Dive headlong into blogging and don’t look back

If you’ve been considering starting a blog, what the hell are you waiting for?  Right now is a perfect time to start!  Don’t worry about what you know or don’t know, just dive right in and start one.

If you wait until you feel comfortable, and that is a perfectly fine thing to do, you might have more hair on your head at the end of the day, but you’ll miss out on the opportunity of time.  The longer your blog has been around, the better.

Just like hot air balloons, each one can rise to the same level as the others in the crowd, but the one that starts out first will stand out from the crowd.

Time is on your side, but the longer you wait to start, the longer you delay the rewards.

Some measure of success can be guaranteed when you continually provide the effort and drive behind anything you might do.  This is especially true for blogs that you start.  I found some wisdom in the following snippet:

I think Chris Brogan said it best, when he mentioned that being an overnight success required 11 years of hard work. Remember that when you see a blogger that appears to have come from nowhere. It was probably 11 years in the making.

from A Guest Post by Nathan Hangen of Making it Social on the post “The ‘It Factor’ – How to get It as a Blogger” on ProBlogger

11 years hard work, that’s all it took for Chris Brogan to reach his level of influence and notoriety. I don’t happen to follow Chris, but when you meet him online via Twitter or by happening upon a post he’s written, you understand why he’s where he’s at.  He’s a smart cookie for sure, and knows what he’s talking about.

He’s honed his craft and continually put out the effort to improve and learn more and more.

You should do the same when it comes to starting your blog.

Starting your first blog

When you first decide to try your skills at blogging, you’ll quickly get overwhelmed with all the technologies involved, the acronyms that you don’t understand, and what you should really do to get your blog off on the right foot.  That is, if you’re not already familiar with them of course.

Unless you’re a research maniac and spend the next year digging into everything involved with blogging, you are better off just starting one for the sake of starting one to find out everything involved.

Don’t go out and spend any money, that would be a little foolish at the start.  But even so, everything is pretty inexpensive that it really wouldn’t hurt the pocketbook terribly much if you did!

But, and here’s the big but, the domain name is very important as it is not only your calling card, but can also help you reach higher in search engines for your topic when the domain name is keyworded up to match your topic.

My point is, the beginner won’t know nor understand all this, so what should they do?

Just do it.  That’s right, just dive in and start rambling out anything you want.  Pick a free service like Blogger or WordPress, and just start blogging.  Get yourself over the need to define something to write about, and just start writing about anything at all.  It really doesn’t matter.

Play around with all the widgets, gadgets and themes.  Find something that appeals to you and roll with it for some time.

You’ll find that after playing around a little, you’ll naturally discover what you need to learn.  If you take it upon yourself to teach yourself what you need to learn, you’re well on your way to becoming the next Chris Brogan.  It just takes effort and focus, and the focus will come after some time if it isn’t there already.

It’s what I realize after two years of blogging

I remember when I started my blog near January 1st of 2008.  It was with very little fanfare, people were not coming out of the woodwork to congratulate me on my decision to start.  No.  It was a very lonely experience.

I didn’t have any commentators for months, I had no clue what I wanted to write about, I didn’t know much about blogging in general or some of the unspoken rules of the road that are involved with being social on the Internet.  I didn’t know about all the associated services that I’d like my blog to be a part of, nor did I know who I should be following.

I persisted though, and now two years later my blog has a following that I’m very proud of, and it makes about $50 a month in passive search revenue.  It didn’t start that way, I had to work at it.

Hindsight is always 20/20

I made several mistakes along the way when I started my blog.  I didn’t like the theme I was using, nor did I find enough online resources for the blog engine I was using.  Over time though, I changed what I wanted to change, added what I wanted to add, and done away with what wasn’t useful anymore.

You’re going to end up doing this anyway…I think it’s just a natural progression that every blogger goes through.

So if you feel like your hung up on something, like what you’ll write about, or not understanding everything there is to know about the technology you’re using, or the nomenclature being used, don’t worry.  You’re in good company, and there is plenty of time to overcome the challenges you’re bound to face.

It is better to start and fail, then to never start and never fail.  Just do it, and you’ll be glad you did.

Wayne  (531 Posts)

Wayne John is a health coach for people that want to lose weight, gain weight, improve athletic performance, or simply maintain a healthy lifestyle. Wayne has lost over 55 pounds and improves his current health every day by using simple, straight-forward techniques that anyone can integrate into their lives to achieve the same. Contact Wayne today to realize your own health and fitness goals, or get started now by completing and submitting the free Wellness Profile. He also has been developing websites since 1995 and programming solutions for clients even longer. He'd rather be outside having fun in the sun though.