Initial Setup and brainstorming

So, you think you want to blog.  In the last post I listed a couple of items you should consider before jumping in.

Purpose:

Do you simply want to share information about your daily life with your family and friends, do you have a cause that you are deeply involved with or have a passion for, are you wanting to create a blog to generate interest in something (using it as a marketing tool), using it as a feedback tool, or do you desire to try and make money by blogging?

Any of those are valid reasons; it is simply up to you to decide why you want to blog in the first place.

With that information in hand, you are now ready to figure out what the subject matter will be.  This should be fairly easy now that you figured out the reason behind blogging.  Did I miss any purposes?  I think the ones I listed are fairly general and would include most ideas.

Don’t take my word for it though, a recent post at How to make my Blog.com has a similar post.  He recommends having a passion for what ever subject matter you are going to blog about.  I could not agree more.  If it is something you enjoy, you are more likely to know more about it as well as keep writing about it.

Next up is Subject Matter.  I will post it next week so you have a chance to really consider your purpose.  I know some of you will be thinking – but my purpose is to make money, lets get going already.

If that is your purpose, you should know that building a site from scratch is a very time consuming ordeal.  I have several other sites and have time / income tracker pages on them.  If you would like to see the results you can go over to Johnny Optimist and look at the Stat Tracker page.  My suggestion to you is sit back and relax.  Formulate a complete idea before you jump in head first.  Of all new blogs started, a majority of them go stale after about 6 months.  Making money through your blog is not a get rich quick scheme.  It is a long-term commitment that involves more than just posting good content.

Hope this helps.  What is your purpose?  What types of sites are you contemplating?  Maybe I can help you brainstorm.

Ben