Comments on: Beginning Pro Blogging – Advice for getting started

By: Markus Merz

Markus Merz — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 16:13:16 +0000

Write ideas down. Have your paper notebook in reach all the time. Take a walk in the neighborhood and try to figure out companies for which it could be interesting to have a (blog style?) website. Talk to the owners and present your concept(s).

Don’t hesitate to take pictures of products you like or dislike and write a review. This is an absolutely wonderful and easy way to practice writing.

If you are just starting to create content find a blog community which allows to share subjects. I can really recommend the StumbleUpon community. Great to practice research, forum, self promotion, blogging and writing. They offer a very comfortable FF extension and you have everything you need to get started incl. your own blog. The content you create is absolutely not lost as you can always recycle it on a ‘real’ blog.

Blogger and wordpress.com are great for getting some feeling for the possibilities, the technical limits and how to use them. As you want to build up traffic all free blogging platforms are a nice opportunity to test how different strategies work out. Last not least you can use free blogs to fetch traffic and try to redirect traffic to your main site.

By: Paula B

Paula B — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:08:23 +0000

The key to making a living at any kind of writing is to turn yourself into a brand, Chris. That means you don’t do just one thing. You blog, you write articles and books, you speak at events, you do interviews, you consult, etc. And you’re right–it takes years for most people to develop a name for themselves and a following. If you go in realizing that, you’ll be a lot happier than if you expect instant riches.

BTW, on the subject of what to write about, how about doing interviews? They take a while, but then you get fresh input from others rather than doing all the work yourself.

By: Chris Garrett

Chris Garrett — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 01:10:26 +0000

A couple of people asked why I suggest using wordpress.com when elsewhere we tell people to get their own domain. I need to clarify that I suggest wordpress.com for a *personal* site, a free host for your anything-including-cat-posts diary, not your professional blog. Once you find blogging is for you, then buy a domain.

By: Jim Turner

Jim Turner — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:08:18 +0000

Dude….live a little….lose the underwear.

By: shotoshi

shotoshi — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 13:02:22 +0000

Ahmed – that ethos you describe, e.g. corporate slave for 50 years is one shared by a first world countries such as (Great) Britain, (United) Kingdom and Japan.

Back in the 70′s, when I was a youngster I was good a football (soccer). I was naturally athletic, good at all sports except golf. I loved art and music too. My parents never really encouraged my natural talent because football was a working class game, not seen as career. They were not sufficiently middle class enough to encourage me in my other talents: music and art. Then punk rock happened (1977). I changed overnight, I was 15. I forgot about football. I pursued music and art with a passion. Ending up with my own record label.

Now, here we are in 2006 and all of the above fields: music, art and football are sophisticated industries. There’s career opportunities in all fields, the likes of which has never been seen before. Talent is no longer a prerequisite. You just need to work out the formulas (wish I’d paid more attention to math when I was at school)

I no longer have any high faulting ideas of job descriptions, never did. I sell ad space, pure and simple.

By: Ahmed Bilal

Ahmed Bilal — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 12:30:01 +0000

Considering that I live in a third world country where people are still stuck in the whole “study hard-get a job-be a corporate slave for 50 yeas” loop, even saying that I’m a writer gets me very strange looks and stranger questions.

My favourite:

“So like, you cant do that for the rest of your life, can you? What about getting a real job?”

So I tell them I’m a business consultant (which makes sense, because some of the work that I do *is* consulting), and they go away impressed though totally clueless.

shotoshi – advertising – yea, gotta try that line sometime

By: shotoshi

shotoshi — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:29:50 +0000

Chris, you tell them you’re a writer, eh? Me, I sell ad space!

By: asajay

asajay — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:17:07 +0000

For me, it’s not a matter of the idea well being dry, but a matter of not having the time to blog. With an 8-5 job, school part time (work on bachelors degree) and generally wishing to get some sleep on occasion, I find it hard to take the time to write. Well, to be honest, part of that writing I wish to be from personal experiences related to the subject, but if I can’t get to the subject and work on it,then I can’t very well write about it.

I think your insight is spot on though. I currently fall into the “great start but fizzled” category. I took the track of trying to at least blog every day starting January 1. I have failed miserably. I’ve not even taken a look at Adsense or other money schemes yet. I figure I have to get started with the actual “content” before I can think about money.

. . . then there’s that pesky “job” thing I’m working right now too.

Asa Jay