7/22/10

The Road from Blogger Novice to ProBlogger Chronicles – The beginning

Blogger Novice

The love, the passion.

I love blogging, and although I’ve been blogging for over 3 years now I still consider myself a Blogger Novice. After discovering so many blogs and sites to share, promote and guest blog out there, I’ve found myself loving it even more. It’s like a passion for something that makes you feel good, that makes you free, that brings joy and satisfaction.

In essence blogging is like being with the perfect woman (or man, depends on your taste) or discovering the most delicious cheese cake. No matter how much you get, it’s never enough and you always go back for more.



The difficulties

Blogging can be fun and fulfilling but it’s not as easy as one might think. Trying to find what to write about is easy; trying to write the article itself is the hard part. At least for me it is. You see, I tend to be a perfectionist; I like not only writing it with as little grammar errors as possible but I also like my content to make sense and not jump from one topic to another losing the point of the article all together. I have seen blogs where the writer jumps from one thing to another and before you know it you forgot what the article was really about. It can be overwhelming when you have so much to say and so many different “for example” points that go with the topic that one can easily start with the point of the article and eventually end up talking about something completely different only to realize it after so much writing. The trick is to stay focused on the point of the article and use links if necessary rather than giving the whole “for example” points within the article to add to the point of the article.

As I said above, finding what to write about is easy. The worst part is getting ideas on what to write about and having the perfect words to express the idea on your article but not being at the computer at that moment to write it down or even having a pen and paper or a recorder to save it. I’m a gadget lover but can’t afford today's fancy smart phones so I don’t have a recorder on me 24/7 as many out there do these days. I do my best to remember but then I’m also somewhat forgetful. The solution may simply be a small digital recorder that I can carry with me at all times so that when inspiration hits I won’t have to worry about remembering.

Never give up

Once I get started with an article, I usually end up with some very interesting stuff (at least interesting to me). There have been times I start writing something but circumstances stop me from completing my writings and when I get back to them my train of thought left the station without me and the article then becomes lame and useless and will sit in my draft folder for a long time. If I’m lucky I might catch up to my train of thought on that article and jump on to finish the ride but it’s not a common event. Sticking to an article is not easy, ideas can come and go so fast and if your a blogger like me who doesn’t have just 1 niche (I didn’t know what a niche was before) to write about it can be overwhelming trying to figure out which article to handle first. I can multitask but when it comes to blogging, multitasking should probably not be part of the process. Write down the topics you are interested in writing if you have to but I recommend finishing one article before getting the next one started.

This blog has become a personal project, something that gives me the chance to build it myself and make it grow. Normally I would just be guest blogging (another concept I wasn’t aware of or even knew I was already doing), commenting on other peoples blogs, browsing the Internet for tech sites and podcast or simply playing video games; but now I find myself doing research, learning new skills and application, finding new software and collecting useful online tools and sites, all to get my own new blog started and looking the way I want it to look and work. The amount of sites I have discovered in just a few months that can or have helped me create, improve and expose my new blog to the Internet masses outnumbers 10 to 1 the amount of sites I had bookmarked since I started browsing the Internet several years ago. My Twitter account was small and lame back then but now, while I am still at the bottom of the food chain, my Twitter account has grown exponentially and continues to grow every week. Heck, even my Facebook account has seen more action from me in the past few months than it had in the years I’ve had it.

The Road Trip begins

Although my new blog is still in it’s infancy and my rank will stay as Blogger Novice for a while in my book; I look forward to making a name for myself in the online community. I will continue to find and read sites and blogs that provide great blogging tips such as the ones you can see on the My Blog xMarks Bookmarks section on side bar of my blog. I highly recommend you check them out as the tips can come in very handy.

This will not be the first article I write and post on my blog, but I will consider it the beginning of my trip on “The Road from Blogger Novice to ProBlogger Chronicles” and I invite you all to ride with me.

Do you dare tag along for the ride?

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1191032

2 comments:

  1. I am sure you will enjoy the ride. I read that you have already 3 years experience blogging then I know that you have already learned a lot of things, It is just that now you have thinked of taking it seriously, well I must say it is a good decision, certainly you will be successful.

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  2. @Shiva | Web Magazine

    Thank you Shiva. I guess you might be right. Blogging before was for entertainment. Now I want to do more; I want to learn and to help others by sharing what I have learned. I'm looking forward to it.

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