If you’re aiming at making a living as a freelancer, you need a blog. Blogs are great for building up a network of contacts. A well-executed blog can be a showcase for your skills. And if you’re good enough, you can earn a living from your blog – just look at Darren Rowse.
If you’re thinking about starting a blog, the first thing you should know is that there are two ways to do it. The easier way is to use a hosted service, such as Blogger.com or WordPress.com. These are great services, and they certainly have their place. But they do have limitations, mainly because they ultimately belong to someone else. You have to play by their rules. Making your blog look just the way you want may not be possible. If you break the rules, you can be kicked out at any time.
If you crave independence, you’ll want a self-hosted blog. That means that the blogging software runs on a computer (or ‘server’) owned by a hosting company. You pay a monthly fee in exchange for a certain amount of disk space and bandwidth.
There are a number of blogging software systems, but by far the most popular is WordPress. Because it’s so popular (did I mention that it’s free?), there is excellent support through a huge network of WordPress users. If the basic software doesn’t do something exactly the way you want it to, you can modify its behaviour with ‘plug-ins’. If you don’t like the appearance of your blog, you can choose from thousands of free themes. You can create your own theme if you like. You can even sell themes.
Yaro Starak has released an excellent set of training videos which step through the process of setting up a WordPress blog. They’re free – you don’t even need to give away an email address.
Watch the videos, set up a hosting account with a hosting company and register a domain name (not with the same company – I recommend Namecheap), upload and install WordPress, choose and install a theme, add some plugins and start blogging.
Tags: blog, blogger, Blogging, features, plug-in, theme, training videos, wordpress
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If you’re still on the fence: grab your favorite earphones, head down to a Best Buy and ask to plug them into a Zune then an iPod and see which one sounds better to you, and which interface makes you smile more. Then you’ll know which is right for you.
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The new Zune browser is surprisingly good, but not as good as the iPod’s. It works well, but isn’t as fast as Safari, and has a clunkier interface. If you occasionally plan on using the web browser that’s not an issue, but if you’re planning to browse the web alot from your PMP then the iPod’s larger screen and better browser may be important.
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