Do not load a lot of plugins at once! This will make your site load up slower! Plugins such as Wordpress Automatic Updater, Guestbook Generator, Contact Generator should be turned on only when needed!

Don’t be afraid of looking around to get ideas for your own blog. That’s what I do in order to find what suits me best.

When writing a post, research, research, and research! Also try and mention tips that users can try out on their own that aren’t too difficult to try.

Make your blog user friendly! Don’t use big words. Users will be discouraged to keep reading on.

Interact with your visitors! Respond to comments, e-mails, and encourage discussion by doing so! Also post polls, and get user feedback!