Starting a Blog

Is there anyone left that doesn’t have a blog?

Astonishingly, yes. Hard to believe, but there are still people out there who think that a link to their MySpace profile doesn’t make them look like a douchebag. Heck, I even know people that don’t have mobile phones!

Admittedly, most of the crowd I run with are bloggers, and many have been for ages. Personally, I’ve been at it for 5 years, first on a freebie Blogspot platform, then on Blogger with my own domain name, and now a Wordpress platform on my own domains.

Out of the three scenarios I’ve been through, I really like Wordpress the best. It has more features than Blogger offers, without being so over-the-top tech-oriented like Joomla, where you’d better have a degree in coding just to get the first post published. Wordpress offers a ton of free templates to work from, and most of them are customizable. Which is not to say that Wordpress is super easy. They tell you to download a bunch of things, and give vague instructions for set-up.

Which leads me to: If you have a few hundred bucks in the bank and absolutely no talent for creating or customizing a template, and no idea which end of Wordpress is up, do what I do: Hire Tammy. She created the template for my political blog, and customized the one you’re reading here.

But for the average Joe or Jane starting their first blog, whether it’s to get opinions off their chests or to make money through marketing, one of the existing templates will usually do. Though that still leaves set-up. The first time I tried setting up a Wordpress blog, I was left weeping and calling Tammy at like, three in the morning. It wasn’t pretty. She has since learned to switch her phone off at night.

So where deas that leave you, dear reader?

Johnny B. Truant started a little project over at IttyBiz (one of my all-time fave marketing sites) and 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:

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. If you want a quick and easy blog, you have to do it on Blogger, right? And if you want one on your own stand-alone site, you have to pay a developer a few thousand dollars. Or at least a few hundred for the work of just setting the thing up, even if nothing is customized.

And if you do it yourself, you have to be a tech wiz. Maybe you’ve read the “Easy install” instructions on Wordpress.org. “Log in to phpMyAdmin and add a new database.” “FTP to root of domain.” Not so easy.

Yeah, well. It doesn’t have to be that way. 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.

So. Blog amazingness. You want it, right? Go see Johnny. He’ll help you. In under an hour. For super cheap. Which, if it’s three in the morning, Tammy can’t do. She’s asleep, ferkrissake!