Thursday, July 21, 2011

Resources for bloggers

I've received quite a few comments and questions on my post What I've learned so far: Advice for beginning bloggers - mainly because I planted a link to it in the comments section of the Blogger Buzz post "The best blogging advice you've ever received." One of these I haven't answered yet, and I'll attempt to do it here.

Have you ever seen local community colleges or places like that offer classes on blogging tools, etc.? Just curious.

Actually, I haven't, but this is probably because I haven't looked very much. Years ago I contemplated creating such a thing - I thought I wrote up an outline for it, and posted it as a blog post, back in 2006 or 2007 or so, but I can't find it anywhere. (Ten points to the house of anyone who finds it!) Not that even now do I think that I have the appropriate skills and knowledge to teach such a class. On the other hand, I know some people who have taught university classes with even less subject matter expertise, so who am I to say?

Still, there are resources online. I'm going to start off with just a few, but if I discover more, or if anyone would like to make suggestions, I intend to expand this list.

Blogger Buzz: The official buzz from Blogger at Google (http://buzz.blogger.com/) - An official blog from Blogger corporate which manages to be relevant and informative, with news about new and upcoming features and information about what's going on at Blogger. With links to other resources from Blogger: Blogger Status blog,  Blogger in Draft blog, Known Issues, Help Forum, and  Help Center .

The Real Blogger Status: What Blogger Won't Tell You (http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/) - An unofficial blog that tackles many of the issues being dealt with by users of Blogger, as well as advance warnings of upcoming changes. Tends to be a bit beyond the Blogging 101 level as it gets down to the roots of issues and what steps you as a blogger must take to resolve them.

ProBlogger (http://www.problogger.net/): This blog has been around for a while, but I only just learned about it recently. Its subtitle is "Blog Tips To Help You Make Money Blogging," and that's what it's about. I should probably go over it thoroughly. I'm currently bringing in five figures annually from the ads on my blog (six if you count the decimal point as a figure), and I'd be very interested in learning how to earn more.

Anybody have any more recommendations for resources for bloggers? Leave a comment and I'll incorporate them into the body of the post. Thanks!

Update, 7/21/2011:

I just did Google searches for "blogger resources" and "blogging 101." Each turned up a lot of responses. But some of the most detailed results were blog posts from long, long ago - 2010, or 2008, or even as far back as 2006. I realized that these posts were mostly pointing to individual tools, sites that were hip and hot and happening at that moment - many of which no longer exist. And a static post does not encompass advances since that post was written, unless the blogger has actively been updating it.

I did, however, find another blog that has been set up expressly as a resource for bloggers:

Learn Blogging & Social Media -- Blogging Basics 101

Unfortunately, this site disregards something I consider a blogging basic: it is not thoroughly indexed by date. You can see all of the posts that appear on the front page, or search posts by category, or work your way backward using the "Older Posts" button. But there's no easy way to see all the posts from, say, May 2007, or to find the earliest posts, or even to quickly scan through post titles. So, use at your own discretion.


7/22/2011: Here's a nice post about getting more traffic to your blog:

~How To Get Traffic, And Repeated Readers, To Your Blog - Blogger Help Group | Google Groups

This comes from the Blogger Help Group on Google Groups:

Blogger Help Group | Google Groups

...a truly useful resource which, of course, has this message on its front page:
Zipped versions of the pages and files associated with this group will be available for download until August 31, 2011. After this date, this feature and the zip file downloads will be turned off permanently.

Super. Well, may as well take advantage of this feature while it's still there:

Download pages | Download Files

3 comments:

dr.antony said...

You will learn all that is needed on the way,once you start blogging.

Unknown said...

Thank You for this Blog Post! I will be looking into it! I read up on alot of different sites before I started to Blog. I know a lot of them said that if you are Blogging to make money, it takes a while to build up a following. It also has a lot to do with keywords in search engines and whats on your Blog. I haven't read any of the links you posted. But I will when I get a chance. I so far have been having a hard time making any money Blogging. But I guess time will tell, I don't always have the time to Blog either. Thank you!!

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thanks for ur help