I am learning each and every day about blogging, I have been blogging since June 2008 with my first blog, but then started a replacement blog Dragonblogger.com in August 2008. So I really have only been blogging for about 3 months and only seriously and with wordpress for about 4 weeks. Each and every day I am learning new things about blogging, how to write more engaging blogs, how to promote your blog, how to market and properly praise other bloggers...

Tools, Techniques, Tips...etc

A new blogger starts out with the following in mind:

1) Do I want to blog and why?

Find out why you want to blog, what is the purpose? Is it just to share your opinion and thoughts and life with the world, is it to make money online, or maybe a little of both.

2) What type of blog service should I use?

If you are doing a personal or diary type blog, with only casual advertising pick up, or if it is your first blog then I would recommend using Blogger, or a Free Wordpress blog. If you want to develop a professional blog, or you want to have a string of multiple blogs, then you will need to pay for web hosting and install and configure a wordpress blog.

3) What do I want my blog to look like?

This is one of the hardest things, how to style your blog. Many bloggers like artistic and wildly colorful blogs and many of them look great. I kind of fashion the following rule: If you are blogging about art, music, entertainment then I think an artistic blog is much more attractive and fits the bill. If you are doing a political blog, having a theme with flowers and kittens is a little out of character. Plain generic white themes with 2 columns are also the most popular, and functional, but personally in my humble opinion I like to see a little "Personality" in a blog site. Even if it is a colorful logo, or some borders. Generic white blogs to me tend to reek too much of "Regurgitated content" and my initial impression is that maybe someone didn't put time into stylizing their blog because they aren't that serious.

That being said, plain simple blogs are fine for many people, and there is nothing wrong with them. I may use one for one of my blogs, but I tend to like a little color and a little style that makes your blog stand out a little from the rest. That being said, my black with silver theme is fairly common too, I have truly seen some really nice templates out there.

I recommend having a blog with no less than 3 columns
Content Column - Where all your posts lie
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