Today, 7th January, and it is notyet even midnight, the Blog Basics site has, according to the plugin, Jetpack’s Stats has hit the figure of over

300

visitors today. I cannot work out where the big jump from a normal 120 or 130 visitors to this high number have come from.

My previous highest has been 262.  This jump is a surprise as although I’m in the process of revamping Blog Basics this work has been mostly behind the scenes.

I’m working on:

• writing a number of linked tutorials, which I plan to upload in the next few days
• I am working with a designer to redesign the site.  There’s a technical problem with the new theme which is holding things back a little
• I am also working with a friend to restructure the way that the posts are linked.

 

Arghh blogging decisions

Contents Introduction How are you going to blog? The two free methods of blogging The four premium methods of blogging What are you going to write about? What are your long term intentions with the blog? Over to you

 

Introduction

A blog is a way for you to publish your thoughts and ideas on the internet.  Once on the web your thoughts can be read by potentially billions of people.  People will find their way to your blog through search engines, links and recommendations on other websites, reviews and even from social media, such as Twitter and Facebook.

Before you start blogging you have to consider the following:

• How are you going to blog?
• What are you going to write about?
• What are your long term intentions with the blog?

How are you going to blog?

There are two free methods of developing a blog and four alternative premium methods of blogging. The majority of blogs being set up today use one of the free methods.

The two free methods of blogging

• Free blogging sites: such as the WordPress.com and Blogger websites.  Good if you want to try out blogging with a longer term intention of upgrading.
• Own your own domain and use free blogging software: You do need to organise hosting and then use their free blogging software. This is the option I recommend to most bloggers. (Why you should use a cPanel hosting company)

The four premium methods of blogging

• Using a premium blogging package: such as Moveable Type.  Usually the blog owner has to buy the domain and pay for hosting.
• Using an integrated support service: such as Sitesell, which manages the technical side of blogging and provides a lot of support and training for someone wanting to run an income generating blog or website.
• Use a freelancer to develop the blog: and even to write the posts.  This option is mostly used to develop business blogs and some campaigning blogs.
• Using a high level content management system: which also has blogging facilities. The two most common, Drupal and Joomla, are free, open source packages, but will require a lot more technical work than standard blogging software. Both packages have a good reputation but I would advise not using them unless you have a good reason, such as you need additional business facilities and you have the skills to learn the package, or are working with a developer, who has the relevant expereince.

What are you going to write about?

For those starting a blog there are a number of different strategies the most common are:

• low key blog: as a personal blog a blog aimed at a small group – be they family, friends, colleagues at work, members of the same church congregation or a blog aimed at a local sports team.
• focus blog: for someone who is very clear on what they want to write, but wants to reach a wider audience – such as aimed at hobbyists, fans of a specific performer, followers of a particular game or political blogs.
• business blog: for someone who wants a blog to promote a business, product or service.
• contact blog: more a back-up to a business card with an address, what you do and maybe the occasional post.
• expert blog: for freelancers, consultants, coaches, artists and  authors, where the blog fulfils two objects: the first to build the authority of the writer and the second to promote their service, books or other products.
• income blog: someone who wants to use a blog to earn an income either part-time or as a full-time professional blogger.
• portfolio blog: where a professional, such as a writer, journalist, photographer, thinker or technical person who wants to use the blog as a portfolio.
• entertainment blog: aimed at making some money through advertising by providing humour, gossip, celeb information and reviews.

What are your long term intentions with the blog?

It is useful to be aware of your long time goals with your blog.   It affects your strategy and decisions made today can cause problems in six months or a couple of years down the line.  As an example if you built up a successful, profitable, business blog on a free service, such as Blogger, you will not be able to sell it for anything like the value you would get for a blog, with its own domain.

Decisions you ought to think about include:

• What is your target audience?  Do you want your audience to be passive readers?  or do you want them to do specific actions? vote a particular way? fund a charity project? attend a particular event?
• What is the expectations of your audience?  What style of writing will they want?  Will they require daily posts or will they be happy with one longer post per week?
• How much time or resources are you prepared to put into the blog?
• Where will the blog be in 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, five years time?
• Are you planning to use the blog to promote yourself? a business? a product?
• Are you planning to make money from the blog?  If so how? Are you going to have advertisements? affiliate links? sell services? sell products?
• What if you become ill?  Will the blog fade? or will others take over the blog?
• Are you planning to sell the blog?

Over to you

What do you think?

	Contents Introduction Using Live Writer The interface Links with your blog Posting your posts And guys and gals it’s free Conclusion Useful Links

Introduction

All bloggers should use the free utility Windows Live Writer.  It’s an excellent tool for writing blogs offline.  It’s built in word counter and spelling checker make it a very useful.  I actually prefer to use it then writing directly to my WordPress sites direct.

Using Live Writer

So I’m sitting in the lounge.  I’ve just had a nice meal.  The telly’s on and my wife’s offered of make a cup of tea. There’s some programme on where some American serial killer is killing.  But we all know that the CSI  NCIS, the Law and Order team are going to solve the case somewhere between the last set of ads and the end of the programme.

So out comes the notebook. Switch it on and click on Live Writer.

I can then quickly belt out an easy post on a subject that doesn’t require a lot of research.

I’ve got wifi, but I don’t need to use it.  I just write, save to disk.  I can then upload later when I’m connected.

 

The interface

The interface is like a simplified Microsoft Word.  There’s a whole host of controls on the top of the screen and a nice area below where you can enter your text.  You can also add images and video. However, be warned the package quickly gets complicated when you try and do anything clever with images.

From a simpler to use set of controls than WordPress you can add hyperlinks, change the styling, add bold, italics and underline, change text colour, alter text alignment and switch on or off lists.

Links with your blog

The publishing section of the interface allows you to build links with your blog or blogs.  The package allows you to link up with a wide range of blogging platforms including WordPress, Sharepoint, Blogger and Typepad.

When setting up a blogging site you have the option of letting the system download a copy of the theme.  With a simple theme Live Writer will display an approximation of your theme’s layout and with a more sophisticated theme you’ll get a display of the styles, such as headings and customisation of text.

Posting your posts

The utility allows the user to post direct to the blog or post to draft.

There is a simple menu bar that uses a drop list to set up a category, tags and a click down calendar to set the date of publishing.

And guys and gals it’s free

OK you’ve got to have either Windows 7 or the deadbeat system Vista.  But if you have then the package is free.

For a download go to the Live Writer site.  Click and download.

You’ll find that the download will also try and load the entire Microsoft Essentials package, which includes a photo gallery, a video editor, Live Mail, (which allows you to link all your mail programs), and parental control system and Mesh, which allows you to synchronise all your computers.

Conclusion

If you’ve got Windows 7 and blog then you should be downloading and using this very important blogging tool.  It will improve your productivity greatly, particularly if it is used in conjunction with focus booster, which helps you focus on the job in hand.

My main complaint is that Live Writer adds a lot of extra code and then compresses it when posting.  It means that it is difficult to sort out a technical problem in the very dense code.

A second minor problem is that it does take some time to get used to the image management system.  Initially this annoyed me, but after a bit of work I’m finding it a very useful function.

 

Useful Links

Live Write Basics:  A lot of useful tips on Live Writer

Introduction

The WordPress Jetpack is a set of very useful utilities to enhance any WordPress installation. These include:

• WordPress.com Stats, a very useful statistics package built into your WordPress Dashboard
• ShareDaddy, which adds a share button to the bottom of posts, which allows visitors to print the post or send the post details to a number of social media sites
• After the Deadline, which dramatically improves the WordPress spell checker and adds a grammar checker
• Shortcode embeds, which sets up and configures video and media sources, such as YouTube, when you just add the video’s single line short code.

To configure Jetpack

Click on the Jetpack button   found at the top of  the left hand menu, just under the Dashboard section.

Click on the     Jetpack link

The main Jetpack configuration screen is displayed

You can then configure the various sections:

The WordPress Stats You can control which roles can have access to the statistics and you can select to display a bar chart showing the number of visitors.

ShareDaddy allows you to select which services you want to use including email, print and a selection of social media.

You can also change the look of the Share button and whether the share options are displayed on the current window or when clicked will it be displayed in a new window.

You can also add new social media options.

After the Deadline configuration takes you to the user profile where the plugin adds quite a few grammar actions, which the user can use when they press the proofread button on the Add Post or Add Page writing option.

Introduction

There are whole armies of freelancers who are willing to do all, or some of the work, required to set up, design, develop, promote and manage your blog.  There are also lots of writers willing to write content for you.

As this is an international market  you can find people willing to work from $5 per hour upwards.  However, be a little bit cautious as the very low rates are likely to be at a low standard.

Finding freelancers

The internet is a great place for finding freelancers. You can just type a search command in Google, such as blog writer or WordPress theme developer and you will quickly find hundreds or thousands of people willing to work for you.

However, I advise using one of the freelancing sites, such as Elance or Guru, where you can post a job, businesses and individuals can bid for the job.  You agree a price, select the one you want to use and away they go and in most cases you will find the work completed in a short time.

 

The advantage of this system is that the site acts as an escrow.  That is before the job starts you deposit some money with the site.  This is only released when you sign off the job.  If the freelancer doesn’t deliver you get your money back.  This protects both you and the freelancer.  Many high quality professional freelancers use this system as it saves them hassling their clients for money.

For graphics, such as a logo for your site, I recommend the really excellent 99designs website.  They have a pool of quality designers.

Managing a freelancer

The secret of managing a freelancer is by sitting down and thinking through what you actually want and then stating your requirements in writing.

Through the freelance sites you can then clarify your requirements through email with prospective freelancers.

Bloggers can use freelancers to:

Install WordPress and a theme

This should be quite straightforward and relatively cheap.  It should take about an hour to do a basic installation and to load and install a particular theme.

It will obvious take more time, and therefore be more expensive, to install extra plugins and widgets, or provide training and advice.

Site maintenace

Quite a lot of business website employ a freelancer to maintain their website:  this could include making backups, updating the software, making modifications to the theme, changing widgets and plugins and providing support.

These contracts can be a set number of hours per month or an hourly fee as and when required.  As you could employ someone from, say India or the Philippines, you could employ someone quite cheaply to do this work.

Theme development and customisation

There are a host of WordPress and other content management systems theme developers.  You can get someone to either modify an existing theme or develop a theme from scratch.

The lowest price I’ve heard for a WordPress theme is $400 – the highest £14,000.  For other systems I have heard of considerably higher fees.

My suggestion is that when specifying a theme is to search the net for websites you like, or look through the free and premium themes available and decide which features you like.

You can then specify the layout that is close to what you want.  You can then specify the features and colour scheme that you may require.

Customisation of a theme: Here you just need to specify in detail the modifications that you need to make.

As an example I’ve used the StudioPress Freelance theme, (which has a good framework for a blog), with a different heading, and I have taken some of the features, such as the sidebar and colour scheme of the StudioPress Lexicon theme.

Promotion

Promotion of the blog ranges from writing comments on sites in the blog’s niche, using social media, writing guest posts on related blogs to re-writing posts to include important key-words.

The routine work can be done very cheaply.  However some of the more intensive, search engine optimisation work is highly paid.

Content Writing

There is a growing profession of content writing, where freelance writers write some or all of the blog’s content.  Rates range from around $5 to around $40 a post for a 400 word post.  Other contracts include weekly or monthly numbers of posts, usually with some discount on the cost per post rate.

The value of the writing goes up if the freelancer uploads the post, supplies images or has some expertise in search engine optimisation.

A word of caution: I have had more problems with writers than any other group of freelancers.  My advice is to offer a number of small writing contracts on a freelance site and see the quality and reliability of the different writers.

For some blogs a variety of writing styles may also be beneficial as the subject can be approached from different angles.

Conclusion

For some blogs, particularly business blogs, it might be the best solution to employ freelancers to sort out the technical and design, promotion and content writing.

I recommend using a freelance site, such as Elance or Guru, to find a wide range of professionals and to give yourself some protection.

You need to specify very clearly what you want or you could have communication problems with your selected freelancer.

Over the you

Have you used freelancers?

 

 

Introduction

A question that is often asked on blogging advice sites – when should a person leave a full time job and start a full time career as a blogger. This is a difficult question as there is a different answer for different people.

I used to help support a small business support unit and in addition I’ve helped numerous small businesses over the years.

Are you ready to be a full time blogger?

This consideration is more important then whether or not you are making enough money from your blog.  Are you able to work alone? at home by yourself?

Do you have the right support network and enough human contact. I’ve bought my daughter a notebook computer and a carry case so that she could get away from home and work in a local coffee bar, art centre and library on her projects.

I force myself to work in the mornings and get some posts out of the way and then take a long break outside the house for a couple of hours.  Lucky I can go for a walk in the nearby park, Bushy Park, to clear my head and we have a thriving town centre, so I can go for a tea or a drink and a talk.

Make sure you’ve got this support structure in place before you make the leap to being a full timer.  Make sure you have online support as well.

Your freelance business

The standard advice for anyone starting a freelance career is to have more than one source of income, particularly in the economic climate. I know quite a few people who are losing contracts at the moment and some of them are desperate. Experienced business journalists, who used to earn £600 minimum an article are now accepting £100 contracts.

It is the same in the online world. If you offend Google in some way or they change the way their search engine formula works then you need alternatives.

This is why relying only on Adsense is dangerous – a friend running a very successful website suddenly lost $4,000 a month, 80% of his income, when Google blocked ads on his sites.  His site was eventually restored, but for a couple of months he was in real trouble as the income supported his mortgage, his child and his very pregnant wife.

In a way this situation was good for him as he now has a wider range of ads and affiliates and is actually making a lot more money.  But he is still dependant mostly on the one site for his income.

Can you survive on the stress?

Some people thrive on the fear factor, which makes them work harder. Unfortunately more do not – they panic – and their work gets worse – and their confidence goes – often just before they make the big breakthrough. I’ve seen so many businesses that should be viable that have closed down to early.

So can you cope with working on your own and things go wrong?  I personally couldn’t go the whole hog.  I have a backup income of some training and some investment income.  My wife also works so the mortgage payment can be covered if my earning are slow.

So when to take the decisive step?

A lot depends on your circumstances.  If you are young and if you’re completely broke – you can go back to mum and dad – then there is little risk.

If you have a mortgage, children, lots of bills then it become risky to jump completely into becoming a full time blogger.  Try and phase in the blogging career slowly with the backup of some part time work.

What is bad is that many without a job will be desperately trying to set up a blog or online business to survive.  A few will succeed, but most will not. Some will believe the over-hyped – ‘be rich overnight’ schemes and will end up being disappointed. If they take the advice of the more rational sites, such as Problogger and Daily Blog Tips they will realise that developing a income generating blog will take time.

On a positive side the person learning the skills of setting up a blog, dealing with affiliate schemes etc  will be learning a wide range of technical and business skills, which could be useful in looking for a job.  .

Consider the earnings

The article on Daily Blog Tips reckons that you should consider going full time when your level of earning is around 50% of your normal income.  I would say that’s OK if you can survive on those earnings and that the level of earnings is reasonably safe – which means a number of sources.

I would still advise caution.  Until you are confident in your promotional skills and business skills you are taking a risk.

Time factor

Realistically I reckon it takes about a year to get a blog to a position where it can make a reasonable income and I reckon three years to make it a safe professional blog, where you are sure that you will have an income.

Still I could be wrong.  Many claim otherwise.

Over to You

So have you taken the plunge?  Are you thinking of taking the plunge?

Do you have any other advice?

Introduction

This Blog Basics website has now been merged with the website Beginning to Blog. I have now transferred over all the posts from that site onto this one.

I will now focus on developing this website over the next few weeks. My first priority being to develop the range of basic tutorials for blogging beginners.

Other Developments

Because of the merger I have decided to add a number of features these will include:

Editorial

I will be writing a regular editorial articles focusing on new developments in the blogging world as well as posts on to try and boost bloggers self confidence and motivation.

Website Reviews

This is something I keep intending to do which is to do a review once a week of a significant website in the blogging, online, marketing and self development world. At present there is a single review of of the website – Daily Blog Tips.

Blogging Tools

I also intend to add a post on a useful tool or technology that is on benefit to bloggers, computer and internet users. I have three reviews already which include a great productivity tool, focus booster, and a useful tool for writing blogs without being online, Live Writer.

Development Notes

I am quite interested in seeing how other websites develop. I therefore intend to write a notes showing how the website develops and what changes I have made. This will include giving statistics.

This may be of interest, or just of interest to myself.

Over to you

I’d be interesting in any comments you want to make on how I can improve this website, anything I should add, anything I’m doing wrong.