This is probably because:

• They get discouraged because of lack of traffic
• They run out of things to blog about
• They hit technical problems
• They set the blog up to sell something but they’re not making any money
• They find something new and they shift their attention to that
• etc

Which is all a bit of a pity. It takes time and effort to set up a blog and, if you just abandon it, all that time and effort can be wasted.

But it needn’t be like that if you set about it the right way from the start.

Now, I’m not about to deliver you a big lecture on how to go about blogging. Instead,  I’ll set out a few helpful hints so that you can hopefully avoid the commonest pitfalls.

The first piece of advice is to look ahead. Visualize what you want your blog to be in a month’s time, six month’s time, a year’s time. What topics will you write about? What pages/posts will there be for your visitors to read? What widgets will you display?

As of today, why not write out a plan for your blog’s future? Make a commitment to post regularly and write down in your diary when you are going to post and what you are going to post about. Do this for a least the next three months ahead.

Also, set yourself some goals for your blog. Make some projections for traffic levels, income earned, number of backlinks etc.

Commit to your blog’s future and you’ll find it becomes easier to overcome those seemingly insuperable hurdles when they occur.

And I’ll make a commitment to you. I’ve made a plan for this blog to post a series of articles on how to deal with all the problems I’ve listed above.

Watch this space!

Sarah

When you begin blogging you sometimes don’t know what’s in store for you.  You can set out all happily with big plans for your blog but before you know it you’ve hit a problem.

Some problems are technical:

• How can I change the font of my blog?
• What plugins do I need?
• Why is my photo displaying too large/small?

Other problems are more personal:

• What shall I write about?
• I don’t have time to work on my blog
• I’ve changed my mind and want to start my blog over again

Or maybe the problem is external:

• How do I get traffic to my blog?
• How do I get on to the front page of Google?
• How can I make money from my blog?

What’s your problem?

If you have a problem with your blog, why not share it here? Leave a comment at the bottom of this page and see what happens. Maybe someone will answer your problem or explain how they’ve solved a similar one.

All genuine replies will be approved!

So, how to blog?

First, you have to choose a blogging platform.  This is the software mechanism by which your blog is presented to the world. There are quite a few blogging platforms available but there are two clear market leaders: Blogger and WordPress.

Blogger.com is free and is owned and operated by Google.  And that is both its strength and its disadvantage. Yes, you get a free blog and yes, Google is prestigious and powerful. But when you have a Blogger blog Google owns the blog – not you. For that reason most serious bloggers don’t use Blogger as their platform.

Which leaves us with WordPress. WordPress has two platforms: wordpress.com and wordpress.org.

WordPress.com is a bit like blogger.com in that it is free and, because WordPress hosts the blog,  WordPress owns the blog – not you. So, while it is fine for personal bloggers and non-profits, it is not the platform of choice for those who want to attract visitors and particularly for those who want to make money from a blog. WordPress.com doesn’t like you using your blog for commercial purposes

WordPress.org, on the other hand, is still free but you have to pay for web hosting. This means you have to buy a domain and open a hosting account somewhere. And because you pay for that (all of $10-$12 a month!) you own the blog. It’s yours and you can do what you like with it. This is the route that most serious bloggers and most small and large businesses take.  They start with a self-hosted WordPress blog right from the start and they get on with the business of getting a presence online.

Learn how to blog

By now you’ve probably gathered that I’m a big WordPress fan. And I’m here to help you get started with blogging.

I have two tutorials to teach you how to blog:

• How To Build A WordPress.com Blog
• How To Build A WordPress.org Blog

These are downloadable tutorials in ebook format which take you, step by step, through the process of building a WordPress blog. Take your pick – if you can’t decide which one to take, get them both!

If you want to know how to blog, get one of these tutorials now!

When you see that it means that the website is actually a WordPress blog rather than a traditional website. That may surprise you when you look at it because it might not look like a blog at all.

When WordPress was first developed its main function was to act as an online journal. Bloggers (usually individuals) would post daily (hourly?) updates to record changes in their fascinating lives. But these early WordPress bloggers became more demanding in the functionality they required and soon WordPress became so powerful and flexible that it began to be adopted by the mainstream.

WordPress is now used as a web platform by some of the biggest names on the web. Why? Because it’s powerful and easy to use and it cuts out all the hassle of in-house web design and development. Let’s face it, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when someone’s already done it.

Check out these big names who use WordPress:

If you’re planning to put your business online, why not join the big boys and go for a WordPress blog?

If you’d like to learn WordPress start by downloading my tutorial now!

How do people find your blog and when they’ve found it, what makes them read your blog posts?

The answer is in the title or the headline.

Think about it. In the first place, your blog gets indexed by the search engines and blog directories. They classify your blog by what they interpret as its subject matter. What’s the most powerful way to tell the bots what your subject matter is? Why, your title. Bots are not that smart. Give them some valuable clues and the chances are that you’ll get indexed how you want to be indexed.

Then, when you’ve got yourself indexed in the right category, how do they list you in the search results? Why, your title. Now we’re talking about humans, not bots. You need to give your potential human visitors something to tempt them in.  An attention-grabbing title will do the job.

Let’s look at an example.

Say you have a gardening blog and you’re writing about dahlias. You could have the title to your post ‘Another Late Summer Plant’. Yeah, well. Not very specific, is it?

So how about ‘Dahlias – Late Summer Glory In Your Garden’. That’s better. An even better title would be ‘Dahlias – Beat The Slugs And Grow A Winning Dahlia’.  In both cases the title begins with the word that your blog post is about and you’re offering a title that tempts them to read more.

An even better title, at least for humans, is to ask a question. Make it short and snappy and impossible to ignore. ‘Dahlias -  How Do I Keep Snails At Bay And Grow Winning Dahlias?’

Whenever you’re writing a blog post, the title comes first. It’s what grabs your reader’s attention in the first few seconds.  And, if your blog displays other fascinating titles on other posts in your blog, it’s what will keep them there.