Saturday, 6 October 2007

Day 6 - The End

Well I have been doing a lot a reading and listening to people and realise my folly at such an undertaking. After beginning my fifth blog yesterday I realised my heart really isn't in it.

Most of the prevailing advice about how to make money from blogging is get as much readership and authority as possible, then moniterise.

Part of the problem is me sticking to stuff. I start doing a site or project then get bored, or think it is rubbish, or think that I shouldn't be putting all my eggs in one basket or get a better idea.

I think that this site has been a result of a bit of mania that creeps into my life from yesteryear.

I have decided to concentrate on www.portablelives.net as it is something I am in interested in and is a popular.

To deal with a the constant influx of ideas that buzz around my head I am playing with the idea of blog giving them away for free. I read how Seth Godin thinks it could be holding you back if you don't act on them. So to focus I will concentrate on www.portablelives.net and maybe introduce another site in a couple of months and let the other ideas that I know I won't work on free.

Thursday, 4 October 2007

Day 4 - An Auction A Day

Day Four and another blog - An Auction A Day, something that I have been thinking about for a while now. The Wordpress theme is the classic version as the one I uploaded didn't work properly. I do think that it is actually really nice. Simplicity itself.

I have decided to not to continue following Problogger's 31 Days To A Better Blog as it more suited towards slightly older blogs. I did however have some feedback from someone from the Bloggeries Forum. Skins commented on an earlier and has a cool blog. So I will be checking it out more often when I have the time.

I do really want to promote the blogs more but the prevailling advice is to build up more content so that when people come they have plenty to look at. So I will be researching ways to promote for when I have a older more mature blog.

Thanks for the support from people already. My wife thinks that this blog is a bit of a waste of time. I have my doubts over the purposefulness of this blog, it's worth. Also I feel like more serious bloggers might think I'm an idiot. I do want to be a professional blogger and this is how I'm getting my head around it. I don't know how long I can maintain this because of other responsibilities but is an experiment so we'll have to see.

Day 3 - Debt Diary Blog

Although the site was live yesterday I did not post about it. It is my debt diary. I still have to change the skin as the title is not visible. It has been changed around a little from what was originally planned. I was thinking about stopping it but I couldn't handle adding to the flotsam and jetsam of the internet. Also I do think that it will be good to write about my journey out of debt so it might help others. I will put a screenshot up when I find a decent skin for blogger.

Tuesday, 2 October 2007

Building A Better Blog (Day 2)

As part of my drive to improve readership of this blog I am using Problogger's 31 Days to Building a Better Blog. Day involves someone reading my blog but as I have no one able to do that yet I went onto Day 3: Search for and Join Forums on Your Blog’s Topic. I joined the Bloggeries Blog Forum which seemed quite intimate and non-threatening and responded to a few posts. I aim to post on the forum once a day to build a relationship with the people there.

There was some advice from the moderator which went a long the lines of not doing any major promotion till the blog has at least 5-10 posts. I suppose it makes sense. I will keeping an eye on the forum then posting about blog in two weeks. I'm going to spend the rest of today making sure this blog and http://www.portablelives.net/ is looking and feeling like I want it. Playing with plugins and learning my way around blogger.

Day 2 - Portable Lives Blog

The second day has arrived at ABADFAY and so has http://www.portablelives.net/ . It is a blog I've been wanting to start for a while now, that is why the domain was reading pointing to my server. It has what I think is one of the best free Wordpress themes I have seen and used. I love the drag and drop functionality on the sidebar. It is also very clean and user friendly.
http://www.portablelives.net/

Portable Lives is something that I am determined to pursue with some vigour as it is something I am really interested in. I am going to try and increase search engine activity by posting as frequently as possible for the first month as it is something I think I read on Dosh Dosh.

Monday, 1 October 2007

A month to build a better blog

Using Probloger's 31 days to a better blog as a guide I emailed a few possible new readers to this blog. These are those who commented on my blog over at http://www.constructyourself.co.uk/ . I hope they don't feel like I've spammed them. I've decided to follow this on here to see if I can build this blog's popularity.

I like Problogger but anyone here who reads it will have noticed a revamped design which has taken me a little while to get used to. The guy who writes it has done well for himself by providing some reader good advice.

I really like Dosh Dosh as well. Especially the small anime illustrations. It has some really good articles and the person who runs it decided to favourite http://www.constructyourself.co.uk/ after I did the same of Technorati.

I will write some posts about blogging on here but to fill the quota I will develop a blog on bloggin myself.

I have been retro-fitting my wordpress theme for tommorow's blog using one of these designs from http://www.ndesign-studio.com/ I must say they both look really cool and I'm sure that I will use the other one on another blog. I think that by using Blogger's hosted blogspot domains and bought ones hosted myself is the way that will work for the time being.

The First Blog of Three Hundred and Sixty-Five

Welcome to A Blog A Day For A Year - does what is says on the tin

Why would I possibly want to start a blog a day for the next year, well why not. It is an experiment to see if a mass of disparate (and perhaps later linked or networked) blogs are possible to sustain for a whole year.

I will be hosting as many as possible but as I started today with no domain linked to my server the first few blogs will be hosted at blogger. Why, well, although I am familiar with Wordpress as it runs my blog constructyourself.co.uk setting up a blog on blogger is simple and there is in-built support for adsense should I require which I'm not sure how easy is to do on Wordpress.com.

I will be posting everyday with information on that day's blog. I already have a few ideas for blogs that I want to start but they will most likely come a little later as I have to do a little more work towards then. I already have a few domain names but after this I will be buying a few more over the next few days.

I don't know how this will play out, especially as I'm aware of the amount of time required just for one blog. And I will want to go on holiday at some point and you never know what will happen. I will have to find ways of creating and posting in advance as well as being able to blog more remotely and portably.

Till Tommorrow for Blog #2