Ask ProBlogger a Blogging Question

Hi Darren! :-)
I’m a “new” blogger and I’d like to receive some suggestions and help in order to make my blog better. I speak about information technology and similar topics, but I have few readers and even less comments: many posts are without comments.
Could you “review” my blog? Perhaps you can use Inforum (my blog) as a “case study” for a blog post… :-)

What do you think?

I’ve been reading several articles of people starting a new blog and they share their stories of success and failures. The articles gives many valuable advice about blog startups and dos and don’ts, what and how to write a blog, goals, mission … etc.
But what about the technical side of building the site?

For someone “out of the blue” who decides – I want to have a profit-driven blog – how can they begin if they don’t want to use avenues such as blogspot and such. If they can’t afford to hire a webdesigner/developer to build the initial site – and certainly they are not IT specialists, how in the world do they start?

They either need to personally know a web designer or go back to school and learn web development.
There is an initial cost involved to build a blog.
Website firms charges minimum of $1000 to build a dynamic CMS site for new Blogs. I received an initial quote for $15,000 to build a CMS backbone for a Blog.

It cost money to build this backbone – and if you have no clue how to do the scripting backend – you have to pay more money to hire someone to troubleshoot.
So starting a blog – one would need to fork out $$$ to build the actual site. Unless you are fortunate to be related/or know a web developer (but still there is some cost involved for the time and energy spent).

Can you shed some light as to the cost initiatives for someone with no IT background and how they would go about building the initial site?
What are the drawbacks? Troubleshooting costs?

Throwing my question in a little late, but where the heck do you find really really good blog designers!?!?! I need one badly and can’t seem to get one who can design a very Web 2.0 style blog! Thanks!

@Roni – look into Blogads and the BlogHer Ad network. :)

Making money with programs like AdSense or Chitika is depressing and frustrating at best. At some point, I feel that blogs can outgrow their dependency on these services and shoot for “real advertisers” as a means of making money through blogging. I’ve been struggling with this one for months now, and I can’t seem to find any good resources that address it directly.

At what point is it feasible to approach those “real advertisers”? Is there an approximate readership that may be useful as a guideline?

How do we find those advertisers? Are there any good places to start looking, or is it a game of guess and check?

HOW should those advertisers be approached? Should they be given a brochure? Do we talk about our stats, readership demographics, the site content?

What about pricing? Are there any good ballpark price structures? What do we base rates on?

And how should all of this be managed? What’s the best way to manage the accounts and the actual ads?

I’m sure these bits and pieces are out there somewhere, but like I said, I haven’t seen them covered very well and in a coherent flow. I think a lot of people would be interested to learn about these same things.

By the way, I’m open to being used as a supporting case study for an article or series in the event that you choose to write on these topics. ;)

Could you give some points about an effective landing page for any advertising that you are working outside your niche or blog

Like sponsoredreview , can i get the direct market place where i can bid sponsored directly to give me the offer?

What is your level of expertise in the following:
1. (x)HTML
2. CSS
3. SEO
4. JavaScript
5. PHP
6. WordPress customization
7. PhotoShop (or other graphic editor)

thanks

11. web security
12. Mysql (or other server query language)
13. 3d animation

Darren/Skellie,

Hello, I have a few fairly brief questions I believe many of us would like to know.

1) Is it too late in the game to become a blogger?

I understand there are many hundreds of niches, but it seems every niche now has a “big-boy” website within it. Unless you find something truly unique.

2) A website in 90 days or less?

A while back I heard rumors of a guy who can grab a domain name, and in any niche can have that site brining in $100 a week in Adsense. I have used adsense, and have been lukcy to get $1-$3 in 90 days a week..

3) The Long run –

I saw a while back you stated that 6% of global advertising was done on the WWW, and even more projected for the future. I can understand how having a big site, this would pay off for you, but us over here in the little pond who get maybe 100 visitors a day on a good day, doesn’t leave much room.

4) Computer literate

More and more people are becoming computer literate. People are learning not to click on the AdSense links, as they see them as just that, ads. I understand positioning and what not has a great deal of influence on these matters, and you can mask your affiliate link (why people think it’s funny to go through the link you provide but delete your code beats the heck out of me..). My question is, as the world becomes more and more pc literate, do you think there is going to be a type of advertisement that will keep up with it?

Thanks guys!!!

Hi Darren,

On the topic of social media –

Using SU for an example – I noticed in your profile that you have only listed your interests in the area of blogging. So my main question is… do you have a strategy in mind when you set up your profile, not only on SU but on other social sites?

1 – are you limiting your interests to blogging because you only want that profile associated with problogger? (do you have another profile for your digital media blog?)

2 – do you only accept fans as friends if they blog about blogging or only submit articles on blogging?

3 – do you only give the thumbs up or submit articles about blogging?

4 – if yes to any of the above, are you doing this because it strengthens your SU ranking? Should we be doing the same….if our niche is sky diving, should we only be about sky diving and nothing else?

Finally, If you do have a strategy on your profiles limited to blogging, do you suggest that we should limit our (using SU again as example) submits only to our niche area? and… if we have another blog in a different niche, should we set up a separate profile for each of our blogs?

Exactly what % of your workday do you spend on social media Darren?? (seems like we could spend a large chunk each day on this)

Thanks a lot Darren. I really appreciate all of the valuable information that you pass along to us.

Hi Darren, are you still taking questions?

Here’s one that I’ve been bouncing around and now that I’ve seen it more than once I’m running it by you –

I’ve come across 3 blogs to date that are new, have few comments (2 of the blogs have almost 0 comments, one has some comments), but they display the feedburner chicklet with what appears to be an inflated count. (blog one – 30,000+, blog two – 40,000+, blog three – 500+).

I’m really curious if this is a new trend in an attempt to attract subscribers? I think it’s fairly obvious when you land on a blog that shows over 30,000 subscribers yet has 0 comments and also displays a copyright of 2005-2008 when the url was registered 2 days ago that something is up, but not everyone is going to investigate like I did.

What do you think about this and how can it be so easy to game the feedburner chicklet count? Does this make you question a new blog that you come across, wondering if it really does have the subscribers that it displays in the feed widget?

Thanks Darren!

In general, what would you say has the potential to generate the most revenue for a blog?

Thanks!