(by 266 people)
Many of my close friends are entering the blogging world. I am so happy for them. I started blogging in Feb 2005 and I have learnt that we need to do a few basic things when we start a blog. I learnt it the hard way but you don't have to. I have put together a starter checklist for new bloggers. I have used this list to help my friends and now I thought I will make this public.
Disclaimer: This list is by no means complete and all the items may not be relevant to everyone.
The only thing that matters
Well, may not be the ONLY thing but want to stress on the importance anyway
The only thing that matters finally is superior content. If you forget everything else in this list and focus on just providing great content, you can still win BIG in the blogging world!
Things to do on your blog
1. Enable search on your blog
Again, search should be a standard feature for any website. Your blogging provider would normally provide the feature. You just have to find out how to enable it for your blog.
2. Link to your profile
Write up your introduction "elevator pitch" and link it from your blog. People want to know who you are. Celebrity bloggers can ignore this comment :)
3. Provide a way to contact you
Other than posting comments on your blog, provide a way (email, phone or both) for your readers to connect with you. I have made quite a few new friends from all over the world.
4. Create meaningful categories and chunk content
Very soon you will have a lot of content on your blog and your readers will get confused where to go. One option is to create meaningful categories and file content appropriately. That will be a great service for your readers.
5. Put your photo on the home page
Blog is a conversation that you are having with your readers and it becomes more personal with a photo.
Again, search should be a standard feature for any website. Your blogging provider would normally provide the feature. You just have to find out how to enable it for your blog.
2. Link to your profile
Write up your introduction "elevator pitch" and link it from your blog. People want to know who you are. Celebrity bloggers can ignore this comment :)
3. Provide a way to contact you
Other than posting comments on your blog, provide a way (email, phone or both) for your readers to connect with you. I have made quite a few new friends from all over the world.
4. Create meaningful categories and chunk content
Very soon you will have a lot of content on your blog and your readers will get confused where to go. One option is to create meaningful categories and file content appropriately. That will be a great service for your readers.
5. Put your photo on the home page
Blog is a conversation that you are having with your readers and it becomes more personal with a photo.
Things to do off your blog
1. Register a domain name and redirect it to your blog
It costs less than $10 per year but the return on investment is huge.
2. Include your blog link in your email signature
Again, it takes only a minute but it will help spread the message quickly.
3. Build your personal brand
Your brand can help your blog and your blog can help your brand. So start building your personal brand right away.
4. Include blog link or feed in social networks
You may be on Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace and/or other social networks. Wherever applicable and relevant, include your blog feed or URL.
It costs less than $10 per year but the return on investment is huge.
2. Include your blog link in your email signature
Again, it takes only a minute but it will help spread the message quickly.
3. Build your personal brand
Your brand can help your blog and your blog can help your brand. So start building your personal brand right away.
4. Include blog link or feed in social networks
You may be on Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace and/or other social networks. Wherever applicable and relevant, include your blog feed or URL.
Blogging Platforms
Too many to list. Here are a few...
This is not in any particular order. I use Wordpress only because John (Keegan) suggested me to :)
- Blogger
- Founded by Pyra Labs - now owned by Google. Needs a Google Id for commenting on the blogs (I think)
- Wordpress
- Hosted option or you can host it yourself
- Typepad by SixApart
- Typepad is hosted offering based on Movable Type
- MovableType by SixApart
- MovableType is open source blogging software offered by SixApart
- Profy
- Profy, a new player in the blogging arena, is a one-stop web platform for
all things blogging. Described by some reviewers as a social blogging platform, the Profy solution provides a single point of comprehensive access to the full range of activities involved in blogging, from reading and sharing news to publishing posts and networking with other bloggers and readers. Profy's vision is to provide bloggers with all the creative tools they could possibly want - in one place. - Textpattern
- Textpattern is a light-weight CMS system and you can customize it to create your blog. Open Source.
- Spaces by MSN
- Hosted platform by Microsoft MSN Network
- Expression Engine by pMachine
- ExpressionEngine is another light-weight CMS (content management system) that you can customize to host your blog
- SquareSpace
- Hosted software by SquareSpace
Registries and Directories
PIck and choose the services that are relevant for you.
- Get a creative commons license for your blog content
- Creative Commons makes it easy to assign a license for your online content. I use a license called "Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0"
This means (in english)
You are free to
* to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
* to make derivative works
Under the following conditions:
* by Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
* Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. - 3. Implement subscription chiclets
- People use variety of RSS readers and you want to make it easy for them to subscribe to your feed from those RSS readers. Feedburner provides scripts to create those subscription chiclets. I suggest that you should take a look at the available options and add those chiclets to your blog site.
- Claim your blog on technorati
- By registering yourself at technorati and claiming it, you have an ability to put your photo with your profile. When people search for stuff on technorati and your blog comes up in the search results your thumbsize photo appears with the search result. Every single thing helps.
- Provide email subscriptions to your blog
- You will be amazed how many people want to read your blog via their email. It's easy to set that up. You can get a script to do that by registering at Feedblitz.
- Link to your photo album
- If you have an online photo album with a service like Flickr, put in a link to that as well.
- Announce your blog to the world
- The first thing that you can do is to use a service like Pingomatic to ping a few servers. Of course, best would be to write compelling content that would make others link to your site.
- Link to your online bookmarks
- If you have an account with del.icio.us and are tracking some interesting websites, you can link to your bookmark page.
- Validate your feeds
- Simple way is to subscribe to your own feed in your RSS readers. Other way is to use FeedValidator to check if everything is OK
- Geo-tag your blog
- Feedmap provides a simple way of associating your physical co-ordinates (city, zip) to your blog. As more people sign up for this service, your blog will appear in the "bloggers nearby" for your neighbours blogs.
- Register in the TTLB ecosystem
- TTLB (The Truth Laid Bear) eco-system ranks blogs by links.
- Register at Blogarama
- Blogarama is another manually moderated registry.
- Get Clustrmaps for your blog
- Show visitor count and the regions from where the visitors are coming
- Enable MyBlogLog click tracking
- MyBlogLog is really cool. It takes about 2 minutes to implement on your blog and provides real-time tracking (Pro Version) of user behavior (where did they come from and where did they go) on your blog.
- Publish your conversations from other blogs to your blog via CoComment
- Succeeding in blogging requires participating in conversations. How do you bring all your conversations in one place? Well, CoComment has an answer via their Firefox plugin.
- Leverage the power of HitTail to get more traffic
- HitTail reveals in real-time the least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the Long Tail of your natural search results. We present these terms to you as suggestions that when acted on will boost the natural search results of your site. It's that simple.
- Give back some link love with WhoLinked
- WhoLinked will search through the web and send you back a list of sites that are linking to your site. You can say "thank you" to those sites by putting up this widget.
- Provide target website previews via Snap Preview
- Snap Preview Anywhere enables anyone visiting your site to get a glimpse of what other sites you're linking to, without having to leave your site. By rolling over any link, the user gets a visual preview of the site without having to go there, thus eliminating wasted "trips" to linked sites.
- Get cool widgets from MajikWidget
- Do you want to add polls, voting or rating for your blog? Check out cool widgets from Majikwidget. You can get them for a song.
- Register in BlogTopSites
- BlogTopSites is a directory of blogs. Register your blog under the right category.
- More widgets from WidgetBox
- There are hundreds of them here. You can pick and choose...
- Post your LinkedIn Profile via LinkedInABox
- Amir Glick and Yaniv Solnik have a cool widget to display your LinkedIn profile on your blog sidebar.
- Submit your blog to Blogged directory
- Blogged is a directory where editors and other readers can rate your blog
- Add your blog to Wikizines by Zimbio
- You can submit your blog to be featured on one or more Wikizines operated by Zimbio and get more inbound links
Commenting Platforms
You can enhance your commenting system to include ratings, reputation, spam protection etc.
- SezWho
- SezWho is a universal profile service for the social web that improves community engagement and enables content discovery to be added to blogs, forums, message boards and other social sites. SezWho works with most social media platforms without taking over the content on the site.
- DISQUS
- Disqus is a powerful comment system that easily enhances the discussion on websites.
- Intense Debate
- IntenseDebate comments enhance and encourage conversation on your blog or website.
- JS-Kit Comments
- The Comments service provides a full-featured commenting engine for your web site. It is implemented as a lightweight widget and is incredibly easy to install on any static or dynamic web page.
Spread the Word
Provide tools for your readers to spread the message
- AddThis
- Social Bookmarking Sharing Button - One button to bookmark on many different social bookmarking sites
- Tell-A-Friend
- Word-of-mouth marketing made simple. Allow readers to spread the message to their friends via email, IM, social networks or blogging platforms.
- Yahoo Buzz!
- Yahoo!'s answer to Digg
What they didn't tell you about blogging...
Things I wish I knew when I started blogging
- What they didn't tell you about blogging - #1 - #10
- 1. It's easy to start but hard to maintain.
2. People expect consistently good content or quality readers walk away.
3. You can't be famous just by blogging.
4. You can't get rich blogging.
5. You can extend your brand via the blog but you can't build a brand by blogging.
6. Blogging is an addiction and sometimes it can be serious.
7. If you want to succeed, you HAVE to start making others succeed.
8. You don't climb up by pulling down other people.
9. It takes time to produce "Timeless Content." But "timeless content" produces results (traffic included) in the long run
10. Traffic is important but "Quality" traffic is more important - What they didn't tell you about blogging - #11 - #20
- 11. Never ask for links
12. Who you are plays an important role in how your blog is perceived
13. Using the right tools is VERY important to get the right feedback
14. Taking a STAND is necessary
15. You can slack but remember that you are only one click away from someone unsubscribing.
16. Don't apply the rule of reciprocation to blogs.
17. Don't impose your rules on other bloggers
18. Don't write if you don't have anything to write
19. Don't expect short-term benefits. There are none.
20. Your attitude DOES show up on your blog - What they didn't tell you about blogging - #21 - #30
- 21. Getting attention may be easy; maintaining it is hard
22. What you don't know might hurt you
23. If you don't care passionately about your readers, they won't care for you
24. What you do outside the blog is equally important
25. You can never stop learning; now you got to learn FAST
26. You rarely can take back what you said
27. You have more help than you can ever need
28. You can make more friends in the blogosphere fast
29. You WILL have critics. So get used to it
30. You have to give back! - What they didn't tell you about blogging - #31 - #40
- 31. Not only is blogging addictive, blogging stats are addictive too...
32. Barring exceptions, older posts are considered dead
33. Variety helps; too much variety hurts
34. Blogging is personal
35. Traffic is not the only metric of success in blogging.
36. Name of your blog matters
37. Create tipping points for your blog
38. You can get carried away sometimes
39. Set time aside for your blog fans
40. You can join the discussion but you got have something original to say - What they didn't tell you about blogging - #41 - #50
- 41. Your blog can change who you are
42. Your blog can change who your readers are
43. Blogging can make a serious impact on your personal brand
44. Not everyone who should be blogging is blogging
45. Not everyone who is blogging should be blogging
46. There is no one secret recipe to make your blog successful
47. Not all the blogging tips are applicable to everyone
48. You can make your blog the ultimate leverage engine
49. Blogging can seem like a thankless job
50. Blogging will increase your capacity to do more good
Selected blog posts on..well, blogging
- Sep 2007: A Blogger's fantasies
- Blogging reality check...
- Sep 2006: How can I get more traffic to my blog?
- Shouldn't the really question be "Why should I get more traffic to my blog?"
- Jun 2006: When the going gets too easy..
- Most things on the web are easy.. sorry easy to start!
- May 2006: 11 ways to kill your blog
- This is very common among many things in life - its easy to start but hard to maintain. As a bonus its easy to kill - character, reputation, trust, integrity - the list can go on.
Add blogging to this list as well. It's easy to start, hard to maintain but reasonably easy to kill. - Jan 2006: 11 Ideas to maintain your blog
- One thing is to start a blog. That's easy. But how can you maintain one?
- Jan 2006: Open Source and blogging; We can change the game
- There is a need to get more quality bloggers into the blogosphere
- Jan 2006: Why you can't ignore blogs?
- Blogs, I think, provide the fastest way to understand the current reality globally
- Nov 2005: One more reason why you MUST focus on creating GREAT content
- Content is still the king!
- Oct 2005: I started a blog; now what?
- Key message: Blog is not your brand!
- Aug 2005: Building blog traffic - Blog Business Summit
- Notes from a seminar led by Dave Taylor and Robert Scoble at the Business Blogging Summit
Check your progress
Blog popularity and ranking is only ONE way to check your progress. Here are some resources to do just that
- Check your alexa ranking
- Alexa ranking is skewed in the sense that it is only restricted to people that have downloaded the alexa toolbar. Even than, its a reasonably good indicator
- Marketleap's Link Popularity Check
- You can compare your blog's popularity with three other websites
- Check your blog $shares value
- Blogshares is a fantasy market where every blog is equivalent to a stock. Your blog may already be listed there. Check out the value there.
- Search results count on google
- May sound too simplistic. The number of search results for your blog name is still one indicator of the popularity.
- Check Page Rank for your site
- If the site ranking is less than six, you got some work to do :)
- Check your ranking on Compete.com
- Compete.com uses the same model for ranking sites.
- Get Quantified
- Quantcast is a new media measurement service that lets advertisers view audience reports on millions of websites and services. Only Quantcast combines directly measured audience data with panel-based estimates to deliver accurate third-party metrics and easy-to-read profiles on digital media properties.
Monetizing Your Blog
Partial list of advertising options on your blog
Making serious money with your blog is not easy. But no harm in trying I guess :)
- 1. Google Adsense
- AdSense for content automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers ads (you can choose both text or image ads) that are relevant to your audience and your site content-ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful.
- 2. Yahoo Publisher Network
- Yahoo's answer to Google Adsense
- 3. Adbrite - Text advertising
- Adbrite operates a network where publishers (blog owners included) can sell text ad spaces directly to advertisers
- 4. Text Link Ads
- "Text Link Ads" specialize in placing static html links on high quality, high traffic web properties
- 5. Chitika - Product display ads
- Chitika says "We make money for you by displaying revenue-earning ads and merchant offers on your web site"
- 6. Kontera - InText Advertising
- The company's flagship product, ContentLink%u2122, finds contextually relevant keywords on a publisher's web page in real-time and automatically matches them to relevant ads presented as In-Text sponsored keyword links.
- 7. BlogAds - Text and Image based ads
- Blogads.com is a network of influential bloggers who collaborate to promote and sell blog advertising.
Joining BlogAds is by invitation only.
BlogAds takes 30% of the advertising revenue. - 8. Simply Hired - Implement a job board
- Implement an "on demand" job board on your blog with a revenue share arrangement with SimplyHired.
- 9. EventBee - Implement Network Ticket Selling and Event Listing
- EventBee offers a "Network Ticket Selling" and Event Listing service (again, on demand) with a revenue share arrangement
Other Resources
Related resources elsewhere on the web (in no particular order)
- 1. Pedro Timoteo's Blogging Tips series
- From basics to monetization techniques, Pedro has a number of tips to share
- 2. Problogger: Helping bloggers make money
- If you are serious about making money via blogging or just interested in becoming a better blogger, Darren has a lot to share
- 3. Daily Blog Tips
- A ton of good information here on a wide range of topics. A treasure chest.
- 4. Copywriting tips for online marketing success from CopyBlogger
- Lots of tips about writing for online marketing success
- 5. "The Link Kitchen" on Squidoo
- Megan has created an impressive list of resources to build links. Check it out!
Get Noticed!
Every disciplined effort has multiple rewards (or BLOG awards and more)
- 1. SOB awards
- SOB = Successful and Outstanding Blogger
- 2. SLOB awards
- SLOB = Startlingly Loquacious and Outstanding Bloggers!
- 3. KBCafe: Blogger of the day
- Randy Charles Morin features an interview with an interesting blogger every now and then. Go pitch your blog if you think it will be of interest to a large audience!
- 4. Submit your best posts to Blog Carnivals
- Blog Carnivals are typically organized by bloggers when they want to collect great content from other bloggers about a particular topic and then post them in a sepate blog post.
- 5. Bloggies Awards (annual)
- Bloggies are like the Oscars of Blogging. If you think your blog is up there, go ahead and get nominated!
- 6. Bloggy Award (ongoing)
- You can display the "Bloggy Award Winner" banner if your blog makes it (get 10 out of 10 by their reviewers). They have a five-part judging criteria:
1. Visual Aesthetics
2. User Friendliness
3. Reading Enjoyment
4. Useful Info
5. Overall Experience - 7. BlogExplosion network
- There are more than 50,000 blogs in the network. More than 14,000 blogs have been reviewed.
- 8. The Weblog Review
- You can submit your site for free and wait or pay and get it reviewed quickly via "Pay Per Review" options.
Books on Blogging
(Partial list)
Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
Scoble and Isreal are masters of business blogging. Go read and learn from the experts!
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 01/08/2009) 
List Price: $24.95
Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content (VOICES)
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $29.39 (as of 01/08/2009)
List Price: $29.99
Blogging for Business: Everything You Need to Know and Why You Should Care
Avg. Customer Rating:
Amazon Price: $14.93 (as of 01/08/2009)
List Price: $21.95
Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging
Avg. Customer Rating:
Amazon Price: (as of 01/08/2009)
List Price: $19.95
Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them
Avg. Customer Rating:
Amazon Price: $16.49 (as of 01/08/2009)
List Price: $24.99
More books on Blogging
It's still a partial list...
Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: $17.05 (as of 01/08/2009)
List Price: $18.95
Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business
Avg. Customer Rating:
Amazon Price: $24.29 (as of 01/08/2009)
List Price: $26.99
The Rough Guide to Blogging 1 (Rough Guide Reference)
Avg. Customer Rating:
Amazon Price: $10.39 (as of 01/08/2009)
List Price: $12.99
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Lensmaster
lastminuteacademic wrote
I think I found your blog from Johnpt.. This is a fantastic post and is extremely comprehensive. Thank you.
Perhaps this is an obvious thought but a lot of blogs, whilst having a particular market, have or contain properties or aspects which we can all apply to a variety of things. That, and the fact that there are so many interesting blogs out there, makes the web a really exciting place right now!
My blog is called last-minute Academic. http://lastminuteacademic.blogspot.com
The ideas it advocates can apply in many areas. It is based on the idea that there are a lot of study guides out there, a lot being bought, but not that much improvement on the ground. This blog discusses tried and tested study tips with a dose of reality in relation to student life and how sometimes getting off the ground is the hardest bit.
I hope it will be useful to people, because as you said, one cannot really (unless one is amazingly hardworking or lucky) make a lot of income from blogs.
Posted November 11, 2008
Lensmaster
oyuncu wrote
Well, this very nice and wonderful. www.oyuncunet.com
Posted October 27, 2008
dragonsix wrote...
Blogshare is very interesting concept. Don't really have the time but it looks like fun. Thanks for sharing!
Posted October 20, 2008
Lensmaster
Richard Carey wrote
Five stars! Covers everything I've been preaching and trying to maintain on my one, organized in one place.
Posted September 14, 2008
