Improving Your Blog, a begining investigation

As was said a while back, I Thoguth I’d see if I can find a way of getting this blog out there. There appears to be a few things that I should really consider first.

Before I can start to make money from this site, which, lets face it, is the ultimate aim of spending all this time sharing my thoughts, feelings, and generall work round-up on the internet, I really should do a bit of Market Research.

It’s always a difficult thought that perhaps the thousands of picturs of your little dog, and the cute stories of what your boyfriend got you for your birthday might not be the hottest topic on the web. So the first thing you need to know is what your target audience is. Then you need to know if your finding them.

I personally havn’t found out what it is I’m trying to say. I’m simply trying to document my life, in ways that perhaps will help other people, so perhaps this blog is not exactly going to be a money spinner.

You have also got to take into account that once you’ve got yoru content sorted, what you really need to fix is the layout. The information needs to be easy to read, easy to find, and accessible. Wether it’s about your dog, your boyfriend, or a post on how to make money on the stock exchange. Presentation is almost as important as the content, or, perhaps I should say, in some ways, it is more important than the content. You need to insure that your information is at least readable. That the layout doesn’t detract from your information.

Another mistake that people make is to plater their sites in adverts. Adverts for everything, all over the place. The problem with that is thought it might make you a few pence, it is unlikely to be sustainable, and very unlikey that you’ll get return business.

So, as I’m just starting out here, I thought, as most bloggers would that I would go straight for the money. Show me the Money. Gimmi.

Then I read a piece on DoshDosh, about the mistakes you can make by monetizing your blog too early.

Though of course he doesn’t say what “too early” is. This blog has been going nearly a year, slowly the readership grows, but it’s only bouncing around 50 readers a day. Perhaps, as I’ve not yet really made any kinds of headway into the blogosphere, that monetizing yet is not a good idea. That doesn’t mean that I won’t.

I also need to look at layout. The one you can see (at the time of wrighting) running is called Dark Water by antbag. (I suppose I should look into the plugin that allows you to switch themes on WordPress so that this post will make sense in the future). It’s a nice, clean theme, but it’s.. a bit dark. Perhaps I should pick something that says “profession”, or perhaps “Religious”, or even, perhaps something that’s a little more standard. Something that’s clean and easy.

At least, perhaps, while I work though this I can at least keep the updates on this site, and hopefully help all those other confused newbie bloggers out there.

Hope this helps,

Black Xanthus