Choosing a Topic

I'd like to say I've read a lot of articles about choosing a topic for your blog. In truth, I've only read several. Maybe it's a coincidence that the articles I found all seem to say the same thing - don't pick a topic you think will make you a lot of money, choose one that you are passionate about.

I really do understand the point that's trying to be made, but blog topics have been flying through my head at the speed of thought lately and there are some that I've had to scrap because of time/money.

We all know that time=money. We all want more money for our time. In fact we'd prefer not to have to spend time making money. The less time and energy it takes me to make more money - the better. Listen to me! I sound almost obsessed - like Scrooge McDuck. (Very unlike me, I assure you.) Here is my reasoning:

• Time spent working takes away from time with family.
• Time at the office is time away from home.
• Salaries usually have upper limits.
• Working for someone else is stressful.

None of these contribute to the health of my family.

So when I'm considering topics for potential blogs time and money are key factors. Example - I have an interest in Ancient Civilizations. The Egyptians, the Mayans - I've even travelled to a several ancient ruins. But my historical knowledge of these civilizations is limited and it would require a great deal of time and effort to research and write articles on them.

Another consideration is how big the target audience is. Go to Google Trends and compare Egypt, Ancient Civilization, Pyramid and Golf.

How saturated is the market? Google Paris Hilton and Google will show you:

Results 1 - 10 of about 60,200,000 for paris hilton.

I don't know a ton about search engine ranking yet, but I'm pretty sure it takes awhile to climb that ladder.

So what have I figured out - other than don't believe every blog you read?

1. Choose a topic for which you can generate content quickly and easily.
2. Choose a topic that lots of people are interested in.
3. Choose a topic that hasn't been over saturated.
4. If you can find one, choose a topic that other bloggers have overlooked.

Multiple Revenue Streams

Something I keep reading about really makes sense to me. Multiple revenue streams. Maybe this blog will only generate a trickle of revenue. But if I create 10 blogs and they all generate a trickle of revenue it will start to add up.

Take a look at 451 Press. They must have hundreds of blogs listed - all funnelling revenue into the parent company. Of course they have the luxury of additional staff - but that doesn't mean I can't follow such a model on a smaller scale.

The other advantage to diversifying my revenue generation strategy with multiple blogs is that I will see which topics thrive with little or no effort and which ones struggle no matter how much time I put into them.

I've already launched my second blog and it's almost no work to maintain. I'll let you know where to find it soon.

Learning to Blog

Learning to blog is so easy anyone can do it. But learning to blog successfully is more of a challenge. I don't have any quams about blogging for money. If I can make money doing something I love that gives me the freedom to spend more time at home with my family it would be a sensational personal achievment.

However, I do detest the amount of misleading clutter that plagues the Internet. I will not stoop to misleading readers in order to make a buck off them.

That being said, what I've learned today is to look at those that have gone before me. I'm not the first person to write a blog and I'm not the first person to try and make a living at it. I have ideas, but why not look at some success stories and learn what has worked for them?

So far I've found two "How to Blog" sites that I find genuinely useful. Have a look for yourself.

www.stevepavlina.com
www.problogger.net

My Site is Google Indexed

Today as I was looking at Google Webmaster Tools, I noticed both my BBQ site and this Blog have been added to the Google index. Google's Webmaster Tools report that the sites were successfully accessed by Googlebot on July 2, 2007. Today is the 22nd.

There seems to be a delay. July 2nd is the day after my first post. That makes sense. But has Googlebot checked my site since? If Google indexed my site on the 2nd, why did it take so long for it to show up in Google Webmaster Tools?

WordPress vs Blogger

Should I use WordPress or Blogger?

Everybody has their own reasons for choosing one platform over another. I need a free host for my blog that allows advertising. WordPress didn't meet my needs. They gave me a free Blog but they don't allow advertising (as far as I know) with their free blogs. I was already frustrated after my first hour using WordPress anyways. Blogger's user interface is much more intuitive.

I decided to try WordPress to see if I liked it better. Part of the reason I chose it was for it's ability to include YouTube videos in my blogs. Now I have learned that this is easy to do with Blogger too.

To include a YouTube video in you Blog using Blogger:

1. Find the video you want to include on YouTube.
2. To the right of the video is a field named "Embed"
3. Copy everything from the embed field and paste it into your blog editor. (You don't need to be in HTML mode, you can paste it right into the standard editor.)

If you get it right you should see something like this - one of my favourites.



Now that I've learned how to include YouTube videos using Blogger I can launch my next experiment. A video blog without the need for me to record the video. Stay tuned.

My First Take on WordPress

So I have extra time while I'm waiting to see results from my efforts to attract visitors to this blog. One of the suggestions I came across early on was to diversify. It doesn't take a ton of time each day to update a blog. At least not yet. I decided to try something totally different - but before I get into what - I decided to try WordPress.

WordPress.com was easy to sign up for and gave me a free blog. I wanted to post videos as part of my new blog and WordPress lets me do that. (I'm not sure if I can do that on Blogger - I haven't tried yet.) It was easy to post my first message and it was easy to include a video from YouTube. However I find the user interface for managing and customizing my blog to be substantially less intuitive than Blogger. Maybe I will learn the interface and there will be extra features making it worth the extra effort - but so far I can't seem to add the necessary tracking code so I can analyze the site using Google Analytics. Maybe it's the learning curve, but it was really easy for me to figure it out with Blogger.

Can I use AdSense with WordPress? I still haven't figured that out. There must be a way, but again - it was really easy to figure out with Blogger.

Last beef. When I try to open my WordPress blog it seems really slow to load. Was it a fluke? Or does it make sense that WordPress doesn't have the infrastructure to provide as fast a loading time as Blogger?

I will tough it out with WordPress for a little longer but I'm already leaning towards learning how to post a video using Blogger.

FeedBurner

So I'm kind of excited about the small jump in visitors after listing my Blog with some directories. I plan to submit it to some more - in fact I was just about to. Then I came across FeedBurner. It's a perfect example of a technology that I don't understand, but it seems popular and widely used. What does it do? I don't know. I'll figure it out on the way. I signed up. It seems to have a lot of tools for optimizing and publicizing your feed. What's a feed? I'm not sure. But apparently I have one now. I'm not sure when I got it. But I think you're reading it.

Be patient. More to come. Before long I should be able to publish more useful information like what is working for me, how to best take advantage of some of the available tools and how to set up a blog in as little time as possible. Remember - I have a goal. I want to start generating income. My first nickel will be a huge milestone.