The Definitive Guide to Blogging – 1st Edition
February 8th, 2007 | Blogging Tips
Over 130 of the best resources for Building, Customizing, Promoting, and Monetizing your blog. Have fun!
Hosted Solutions
WordPress – WordPress is free and easy to use. It is the most popular platform out there. With the hosted version of WordPress you get a subdomain with your name. I.E. (yourname.wordpress.com).
Typepad – Cost from 5-15 dollar a month. It is also one of the more popular blogging platforms.
Blogger – A free blogging platform that is owned by Google. Blogger is great platform for beginners.
Movabletype – Another Very popular blogging/publishing platform
TextPattern – Blogging, Content Management, whatever you want to call it… Textpattern is another solution for it.
Vox – Vox is not only a free blogging platform, it is a community.It is another blogging platform that is great for beginners.
Live Journal – It’s a combination of blog and social networking. With Live Journal you can create a community around your blog. You can also make your blog private so only your friends can view it.
Shoutpost – Shoutpost is a quickly growing community of bloggers. It is also designed to be a social networking platform. One of the great things about Shoutpost is that it is completely ad-free.
Non-Hosted Solutions
WordPress (Non Hosted) – WordPress can also be downloaded and installed on your own server. It is open source and the most popular platform out there. The download version requires you to get your own hosting. Some hosts include a simple install script to quickly get started. We have listed some of those hosts below.
Text Pattern – A content management system that can also be used for blogging. Text Pattern is for more advanced users.
MovableType – Another popular blogging platform. You can choose from their free or paid version.
PMachine – Expression Engine, Pmachine’s blogging platform is a very easy to use. Cost around 100 dollars but is free to try for 30 days. Expression Engine is designed to be a complete content management solution.
Drupal – Drupal is another very powerful and popular content management solution that many people use as a blog. The great thing about Drupal is the ability to expand beyond the basic blog functionality. It does require a more advanced understanding of web development though.
Hosting Services
If you choose to go with a non-hosted blogging platform you are going to need a hosting company. The following are some hosting companies that offer Fantastico, a control panel plugin that allows you to quickly install software, including most of the popular blogging platforms.
Useful Articles/Blogs
Blogging for beginners – A great article that helps you choose a blogging platform thats right for you.
Top blogs – A list of the top bloggers. Before you start blogging take a look at the leaders in the blogosphere, you can learn a lot from them.
Blog Themes
Set your blog apart from the rest. Here are a few sites that you can download free themes to brighten up your blog. Most of the themes are designed for WordPress, which is one reason it is so popular.:
WordPress.net – Choose from a variety of user uploaded themes.
Alex King – Another great place to find themes.
Emily Robbins – Thousands of free WordPress themes to choose from.
Blog Flux – Has a huge database of themes for many different blogging platforms.
Andrea Sviklund – Few themes for various blogging platforms.
Blogging Pro – Reviews dozens of themes.
Blog Designers
If you truly want to set yourself apart from the rest, then have a blog designer make you a custom theme. The following is a list of blog designers that can make your blogging dreams come true:
Pearsonified – Chris Pearson is one of the most well known blog designers.
For more blog designers check out this list of a few hundred:
Huge list of designer
Plugins
Add functionality to your blog with plugins, the following plugins will not only make your blog more user friendly but search engine friendly as well (plugins listed below are only for WordPress).
Subscribe to Comments – Allows commenter’s to receive email updates when new comments are posted. This is a great way to increase traffic and participation.
Ultimate Tag Warrior – Allows you to tag individual posts with keywords, which will help the popular blog search engines, such as Technorati, find your posts. It also provides an alternate way to organize your posts. We highly recommend this plugin.
Sociable – Sociable is a plugin that allows you to add social bookmarking links to each of your posts. This is a great way to help get your site promoted. But be careful not to list too many, else it might just clutter up the screen. See below for some of the more popular social networking sites.
Google Sitemap – Automatically creates and updates a XML sitemap after every new post. It then pings Google to update their listings. This will insure prompt inclusion.
SEO Title Tag – Makes the title of your post the title of the page, which is great for SEO.
Head Meta Descriptions – Allows you to add a brief description about each post. This data shows up under the title in your search engine listings.
WP-Post Rating – Allows visitors to rate your blog. This will allow your audience to easily give their feedback about which posts they like. Understanding your audience is key to growing your blog traffic.
WP-Contact Form – Easily add a contact form anywhere on your blog.
Feedburner Plugin – Replace your feed with Feedburner plugin which will help you accurately track of your subscribers. Feedburner also allows you to accept email subscribers, which will increase your subscriptions significantly. As an example, about 20% of SponsoredReviews subscribers are email based.
WordPress Plugin Database – List of plugins
WordPress Plugins Directory – Another list of popular plugins
Useful Articles/Blogs
Essential tools for blogging – A huge list of plugins/tools that will make creating and customizing your blog easier.
Top design mistakes – The most common design mistake that blogs make. Read this article before customizing your blog so that you don’t make any of these mistakes.
Social Media
Social Bookmarking websites can not only drive tons of traffic to your blog, but are also a good place to find topics to blog about. The content on these websites are user submitted and voted on by their community.
Digg – If your post gets submitted to Digg, it can drive quite a few visitors to your blog. If your post makes it to the Digg homepage it will drive thousands of visitors to you blog and could even crash your servers, also known as the “Digg Effect.” Digg tends to be geared towards the tech crowd, so if your site is tech related you have a good chance of getting Dugg.
Reddit – Another community based voting website which can drive tons of traffic to your blog.
StumbleUpon – Users on this site blindly go to different blogs/websites based on their interest. Users can give a thumbs up or down based on if they like the content. If your content makes it on the buzz section of Stumble Upon it can drive thousands of visitors to you blog throughout a few days.
Del.icio.us – The most popular bookmarking website. If your site gets bookmarked enough you may make it to the homepage. Adding links on each of your posts to help your readers bookmark it will definitely increase traffic to your blog. Use the sociable plugin listed above to make adding these links to your posts easy.
Here are few other Social Bookmarking websites that are worth mentioning:
Blog Directories
Having your blog in directories can increase your blogs visibility and exposure. The following are a list of paid and free directories:
Blog Networks
To join a blog network your blog must meet several different requirements, once your blog is accepted into one of the following blog networks it will drive more traffic and give your blog some prestige.
Blog Search Engines
Technorati – The most popular blog search engine.
Bloglines – Much more than just a blog search engine it is also a very popular reader. With BlogLines you can find, subscribe and keep up to date with your favorite blogs.
Google Blog Search – A popular blog search engine by Google.
Ice Rocket – Another popular blog search engine that also allows you to subscribe to your favorite blogs.
Analytics and Tracking
Part of being a good blogger is knowing your audience. Tracking software allows you to do just that. With Google Analytics, Mint, and MyBlogLog you can track how many visitors come to your site, what posts received the most traffic and many other powerful statistics. With Feedburner, you can track the number of RSS subscribers and even monetize your feed.
Google Analytics – A free tracking solution that allows you to export data for quick and easy reports.
Mint – Is tracking especially made for blogs, even tracks your RSS subscribers. Cost about 30 dollars but it is popular with many bloggers.
Feedburner – Allows you to track your RSS subscribers and also allows you to monetize your feed. Not to mention some of the other features like “Email Subscribe”, and auto-detection scripts. We highly recommend Feedburner.
MyBloglog – A blog community that not only lets you track your visitors, it can help you expand your readership. It is a combination of Social Networking and analytics.
Useful Articles/Blogs
Optimize your blog for search engines- Pronet Advertising has some great tips on optimizing your blog for more visibility on search engines.
How to increase rss subscribers – Copyblogger has very helpful tips on increasing your RSS subscribers.
How to drive traffic to your blog – Learn how to drive more traffic to your blog by Seth Godin, who happens to be a top blogger and popular writer.
Blogging Pro – Has great tips to help improve your blog.
SEO Book – Learn some SEO tips to help make your blog more search engine friendly
21 traffic triggers for social media marketing (copyblogger) – Copy Blogger discusses the 21 topics that will help your content do better on social media websites such as Digg and stumbleupon. A must read.
10 Surefire Headline Formulas (Copyblogger) – Eye catching headline formulas.
BlogHerald – Lots of Blogging news including tips on how to grow your audience.
5 tips to organize your categories – Organizing your content can be quite difficult if your blog talks about many different topics. Daily Blog Tips has a few tips can help you better organize the categories on your blog.
If your objective is to make money from your blog then this section is for you. There are many ways to get paid for blogging, here are a few:
Paid Reviews
SponsoredReviews – Bloggers get paid for writing honest reviews about products and services.
Affiliate Programs
Chitika – Chitika is a contextual program for delivering relevant product ads to your pages. It is great for monetizing pages that talk about or review products.
Banner, CPM, CPC, and CPA Networks
Tribal Fusion – Your blog must be established and meet certain requirements to join this ad network.
Contextual and Text Link Advertising
TextLinkBrokers – Get paid set monthly fees for displaying text link ads on your site.
AdbriteText links and contextual links.
TextLinkAds – Another site for selling text links.
Google Adsense – Google adsense is a very popular contextual advertising program. Many bloggers still use it, but many of the a-listers have moved away from it due to poor click through rates and earnings.
Yahoo Publisher Network If you can get accepted into YPN you can earn much more then with Google Adsense. One problem with Yahoo though is sometimes it has a hard time targeting the right ads to each page. Google is much better in that sense.
Useful Articles/Blogs
Making Money From Blogging – Goes through tons of different ways to make money from blogging
We hope you’ve enjoyed this list, if you know of any resources that we missed, feel free to comment.
[...] Jarrod drops his definitive guide to blogging [...]
Left by Friday Favorites 1/16/07 - Stuntdubl - Search Engine Marketing Consultant on February 16th, 2007
Great list, very informative, it is a nice guide and resource from beginners to professionals interested in bloging, I will be bloging about your list and posting it at the social sites, thanks.
Left by Beginners Guide to SEO on February 16th, 2007
[...] There is an extensive collection of links and resources over the SponsoredReviews blog titled
Left by The Definitive Guide to Blogging on February 16th, 2007
Really Great post.Must have taken time to get all those.
PS: Next time if you can try to split it in two different parts, readers will not leave in between getting read to so many things in a single shot
Left by Ashish Mohta on February 16th, 2007
Thx Ashish,
Left by Jarrod Hunt on February 16th, 2007
[...] Looking for a definitive guide to blogging? Then you could do worse than check out “The Definitive Guide To Blogging“, a post that has been put up over at Sponsored Reviews. [...]
Left by Lost in Cyberspace » Blog Archive » A Guide To Blogging on February 17th, 2007
[...] EctoScribefireMars Edit [...]
Left by Complete Blogging Resource List For The Pro-Blogger on February 17th, 2007
Great guide. Look forward to reading the 2nd Edition.
Left by inspirationbit on February 17th, 2007
It’s a comprehensive post Jarrod, though I found it rather hilarious that under “Monetize Your Blog” Sponsored Reviews is the only one that appeared. Hmmm…
Left by Leonard Chen on February 18th, 2007
You forgot one of the best non-hosted solutions: DotClear. Superior to WordPress and many others. Moving from WordPress to DotClear is like moving from IE to Firefox: irreversible.
Left by effisk on February 18th, 2007
Leonard,
Ya, I wrestled with idea of listing our competitors, but then I’m fairly certain they would not list us on their site, so I decided to leave them off.
If they want publicity they can spend the time putting their own list together
Left by Jarrod Hunt on February 18th, 2007
This is a must read for anybody with even a single blog thought. Great job putting this together Jarrod. It is definitely definitive. Ya, let your competitors come up with research like you’ve done here on their own. I’ll refer to this often.
Left by David Temple on February 18th, 2007
Thx David,
Left by Jarrod Hunt on February 18th, 2007
Great resource. Just found through Daniel at Daily Blog Tip. Thanks for compiling this. Seeing as it’s Vol 1, I’ll look for future Volumes.
One question, I grabbed your feed and saw that you only publish 3 posts. Why? Any thoughts on increasing the number of posts in your feed?
Left by Dawud Miracle on February 19th, 2007
Hi Dawud,
The blog is new so there aren’t going to be a lot of posts.
Plus, we aren’t planning to compete with other blogging sites, we are a corporate blog.
Left by Jarrod Hunt on February 19th, 2007
He Jarrod, nice post!
One tip for you, make your blog url’s search engine friendly with mod rewrite rules.. That way search engines will find your pages quicker and it’s better for your search engine results..
Karel
The Netherlands
Left by Karel on February 22nd, 2007
Thx Karel,
Unfortunately this blog is on a IIS box and rewrites are not as cut and dry as they are with Apache.
It can definitely be done but right now it is very low on our to-do list.
Thanks again.
Left by Jarrod Hunt on February 22nd, 2007
Great list, very informative!
Thanks so much
best regards
Left by gidibao on March 9th, 2007
Great resource and very comprehensive.
Thanks so much.
Left by Diana on March 9th, 2007
Thanks for such a wonderful article..
I have joined sponsoredreviews – lets see how it goes.
Also, there is an extra dot (.) in http://www.adbrite.com in your above article
Left by Hitesh on March 10th, 2007
when you can put “the definitive guide to blogging” phrase search into google and hit the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button, what could I expect other than what I searched for!
Great minds think alike eh?
Left by Robbie G-Bek on May 2nd, 2007
Thanks; I’m new to blogging and this is a huge helpin realizing blog.
Left by hexden on May 27th, 2007