If you decide to start blogging you won’t find an introduction agency to help show you the ropes, you have a learning curve and the only way to get start learning is to dive right in and start doing.
The first thing you need is to decide right off the bat what type of blogger you want to be by answering the following questions?
What do I want to blog about?
Do I want to eventually try to make money from my blog, or just do it for fun?
What should I name my blog?
How much time do I have to devote to blogging per week?
Depending on how you answer these questions will determine which path to take, if you just want to blog for fun and have no interest in monetizing your blog, then you can experiment and start with blogspot or wordpress.com and set yourself up with a free blog. You can even start a blog on Today, or one of the other blogging sites that let you earn some money each month for blogging.
If you have 10 – 20 hours per week to devote to blogging and you decide you want to be a serious “true” blogger, then you will need to invest some money into a self hosted wordpress domain. You can find some hosting providers with plans as little as $3.99 per month, and you can always upgrade later after you make some money and can afford a better hosting service if you need to.
When blogging the first thing you want to do is launch your blog with 10-20 really strong articles, write and write about what you love to write about. People will feed off your passion and enjoy your writing more, you can always tell when somebody writes passionately and it draws in the reader more. Write blog posts that engages your readers by asking them questions periodically and invite comments.
Don’t do heavy promotion of your blog until you have at least 10 posts on your site, and only post at a rate of about 3-5 per day for the first week if you can. Don’t slow down to 1 post per day until you have at least thirty posts on your site. Many bloggers won’t agree with me here, but if you don’t have enough content on your site and you do too much promotion, a reader will hit your site and have nothing else to visit and then leave. You want to make sure you have content on your site they can go to besides your first few posts, you want to give the appearance of a flourishing site.
One other thing, never post your blog stats in badges when you are just starting out. You should after you have an established blog, but you only make your blog look like it is struggling if you have a chicklet or counter for 0-5 feed subscribers, and Alexa over 900,000 or a PageRank of 0. These are valuable counters and badges, but wait until you at least have some ranking and something to show before you display them. This is especially true if you monetize your site, if you reveal your sites vulnerable area’s you may not be able to entice advertisers to purchase an ad space or a link on your blog.
Remember your blog vitals are a valuable selling point, and you should use them carefully. In the meantime network with other bloggers, and build yourself a social network empire. Make sure you create an account on every social network you can find and make sure you use the same account name so people can find and cross reference you everywhere.
Dive right in and start blogging but remember, there aren’t any introduction agencies to help you start out, so you have to do plenty of reading and make friends in both the blogging community and on Social Media sites and these are among my favorites for meeting bloggers and networking with people: Twitter, BlogEngage, BlogCatalog, SocialSpark, Facebook and StumbleUpon.
Fellow bloggers, share your views do you agree or disagree with my advice?
-Dragon Blogger
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Tags: beginner guide to blogging, blogging advice, blogging for beginners, blogging how to, blogging tips, dive into blogging, help for blog newbies, help for new bloggers, helping new bloggers, how to start a blog, how to start blogging, introduction agencies, introduction to blogging, new blog help, new blogger help, new bloggers, starting a blog, Why start a blog
January 16th, 2010 at 10:19 am
I agree with your advice, particularly if you want to make money blogging. I occasionally (2-3) times a year accept a paid post, but I really have no interest in making any money blogging. I think people like me are okay on any platform (including Blogger). In fact, I’m still kind of sorry I gave in to the whole WordPress self-hosting thing. I don’t think it’s made a difference in how I blog or who reads what I write, but trying to get my posts to look as I like them in WordPress is way more difficult for some reason.
read Jessica The Rock Chick´s article about Dumb It Down
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January 16th, 2010 at 10:22 am
True, but you do have far more options with themes, plug-ins and customizations on a WordPress self hosted blog. My very first blog was on blogger, I did it as a practice for a month, then I tore it down and did my 3 blogs on WordPress 2 months later.
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January 16th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Wow. I don’t think I would have started if I had to have 30 posts and the plan to add 3-5 per day. It may be good advice but most people, I feel won’t take the plunge on your terms.
read Ralph´s article about Leaders are not enablers
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January 16th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
My recommendation for 20 posts and 3-5 per day was only if you intended to try to make money from your blog as soon as possible, not for casual bloggers looking to blog for fun.
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January 17th, 2010 at 3:08 am
I think I will reread this post a couple of times. I’m really on the fence about starting a blog, mainly because I don’t feel I’m passionate enough about one or two particular things to make up a “main” themed blog. On the other hand, there are plenty of times when I’m at work, or just in general when I’ll think of something I want to share with more than just my twitter friends, and with more than 140 characters to do so. Mainly, it involves when I hear something political or in the entertainment field and I want to post something about my thoughts on it. However, I really don’t want to start a political blog OR an entertainment type blog. So if anyone has any suggestions, I am open to ANY, as I have tried to start a blog once or twice, was lost, and didn’t even post anything. I’ve been practicing making websites, and learning about that, and now I’m interested in blogging. Hopefully I’ll have a nice site like this one day!
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January 17th, 2010 at 10:26 am
You don’t have to start a blog to share your thoughts, you can be a freelance writer for AssociatedContent, Helium (and earn from it) or even just share whats on your mind on Twitter or Facebook. People who don’t have the time and energy to invest in a blog, but still want to write really could benefit from AssociatedContent.
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January 18th, 2010 at 4:04 am
Hi Dragon Blogger,
This is very helpful! I’m just starting my personal blog.Even though I’m busy with my studies and all, I’ll still make an effort to publish posts more than one. I realized many mistakes I’ve made, according to this post. Surely I will correct them in the future. Thanks for posting this!
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January 18th, 2010 at 8:24 am
I had read few articles of this sort where suggestions were shared for new bloggers like me. what I liked about your post is that you have mentioned both DOs and DONTs.
Great suggestions and really worth following as closely as possible.
read Suresh Khanal@blogging and bloggers´s article about How a New Blogger Should Start? David Risley’s Suggestions!
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January 20th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
There are some really cool tips in how to approach your new blog and I do agree a blog having 1-2 posts won’t attract any reader much…if the person has atleast 10 posts then the reader might feel that he maybe new but he seems quite interested in regularly contributing to his blog.
And yeah friends in the blogging world can help you a lot but once you’re helped and have found some success in the blogging world, don’t become mean. You can help them too as they have helped you.
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February 11th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
[...] To read more of the posts I find valuable and/or entertaining check out all my favorites on . New Bloggers: Just Dive Right Into Blogging from Dragon Blogger by dragonblogger – This guy has some great advice and he makes money too [...]
June 28th, 2010 at 3:46 am
You have said about hosting plans of $3.99/month. Can you tell the site from where i can get this? I am new to this area and don’t know a lot about it. SO please help me.
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June 28th, 2010 at 6:57 am
Check this site for Hosting Provider deals less than $4 per month: http://b2evolution.net/web-hosting/budget-web-hosting-low-cost-lamp.php
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