Blogging 101 – How-To Build Your First Blog

Glad you could visit my site!  Yeah, I know it’s not much right now, this is the building phase.  I’ve been wanting to start blogging for some time now, but with two small children, finding a little extra (personal) time can be difficult.

 I got to thinking…instead of getting the whole website fully functioning right from the outset, let me document my progress from the ground up.  It will allow me to utilize my time more efficiently (ie. work when the kids go to bed!!!) and readers will get to see how to build a site from scratch to hopefully, a fully functioning, and interesting blog site.

I don’t have any formal work-plan, but I’m going to try to use the following as a guideline:

1. Sign-up with a hosting provider and create my blog site SimplyWebtastic.com.
2. Choose a blog theme.
3. Decide which widgets to include.
4. Determine any custom coding that may be necessary.
5. Find ways to monetize the blog (honestly, let’s face it, money is a motivator!)
6. Research ways to generate blog traffic.  (commenting, guest articles, social websites, etc.)
7. Set an initial monthly blog visitor goal and try to increase it every month.
8. Keep rethinking and reworking the blog based on readers comments and functionality.

Since this is my first blog, I know they’ll be changes to my guidelines, but as with anything, this is a start.  Also, as I write articles about the different topics, I’ll try to come back to this document and create links to those entries.  This way, readers will eventually be able to use this initial post to follow the process of building a blog.

If there are readers out there willing to give some advice on different aspects of blogging and the creation of this website, I’d surely appreciate the comments (both good and bad).  It’s the only way to truely make a friendly blog site.