Blogging

Blogging is the newsletter industry of the 21st century. It’s an example of how the Internet and new media technologies are democratizing the dissemination of information and opening up opportunities for ordinary people that were once reserved to just a privileged few (newspapers, three TV networks).

A blog (short for “web log”) is typically a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Also, although most blogs are primarily textual, many provide multi-media content and focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting).

With the advent of YouTube and new, inexpensive video editing and publishing technologies, many blogs are becoming Vlogs, or video blogs. The average person, armed with nothing more than an inexpensive camcorder and a video editing program, can now create videos that can be seen by millions worldwide.

Blogging is possible because of programs that make the posting of writing and photographs online relatively easy. In the past, the creation of websites required specialized programming knowledge and the use of complex web design software, such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage. But in the past five years, a number of websites have been created that allow “non-geeks” (as we are affectionally known) to create blogs. Site such as Blogger offer free blogs. The problem with the free sites is that they often contain little information for the beginner about how to change the free templates to get them to look the way bloggers want them to look. What’s more, many people want their own domain names — such as JoeSmith.com or SmithTowing.com — and want to have more control over how their blogs look.

Because of their relative ease of use, blogging software such as WordPress are increasingly being used even for business websites. You can set up and create a “business blog” in about ten minutes — complete with domain name. To make it look semi-professional, all you need is a professional “banner” which can be created in 5 or 10 minutes with a $40 program you can actually get FREE (for 15 days) on the web.

Once blogs are created, however, they have to be found. There are now more than 108 million websites on the Internet and an estimated 29.5 BILLION webpages — and part of creating a blog is learning how to promote it and have it “found” on the Internet. Fortunately, that isn’t as difficult as it may seem — although, once again, no one tells you how to do it. A few easy steps, that take maybe 10 to 20 minutes, can quickly result in your blog going from 14 millionth most popular on the Web to 2 millionth to 900,000th… to, eventually, under 100,000th. Once you have between 10,000 and 15,000 unique visitors per month, you can begin making money by placing ads on your blog. There are people who make full-time livings as professional bloggers — through Google Adsense and affiliate ads on their blogs — although they are still relatively rare.

Most people start blogging simply because they have a passion they want to share or because they have a business they want to promote. Creating a blog is a quick, easy and relatively painless way to get a website up and running. This is what BlogClasses.com is all about.