Starting a Blog

Blogging is, we will admit, a dream career. We won't sugar coat it- achieving blogging success is a huge milestone that many of us work to daily.

But what happens after you hit your target for success? Well, for bloggers who have been around a long time, hitting this level also comes with many fears, anxieties, and the push to keep the momentum going as long as possible.

So in this one, I thought I'd share why these are so common and give some advice to help you deal with the issues as they come- because they most certainly will.

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We'll be the first to admit, there is a lot of bad blogging advice out there. We've likely been guilty of it, too.

There are many reasons for why bad advice is a dime a dozen. The landscape changes faster than most can keep up with, established sites have different challenges (and solutions) than those who are starting out, and so many factors work for (and against) each other such that advice that works on Site A may not work at all for Site B even if every other factor was virtually identical.

We could go on.

While these are things we could talk about until we're blue in the face, in this one we want to take a look at the people who give out advice on the internet. Namely, the people who you may want to hesitate before listening to at all.

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When it comes to operating in the digital world, scams are plentiful.

From scams designed to steal your banking information, identity, or even your website or social profiles outright, there really is a lot out there!

So in this one, we thought we'd take a look at a few common scams targeting bloggers we've seen floating around recently. For each, we're going to discuss what they are, what you should do about it, and the risks that are involved with each.

As with all things, proceed with caution- whether you think something would be a scam or not!

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If you are looking to start a new blog, the tasks you have to complete are often overwhelming. Setting up servers, WordPress, themes, plugins- the sky is really the limit and that is before you even create a single piece of content.

Once you are ready to start writing articles, you may need to take a few days to put together some pages that we consider to be essential for every blog to have.

So in this one, we thought we'd take a look at pages you should publish on your blog, why you need them, and brief discussions about what should be included in each.

Note: We discuss the pages below as must-have pages that should be linked within in a navigation menu, but do not discount having them in a navigation footer on your site as well. This way users can reach all of the required pages at the start and end of your site.

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Having a killer logo is one design element that bloggers use to stand out and create a unique brand identity.

Unless you are skilled in graphic design yourself, odds are good you'll be going with a designer to help create that perfect logo for your brand.

After updating our logo here at This Week in Blogging, we'd thought we'd take a look at the process to help give some tips to ensure you get the best logo for your budget, needs, and branding!

Note: Our friends at Reggio Digital hooked us up with a killer logo as a courtesy to try out their new graphic design service. In using the service, we got the idea for this article and thought it was timely to share. This was not a requirement of a sponsorship; however, we are plugging our friends as a courtesy- we're simply fans. Photos of the non-final designs are used with the permission of Reggio Digital.

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If you are a new blogger looking to jump into professional blogging, you may be daunted by the number of ideas there are within the industry when it comes to how to start a blog.  There is far more to blogging than just taking pictures and writing stories, and most of the unknowns are the behind-the-scenes work and, more importantly, expenses you may never have considered.

So in this one, we wanted to take a look at some of the first expenses future professional bloggers can expect when starting a blog. To keep this fictitious spending in check, we gave ourselves a $1,000 limit and tried to allocate it to the best items new bloggers should look at. Whether you spend this over the course of just a few months or over a year or more, the following is what we think is the best use of the first thousand dollars you invest in your site, other than what is needed to create content (of course).

Please note- this list is not an end-all list of what you must buy when launching a blog. This is just our reflection on what we'd do if we started over again today with the knowledge we have gained after writing on our blogs for over a decade.  You could easily throw all $1,000 into any one category featured below (in fact, we have in all of them), but if you want a decent split of everything we'd start with the following.

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We'd like to think that we know a few things about blogging over at This Week in Blogging, but, at the same time, we also recognize that there are certain times when it really makes sense to crowdsource from the blogging community. An article on blogging tips? Well, that seems like it's one of those times.

And that's because each individual blogger has had a unique blogging journey which, by proxy, ensures that their advice will also be unique. We could share all the blogging tips we want, but there's something different and, well, better about propping up the voices of so many experienced bloggers at once.

The more the merrier, as they say.

We thank each and every blogger who took the time to share their expertise.

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