Is There Anyone Left That Doesn't Have a Blog?

Everyone and their little sister seems to have a blog these days. People who have businesses - everything from corporate to freelance - know that you don't give out your MySpace page and expect to be taken seriously. So they set up websites and blogs.

Many people start out with a free hosted Blogspot service, just to dabble in blogging and see if it's for them. There's no harm in that. But if you're starting a blog for business/portfolio purposes, skip that step altogether.

Create a blog plan.

* What do you hope to achieve with your blog?
* Who is your target audience?
* How often can/will you post to it?
* How much can/will you invest in getting it started?

Generally instead of going the Blogspot "free" route, you should invest in buying a domain for yourself. Maybe it will be your name or the name of your business. Maybe it will hint at the products or information you have available. Sites like "Right Wing News" are pretty up front about what they have on offer, and you should be too. Once you have the domain, you need a blogging platform. Wordpress is the most popular because it's free (for the software) and somewhat easy to set up.

By "somewhat", I mean that it can be done in very short order, but that you need to know how to read between the lines of their somewhat vague instructions for choosing and installing a template.

So where does that leave you?

Johnny B. Truant is a self-starter and entrepreneur that is now offering his lessons to the general public in e-book form. The title leaves a lot to be desired (How to Launch a Blog in Under an Hour for Super Cheap) but the content is solid:

You can have your own blog on your own domain. You can have it fast. You can have it cheap. How cheap? You can do it for $20 if you want to, but the best option is still under $75 for one entire year of blog amazingness. And you don't have to be a tech wiz to do it. This report will tell you exactly how to do it. Step by step. With screen shots and everything.

This is a great opportunity if you want to get started right away and don't have the first clue how. Wordpress is extremely user-friendly once it's installed. It has a WISYWIG (What You See Is What You Get) Word-like editor that you can use for uploading pictures and videos, making bullet-point lists, and formatting text the same way you would in Word.

In addition, there are advanced features like being able to change the time the article is posted. If you do all your articles on a Sunday afternoon, you can set them to publish one at a time, one each day, at a time of your choosing. All In One SEO Product is a Wordpress plugin that can help you attract relevant traffic to your blog. Wordpress offers dozens of free, customizable templates to help you set the tone of your site.

Whether you want your site to be about business, politics, photography or your pets is up to you. The most important thing is to make that decision in advance, scratch out a few basic posts to help you get a feel for what you want to do, and then take the plunge.

Good luck, and happy blogging.

Wendy Sullivan is a blogger, writer and radio host. Her paralegal background and freelance career has allowed her the opportunity to research into various and sundry areas from politics to war to health care.

Further info about Wendy Sullivan can be found at

http://www.girlonthewrite.com (on WordPress, naturally!)

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