I have a new, beginner’s blog and I have been reading up on what I need to do to get this blog started. I’ve come up with a checklist of things I need done before I can even begin to think of this blog as complete and established. I have tried to get this blog up and running in between having a regular life and a full-time job. That’s not easy when you work six days a week for a newspaper!

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?

Tags: Bloggers starting by Angel
5 Comments »

Darren Rowse wrote a post last year about the importance of choosing your domain name. Darren came up with these objectives to consider when choosing your domain:

• 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.

Tags: Bloggers starting by Angel
1 Comment »