Tag Archives: new to blogging

Are You Sure This is Where You Should Be? (Remember you can always set up a blog privately and delete it if you like – the world is your oyster!)

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Preliminary Advice for someone new to computer land as well as blog land:

Before you start anything, make sure you know about your search engine’s capacity, how to clear your browser and delete your cookies (or that you’ve scheduled clearing on a regular basis, I have mine set up to clear every time I shut down the internet). Make sure internet access is current and up-to-date. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, speak to your internet provider. Make sure you have good anti-virus software and that you have password protected as much of your stuff as you can; this would include, access to the computer itself, all of your email accounts, access to your wi-fi (if you’re using it), etc. If you’re not sure, do research, this is a buyer beware market. Keep your passwords in a safe place and don’t write them on the back of things. Make sure you have pop-up blockers and honestly, if you want to watch porn – buy it! It’ll cost you less in the long run and p.s. it’s so much easier to hide DVDs than your browser history, trust me! (But be advised you may need to disengage some of your pop-up blockers and change certain settings in order to load certain programs and files. Getting to know when and how to do this takes time. Be patient.)

Make sure you have a good computer (or a lot of patience); your memory capacity, internet access and internal hard drive all affect the loading time of web pages, how many you can load, etc. if your computer is too old it may not even be able to load and run your internet access properly.

Again, most people may think this is stating the obvious but I think it’s so mean how people talk on the internet like you’re already supposed to know all this stuff automatically. How’s that supposed to happen if no one tells you? I don’t think many people consider how overwhelming the internet might be to a newb and why it’s so hard for people who aren’t computer savvy to get interested. Sure you can find all the information after researching for a billion hours. Like who automatically knows that if your pages aren’t loading properly it’s probably just a matter of clearing your cache or deleting your cookies and highly unlikely that you need to call tech support? But most people who are on the net have known this for a long time and therefore assume you should too.

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If you are comfortable with all of the above and feel comfortable in the land of the world-wide web then perhaps you are ready to consider blogging. Now I’m looking at blogging in hopes of earning an income, so I am going to do a lot of research before I do anything active and then start my blog (where this information will eventually go). But if you just want to set up a blog and start writing go to http://www.wordpress.com , set up a blog for free and fill your boots.

There are million sites out there telling you “steps to doing a blog for beginners” etc. i.e.:

Step 1 – determine your audience (I don’t agree with this myself, at least not at this point in my journey)

Step 2 – determine if you are capable of blogging.

This means, do you have a lot to say? Do you think you can keep writing on a daily basis? Are you ready for people to criticize and slam your blog? (I assume this will happen to me, at this juncture this is all being done on a word processor and I’m plunking a multitude of pages on my blog all at once when I go live.) This means I’ll have comments and questions. Are you going to have time to respond to people in a timely fashion? (Follow-up note, that was wishful thinking, so far I haven’t really been able to engage people on my blog.) (I plan on researching this later today.)

Now of course, nothing’s written in stone – you can just stop blogging anytime. You can change your topic, you can win the lottery and not need to blog – or maybe you want to blog about winning the lottery and how it’s affected you at any rate, you can be fickle too – in fact web hosts, domain name sellers and the like are counting on it. It’s sort of like gym memberships, if everyone went the gyms would be screwed, they depend especially on the likes of me and my last membership and how I only went a handful of times the whole year but still paid $45 a month. Okay, I guess this is more a note to myself more than anything else but meh, maybe it’ll help you too.

Toodles for now my lovelies, back to the net to do more research and see if I can’t do something to get this show on the road!

Blogging for the Newb – Part 2

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(… and other assorted blatherings because I’m of the “Oh look, something shiny” crew).

(I was going to put a youTube link here to but no matter how much I tried it wouldn’t let me. I finally realized that I can’t embed video into my blog but it still didn’t explain why the link below *points finger and indicates* did work. I’ve spent the good part of day trying to figure that out so this blog entry is, at least partially, thwarted but I thought I’d get it out there.)

Bad news people, if you’re just on the .com site, it’s very limited and if you ARE going to transfer over to .org of course that’s some complicated programming b.s. too. FTP – File Transfer Protocol … for instance. (Remember, everyone’s out to make money. If you have it, use it! I don’t have that luxury. Plus you have to consider the cost of the domain, host, etc., etc. versus the profit – which in this case and for the foreseeable future is likely to be negligible at best.)

Now what was I rambling about again? Oh yeah, it let me insert this link *points accusingly at link below* but not the “Oh look something shiny” one WTF? Anyway, that wasn’t the point of this section (even if I did waste a day trying to figure it out …)

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And if you have not seen Finding Nemo, I feel bad for you, oh and if you really want to up your game, it just came out in 3D! Now where were we?

As defined by urban dictionary

newb:

“Someone who is new to the activity that they are currently partaking in. Very often this term pertains to gamers using computer games. Contrary to popular belief, a newb and a n00b are not the same thing, as a newb can and will get better where as a n00b will partake in activities meant mainly to aggravate other players.”

newbs deserve a chance to grow and become better.

As a noun.

“You jump with the space bar, don’t be such a newb”
“Obviously, this item is better… newb.”
“Since your just a newb, I’ll help you out.”

In case you didn’t already know.

Blogging does not really have one straight definition, I talk about that later on.

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If you want to make money most people say, you must commit to writing on a daily basis. You must be focused, willing to invest a substantial amount of time and some money to your blog and you CANNOT come and go as you please. Successful blogs generate daily revenue by maintaining interest from their readers and advertisers alike. (How often you should write is another contentious topic.)

If you’re placing ads, Ad Sense from Google is the way to go, this is not up for debate.

In here I will have links that detail every topic so you can go back and read in detail about the topic without having to search around the net. Please note, I do not necessarily agree with everything that stated in these links and I plan to directly juxtapose some of the advice given, but I want you to have choices without being overwhelmed. I’ve just picked links that seemed to have the information I was looking for without being too extensive.

Hopefully this will expedite your education – good luck!

For example, here’s how to build a successful blog.

As I will state time and again, if you know absolutely nothing about blogging, or computers in general – you’ve come to the right place, for the most part, neither do I. And remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question. Feel free to ask me anything and I’ll try my best to find the answer. As well, this is me learning as I go so any constructive criticism, advice or just plain kudos are all welcome.

(Oh, word to the wise, don’t write a page-long entry in your WordPress and then close out of the window before saving or publishing … d’oh! I write all my stuff in Word first and then put it on my blog, that way you have a back-up if need be and all the links there so you don’t have to keep going back and forth. As well, I back my stuff up on an alternate hard drive. You may even want to have a printed copy of everything you write if that makes you feel better. Remember there are no rules cast in stone but be sure to find something that works for you.)

Second of all, I would really make sure you have a good firewall and internet security system in place, yes it might be a little more time-consuming in the short run but it beats hell out of paying $300 to have your computer wiped and possibly losing all your information.

If you’re good with all of the above and are relatively comfortable in your present surroundings, let’s move on together shall we? (Yeah, I’m scared too.)

Okay so we’ve come to the decision that this is it, this is how I’m going to change my life, this is how I’m going to lose the repression of the Monday to Friday, nine to five burden and write a blog and make money doing it and I’ll be free, free!

Oh but wait a minute, how do I do that? Well apparently it all works from banners and hits. People read your blog, advertisers see that people are reading your blog and they advertise. People click on these advertisements from your blog and then you make money – easy peasy! (Oh wait, did you say people read my blog? Yeah, I know, I haven’t figured that part out yet either.) Not only do they have to read, but they have to keep coming back, that means not only do you have to hook the reader but you have to leave them hanging for more. (I am for the time being holding off on the whole banner thingy, etc. because I’m going to a conference this weekend and I want to see if there’s a way to do it without polluting my page with advertising …)

Which makes me wonder, so if I’m writing a blog is it protected in any way from plagiarism or can anybody just saunter along and just casually yoink my words verbatim and repost them? Hmm, I think that’s a question for much much later.

See you tomorrow!