My 1st Year Of Blogging

I have learned a bunch of things in my 1st year of blogging. Some things are good and some not so good, but that's life! The best thing for me at this point is that my passion for blogging and learning the ins and outs of the blogosphere has actually grown and I feel good about that! My most painful lesson so far was when I lost my other site Beltwayboysports.com because of a security issue. I'm still broken hearted about that and will probably never fully get over it, I know that may sound crazy to some people. I had over 200 posts and my page views were increasing each month until the crash of the site in September. I was going to have over 30,000 page views that month! I made my first post on that site last January. Your site security must be your #1 priority so that something like that won't happen to you! I have come along way from when I discovered what a blog was all about and fell in love and decided to do one! I had no computer knowledge whatsoever and taught myself to get to this point. I still have a lot that I need to learn in order to get to where I want to be. I try to learn at least one thing everyday. One thing I would like is for Google to simplify Adsense and make it easier for the new blogger to understand and use.

Blogging Advice For A Rookie Blogger

I'm not a seasoned blogging veteran by no means and will not claim to be an expert either. I have been blogging close to a year and still love it as much as the day I started, if not, more! I have learned a ton about what is going on through trial and error. When I found out what a blog was and fell in love I had no real computer skills and have had to learn everything myself . That is one of the biggest reasons I started this site, I want to gear it towards the people like me who are wanting to learn about the Blogosphere. The first thing people need to know is that it takes a big commitment in time and patience to learn if you want to earn money from your blog.  I almost forgot about determination. There will be times when you get discouraged and wonder what the hell am I doing this for and feel like quitting. You must continue and fight through it. It has happened to me a couple times. Make a plan for your blog before you start and list what goals you want to achieve. Do you plan on making money from your blog? What is your blog going to be about? I would suggest either Blogger.com or Wordpress.com to start with because they seem to be the most popular and they are free. Both are fairly easy to use and you will have your first blog up in no time and can get going. I wish I would have started like that. You are not allowed to run ads on Wordpress.com, but you are able to do it on a self hosted Wordpress.org blog. In that case you will need to register a domain name, it is the name of your site. The cost is around $10 per year. After that you will need a host for your blog and that is around $5, but could be more depending on what your trying to accomplish. Some places online will let you register your domain and host it as well. After sitting down and figuring out how much time I have spent on learning as much as I can about all the different aspects of what goes into making a successful site I have come to the conclusion that Site Build it is the best deal going and it's not even close in my opinion. I want to let you know that I am an affiliate of Site Build It and I want to make that perfectly clear. I did not find out about them before I got going and I will be moving my other site, Beltwayboysports.com over to them. Don't just take my word for it, go and look at them for yourself and then decide what will be best for you. Even if you don't use them, you can become an affiliate and they offer a ton of free information about building websites and blogs all for free. The material they provide you is topnotch and very helpful.

A Wordpress Plugin From Blogging Heaven

I found a Wordpress plugin that is absolutely amazing, it's the Header and Footer plugin that has been developed by Satollo.net. I added it to my self hosted Wordpress blog at Beltwayboysports.com and it has worked great with no problems. What it does is allow people like me who don't understand coding to add stuff to your template very easy. You just paste whatever it is into one of the boxes that are labeled and the plugin does the rest. You can ad adsense or anything like that to your site, it really helps newbies to be able to monetize their site or to add other functionalties for your readers. I wish that I would have found this months ago! The plugin is free and will cost you nothing more than a couple minutes of your time to install and have it up and running. I highly recommend it because I know how intimidating trying to add something to your template can be for a new blogger. I hope that this will help you on your blogging journey!  

5 Blogging Tips To Grow Your Audience

1. Post frequently when you first start your blog
2. Post comments on other blogs that you read
3. Respond to comments and emails that your readers send to you
4. Don't try to push crappy products to your readers for the sake of making a dollar, because they will not remain your readers for long. 
5. Join the social networking party with Twitter, Digg and all the others that are out there in the Blogosphere.

There are plenty of other tips for growing your readers and gaining traffic to your site, but the main thing is to get out here and join the party! Good luck and have some fun!

Social Networking Has Value

Social Networking has value for your blog no matter what your goals may be. If you are looking to increase your readership or to monetize your blog, social networking can help you to achieve it. I know firsthand how it can increase your traffic because on my other site Beltwayboysports.com I saw an increase immediately in my traffic after I started using Twitter, Digg, SBNation, MySpace etc.. I'm still learning how to maximize them to their fullest extent, but I wanted to write this because I wish now that I had started using them sooner! You can start using some of them before your blog is up and running. It's a good thing to start getting your name and blog out there in cyberspace. All of these services are free and the sign ups are a breeze. Just be yourself and you will be fine. Don't be shy, get out there and start building your brand!

What Can Google Do For You

I love Google because they give you a lot of cool services for free. There are certain things they will charge for, but being a new blogger you don't have to worry about any of those just yet. Unless you want to pay them for a domain and hosting, which is a good deal. I would hold off spending any money until you know that you are going to stick with this. Google will give free blogger blogs to get you started, plus you can earn money through ads on your site. If I could do it over again that is the route I would go. It's free to sign up with Google and it's well worth signing up even if you don't use blogger. Gmail is their email application and it is loaded with features, you will never look at email the same way again! My favorite of all things Google is the Google Chrome browser and yes it's free as well. It is easy to use and fast, I love it and everyone I have talked with about Chrome loves it. You are probably reading this and thinking to yourself that I must work or be associated with Google in some way, I'm not. The biggest issue I have with Google is that they need to simplify the adsense installation process, I hate it because for the new guy or gal like myself who have no clue. That is still a problem for me and I may drop the adsense part, there are other options out there. Go and check Google out and see if they have anything you could use to help you along on your journey into the blogosphere, good luck.

What Blogging Platform Will You Use?

After you decide that you are going to give blogging a try, there is one more very important decision you must make. What blogging platform are you going to use? There is a bunch of them to choose from. You have Wordpress.com and .org, I will explain the difference between the two later in this post. Google has Blogger and to be perfectly honest with you, those are the only ones that I have personally used. I like all three of them and each has their pros and cons. They are pretty easy and straight forward when it comes to using them. I started out with a Wordpress.org site. It's Beltwayboysports.com you should check it out sometime. This blog that you are reading is a Blogger site that I got from Google.

Now onto the differences of the Wordpress.com and .org. The differences are .com is free and wordpress will host the site for you, but you don't own the site and can't put ads up if you decide to monetize your blog. I have heard of people losing their blogs because of some type of rules infraction and lost all of their content. Now with a .org blog you control the whole show. You will need to pay for hosting and pick out a domain name like I did with Beltwayboysports.com. I should have went the free route to begin. I knew absolutely nothing and had to figure it out on my own. It really is best to get a handle on how everything works before striking out on your own. It will save you a bunch of headaches, trust me!

Hosting is not all that expensive to get. DO YOUR HOMEWORK when you are searching for a place to host your site. I would recommend my host, but I'm not totally satisfied with their service. I did not do enough homework before I selected them. So I learned a very valuable lesson. I was just so excited to get going and let my guard down for a second and wham. My suggestion is to go and research all the different platforms. Only you will know which one fits your needs. Everyone is going to talk about whatever one they are comfortable working with!

Here is another good resource site that is packed with a ton of great information to help you out as you start your journey into the blogging world. http://2createawebsite.com

Great Online Blogging Resources For New Bloggers

Where can a new blogger go online to get the best information about how blogging works? That was one of my earliest questions. You can get all the information you need to start your blog and to get traffic to come as well, for FREE! Sounds easy enough, but how do you know what sites are legit and which ones are not? You don't, you have to be careful because there are some sites that are scams. I have come across plenty of both in my brief time on the net. You should go with your first gut feeling if something does not jive. I operate the same way. One thing I can promise you is that I will never recommend a site or a product that I don't beleive in. So I'm going to recommend some sites that I found that worked for me. I still go and check them out from time to time.

http://Becomeablogger.com Is a 10 part video series that is designed for the new blogger it is very,very good. Plus it's free. Each video is about 10 minutes long and packed with quality.

http://Dailyblogtips.com Is a very informative site with alot to offer. You should check it out.

Another great site to check out is SBI, Sitebuildit. SBI is a very unique site because of all that it offers you. The best thing is that you can get some great training for free even if you don't buy anything. They will give you free Affiliate marketing training by signing up as an affiliate of theirs and that is free as well. If you plan on making money blogging then you should learn about affiliate marketing. There are more great sites that I will be putting on here in the coming weeks. You need to determine what blogging platform you will want to use. I will get into that in my next post.