Blog From Scratch: Review and advice for a new blogger. [Archive]

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timscullin

Fri 27th Mar 2009, 23:32

timscullin

Fri 27th Mar 2009, 23:37

Also if you are more experienced could you let me know that sorta stuff I may end up wanting to do on the blog and how to set it up correctly now so I don't have troubles later.. like adwords/new layouts etc. or is it all pretty easy to change.. keeping in mind I am not a coding pro!

That would be awesome.

Fergal

Sat 28th Mar 2009, 10:05

Hi Tim, welcome to Business Advice Forum. Sorry to hear about your neck and I hope you are well on the road to recovery.

Your blog looks great and the articles are of very high quality. I particularly liked the tips on creating attention grabbing titles. Have you decided on the theme of your blog, looks like you will be concentrating on blogging and social networking?

Have a look at the "Blogging" links in our Useful Online Business Resources (http://www.businessadviceforum.com/showthread.php?t=377), there are a couple of very useful links there.

Please keep us updated as to how it is working out for you and let us know if you have any specific questions.

timscullin

Sun 29th Mar 2009, 04:37

Thanks. Yeah well the I was interested in internet marketing and so I was just oign to write posts about the things I was learning. So it is kinda general at the moment but focused on building a blog from scratch and learning how to market it from there all the way through to monetizing traffic. What do you think?

Or might it be a bit too general?

Cheers

ShawnLim

Sun 29th Mar 2009, 04:45

If you're just starting your blog, you're doing it right.
Remember to add in more sidebar functions.
And content will be the #1 reason people visit your blog.
So keep pumping quality content for the first 3 months.
After you've quality content, it will be time for you to go
into fully marketing your blog.

timscullin

Mon 30th Mar 2009, 05:56

What sort of sidebar functions should I add?

Fergal

Mon 30th Mar 2009, 08:57

Sounds good Tim, there have been some very successful blogs that focused on starting a blog and charting it's success. You might find some inspiration from http://www.problogger.net/ and http://www.copyblogger.com/.

Have you considered your readers, what type of people they are and how they will benefit from visiting your blog?

Nazreen

Mon 30th Mar 2009, 16:15

Welcome to the Business Advice Forum Tim. Sorry, I somehow missed your post.

Anyway, this is a really nice thread especially for those who would want to start blogging. I've also never blogged in my life and your site would be a good read for me too.

I think that putting an FAQ to blogging on your site might help improve it a bit.

ShawnLim

Mon 30th Mar 2009, 17:51

True enough, you should model those successful bloggers out there.
Those 2 given by Fergal are top in blogging world.

Here are another 2 more of my favorite:
http://johnchow.com/
http://entrepreneursjourney.com/

Hope this helps.

Fergal

Tue 31st Mar 2009, 07:03

Shawn http://entrepreneursjourney.com/ appears to go to a domain parking page. Is that the correct domain?

timscullin

Tue 31st Mar 2009, 10:30

Yeah JonhChow.com is great.
Were you meaning Yaro Staraks www.entrepreneurs-journey.com
And yeah his is awesome too..

Nazreen: What sort of things would you help you if they were in a FAQ?

Cheers

ShawnLim

Tue 31st Mar 2009, 14:37

Shawn http://entrepreneursjourney.com/ appears to go to a domain parking page. Is that the correct domain?

Woops, sorry, type wrongly.

Yeah JonhChow.com is great.
Were you meaning Yaro Staraks www.entrepreneurs-journey.com
And yeah his is awesome too..

Nazreen: What sort of things would you help you if they were in a FAQ?

Cheers

This is the correct one. Thanks for your help, timscullin.

If you are serious in achieving great success for your blog.
You don't have to purchase any ebooks or reports or any materials.
Download the free reports given in Yaro and John Chow's blog,
study their strategies and you'll do just fine.

The reports they offer are of great value and they will truly help
you to build a strong and profitable blog if you follow through. :)

Nazreen

Tue 31st Mar 2009, 15:40

Nazreen: What sort of things would you help you if they were in a FAQ?

I've always loved those books for dummies and idiot's guide books so the FAQ should be catered to the total blogging novice or idiot/dummy. I don't know but maybe put something there so that even an alien who just came to earth and never heard of blogging, can understand about blogging by reading the FAQ. Things like "what is blogging", "what is wordpress", "how to earn from blogging", etc. Anyway, this is just a suggestion. You guys are still the experts when it comes to blogging. :)

Fergal

Wed 1st Apr 2009, 07:22

Looks like you've received plenty of suggestions of useful reading material Tim and I see that you are still adding valuable content on your blog. I do like today's article with "5 Tips to Succeed".

Please feel free to add a link to your blog in your forum signature here on BAF.

Also, please keep us updated on your progress and how it is working out for you.

ShawnLim

Wed 1st Apr 2009, 14:45

Fergal's right. You already have all the resources you need to be a successful blogger.
What you need to do now is to take massive and consistent action.
This is what most people lack and if you take consistent action everyday, soon enough,
you'll be another superstar blogger in your niche.

Fergal

Thu 2nd Apr 2009, 08:58

...What you need to do now is to take massive and consistent action...

Very good point and I strongly agree that doing something every day, to move closer to your goal, can be very powerful. Do you think that the action needs to be "massive"? I find that even doing a small thing every day can be very powerful. Perhaps you could please expand on this a little more.

ShawnLim

Sat 4th Apr 2009, 03:54

Very good point and I strongly agree that doing something every day, to move closer to your goal, can be very powerful. Do you think that the action needs to be "massive"? I find that even doing a small thing every day can be very powerful. Perhaps you could please expand on this a little more.

Well, in my point of view, consistent action is a MUST.
As for massive action, if you have the time and the energy,
just take massive of action. This will build up the momentum to
keep you going and you will achieve your goals in a much faster
way.

And if you found that your action does not produces the results
you want, you must change your strategies and then do it again. :)

Nazreen

Sun 5th Apr 2009, 15:25

I do have to agree that consistency is a must in blogging. If you have excellent blogs but have inconsistency in either your delivery and even in your point of views, then your readers will not remain loyal to your blog.

But I also think that an action that is considered massive should also be a good thing. People also need a change in pace and some surprises. This is so that the readers will not be bored and will keep asking for more. Is this what you guys also think of when you say "massive action" ?

Fergal

Mon 6th Apr 2009, 07:02

Thanks for the explanation Sean, I think the concept is great.

I also like Jack Canfield's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Canfield) concept that he calls "The Rule of Fives", where he talks about doing five things every day, to move you towards your big goal. He also talks about getting feedback and changing your behaviour along the way.

scifi

Mon 6th Apr 2009, 08:37

Wow,a lots of useful tips here & many interesting links ..I don't know how I have missed this thread for so long....I liked the sites especially copyblogger & entrepreneurs-journey..some great points there...thanks a lot everyone here...!!:D

Kay

Tue 7th Apr 2009, 05:34

I broke my neck and its taking a while to recover so I am trying to tackle the net. I am learning as I go and would love to get feedback/tips from more experienced people. My blog is the culmination of my research and experience to date.

Check it out www.timscullin.com
(www.timscullin.com)

I am going to write a bit about setting up your blog ("Things that will save you from blog headaches" or something, not sure yet...). Does anyone have some other important topics I need to cover/know about at these early stages?

Also if you can give me any advice on improving the blog I would love it!

Cheers

Tim

Howdy, Tim! A belated welcome to BAf to you from me. :) I've not been around much lately and didn't catch up with your thread until now. Just to say I'll be back to add some thoughts in the next few days once I get a chance to look it over properly. You've had some great feedback already!

Just wanted you to know I'm not ignoring it. I had a very quick glance at it and it looks excellent! You're doing a great job. :)

First thing from first impressions I would suggest is you consider using the "more" button to break your posts.

As it stands the homepage stretches out a very long way and you'll have trouble filling your sidebar when it's got 10 full length posts on it, plus that will eat into your loading time. If you want to be considerate of those without fast connections and not lose them at the start because it takes too long to load your page, then I'd reduce that down. You can do it one of two ways: either use the more button or cut down how many blog posts display on a page. Or you can do both.

If you look at my Hill Holler blog in my sig you'll see what the more button does. It breaks your post after a few paragraphs or wherever you want to place it and adds a "read the rest of this entry" link.

You'll find it easily. Go to Write/Edit Post and you'll see it next to the tree image icon. This is what it looks like: http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/9557/moreicon.png.Hover your mouse over it and it'll say Insert More tag. Just click that at whatever point you want to break the post and you'll see it insert a line in your post's text box, showing where it is.

Just a suggestion anyway! Give it a whirl and see what you think. :D If you see anything at Hill Holler or The Cuckleburr Times you think you'd like to add to yours, just ask me. Features or articles. Both sites are based on WordPress.

Kay

Tue 7th Apr 2009, 05:38

This might help too. Don't know if you'd want to have feeds but here's a guide I did on how to add an RSS feed to Wordpress, complete with screenshots. Obviously you just put in whatever RSS feed URL you want. My guide was shameless self promotion of my own LOL.

http://www.hillholler.com/2008/07/how-to-add-an-rss-feed-to-wordpress/

timscullin

Tue 7th Apr 2009, 07:40

Wow thanks for all the great tips.

I totally agree that doing something everyday is essential. Good thing I have some time on my hands at the moment! ha

Also blog has been going well was promoting it for the first week and getting good growth in traffic, but has dropped off this week due to focusing on developing more content as opposed to marketing.

I have read Yaro's ebook and was great, learned a lot. Am going to get onto John Chows. Any other ebooks out there (hopefully Free) that would help?

And yes I will add the more tags, that is a great idea. I have wanted to do it but didnt know how! perfect. May even write a post about it ;) ha

Cheers

Fergal

Tue 7th Apr 2009, 16:11

Thanks for the update Tim, glad to hear that it is working out well for you. Your blog looks great, you use images and layout design extremely well, giving your blog a very attractive and user-friendly appearance.

Kay

Thu 9th Apr 2009, 15:14

Tim, I don't think Problogger's (http://www.problogger.net/) been mentioned to you yet. He's the top of the heap when it comes to advice on blogging IMHO and the site's crammed with loads on great information.

I see Darren's just started a 31 Day challenge to Build a Better Blog program at his site, with a new post every day on what to tackle next for the project. It's only been going 4 days and would be worth subscribing by email just for that alone dropping in your inbox. :) Feel free to email me anytime you get stuck with anything and I'll help best I can. I'll PM it to you so the bots don't pick it up.

Kay

Thu 9th Apr 2009, 15:32

Tim, I did a post a while back on playing detective. It's about how to look at successful forums and learn from them why they're popular and attract traffic. I think a lot of what's in that can be applied to blogs as well. You might want to take a look at that too.

http://businessadviceforum.com/showthread.php?t=1637

Kay

Sun 12th Apr 2009, 02:59

Tim, you'll also want to see this thread I think:

How To Blog: Ten Slide Presentation (http://www.businessadviceforum.com/showthread.php?p=9763)

Hope it's all going well! :)

timscullin

Sun 12th Apr 2009, 04:40

Thanks for the links. You guys do a great job!

Fergal

Sun 12th Apr 2009, 08:03

Tim, I notice that you are very active on Twitter. Has that been helpful with promoting your blog?

Cynthiab

Wed 22nd Apr 2009, 02:25

Back from a long absence as well but I love blogging and building blogs so this thread caught my eye. Problogger is an amazing source - just don't get overwhelmed.

As for traffic dropping off, that's typical. Those first weeks you're at the top of all the new blog directories and search engines, then 100 new blogs come in and push you out of the way. That's when the real work starts, building quality content that will sustain you over time.

man2008

Fri 24th Apr 2009, 16:58

Hi Tim!

Sorry to hear about your bad situation. But I do appreciate about your concern for bloggers. Your blog is very good and will catch the eyes of every blogger or whether experienced or a new one.

I pray GOD for fast recovery to get in touch with all of BAF members.
:)