Creating a Web Log (Blog)

For a model of a well written blog using a nice template take a look at my new blog, Politics, Video Games, Movies, and more!

Blogs are websites where the entries are written in chronological order (usually dated as well) and are often displayd in reverse chronological order to display the newest content first.  "Blogging" refers not only to the creation of a blog but to the addition of content, advertising the blog, etc.  Blogging has become an increasingly popular form of website and with it has come a revolution of new social networking sites that allow you to advertise your blog.  StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, and many more are tailored to perfectly fit the needs of the independant blogger trying to get the word out (assuming you have good content).  While some of these sites such as StumbleUpon and Digg work for websites such as this, they are more commonly used by Bloggers (feel free to add me to your social bookmarks).  Many of these bookmarking services work best on the Firefox browser, I use Google bookmarks myself.

The difference between visitor expectations for a website and a blog is that a blog is expected to be more up to date than a website, it should have constantly updated content in order to keep visitors coming back over time.  Bloggers are typically considered to be an expert on their given topic by the general public (personally I've seen enough bad blogs to be a constant skeptic).  This website is actually written almost in a blog like way as I use the words "I and you"; the majority of websites are written in a purely informational sense but partially due to my age and partially my experiences on the web, I'd prefer to write from my own perspective.  I also do this because I truly care about my visitors, I may never meet you face to face but I do occasionally get a nice e-mail in my inbox from a visitor.  This website is here for you to make money, I just happen to be the one that has experience in the topic.  Writing a blog is often more time consuming than creating a website as a website can be created and never updated and still be successful, but due to all of the template options out there it can be much easier to create than a standard website.  For the ultimate in easy blogging, try out Squidoo.  It allows users to make "lenses" where you write a relatively concise pre-monetized article, I can write an article in less than 20 minutes that will act as a secondary website for me where I recieve the advertising revenue, etc. 

There are many sites that will host your blog for free, the most popular of which is definitely Blogspot which was relatively recently acquired by Google.  By creating a blog you also expose yourself to new means of monetizing your website.  One of the best ways currently is through a service that I'm sure you've seen buttons all over my site for, PayPerPost.  Bloggers have a wide variety of choices for monetizing their blog such as creating affiliate links, using pay per click advertising such as Google AdSense, and also various services such as contextual linking and also getting paid to write reviews, as with PayPerPost.  To see other options, or more in depth description, check out my Advertising and Affiliations page.