Blogging: Where to Start

I can't tell you what is the definitive way to go about this, but I can tell you what works for me.

One thing I need to point out is, what I've learned is from others on the net plus what I've stumbled on by accident. So here we go.

1> Set your goals. How many blog issues are you prepared to commit to, in other words how often will you be putting your new gems update online. Apart from a death in the family (or your own), how strong is your commitment. The people who commit to reading these gems of yours are wanting to see them regularly. It doesn't matter if Regular means once a day or once a quarter. If you say it, DO IT - EVERY TIME. Show your 'loyals' that you are loyal to them as well. So in the beginning be careful that you don't promise what could turn into an unacceptably heavy commitment.

2> This leads to the next point. The reason you are blogging. Unless you are a professional, in other words this is your business, or you work for a paper or something similar, You need to be able to HONESTLY say at the end of your day "That was Great, I thoroughly enjoyed working on that Blog for the last ____ Hours and now I can't wait till I can start on the next one. There are two things that will see you through. One I have been mentioning which is commitment the second is discipline. It can take an awful lot out of you meeting those deadlines day after day, week after week. Coming up with the goods Every Time, on time with nothing allowed to distract you.

3> "I'm certain by the time Christmas comes I'll have the Blog showing a profit....."
Sounds good.... Do you know there are people who have been blogging for many months who haven't had their first comment about the blog, let along a follower.
But do not fret we are going to change that. Stay tuned....

4> Obviously I don't know what you are wanting to have as your topic. But I do know it needs to be your passion. Something you think about regularly nay almost constantly. Something that you feel that you eat, sleep and breath. Are you getting the picture yet. You need to have as your main topic something you really, really enjoy. Also, you have to be willing to spend hours studying and writing in your own words in an understandable style the information you want to convey.

5> Based on what I have been observing (and in case you are wondering, I constructed my first computer in 1984 and have been an avid computer freak ever since) you can expect to possibly work on your Blog for up to three or four years before you will have something that you feel is a successful BLOG. So PATIENCE is the first key word followed by PERSEVERANCE and finally make every page a PEARL.

So earlier I wrote "stay tuned"... OK before I started my blog I was using Google Alerts to improve my knowledge on several subjects. When I started blogging I wanted people to start looking at my blog, funny about that. So I started going to the blogs that broadly covered the area that my blog addressed and writing good comments about their blogs if I felt I could do this honestly. I then found they were coming to my blog and doing the same thing so then I started to be a follower of their blog as well as a commenter and guess what, they were doing the same thing for me and then.....

Easy? No it takes a lot of time and a lot of work.

WORTH IT? You bet it is.