Blogging - My New Obsession

[amipalgi]

Hi everyone,

My name is Ami and I just launched my new blog:

www.beeablogger.com

In this blog I'm conducting a blogging diary that documents all the steps I take in this amazing journey I like call "becoming a professional blogger".

I call this diary: The Real-Time Blogging Report

I'm trying to solve a very basic blogging problem: before you start - how do you know how much effort it is? How much it costs? What results to expect? How long will it take? And of course: what is the next step!

You do need to be a bit obsessed to achieve all this don't you think

Let me know what you think.

Ami
Bee a Blogger | REAL-TIME Blogging Report

[Mac100x]

Very Nice Blog! I was just reading it! No doubt it is very informative

Keep Blogging!

[Melody]

I have to say I'm a tad disappointed by your blog! I'm always surprised when people start blogs on blogging because it's a topic that has been done a million times. Is there any particular reason you started the blog on blogging?

Do you have some other niche? If I were looking at a book written on how to write best-sellers, I'd expect to also see that the other has previously written a best-seller. Do you have another previous niche blog?

I read your "about" page and that's a great page because it's very real. You get a picture of you and some real background information on you! I guess I'm just not into your content at all. As an aside, I tend not to like ads on new blogs too (though I'm not really sure how long you've been blogging).

Good luck!

[amipalgi]

Thanks Mac for the feedback.

Melody - I like what you wrote, I agree - there are a million blogs about blogging, the problem is when you start looking for information on how to setup a self hosted professional blog you find two things:

1. Top bloggers handing out tips, that are good, but are not always what a beginner needs (they lack the foundations). Also most top bloggers have been blogging for so long that they don't write about simple problems like: how to choose a hosting plan, a theme that is right, setup your feeds correctly.

2. All the quality information you have to pay for, Like Yaro Starak's BecomeaBlogger.com program. For someone who just started - I wasn't willing to pay that kind of money.

My blog comes to solve this, maybe I'm not the biggest expert yet, but I am highly tech oriented, I don't hold any "secrets" back, I only write about what I fully understand and works for me.

And last - I give the big picture - a Real-Time blogging report is something I've not yet seen on the web, and this is something only a beginning blogger can do. If I had something like this half a year ago it would have made my life so much easier.

Let me know if I've cracked the wall of disappointment, you know L. Cohen says "there's a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in"

Ami
Bee a Blogger | REAL-TIME Blogging Report

[amipalgi]

Melody, Due to this feedback I also did the following:

1. Removed for now my Google ads, this way my sponsors are only services I use or that are highly recommended by top bloggers I trust (Like Darren Wrose and Yaro Starak).
2. I wrote a post about it in order to open this issue for discussion.

Trying to keep it real - Ami

[chasesagum]

I actually really like your idea behind the Real Time Blogging Report. I really think you have something here. Stay consistent with it and I think people will connect with your message. People always want to see the progress financially that other bloggers are making and if you can be that specific like you are on your real-time report, bloggers like myself are going to RSS subscribe for sure!

My only suggestion would be to spend some time educating yourself on CSS and spend a few hours here and there cleaning up some things on your blog's theme. Make it a little more cleaner and appealing to the eyes. Other than that you're good. Rock n' roll!!!!

[amipalgi]

Thanks chasesagum for the feedback, I'm working on my theme all the time trying to improve, I'll keep at it.

Ami

[ChickenFreak]

Back in the Olden Days when people still played text-based roleplaying games, I used to run into a common issue: People who wanted to create a MUSH (a roleplaying site) and who'd be all excited about the code and the descriptions and the rules and the setting, and who would spend weeks and months and years doing all of those things. But they wouldn't _roleplay_. They wouldn't get out there with the very few roleplayers who, essentially by coincidence, drifted onto the site, and actually try to get anything going.

And I'd point this out, and they'd say, "Well, but the rules are _for_ roleplaying. The descriptions are _for_ roleplaying."

And I'd point out that, yes, indeed they are, but without any actual _roleplaying going on_, those things are pretty useless. Roleplaying is not an "if you build it, they will come" thing. Roleplaying is seeded by roleplaying. So for a MUSH to get moving, the creators have to get out there and roleplay.

And they'd mumble and wander back to their code and assure me that, yes, indeed, they were ever so committed to roleplaying, and perhaps we could talk again after they'd finished writing revision six to the Help files.

And I would give up and find another place to roleplay.

How is this relevant?

Well, my point is that blogging is about content. Blogging about how to set up a blog is a little bit like coding for roleplaying, and never getting around to actually roleplaying. If you want to blog about blogging, my strong recommendation is that you blog about _blogging_, where blogging is writing content. The template, the setup, the domain, the SEO - that's just setup. That's just the descriptions and the help files.

To use yet another analogy, it's like an author telling you that he's going to talk about writing, and then talking about what kind of typewriter to buy, and whether a Sharpie or a Uniball is better for doing research, and what angle to set the blinds at for the best typing speed.

A "blog about blogging" that I think would be interesting, would be parallel blogs, one about a non-blogging subject, and one about the blog. So in one blog you'd write about football, or cooking, or your favorite indie band, or pulp movies, or whatever. And in the other blog, you'd write about the experience of the first blog. And you'd encourage others to write about _their_ experience blogging.

Again, where blogging is writing content. Not about the template. Not about the SEO. Not about the widgets. The content. The content. THE CONTENT.

Yes, I'm getting ranty. Blogging is done by so many people, and so few of them seem to want to talk about the actual core of what they're doing. And it's frustrating.

[Melody]

I'm so with you Chicken_Freak. You have to be writing something that people want to read. If you look at highly professional blogs, with paid staffs, they have content - A niche, and a core group readers who want more of what they're writing about.

About a week ago I was in a Starbucks and I ran into two women who were professional paid staff bloggers for SeriousEats.Com. I rudely introduced myself and pryed into why they hard the largest cameras I'd ever seen just hanging around their necks and taking photos of the store.

Later, I made small talk with a number of people that I met some SeriousEats.Com bloggers, and although I had no idea who they were, lots of people had already heard of them. I look at their google PR and it's 7. It's SEVEN. That's high!

These people are blogging, producing regular high quality, unique content about food. That's a blog. That's an amazing blog! Whenever we have these discussions of 'what's content' I'm just going to say, it's SeriousEats.Com. Go look at SeriousEats.Com

Are you asking yourself, can I blog about this for years? Am I excited by my topic enough that I could write about it for 2 or more years?? (I really worry about running out of content for my own blog).

I see you started an entire blog entry from the comments in this thread. But I'd do as Chicken_Freak says: Find your topic that you know and love and develop it as a blog.

[bee05]

I think your blog is fine and and a little different from normal blogging blog.