How much time spent on your blog?

Hey everyone it’s time for thought sharing! As what every blogger would have ask themselves or other blogging buddies: “How many hours you spent in your blog or a blog post per day or per week?” I must admit that this is a questions with few different of answers, if you search the internet you might got your mind clogged with a lot of suggestions and opinion regarding this matter and the thing is, they are all seems to be making sense, so in this post I too wanted to share my own thoughts in terms of how much time spent on your blog will lead to success?

Who you are?

The question here is not asking your whereabouts instead I am asking you do you consider yourself a full time blogger or part time blogger? Because the answer will sort of determine on how many hours you will need to commit in managing your blog.

A simple logic: full timer will indeed spend more hours and effort in maintaining blog because the need to quickly generate income to survive; Likewise, part-timer blogger spend lesser time duet to their day job. The advantages of being a part time blogger is, they have a fixed income monthly which full time blogger do not have, on the other hand a full time blogger has more freedom in their time to explore more possibilities for their passion, so just determine one has their price folks.

However, the answer of what is the exact amount hours to spend for full or part time blogger is still unclear, this is simply because…

Amount of hours spent do not always equal to amount of quality

Sometimes if you spent your whole day just to do research on something you barely know could be tiring and in the end you seems like as though as you have found nothing, but sometimes even only a short 5 minutes of random search you could finish typing two  paragraph while brushing your teeth (Yes, I exaggerated).

My point here is that there is no such thing as spending long hours doing something will always better than spending short hours. It would be a little bit like love, a couple who has been together longer than other does not mean their relationship is better.

What you need is a PRODUCTIVE HOURS instead, even though you have only a few hours left, you could do more when you focus good enough. Check out the pomorodo technique for one of a way to stay productive, quite amazing if you ask me.

My personal hours spent on a blog post

I usually spent maximum of 4 hours on a blog post as a part time blogger, I will break it down into a list of steps for you guys.

Deciding a content

I will decide a blog content first after looking back some of my previous post, sometimes I plan for the next one after the current one too, I spent around half an hour maximum on this because I will need to look around other posts for ideas.

Research!

Alright after having a basic idea of what I wanted to blog but still lack in information, like everyone, I will search the internet for references and information. This process usually took about half an hour or more because sometimes I have to read the whole pages or just look through briefly.

List out the points and refining it

Making a simple list of the points from what you have researched helps in maintaining the consistency of your content, the list of points also helps in taking a look of your yet elaborate blog as a whole or big idea. This process takes me about 20 minutes.

The finishing touch

Finally I will start and write my blog takes me around 2 to 3 hours to finish it, done some proof reading after I finish writing, and the remaining time is for adding images or video if you have any, then I will hit the “publish” button, that’s all takes me around 4 hours more~

All the content above is what I have been doing for previous posts, that was the technically listing out, but most importantly like I always agree on: ”If you are not having fun, you are doing it wrong”, so have fun blogging guys!

Tips in setting up goals and promises in blogging

Hi there fellow bloggers! How are you guys been doing lately? Have you check out the previous post about every blogger’s fear? Well after you have overcome it, the next step is to have goals or promises to set for yourself along the journey. Why? Because this is one of the ways to make sure you are motivated!

There are a lot of resources found over the internet, no matter for beginners or professionals, they are all focusing on short term and long term goals, so in this post I shall share some of the ones I think suitable for beginners and hopefully also helpful for professionals. Alright let’s go!

Write it all on pieces of paper

Write, write and write

As everyone’s advice sound, personally for me I think it does not have to be a pen and paper method, as long as you have a copy of notepad on your desktop as a reminder for you, you can also print it out if you want and stick it on the corner of your monitor. So write it down what your goals and promises for yourself to achieve, well here is the question:

How do you write it out?

That’s right, of course you could write things like “Be a number 1 blogger in the world” the problem is how and where you going to achieve it? Fear not! Use S.M.A.R.T. technique will help break your big and noble goals into manageable little bits and keep you stay motivated at all times!

Break it down with S.M.A.R.T. technique

“Big things has small beginnings” – Dryden from the movie Lawrence of Arabia

Specific

Be specific, whether to yourself or others, we cannot impress everyone all the time, choose what you think is best for you and others, WHY and WHAT is the purpose of your choice goes a long way if you be firm to what you had set because those 2 questions will leads you to WHO to look for, whether a friend who thinks like you or a blogging friend, either collaborate together and manage a same blog or help each other to a common goal, your friend can be online or offline buddies. Both of you may check each other’s progress from time to time.

Measurable

After you determine what your specifications is, break it down into smaller achievable bits or steps, this is an important way that will breathe life into the big goals you have set and make it real in future. Break goals into pro-active practices, not just written plans that you put in your calendar only and thought you could just do it another day. So to avoid that happen to most of us, break it down as small as possible and do it as a daily basis.

Attainable

I have to admit this, this part is cruel and sometimes you might be questioning yourself if you really up for what’s ahead of you. Dreams and ideas are great to keep us motivate however at the same time ironically we also need to be realistic enough to let go some of it due to time constraint or our capabilities.

Relevant

So after some steps of filtering of whether it is attainable and break it into measurable bits of what you already specified, now you have to ask yourself, was everything relevant to your ULTIMATE vision of what you want your blog to appear? Aha, don’t be late enough to ask yourself this question, you might need to start all over again.

Time

Finally, set a deadline, every start has an end if there are no ends in your dreams, your dreams might just stay as dreams because you do not have the sense of time to rush things or a reason to do things to meet the deadline; that is why we called it a milestone, determine what shall be done and think of the ways to accomplish it.

So guys, make it small so you have the confidence and may use your strength separately every day, remember from the last post, is not about the sprint, is about a long marathon. If I were to force myself to write a book every day, every morning I will be in fear and I won’t even finish a single paragraph within a day due to the stress given to myself, so start small and enjoy doing it.

*ps: if you are not enjoying it, you are doing it wrong.

Every blogger's fear

Hi all, it’s been awhile how have you all been up to? If you started not long time ago, I guess you must be busy managing your blog and doing all the tiring maintenance every day.

At some point, you will wonder whether the process you are having now is slow and by any chance, you are asking yourself whether you should even continue blogging? Everyone agrees that having this mentally dreadful condition, it is hard to make any further process throughout anything, in this case your blogging career.

So in this post allow me to notify you about how most serious and successful bloggers thought about this matter, most of them do encounter this point of their life, so it is normal to feel that way, you just need some basic guideline to pick yourself up again.

So basically the most common issue that demotivate most of the bloggers is:

“This topic is already written by other blogger, now I need to faster think of another topic which no one has ever written before”

What happens is that the world has a lot of random people with random thoughts, there is no topic is never been publish throughout the web, trust me. So what’s next after you had discover that all the topic you could thought of has already been written before?

YOU DON’T LET IT STOP YOU FROM WRITING IT

source from http://www.cardiotrek.ca

Embrace it, put your thoughts out there, in fact, this does not affect your blog from becoming a good content blog, you might get some insight from other bloggers regarding certain aspect too, we feel more ‘alive’ as we collaborate with each other, human being is a social being by the way. As some saying goes, treat it as a marathon instead of a sprint, in order to have a useful and content wise blog, stability, consistency and passion are what’s drives you, not speed or fame.

Remind yourself why you start blogging

Identifying the purpose that once made you start this blog, sometimes distractions may blur up our simple purpose like runs out of topics or you do not have extra spare times to blog. Recall back the feeling that made you start blogging at the first place.

Refer back the posts that you are proud of, post that help people on the web, grab that sense of achievement and start make a boring keyboard interesting again with the your typing rhythm and start making other’s day cheerful by sharing your thoughts out there.

Below are some reasons that I found why some bloggers start blogging.

1) You wanted to share the fun

You are bored of your everyday life and start making jokes for others and to yourself, and then you thought: why don’t you share your fun to a place where friends or stranger will smile if they have a bad day. One of the simplest way to do so is blog about it and share to your social network or tell your friends about it.

2) You wanted to make profit online

This is the main purpose of this blog you are reading, blogging really can make profit under certain effort of course, but I do not have to remind you that this is not a myth, there are real people who make money just by blogging, there is a name for them, full time bloggers, interested? Read my previous post for more informations!

3) You wanted to update your families and friends

This happens more to person who needs to work or study overboard the country, blogging can be an update of your life on where you have been and who are you hanging out with often, it may act as a personal and delightful, non-boring report to those who care. So blogging may tighten your relationship with your love ones, how cool is that!

So guys, as you can see the reason can be as pure as sharing experience or updating to your love ones while making profit under certain circumstances. Therefore I hope this post may set fire to your initial passion once again. Good luck and enjoy blogging!

How many plugin or widgets do you need in your blog?

Hey everyone how are you guys been up to lately? Getting good at blogging already? Well at least I hope you find this blog’s posts useful and getting better than before!

Ok, the previous post we were talking about How many words in a blog post? Be sure to check it out, I’ve stressed about the importance of content and the structure content and focus influence the audience, instead of just the word count.

Well in this post we will be discussing about How many plugins and widgets should you put in your blog? There are some discussions about this topic before, whether it might slower down your site, how desperate do you need this particulars plugins or widgets, was it worth the shot and any other concerns. So I hope I will be able to state some of the questions and answers that I know of course added with my own suggestions.

Alright first of all there are pros and cons of adding plugins and widgets to your blog let list out some of the commons:

Below are the pros of using widgets and plugins:

User engagement

Social subscription widgets will provide user interaction with the blog to even more engaging level! With that said if you have a facebook or twitter account, then you should add these widgets on the right or left side of your blog, those who attracted by your content will want to look and follow you around.

Sharing is caring

Adding a “share” or “tweet” button in every post encourage you readers to share the post they think making sense to their facebook news feed for example; they will share because they agree and they think their friends should know how he or her thinks about certain topics and hopefully agrees with them.

Ad banner space

If your blog is intended to make money through selling online banner ads space, then you should include the widget which allows you to create space for online ads, if you are kind enough, look for widgets which you can show ads to readers based on their interest, I believe there is a widgets for that!

Security wise

There are plugins which are best in giving security for your blog from minor problem such as having spams under the comment section to major problem such as being hack by hackers. In these modern era, we might heard popular blogger’s complaint about blog being hacked or content misused, thus it is wise to setup a plugin for security purpose.

SEO

There are some useful SEO plugin for you to optimize in search engine, it helps in setting up a template for titles and meta descriptions and other features available.

Here are the cons if you did not use these widgets and plugins properly:

Loading time

Why yes, widgets need to load from somewhere in your blog, if you abuse the number of widgets your blog takes longer loading time, same goes to plugins. Pin down what you really need not want, so your blog can save some loading time, folks!

Noise and distractions

Back in the Friendster social website, there is a trend where most of the people likes to add auto play of their favorite music and songs when the page loads, yea I agree it is a small sharing session of music taste ONLY IF your reader share the same taste because it would distract your readers from reading the content in which they came to your blog at the first place, and every time they load a new page they need to stop the music first, your potential readers will came for the content and left because of the distractions. Same goes to too much online banner ads.

Unnecessary pop outs newsletter

I personally think that the act of setting a newsletter or subscribe pop outs itself is acceptable, but having it to pops out for a new comer sends a message as “subscribe this whether you like it or not” because we human needs time to understand the stuffs we like, only then it decide whether to follow or buy, no one likes being force to buy or see something before knowing the product first. For this solutions, if possible only trigger the pop outs when readers view more than 2 or 3 posts would make it more comfortable.

Conclusion

Last but not least, you have to decide what kind of widgets and plugins you need for your blog, align with your blogging persona and the content of your blog, like I mentioned, try to pin down, it is about what not to install and it is always about your visitors’ experience who surf your blog, not yours.

How many words in a blog post?

Hey what is happening guys, it is the mid-week of the March hope you guys are doing well in during the month of hazy days, as usual drink more water. Alright this post is dedicated to readers who questions about how many words should be in a good blog post? This question has been wandering around since the starting of the popularity of the blogging trend and yet there are still people who had question about it due to a lot of factors like “Whether my blog is too long or too short, what if I only use images and video log? “

"Measuring the length of the content"

Not to mention about how search engine’s crawler such as google spider is going to crawl on our post for keywords? Search engine optimization (SEO)? How about user’s engagement perspective? Do I need to focus on user instead of how Google search engine works? Ultimately, is there a secret formula to archive good Google search result?

Well to be honest, there is no definite answer to the number of words length of a blog post or website should be. Therefore the question is not “How many words in a post?” but instead “How well is your content?”

Your content, is always your content

"I am going to express my thoughts through the keyboard!!"

The reason why most people set the standard of “500 words” is because they encourage bloggers or website owners to explain more on your content, increase user’s attention, if better enlighten them or even inspire them.

Detailed explanation on your content drives the interest of your reader and curiosity then hopefully they will keep on reading and emerge themselves into the topic of discussion or the content.

So in this case I would agree with one of Google’s guidelines: “Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.” With this mindset, you only focus on questions such as “Did my post benefits users?”, “How am I going to make my readers understand easily and more?” so on and so forth.

Content structure and your focus

After you have your content, you will need to structure it for your reader to read and absorb it easily or to let reader “scan” through it for a quick grab of ideas of what you are saying. The basic structure of the content is consist of a main title, some subtitles and the explanation (Just like what I am doing now!).

However you may need to follow your blogging persona to really get a structure and focus for your blog post. Different blogging persona has their own way in structuring content. For example if your blog is about photography, then I believe images is your main focus, your blog will be filled with large scalable images and lots of thumbnails, so naturally you will have less content in terms of wording because a picture says a thousand words right?

BUT be sure to fill in the each photo’s TITLE text and ALT text for letting Google’s crawler easily grab the image’s description (in the web the read text not images so yea….).

On the other hand, if your blog is a tutorial type of blog, then you might be having some few images and bullet points as your summary in the end of the blog.

Good content, engaging readers, desirable traffic

Results in happy readers and you~

It is all making sense now right? Although there are some site who claims that great length of words promote pages to the first page of Google search result, yea I do agree that, but I prefer the importance of content that helps people in need or hunger for informations, I am sure that a good content with lesser word count will gain more popularity than a long post with the same word copy and paste to make a good word count. Here is how the world works for me: Help people in need, even though you do not need their help, the internet will be a better place. Peace out.

Boring blog? Use pictures!!

Hi all, how is going with the decision in setting up your blogging persona? I hope you already have some ideas in your mind after this long time. Remember, be comfortable with your decision but not to the point it is you easy way out, else you will not treat it seriously in a long run as time goes by.

Ok, I assume you already had a certain kind of personas in your mind, now this post is about attaching pictures in blog. Human being is a visual creature, even those who did not have the ability to see needs to create a visual object in mind to help in identify and recognizing purpose.

So based on the reason stated above, I think a blog with pictures will help in preventing your readers from getting bore with your every post in your blog, I’m not saying that text alone cannot trigger imagination, I am saying picture can boost up and enhance your reader’s understanding and be interest in continuing reading, furthermore to support my point, there is a saying “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Acknowledge that having pictures in your blog has several benefits such as:

• Pictures can help people absorb and remember the content in your blog easier.
• To act as a resting place for your reader’s eyes.
• To act as a humor or to emphasis a point, using caption will greatly help.

Acknowledging the copyright of the picture

Alright adding picture is easy, BUT IN THE CORRECT WAY, you cannot just grab from google images and use it in your blog, you might got yourself a warning from the owner of the picture depending on the types of cyber law because you might violate some legal issues and intellectual property so it is crucial to understand what you are allow and not allow to do.

We have to thank the Creative Commons or as known as CC, What is CC? Check this out from their website:

“Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.

Our free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work — on conditions of your choice. CC licenses let you easily change your copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”

Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs.” - https://creativecommons.org/

You guys should check other licenses and their different usage via their website above under the “License” navigation button, you will find that there are different license logos you need to obey in order to use certain material.

Places to get photos online

Next I will recommend some photo sites meant for free usage or CC usage, again please use according to the CC license logos requirement if you ever encounter one. Just be sure to read their description carefully and you are good to go.

• flickr.com
• freedigitalphotos.net
• freephotosbank.com
• freemediagoo.com
• morguefile.com
• photorogue.com

Alternative ways

1. Google search

Google image has some extra options in searching images, check it out:

1

2

3

4

There is another more advance search in google which they made a page specialize for the purpose of finding images <link> or pages<link>

However you should verify before reuse the images as google are unable to prove whether it is a legitimate license or not. Read their help page for more information.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/29508?hl=en

2. Ahh cut the trouble, I am going to do it myself!!

After all the information state in this post, some of you might be thinking of using your own pictures or even creating it using image software, it is fine, the value of originality will be added in your post, just make sure your photo taken is clear and be able to explain what you intended in the post.

3. Like it? You may purchase it

Take my money~

If you ever found a picture that really fits in your blog post like no other, you can consider purchasing it online, in fact, paid photos are way pretty and it will same ample of your time, below are some of the image stock websites to look for:

• istockphoto.com
• gettyimages.com
• depositphotos.com
• shutterstock.com
• bigstockphoto.com
• graphicriver.net

I think that’s all for this post, sometimes I do find that searching for images or pictures for every blog post can be time-consuming but because I think that a blog should has at least a picture to be interesting for reader and as a symbol of remembrance, so I think it will be worth of my time and it could be fun when you exploring the options available. So hope this post guide you and good luck!

How domain name will determine your success

Well I was just joking, domain is important but not to the extend that it will decide your success of your blogging life, the content is the king, remember that.

So either self-hosted or subdomain it is part of an important element for a good blog, a suitable domain name for your blog because people will need to remember it and hopefully re-visit it again. Treat it as a brand image of you and your blog. Below are the points I think is important to take in consideration.

Dot com is your top priority

People surf the net long enough using .com, it's intuitive and it's more comfortable, if .com already taken please go for others such as .net or .my for Malaysia is also fine, but first go for .com, why? Maybe one day your blog is targeted international and .com will come in handy. 

Your purpose of blogging

You may start thinking your domain name with the content of your blog, if you blog about exercising, you might think of something related to that and plus your own unique thoughts about exercising, doing so may some added value and will attract people for the same mindset. For example you like exercising but prefer to do workout in home, your domain name might sounds like “homefitness.com”.

Think of some keywords

Keywords related to your beliefs or purpose that you think well representing your whole blog. I recommend it ASAP (As Short As Possible), because you need people to remember your domain name without have the effort to recall it (it is impossible yea but you got the idea), after you have a keyword that is easy to remember then naturally people will be able to type it out easily.

Avoid similarities

If you wanted to have a domain name similar to a big brand, please stop right there, it is confusing and it leave people to have negative thoughts about you such as "trying to cheat your way up to the top traffic" or "run out of names" and "not treating your blog seriously" at worst, they won't even click because it may look and sounds like a scam website.

Using numbers is tricky

I know it is easy to add numbers behind a name to save up your time right? Not as simple as that, if you really need to add in numbers you need to make the number meaning and it match with your domain name for example:

great blog can be g8blog, usually I do not recommend in using numbers but I had seen most China site used full numbers in their domain name, so I would suggest using number as your last resort. 

Just take a leap

Sometimes you need to just thought of few choices and choose one and just go ahead even though you still have doubt with it, Think before you act is correct, just do not think too much. JUMP!!!

Money shall be solution

Well for self-hosted people who wanted a domain name so badly that is already registered by someone, you might thought of buying it from the owner, maybe that is your only solution to let you sleep well every night.

Popular words (at the moment)

No one do this dance again

DO NOT use popular, trendy words for your domain name because no matter how popular certain words it will pass and your domain name will mean nothing if is only just for trend, so avoid yourself from that trap.

Make sure it is legal

After you have your domain name figured out, you must make sure it does not violate people’s copyright, this is an important step because if you happen to violate this, you will be sue and force to change your domain name all over again, so avoid this at all cost, you can check copyright.gov to see whether someone has already own your desire domain name.

In the end it’s just a domain name

After all the tiring, sleepless night and extreme efforts and you cannot get what you wanted, it is best to let it go because you already done the best of yours, in fact you may later change the domain name if you have enough money in future and redirect your old domain name to your new one.

I hope these few tips may help you in completing your guest of naming your blog, exciting journey will start after the naming process and oh I found some website for domain name search and check for availability below, have fun~!

domainr

dom!ze

bust a name

blungr

Shine with your blogging persona!!

Hi guys what’s happening? It is been awhile since New Year and now we are already passed the first half of this month. How is the blog you are passionate to setup going? Are you a self-hosted or using a sub-domain blogger? Have you decided what blogging platform for your blogging journey? Well if you got the answers for the 2 questions as mentioned this post is about to assist you in discovering your own style or persona.

“Why is this important to you?” you asked, well it actually helps you in focusing the content and produce a certain pattern of approaching a topic, by having a persona and applying it, you will attract targeted audience who will like your blog posts faster because people are not going to just read a bunch of text, they love to read text with characteristic and the characteristic is set by you.

I have compiled a list of blogging style or persona below, I hope you can relate as you go through and hopefully discover your writing persona, happy discovering!

A tutor blogger

"Alright the first step to do this....."

A tutor blogger is like a teacher in a specific area of knowledge, these blogger teaches stuffs online for free (mostly)!!! You will need them when you are stuck in let say, “How to not messed up during a date?” try do a quick search in google and they will be there for you.

Basically there are the “How-to” type of people ranging from professional to normal who thought what they learnt may be useful to someone like us somewhere and anytime. So if you have experience something with solutions and wanted to share, you might be one of this type of persona.

A reviewer blogger

"Hmm... ratings, ratings and ratings"

These blogger are mostly an early adopter in any industry, games, movies, food, gadgets etc. they tried the product and examined it in detail, come out with pros and cons, report, and ratings as well depending the individual approach.

You can easily find them to know something new in market, if you search a movie in youtube, you might stumble upon some suggestion video of a movie reviewer. They might also be very specific in certain genre in a category, some blogger only review action movies and some only review horror movies.

An opinion blogger

"In my humble opinion, I think that....."

An opinion blogger is a type of blogger who target certain topics with their opinions back with true facts, a good opinion blogger will attract a lot of readers online because opinion blog posts represent readers’ voice, reader follow them to get insight of the opinion and they discuss their opinion below the comment, a 2 ways communication, provide more interactivities than a single read and receive state.

Have an opinion to tell and looking for people to discuss it? You are obviously an opinion blogger.

A reporter blogger

"Bring you guys the latest news of all times"

A reporter blogger reports a current trends or a current news in their post, it might be local or international news or trends, topic can range from political to entertainment genre, basically they serves as a readers’ personal news reporter, any update will be inform as soon as possible to their readers.

If you like to provide the latest gossip, topics, news or even pop songs to keep your readers up to date, you may fit in to this persona.

A professional blogger

Normally pros do not have faces..... Because they are pros that's why

They also known as a niche blogger who write blogs about a niche market (product aimed at satisfying specific market needs). A professional blogger’s ultimate goal is to make money with blogging, not to say the example above do not have the potential to make money but it is the professional blogger’s intention at the first place, they meant to sell certain products to readers.

Often companies will hire them for product launching and they will come out a blog about it for their readers, more like a reviewer but their focus is to sell the product, their blog will have advertisements or pay-per-click banners. If you wanted to be a full time blogger, this will be your direction.

A hobby or personal blogger

"Today I met a friendly friend who avoids me"

They often treat their blog like a diary of their life, what they encountered, when they slept, where they went, how they learn certain skills, most blogger start off as one and then time will tell whether they are one of the above persona, of course some will still stay to be a hobby or personal blogger as well.

If you like to keep things simple and write blogs as your online live journal you will be fitting in this category.

Finally

I hope this post gives you a basic idea of what you are heading, you may start off as a hobby blogger, tryout some of the persona mentioned and then see which one you prefer the most and keep it consistent, but ultimately no matter which type of persona you are, the key to success in attract your reader (or become famous!) is your content quality, so good luck and see you guys next post!

What blogging platform to consider?

Happy new year my fellow followers, for the most of us, it is a brand new year for a brand new start! Let's recap my previous post, in my previous post, we talked about the differences and the benefits between a sub-domain blog and a self-hosted domain blog, for those who don't know about it, I suggest you guys have a look.

So the first and foremost for a beginner in blogging is to ask yourself, what type of blog you wish to have? Micro-blogging? Video-blogging? Journal-blogging? For business or start as individual first and then only switch to business?

Trust me it can be hard to choose at first because there are a lot of choices and advice from friends, but once you set off and the flow will keep on coming. I will start this post by listing some blogging services from free services to paid services with some short-descriptions. (If I miss out your favorite blogging platform, please let me know too!)

WordPress

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform and it’s free, WordPress is built not just a blogging tool but also a content management system (CMS), CMS is a type of program for easily publish and edit the content, it is more user-friendly, you did not need to know coding to manage the content (cool stuffs).

wordpress.org

wordpress.com

There are 2 types of WordPress, WordPress.com and WordPress.org, WordPress.com is for free, it is a subdomain type so there are some limitation, on the other hand the WordPress.org is for self-hosted user, you download, install and you can make your own desirable content.

Blogger

blogger.com

Owned by Google Company, there is huge changes since 2010, the blogger before that is a little bit hard to navigate, after its big changes their amount of users is increasing due to added functionalities like Google analytics and had added a lot of languages and it’s free as well. (P/S: This is a blogger platform if you do not know....)

Tumblr

tumblr.com

Tumblr is free and a micro-blogging site platform owned by Yahoo Company. Micro-blogging means posting small amount of content in multimedia such as video links, images, and short sentences. Great for posting content on the go with mobile phone.

Drupal

drupal.org

Drupal is more than a blogging platform, it offers simple websites, an internet forum or a community website for user-generated content. It is a free blogging platform.

Open Diary

opendiary.com

Open Diary is free and is more on writing if compare to other blogging platforms, the web layout is not that attractive and the user-interface is quite ‘unusual’ for me

Squarespace

squarespace.com

This is a paid blog service, as a paid services, it includes user-friendly customization without any coding experience at all, just drag-and-drop and mostly a responsive web templates. It is more on a business blogging type, oh and it also provide hosting services.

Ning

ning.com

Ning is a paid service, it owned by Glam Media, Ning is suitable for people who really wanted to build their own community through web. It promised to let you control how your blog will be with no limitation.

Ghost

ghost.org

This is a paid service as well, this blog service is a newly started project, and it is a Nonprofit Organization. They made their blog service fully just for blogging purpose, nothing much.

So there you are, some list of blogging platform I searched through the web, some stop their services such as Posterous, Xanga and Bebo remain in the process of revamping their whole services. Despites all the blogging services available here, there are stuff you need to consider:

Posting images and videos – you should be able to post images and videos in your blog, if you want your blog to look good, you should be sure that the blogging platform allows you to do so. (Do not worry, most blogging platform allows images and videos posting, but double check to make sure.)

Service update – A good blogging platform will have updates for their services, be it a plugin update, theme update or back end system update, why? This is to ensure your blog runs the latest web engine and spam blocking.

Design – People likes nice looking blog, well at least a blog which has good layout and comfort when reading it, so it is important for a blogging platform to have several design theme for you to choose based on your intention, fashion, food, etc. each of them has a look and feel.

Online Advertisement – Does the blogging platform provide a space for advertisement for you to make some money? Find that out.

Mobile – Does this blogging platform allow you to publish and edit the content via mobile phone? Sometimes you might need it on the go, so it is good to have it too.

Domains – Does the blogging platform allows you to change the name of your blog URL or URL redirection? If you start with a paid self-hosted domain then it will not have a problem, what if you start off as a sub-domain and then interest in changing it to a paid domain? If a blogging platform cannot change the URL you will be stuck with the sub-domain name forever.

Technical knowledge – Some blogging platforms require little or more coding and technical knowledge, so you have to make sure whether it needs you to learn or not, if yes will it be difficult?

Phew, so I think that’s about all for the basic stuffs that needs to be consider, (there are still a lot of guide on the web you can find though) remember the final decision should be made by you and your likings, I suggest to sign up for a trial for some few posts and take time to play around the settings provided first only you decide. So until then see you in next post for the beginner guides.