Blogging

Getting Started Blogging: Inspiration Hits You!

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When the day arrives that you realise that you need your own blog, it can come like a bolt from the blue! “I need a blog!” you cry but how do you get started blogging? Well, this article will look at three free options that you can explore to get you started blogging.

1. Blogger is a great way to get started. Blogger 2.0 is just out of the
2. Wordpress.com
3. Yahoo! 360

There are many other blogging tools, as well…
myspace.com, typepad.com, xanga.com, blogspot.com, livejournal.com

I do have experience of the first three tools, esp. Blogger is perhaps the easiest to get started if you already have a Google Account. Just login to Blogger, and create your blog in 3 simple steps. There is even a way to create a blog NOT on Blogger, but on your own space. I’m going to try this myself, just to see how it works.
I didn’t much care for Yahoo! 360 yet. It’s too much social network style website with blogging features added, so it has privacy features, ‘friends’ tabs, interacts with Messenger and Groups, etc.. So, for blogging purposes, it’s way overkill. However, it might make a good website to draw traffic to your real blog, because of its social nature.
My favorite, is Wordpress.com. Again, I have a demo site there that can highlight some of the features, you would want to try. You can find it here, though there’s not much there. Wordpress is probably the most advanced of the free blogs because it is a highly tweaked version of Wordpress 2.1, with a lot of additional features aimed at blog builders.

I think it probably has the most potential for the beginner, and its easy interface may make this the most attractive of the three options outlined here.

Blogging makes good dosh, but dosh doesn’t make good blogs!

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As I outlined here about Payperpost, it is possible to make quite a bit of money doing Payperpost. But as the title suggests, Payperpost needs to be carefully balanced with excellent content, to make the blog attractive to readers. I have made about $492 so far because I have been paid to blog. It has a lot of benefits for bloggers and their readers, too.

Naturally, I have accumulated the money. I didn’t want to spend it on frivolous things. I originally published a journal in paper that cost me about $750 to print. I have been less than successful in selling the printed copies, either in bookshops, or online. In addition, my approaches to agents/distributors hasn’t produced much in the way of anything other mild interest. So I was out about $750.

In addition, the journal faced a funding crisis because its primary sponsor faced a cash shortfall of its own, meaning no further money was available to print issue #2. So suddenly I needed to find a way to make money to cover the costs of the first issue, plus provide a little more cash to cover out of pocket expenses for the second issue.

I’ve been able to raise most of the money from a variety of sources, too. So I’m well covered now, but then my own job faced a slowdown in salary that has affected both my wife and family. I’m now finding that that income produced online is now supplementing my salary.

I must say, I’m enjoying the freedom that having a blog produces, and I’m enjoying the fruits of working for Payperpost. I do realize, though, that while earning money encourages me to blog far more than I used to, I wouldn’t blog if it were ONLY for the money.

Writing is something very personal for me, and this blog, and my other blogs are expressions of my own personal interests. As such, I hope that it is my writing, my ideas and my enthusiasm that readers come back for, again and again.

Wordpress Reports: Useful Plugin #5

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One great plugin that I access several times a day is the Wordpress Reports plugin. The plugin notes “Added support for multiple Google Analytics accounts” as part of the release for the current version which is 0.6. I also don’t know if it supports WP 2.1 that was just released. Anyway.

WP reports provides a way to integrate the results from both Analytics and Feedburner into a simple one page report that can keep you uptodate on the last seven days traffic. There is a pretty good jpg at his website that provides an overview of the top of the Reports page.

In summary though, the stats covered include:-

Daily Visits, Daily Pageviews, Avg Pageviews per Visit,
Daily Circulation, Inbound Sources, Outbound Links,
Popular Content, and New & Returning.

It’s a pretty handy tool, however for serious statistics, perhaps you need to look elsewhere. Feedburner provides more stats than you can see in the report presented here, and Google Analytics really does provide a wealth of stats, most of which are absent from the reports page. However, the tool provides a comprehensive overview for those who are obsessed about their stats and need to check them frequently! You can login to your blog and get the stats quickly and conveniently without having to login to either Analytics or Feedburner.

Overall, I installed the plugin. I like it and I’m planning to keep using it!