Blog creation Process Overview

This is a posts that summarizes the entire process to create a professional blog, many successful bloggers use this same technique. This is going to give you a clear idea about how your blog should be developed. My advice about this post is: “Always stick to your schedule.”

Step 1

The brainstorm. Sit down in a comfortable place of your house and start thinking ideas for your new blog, writte them down, all of them. No matter how crazy it might sound. I recommend you to research a little to know which topics are the best and which ones are the most profitable ones.

Step 2

Decide which tools you are going to use to edit and manage your blog. If you haven´t alredy. There are many good options out there choose the one that best fits your needs, here in Blogger Lounge you can find information about software and tools for blogs.

Step 3

Now decide what blogging platform your blog will use, you can choose between Blogger, WordPress and Movable Type, each one of them offers different features but all of them are very useful. After you decide which service you are going to use sign up for an account and select a good title for your blog.

Step 4

The following step is design, choose the design the best fits your needs, some platforms like Blogger and WordPress have very good looking templates you can also search for more using Google, just search for something like: “ Free Blogger Templates” or “WordPress Themes” there are hundreds of free designs, remember that a good blog design has to fill some requirements. This step also includes the design of logo and some graphic elements.

Step 5

At this point you already have your account, all the tools you are going to use and your template, now what? Well now it´s a good time to start writing content for your blog, but, why do you have to write content before you set up your blog? Because in order to start getting visitors and readers you need something to catch their attention, no one is going to visit your blog if you don´t have something to show. So write between 4 or 5 high quality posts about the hottest thing of the moment and you´ll be getting more and more visits each time you posts something new.

Step 6

Ok, now it seems that you have everything ready. At this point you can start building your blog, add all elements together, upload your images and your first entries. It is time to promote your blog, start submitting your blog´s URL to each directory you find and to the major search engines, posts comments on other blogs and invite readers to visit your own site.

Step 7

Now your everything should be working just fine. Your blog is ready and running, maintain it and make it grow, post frequently and take care of your readers, enjoy your new baby and watch him grow!

What is a Blogger?

A few years ago I couldn´t possibly imagine that I was going to become a blogger as a matter of fact I didn´t know what that means. I remember that the first time I heard the word blogger was in 2003 while reading an article, Anyway, let me give you a brief description about what a blogger is, but first here are some definitions from experts.

Radio Docs says: “A blogger is someone (anyone) who posts to their own weblog” simple, right?

Technorati says: “A blogger is someone who writes a blog.” Another simple explanation.

Smart-Shop says: “A blogger is an individual who maintains a web log […]There are some bloggers who write for themselves. But there are millions of others who want their writings to be noticed, and commented upon. It is this passion that makes blogging such an exciting and obsessive activity.”

Now comes my own definition, I define a blogger as a person who creates and shares information (posts) with others through a blog about a particular subject, a blogger is not just a profession it is a way of life. That´s all I have to say about what a blogger is. Share your own definition with us.

How to Choose a Profitable Name for your Blog

Choosing a domain name for your blog is a very important and tough decision, and should not be taken lightly. A bad choice of name could seriously affect the potential profitability of your online business, and prevent it achieving as much success as it should do.

There are many factors you should consider when selecting a domain name for your blog, as you can see many successful blogs have simple and direct names, if your blog is about cars then you need a name that reflects that, you don’t need something like. www.myblog123.blogspot.com, remember that simple and direct names are more successful and profitable.

First of all , you should try and include your main keyword in your name ans see if the domain is available. This will keep your site optimized for the search engine rankings, because search engines generally rank websites and blogs slightly higher if they include their main keyword in their domain name.

Ideally it should be relatively short and easy to remember. Try to keep them as short and as memorable as possible. If the name you are looking for is not available any more you can add a dash between your keywords. If you cant find a good name using the .com suffix you can also choose one like .net. A good name is essential if you want to make a successful blog.

How to Hide the Blogger Navbar

Ok bloggers, lets say you have a Blogger blog and you already have some published posts you have a descent number of readers but, your blog still looks like, well, like a “Blogger Blog”! why? because it still has what it is called the Navbar, you know, the one that has 50 pixels high and spreads across the entire width of the browser window, the one that has a search field and all that stuff. Well let me give you a tip to remove or just to hide that annoying thing.

They allow you to change the color of the navbar to match the design of your blog, but that doesn´t solve the problem, your blog is still marked as a “Blogger Blog”. Blogger has to mark all blogs that are powered by them but I think it is enough if you have a button that links to them or something like “Powered by Blogger”. Follow this simple steps to successfully remove the navbar. With this technique your blog is going to look more professional.

1. First of all go to your blog´s control panel.

2. Go to the “Template” section and save template changes.

3. Now copy and paste the following code in your template as it is shown here.

<style type=”text/css”>

#b-navbar {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none
}

</style>4. Now save Template changes and republish.

This simple code should solve the problem ,if you did it well you might notice that now you have a gap between the header of your blog and the top of the page, if that´s the case let me give you a solution for that.

Insert the  code in your Blogger template as it is shown just after the “body” tag , save changes and republish.

body
{
margin-top:0px;
}

Now you should have a professional looking blog without the annoying navbar.

Email Subscription Services

Everyone owns an email account, then ,why not promote your blog via email? This will help you to increase the number of subscribers of your blog and will also allow you to deliver a newsletter to each subscriber. This tools enable you to send your readers a daily, weekly or monthly summary of your latest posts right into your visitor´s inbox.

Email subscription is very important for blogs because this will also increase the loyalty of your readers that will be waiting for the next update of your blog. These tools enables you to manage you email subscribers and to design your own newsletter to match your blog´s design. Another advantage of this applications is that you will be able to schedule your newsletter for a certain day, week or month. Here is a list of some free and useful email subscription services. Enjoy them.

Zookoda: Is a free email marketing application specially designed for bloggers with many features like real time reports and broadcasts.

FeedBlitz: A leading blog and rss email subscription service, boost your readership!

Mailer4U: Create and send newsletters via email.

ListPower: Is a free mailing list manager that enables you to send a custom newsletter to all your subscribers.

Polls for Blogs

Have you ever participated in a poll? I´m sure you have, even if you just saw it on a website and you answered in your mind. The truth is that online polls are a very good way to increase visibility, interest and traffic, they can boost your number of readers and attract more. If you own a website or a blog you can make a poll about anything you want, money, business, favorite place, favorite color or favorite car, anything. Online polls are also a very useful statistic resource because you can analyze the results and see how your readers and visitors think or what they need.

Make polls in your blog and you´ll see the response of your readers you´ll also increase your traffic and you can analyze your results. Here are some free resources and tools to create, manage and analyze polls.

Polldaddy: Offers free online polls for your blog, just copy and paste the code wherever you want the poll to appear.

Pollverize: Create as many polls as you wish.

Easy Poll: Create and manage your polls.

Snapoll: Change colors and layout of your polls and use them in your blog.

Vizu: Create polls for your blog readers and for your email subscribers.

Ballot Box: Keep your visitors coming back to see your polls.

Poll Pub: Create your own free polls and contest for your readers.

Remember that the use of polls is a very successful strategy to draw visitors to your blog.

Free Image Hosting

There are many options for those who want a free image hosting service. These free services are very useful to upload and host almost all kind of images and then use them in your blogs or websites, but there are some advantages and disadvantages.

One advantage of these free hosting providers is that you can upload almost any kind of image you want without restrictions, another advantage is that you can easily copy the given url of your image and use it in your blog or website. You can upload as many images as you want.

Some of the disadvantages are that many free image hosting providers are not very reliable, this means that if you upload some images for your website maybe the next day the hosting server will be down and all your images will be gone, another disadvantage is that sometimes after you upload an image if you don’t copy the url you wont be able to find it anymore, in that case you´ll have to upload it again. These services only allow you to upload images in formats like .jpg .bmp .gif .tif .png for other kind of images like .ico (icon) you´ll need another kind of hosting, you might also want to check my “How to host ICO files for free” guide. Take a look to this list of recommended free image hosting services they are very reliable and useful.

Imageshack
Photobucket
AllYouCanUpload
FreeImageHosting

Blog Directories

Every successful blog has to be submitted to a Blog Directory, this tools allow users to search within their database for blogs of their interest. Blog directories are a very useful and successful way to promote your blog and to get constant traffic, submitting your blog to one of these directories can get you many backlinks, the ones you need to increase your search engine rank. There are currently more than 50 Blog directories out there if you submit to each one you can get at least 50 backlinks to your blog and more exposure and of course more traffic, what are you waiting for? submit , submit, submit and if you have enough time submit more! This is a list of some of the most prominent and successful Blog Directories.

TopLists
King of the Blogs
Today Blogs
Finding Blog
9Rules Network
My Blog 2U
Blog Hub
Blogger Talk
Blog Show off
E-Marketing Blogs
Bloglines
Globe of Blogs
Bulletize
Blogdup
World Top Blogs
Blogwise
2-Review
All Blogs
Blog Code
Blog Ranking
Blog Search Engine
Blogarama
Blogbid
BlogBunch
Blog Catalog
Blog Listing
Blog Pulse
Blog Watch
Blogz
Daypop
iBlog Business
Industry Blogs
LSBlogs
Pluck
Postami
SmallBusiness
SynBlog
Terrar
The Weblog Review

You can also promote your blog with us, we will help you to successfully promote your blog, if you become a Partner we will add your blog to our listings.

How to Host .ICO Files for Free

As you know there are many kinds of images, there are .jpg, .bmp, .png, .ai, .eps etc. all these image formats are used to build websites and blogs. But if you want images in your blog you have to host them first, if you don’t want to pay for a hosting service you can always use a free image hosting service, but there are some restrictions for image hosting. Let´s see, you can easily upload almost any image you have in your pc, but the problem comes when you try to upload .ICO files (stands for Icon) in that case it´s for sure that you are going to get an error message, something like ” We are sorry but we couldn´t upload your image, please select only supported files” but Why would you want to upload an ICO file? well these kind af files are used to create what we know as Favicons. Favicons are those tiny images next to the title of a website or blog, and they are used to distinguish a website from another or just to provide a professional touch. Anyway if you want to upload an ICO file there are some options you might want to try.

How to host an ICO file for free

1. Go to one of these free hosting providers.

Freewebs They allow you to create as many accounts as you wish.
110MB They give you not 110 mb but 2000 mb of free hosting but for an ico file you just need about 5 kb.
Bravenet You can create more than 5 website in one account and they support all kind of files.
50Megs A very reliable free hosting service.
XM Hosting

…and create an account.

2. Go to your control panel or to your file manager in the members area of the service you chose.

3. Look for your icon in your hard drive and then upload it.

4. Copy the URL of the ICO file and use it in you other websites or blogs and that´s it.

As you can see this is very easy to do and sometimes it is even obvious but many people don’t know how to host ICO files. Don’t forget that if you are hosting a favicon you cannot host two of them in the same location, why? because in order to use a favicon for you blog or website you will have to name it “Favicon.ico” therefore if you try to host another favicon in the same folder the first one will be replaced by the new one, but no problem, remember that you can create another folder and upload the new favicon to this new folder in the same account.

AdSense Preview Tool

Have you ever wondered which AdSense ads are you going to get in a certain page or post of your blog ? Well Amit Agarwal´s blog Digital Inspiration has a very useful tool to preview the AdSense ads you might get in your blog or website, actually it is called “Contextual Ads Preview and Comparison Tool ” and it also a preview tool for Chitika and YPN.

This tools allows the user to put his URL or the keywords of his blog or website and displays the possible ads for that website or for those keywords, but that´s not all you can even “play” with the colors of the ads to see which combination is the best for your website or blog.

This sandbox tool displays text ads, adlink units, image ads, chitika malls, yahoo ads and others. and and shows you which ads your site is likely to show. You can use this preview tool to see if your content is good enough or if you are actually going to receive high quality or relevant ads in your site. This is a very useful money making application, and let me give you one tip, try to find the ads your blog´s competitors can display, in this way you can see if they are getting relevant ads or if they are just playing around.

You can find the “Contextual Ads Preview and Comparison Tool” Here.

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