It was obvious that I couldn’t keep up such a schedule with the amount of other work I have on at the moment, so I took a step back and started updating that particular blog every few days. To my surprise, my RSS count actually went up and has stayed up by about 20 readers, hovering a bit below the 200 mark. Search-engine traffic stayed the same, of course.

You don’t need to become a slave to your blog to make it work. It’s a different game if you have thousands of RSS subscribers because if you are in that position, your blog is something people rely on. For most of us, however, we don’t need to push ourselves that far. Granted, we may never reach pro-blogger status, but you have to seriously question what your time is best spent doing.

The only reason to update a blog every day is for your RSS subscribers, but I have already proved to myself – and now to others – that RSS subscribers don’t always need daily content. If you can write something that incites discussion and is of value, people will keep coming back to it for two or three days before they need something new.

How many of us have tried to get our blogs off the ground by writing religiously, wasting valuable time when we could have been doing other things?

Every blogger’s focus should be on providing quality content. If you can do that daily, without sacrificing other projects, then you probably don’t have much else to do, but very few of us find ourselves in that situation.

Have you ever felt like your blog was taking over your life?

Bloggers are killing their blogs in front of their readers

When you write a post that says “I didn’t make any money last month”, you may as well throw the towel in and scream “I FAILED” at the top of your voice. Small-time bloggers have their place, but the negative impression you give a blog when you draw attention to your lack of success will turn away new readers.

The Feedburner button that tells you how many RSS readers a blogger has is a great tool… if a blogger has a decent number of readers. I went to a blog today and was curious about the content, but as soon as I saw a button in a prominent spot telling me there were only six RSS readers I left the blog. If nobody else is reading it, why should I?

Walk before you can run

You won’t be able to fool people into believing that you a six-figure blogger, but by being smart about what information you share with your readers you will instill confidence in your abilities, which will lead to more return visitors, more RSS subscribers and more money. It’s a gradual process that needs all the help it can get, so don’t blow your chance before you’re even halfway up the hill.

Free hosting sounds like a great idea to me. I’m always on the lookout for good, cheap web hosting services, and I’ve found one that won’t cost you a penny. So what’s the catch? Really, there isn’t one. You get 100MB of space and 1,000MB of bandwidth and free hosting for life. You also get a cPanel, which makes managing your website so easy a child could do it.

The company offering the hosting is Tech Entrance. By signing up for the free service, you receive a lower priority than somebody who pays, but what the heck – you’re getting free hosting for life.

Tech Entrance will not give you a domain, meaning that you need to go somewhere like Register.com and get your domain for $20 (sign up, make an inquiry, get to the payment page where they offer the domain for $35, close the page, and wait for an email offering you the domain for $20). Once you’ve done that you can use the DNS nameserver info Tech Entrance sends you to get your domain up and running with them.

I’m going to try Tech Entrance and have registered a domain to work on as a side project. Tech Entrance guarantees 99.9% uptime, and if they can keep to their word then they will stand head and shoulders above many other cheap hosting services.

Sign up for Tech Entrance here. This is not an affiliate link, so I don’t get anything for recommending you. If you want to make money online, then a good place to start would be to save money on your hosting costs, and this removes them altogether.

If you haven’t thought about blog backup, then start thinking about it now with these easy pointers, because if you aren’t backed up then you could lose out on some serious money:

• Plugins are your friend: There are a number of plugins designed for WordPress that specifically deal with backing up your blog. Use these plugins, as they often allow you to work without having to use a PHPMyAdmin. The WordPress Database Backup plugin is easy to use. Just install it like any other plugin and then use it via the “Manage” tab on your dashboard. This will back up your posts, comments, categories, and so on, but it won’t back up your pictures and themes.
• Backup everything: Most hosting services have an option that allows you to back up all your files. If you’re using cPanel then it’s simply a case of hitting “Backup” and waiting for the file. Once you’ve got the file on your server, you’ll be needing an FTP client.
• FTP: FTP clients are incredibly useful tools that allow you to move the files of websites you have access to. With an FTP client you can move files between your hard drive and your website. I use the open source FTP client Filezilla. It’s easy to use. Once you have it installed, fire it up and enter:
• Address: yourblog.com
• User: the name you use to access your domain
• Password: the domain password
• Port: enter “21”
• Now you can access your backup file and drop it into your hard drive. An FTP client is also useful if your host does not provide you with some sort of control panel.
• Backing up using PHPMyAdmin: When you access PHPMyAdmin you ought to check if any of your databases have overhead, or else they might stop working. If any of them have overhead then select the appropriate check boxes before selecting “Repair table” from the dropdown menu. That’s one problem taken care of.
• Click this, check that: To backup a database, click “Export”. Highlight the “WP” files and check “Add DROP TABLE” and “Complete inserts”. Then check “Save as file” and “None” for compression. Click “Go” and save away. Easy. Some blogs have problems running the WordPress Database Backup plugin, so you may have to use PHPMyAdmin.

So… back up, back up and back up.

Don’t hit “Publish” until you are 100% happy with your post

Editing posts after they’re written is bad form and I need to stop doing that. Part of the reason I do it is because I find myself in a bit of a rush to post some days, what with work and all. From now on I will not publish anything until the post is up to the standard I want it at. I’d advise other bloggers to do the same, although I’m sure most people do already.

Darren from Pro Blogger said that he keeps his links opening in the same window.

My personal preference as a web surfer is that if I want to see a link in a new window (or tab – I’m a big tabbed browser fan) I’ll open it in one (and I do – regularly). I find it incredibly annoying when a new window opens up without me asking for it to. I have enough windows open on my desktop at any one time without needing more!

Initially I decided that I would have all external links open in a new window because it keeps people on your site, but from reading the dozens of comments on Pro Blogger, there are lots of people who find this annoying. In the end, 54% of people said links should open in a new window, and 46% said they should open in the same window.

I personally prefer all external links to open in a new tab, but there is a strong argument that readers of a blog should be given the opportunity to choose. Desi had this to say about the matter:

As you probably figured out by now, I’m not for opening new windows. By doing so it’s disrespectful to the user. If the user wants to open a new window then he or she will, but for the most part open external links to the same window.

I’ve now decided to let my readers choose and all external links will be made to open in the same window. I hope it doesn’t drive too many people away from this blog before it gets up and running.

This is my checklist for setting up a beginner’s blog. Some of these I’ve already done, but I haven’t had time to get round to all of them yet.

• Write content: This is the most important thing for any blog. When I set up worldofangel.com I was starting to get bogged down with all the little technical things I was having to do. I almost forgot to actually write blog posts! Content should be your primary activity on your blog.
• Get Google Analytics working: This is central to evaluating your blog’s traffic and activity. If you don’t have some sort of analytics running then you’ll never really know what’s going on with your blog.
• Start using Adsense or similar ppc ads: This is a no brainer. Adsense is the easiest place to start for getting targeting advertisements on your site. At the moment I only have Adsense, but I am looking into joining Auction Ads, as I see many of the other top bloggers doing.
• Consider the positioning and color of your ads: I’ve copied John Chow and Desi Baba with my positioning of Adsense ads. Integrating them into blog posts, aligned to the right, seems to be the best was to get people clicking. I chose blue because it’s a natural link color and many of the pro bloggers use it for their ads.
• Claim your site on Technorati: Technorati is a great website and once you claim your blog you can see how you’re doing in the global blogosphere and work to increase your Technorati ranking, which will eventually boost your blog’s earning potential.
• Put up a “Contact” and “About me” section on your blog: A blog without these two sections, placed somewhere easy to find, is not a blog at all. People want to know about you and they want to know how to contact you.
• Start building up link backs: This one takes time. To start with, add your blog to some blog directories.
• Get noticed in the blogosphere: At the time of writing this blog post I haven’t activated any of my outgoing links. The reason for this is that I have no traffic and minimal content, so I don’t want any of the top bloggers seeing my links and coming here, only to be disappointed with a redundant blog. When the time comes, I will take all my links and make them active.
• Get your blog working with Feedburner: Feedburner offers a great service for analyzing, controlling and optimizing your feed. The set up process is painless and should be done by every blogger.
• Make your blog design as user friendly as possible: I’ve spent a lot of time sifting through themes and tweaking the one that I eventually settled on. I’m happy with it and think it is easy on the eye and simply for navigating.
• Find the right WordPress plugins for your site: If you use WordPress – and if you don’t, you should – then there are a wealth of plugins out there to help you. In the near future I will post up all the plugins I use and how they help me.
• Get yourself a sitemap for your blog: When you start blogging it’s not so important, but when you have an abundance of posts, a sitemap will help with search engine optimization.
• Add your blog to search engines: Nobody is going to read you if you don’t show up in Google and other search engines. Again, I’ll post up which search engines I submit to and how easy it is to do.
• Work out which features you want in your sidebars: There are various ways you can arrange your recent posts, your top posts, your recent comments, your archives, and so on. Choose what you think will work best and stick with it so that your readers know what to expect.
• Add a search function to your blog: A lot of blogger ignore this feature, and some go so far as to get Google to do the searching for them. If you use a Google search box on your blog, then individual searches get messy and force your readers to leave your site before coming back in. Don’t do it! I’ll show you the code for having your own search box soon.
• Make a kick-ass header image: My header is nothing special but it’s clear, smooth, has a nice image and isn’t overbearing.

Phew! Looks like I’ve got a lot to be getting on with. These tips should help me get my blog started. Did I miss anything out?

• What is the topic of the blog? – an obvious starting point – most blog names reflect their topic
• What do you hope to achieve with your blog? – is it about having a hobby, is it about building your profile/expertise, is it about earning an income via ads, is it to support an existing business
• What style will it be? – is it a blog with one or many authors? What length of posts will it have?
• What tone and voice will it be written in? – Will it be conversational, newsy, rant-ish, humorous?
• Who is the intended audience? – Are you wanting to appeal to professionals, young people, cool people, geeks?

I have been reading blogs for a couple of years, and I have to say that in terms of blogs I “trust”, those that have their own, original domain names score higher than those, for example, that have “blog”, “blogspot”, “wordpress”, and so on in the address. It isn’t that free blogs are always bad, but they don’t have the instant appeal of a snappy, simple .com. They also don’t look as professional. You can register a domain for about $20, so it’s no big deal.

When I chose my domain, I wanted it to reflect a couple of things:

• It had to say something about me: I’m a human being and I wanted my domain to show that. Having my name in the title makes this blog about me, although I’m fortunate to have an interesting first name to use.
• My domain had to be catchy: When people come here I want them to remember the domain. World of Angel. Say it loud. I think it has a nice ring to it. If people like the content then they will remember the domain.

There are some people, like Kumiko from www.cashquests.com, who choose a domain based solely on what they are blogging about. That’s all well and good, but I think in doing that sometimes blogs can become mechanical and lose their human side.

Maki over at Dosh Dosh writes that it’s best to include one of your keywords in your domain address. I can see the logic here, but I prefer the domains JohnChow.com and DesiNotes.com to ProBlogger.net. Maybe I’ve made a mistake here, but it’s one I will live with.

Once you’ve made your mind up about choosing your domain, all you need to do is register it. Pay a visit to Register.com and see if your domain is available.