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The undersigned

How did you get into blogging?

27/09-2006 | 14:09
54 comments

My history of blogging isn’t really anything to brag about - I have had several blogs on danish since 1998, powered by anything from my own small php projects to WordPress etc. where I was blogging on/off.

For all my previous blogs, it was the same situation - I started it, with no goals but to write a little about myself and my daily life. I always ended with giving up and closing them down, because I didn’t take the time to do something about it - I was annoyed that no-one commented, annoyed over close-to-none traffic, and it was hard to find anything to blog about.

Tyme White have published a post, “Be honest, how good are your entries?”, which basically explains how I ran my blogs.

Summary

  • Several blogs
  • No goals for the blogs
  • No topics for the blogs
  • No patience
  • Blogged in danish

Let’s continue

In December 2005 I decided to give my freelancing more space, and came up with a name for my freelance company, “Undertegnede”. I launched a website with a blog, and suddently I found out, that it wasn’t near as hard to blog there, than on my previous blogs. Why? - Because my blog suddently had multiple topics besides my daily life, e.g graphic design, web design and WordPress - all things related to what I do freelance.

I suddently felt that my blog gave more meaning - I would expand my audience and get more clients for my freelance company - english. I made a redesign, translated “Undertegnede” to english (The undersigned), and launched at this domain in January, 2006.

Suddently goals for the blog popped out of nowhere as well: bigger audience, more traffic, develop my english skills, get more clients, become accepted as a blogger in the world wide community etc.

Summary

  • One blog
  • A lot of goals
  • Several topics
  • Bigger audience
  • Better motivation

So where are you going with all this?

I read the blog post of Tyme White, and it made me think about how I started blogging and how I am currently blogging. How did I end up where I am, and what will the future bring?

Some time ago I wrote an article, “How do I start blogging?”, where I made a list of advice for people who want a better start. I want to mention it again - if you don’t care about traffic, comments etc. it is just fine that you launch a personal blog and give the URL to friends and family. But if you want your audience to grow and care about traffic and comments, you really need to take a break, relax and think about it: “What are the goals?”, “What topic should the blog be about?”, “How do I network with other bloggers?” etc.

I encourage you to read the article which talks about this:

  1. Why do you want to start blogging?
  2. Is your blog going to be topic-specific?
  3. Get a network established
  4. Write content
  5. Prepare your blog install for the search engines
  6. How is your blog gonna look?
  7. Statistics
  8. Feeds and ping services
  9. Ready to launch?

To “prove” that this is right, let us compare the two summaries of this article.

Before thinking

  • Several blogs
  • No goals for the blogs
  • No topics for the blogs
  • No patience
  • Blogged in danish

After thinking

  • One blog
  • A lot of goals
  • Several topics
  • Bigger audience
  • Better motivation

How did you start blogging?

If you think that I am totally wrong, please tell - especially if you launched a blog yourself, without thinking closer about content, network etc. prior to the launch. If you agree, you are more than welcome to tell, and I hope that you will write about your own history of blogging, and if you have other things to point out.

54 comments

TechZ Says:

I started blogging simply because I wanted to say stuff and needed a place to. Viper007Bond told me about WP and got me started with it, since then I have worked pretty hard to keep the blog going. I think the One Blog + bigger audience approach works, but ideally I would like to have multiple sub-blogs with each having its own target audience.

27/09-2006 | 16:49

The undersigned Says:

Did you consider what you wanted to write about before you launched etc. or did you simply just begin and see what happened along the way?

Multiple blogs isn’t a bad idea, but it really depends if you have motivation enough imho - and it might also be necessary if you want to blog about non-related topics.

27/09-2006 | 17:15

Dave Says:

I got started blogging the same way. I just wanted a place to put things and thought the internet would be a good place to do it. As I’ve grown, so has the blog which now includes topics like music and photography among other things. I have tried to break it up into sub-blogs for each topic but there is never enough content to go around.

27/09-2006 | 17:18

Andrew Faulkner Says:

I was emailing someone and mispelled the word ‘fantastic.’ I spelt ‘fadtastic.’

The name seemed to have potential and ideas filled my head. Web trends/multiple authors/community feel.

A year and a bit on and I have http://fadtastic.net/ :D Never looked back.

27/09-2006 | 17:36

Josh Says:

I got started like most people: I wanted a place to record daily stuff / thoughts, so I made a blog at Blogger.com. I quickly got tired of the slowness of the service, so I got my own hosting and set up WordPress.

I blogged for about a year and a half, taking it far too seriously. As I mentioned in the comments at Lorelle’s blog, I was passionate about traffic and blog stats, and not passionate about my writing / blogging.

I got burnt out on the blog and killed it. I just recently started over from scratch with System 13. This time around, I’m not really paying much attention to the stats. Instead, I’m just really trying to write / blog better, and enjoy the experience. If people come to my blog and enjoy it, that’s great. If people don’t come, well, I’ve still had the experience of learning to write better and of expanding my thoughts and ideas into something a little more concrete.

27/09-2006 | 18:14

Thilak Says:

Even I started out the sameway. I saw my friends Wordpress Blog, I was impressed. I started playing with wordpress.. Finally I got myself a into wordpress ;)

27/09-2006 | 18:24

CK Says:

I originally started with LiveJournal merely as another friend was doing it. Then i discovered Wordpress and never looked back. It has undergone a massive amount of change over the year as i’m never happy with any particular design, modified or otherwise.

It was also intended to be a photoblog. The lack of a good camera quickly put an end to that conception. Instead it now sits between geekish excitement at new gadgets, and articles on current affairs (what with me working in Social Services and all).

the main problem with Wordpress, i feel, is a lack of social network. This is why places such as 9rules are such a good idea - especially the new Notes function. Heck, if it weren’t for that, i’d never have found this place.

__
CK

27/09-2006 | 19:03

The undersigned Says:

I am very happy with all the comments :)

It seems that most of you found a blogging tool and started using it - then took things as they came. Is that true?

If I ask more directly, did any of you plan your blog and its launch, before you launched it? Wrote content, found blogging topics, thought about networking etc? If not, would you wish you had taken the time too?

Josh: I really like your point of view - focusing on the content! I am a “stat-whore” myself - I do care about the traffic etc., but I don’t let me knock out of it. Actually I think that people who focus more on traffic than content, get less vistors than people who focus on content prior to stats - after all the content is what makes people stick around.

27/09-2006 | 19:20

J Phill Says:

I started because I had a friend that blogged on some blog site, and I loved reading what he wrote, but I wanted to write things to respond to him. So for the past [almost] two years I’ve had a personal blog. And just this year I started a design blog because I read so much about it that I had my own thoughts that I wanted to get out. I love blogging now, and am about to start a third blog very shortly focusing on what me and a few guys go through in trying to start a design company.

27/09-2006 | 19:23

Dave Says:

I didn’t plan anything. I just set up an account through blogger and started going at it. It was, and still is for the most part, a hobby. If something ever comes of it then so be it but if it just stays as it is at least I had fun with it.

27/09-2006 | 19:48

Damien Says:

I started blogging about a year or so back when I found it a good place to air your thoughts and ideas and share stuff with people…a year on I’m still enjoying it.

27/09-2006 | 19:57

Andrew Faulkner Says:

undersigned,

I did have a plan of some sorts, yes. I knew I wanted to have more than one author and also to write about web design trends. Trends never go out of fashion, you see.

27/09-2006 | 20:37

CK Says:

The current Wordpress one was specifically planned as an off-shoot for my views on public services and domestic policy. However, with my job becoming more involved AND studying a degree yet again, there’s often either little time, or my brain is very much overloaded with the subject matter as it is.

Thusly, there’s quite a few smaller, more fun (to me) entries.

27/09-2006 | 20:50

Josh Says:

Undersigned:

No, I didn’t have any plan whatsoever. I made an account and just took things as they came.

In regards to my point of view, thanks. Granted, I still look at my stats, because I’m curious to how many people are coming by, what they’re reading the most, etc. But, like you, I don’t let it get to me anymore. Before I’d get frustrated if my traffic went down or whatever. Ironically, many times I’d get frustrated, and stop posting, which just made my traffic go down even more.

So now, I blog regardless. I figure with that mindset people will come. Kind of like that quote: “If you build it, they will come.”

27/09-2006 | 21:31

The undersigned Says:

I think that if the purpose with having a blog, is to run it as a personal blog, a “public diary”, further planning before launching might not be necessary, but if the purpose is to write content on specific topics to a specific audience, planning and networking is a must.

If the blog have specific topics for a specific audience, such as “webdesign”, “food”, “cars”, blogging ain’t just fun, but hard work. There is a lot of blogs on almost every thinkable topic, so it’s a fight to be accepted among the already existing blogs - this can be fun, but also tough - and that is why I believe that planning is a must.

Personal blogs doesn’t have the same war to fight, their audience isn’t as specific as the topic-based blogs. It is for the fun of it.

Am I right/wrong?

28/09-2006 | 10:54

Josh Says:

Undersigned:

I think you’re mostly right in that to start a personal blog, a public diary of thoughts and opinions, you don’t really need a ‘plan’. Like many of us have done, all you need to do is make an account at Blogger, Wordpress, etc., and start blogging.

On the other hand, even with just a personal blog, to be successful really depends on what your goals are. You can’t really be successful with anything unless you have a goal, just like you pointed out in your entry. If the person’s goal is to simply put their thoughts, ideas, and opinions on the web, the simple act of blogging fulfills that goal. If they want other people to *read* what they’re writing and to respond, then that requires thinking and planning, just like a ‘niche’ blog. Not exactly the same *line* of thinking, but it does require some thinking and planning. In other words, I’m in basically full agreement with your post.

I think having a successful personal blog can sometimes be more difficult than having a successful ‘niche’ blog, depending on your goals. If you’re wanting to just get your thoughts out there, even if no one reads them, is easy. But structuring your blog, writing, etc. to attract readers, when your topics are all over the place, is an interesting problem. I don’t think niche blogs really face this problem. They’re blogging about one narrow topic, attracting a very specific audience.

Just my 2 cents (or 2 dollars, as the case may be!)

28/09-2006 | 18:01

.:: Chinnu-mari ::. » So it works Says:

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29/09-2006 | 2:53

Adrian Says:

After installing and testing NUMEROUS blogs, I went with Simple PHP Blog. SimplePHP Blog was indeed simple and easy to use, but after a LOT of customizing and rewriting code, it simply didn’t feel right.

So I tried WordPress. Easy user customization with minimal PHP knowledge required. Also an easy to use Control Panel and plenty of plugins and themes available. Great! How much more easier and customizable could it be? I now felt like blogging! So, www.adrianherritt.com was born.

31/10-2006 | 4:54

Adrian Hoe Says:

The Undersigned,

I used your Water theme and I love it so much and I give it some face lift. Can I publish the modified version of Water theme?

Well, I started blogging using my own PHP script sometime in May this year. It was just a simple script that updates to MySQL. After awhile, I felt tire of the script. It did not have many features and to do things, sometimes I would need to do them manually. I tried out blogger and I quite like it. So, I moved my karate blog to blogger (http://adrianhoekarate.blogspot.com/). It was my klog (Karate bLOG) talking about karate. On the same day, I started my tech blog (http://adrianhoetech.blogspot.com), basically blogging about technology, software, my experience, and etc. Then I planned to have blog in Chinese (http://adrianhoecn.blogspot.com) and blog about Malacca (http://malaccasblog.blogspot.com), the place where I was born and live. I got some traffic at my sites. And lastly, I created my photography blog (http://adrianhoephoto.blogspot.com).

Later this October, while I was having medical leave at home (does not make any difference because I am working from my home office), I was thinking about WordPress which was introduced by a friend. I got somehow tempted and I installed it at my business site (http://adrianhoe.com). I planned my contents on this site about business blogging). I love WP so much. It is quick and responsive compared to blogger. It is on my server!

12 days later, I was tempted to migrate all my other blogs to the new platform. I planned the blog categories so that I could move all my other blogs into one. Next I need a white theme and I found your Water theme. I love it but I need to modify it to my taste. So I did it. Installed (at http://adrianhoe.com/adrianhoe or can be redirected from http://adrianhoe.net) and imported from blogger one at a time and categorized every posts. Then I modified your Water theme. Next, I claimed my blog at technorati and attracted some traffic to my blogs.

Before migration and merge, I had:
1.) Karate blog
2.) Chinese blog
3.) Tech and everything else blog
4.) Photography blog
5.) Malacca blog

and was quite difficult to maintain 5 blogs! After the moving to new blogging platform and merged all of them into one, I can maintain it easily and more organized.

03/11-2006 | 6:33

Arp Says:

I’ve had intentions to blog for quite awhile, most centered around an interest in electronic music. I dabbled with Greymatter and Textpattern, but neither was terribly user-friendly. And, like you, I didn’t have any distinct goals for blogging. Consequently for me, I didn’t have much to say. I’ve since tried ModX and Joomla, which are great for some things but not as blogging-friendly as Wordpress, which I’ve used for about 1 1/2 weeks now. I, along with my wife, also have one blog with the main focus being parenting, though I’ll probably blog about Wordpress and other stuff about blogging as well.

19/11-2006 | 19:35

Herb Says:

I’ve been into reading blogs for three years, but I spend so much time reading everyone else’s articles, I never get around to starting one myself!

19/01-2007 | 18:34

Bisou Says:

I’m blogging since 2 years now and its a great feeling. Im feeling free, when i post my opinion and willing.

08/03-2007 | 20:21

Liara Covert Says:

I like the variety of explanations presented in the above posts. It’s true some people start a blog based more on instinct and a desire to get words down than because they have a particular goal in mind. Words may seem to have minds of their own in the sense that when you read them back to yourself, you may discover a common thread or over-riding theme you hadn’t thought about before. Although it may seem that you fall into a purpose for your writing, you are actually taking steps to bring to conscious awareness what you already know and seek to accomplish. It simply takes time to listen to yourself. When your inner self takes over, at least you begin to write something. You may think you’re sorting certin things out or getting emotions off yoru chest, yet, there’s more to it than you initially think.

31/03-2007 | 0:11

arabalar Says:

very thanks

24/04-2007 | 22:35

link Says:

l love blog pages

24/04-2007 | 22:36

delinetciler Says:

I was emailing someone and mispelled the word ‘fantastic.’ I spelt ‘fadtastic.’

The name seemed to have potential and ideas filled my head. Web trends/multiple authors/community feel.

25/04-2007 | 16:43

Jason Says:

I started blogging to give my perspective on technology, seo and affiliate marketing. I found it also helps answer the question “What do you do?”

09/05-2007 | 5:20

Jimmy Says:

I started blogging when blogger.com first came available, before I was using Frontpage to make my own page. But didn’t really switch until 2003/2004 when more functions were possible instead of just boring text.

10/05-2007 | 17:47

Marc Says:

I started blogging about 2 years ago. My blog posts have been scattered over several topics just as you suggest will happen if you don’t map out a plan for your blogs. I’m slowly trying to get my act together by at least concentrating on select topics such as life, hacks, productivity, and tech.

Anyways, thanks for the inspiration. I love your blog. ;-)

14/05-2007 | 13:54

Web Hosting Review Says:

im still very new to blogs, however im finding it a very powerful tool

21/05-2007 | 3:07

Matt Keegan Says:

Blogging came along as a natural extension of what I do: write. Since it is easier to upload articles via WordPress, doing so via a blog made perfect sense to me. The same quality I put into writing articles shows up on my blogs.

28/05-2007 | 23:29

Popstars Says:

Opening a new blog is like a christmas present - very interesting and exiting for some days, boring after some weeks :)

14/06-2007 | 10:37

Popstars Says:

Its an easy way to show your interessest for the rest of the world and its easy so handle.

07/07-2007 | 12:29

resimler Says:

l love blog pages thanks

14/07-2007 | 22:56

bebek resimleri Says:

blog is good but i haven’t blog page”

14/07-2007 | 22:58

DigitalBoutiques Says:

know i will use a WP but i dont know how can i install a wp

14/07-2007 | 23:01

Directory Says:

thanks its good

14/07-2007 | 23:06

Saturn Wheels Says:

I’m just a new blogger I started blogging just this year 2007. Not because I’m really into it but because my work is somehow related to it so I just thought why not go and start my own site.

09/08-2007 | 8:51

spanish Says:

I read an article about it, thought it sounded interesting so had a go… it all went from there really i suppose!

15/08-2007 | 17:53

BlogOxide Says:

Though spent some one year and so blogging, started just to expand the readership, and now doing professionally, in fact learning to become a professional blogger.

07/09-2007 | 3:16

Oyun Says:

Anyways, thanks for the inspiration. I love your blog. ;-)

07/09-2007 | 16:21

Bali Real Estate Says:

good info..thanks

16/09-2007 | 1:01

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16/09-2007 | 1:03

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16/09-2007 | 1:04

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I came to this blog by luck i was searching for one blog and in the last i found my self here.

17/09-2007 | 23:05

Outsourcing to India Says:

i came into blogging because i like to write new articles for technical topics and related to my sites. and main benefit of blogging is your dont have to take care of coding hosting and domaining if you are using free blog services. really nice thing.

25/09-2007 | 10:59

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05/10-2007 | 19:12

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19/10-2007 | 6:19

Matt Says:

I started by reading other blogs and deciding I have got something to say as well.

18/11-2007 | 11:50

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