JustinFlood.com

Blogging is dead? Hardly.

It seems it’s been all the rage this week to ring the bell on the death of blogging.  The A-list bloggers are dropping off of Techmeme,  Calacanis quit blogging and switched to email (what!?), and Scoble is more into Friendfeed.   So yeah, blogging must be dead right?  It’s old fashioned!  Out of style!  It’s going the way of the telegraph!  Right?  Wrong.

I stand by my statement that blogging, like anything else, is just a vessel for delivering CONTENT.    Just like TV, Radio, or even Twitter, or Friendfeed.  It’s a method of getting information from one person to a group of people.  Just because the quote “A-Listers” have gotten bored with the system, doesn’t mean that it’s in any way fundamentally flawed.  The only major problem is simply the level of noise in the ’sphere.  There are tens, if not hundreds, of millions of blogs on the net now, and it’s become harder to break through to the surface to find your readers.

To me though, this “problem” really is a blessing in disguise.  It’s a system that naturally eliminates people who don’t deliver good content.  If you copy and paste crap from one blog to another, and fill your page with nothing but ads,  chances are no one will ever see you!    You’re really forced to do a better JOB than the other guy.   If you want to get and keep readers, you have to consistently be on your game.  This is why more and more of the Techmeme leaderboard is made up of major media outlets.  Like it or not, major media outlets are REALLY GOOD at delivering entertaining content.  It’s what they DO.

So what about the solo blogger?  The honest truth is, most solo bloggers don’t make millions of dollars from their blogs,   and most anyone who did would be snatched up by a major media outlet in a hot second!   Solo bloggers aren’t going anywhere either though.  Most of us do this for fun!  We enjoy writing,  and it doesn’t really hurt our pocketbooks to keep it up.   I’d hardly call spending 8 dollars a year on a domain, and 7 bucks a month on hosting a financial burden.  We aren’t going anywhere.  If you like what we write as solo bloggers, that’s fine!  We love that you guys come to read us.  It’s awesome to get recognition for what we do.   If not, you can go elsewhere.  It’s ok.

The biggest problem I think the A-listers are having, is that they really enjoy conversations more than they enjoy delivering a story in a journalistic sense.  People like Scoble and Calacanis LOVE to talk to people.  They want to have an intimate connection with the people who read their stuff.   With some A-list sites getting hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month,  conversations just aren’t possible anymore.  Blogging at that scale just isn’t good for having a conversation with your readers.  This is why they’ve all gone on to sites that are more social network than they are content delivery.  This is great too.  They should absolutely do what they feel they should do.  But to call blogging dead is I think taking it a bit too far.

You don’t see sites like Engadget or Techcrunch calling blogging dead.  The numbers of hits they get on a daily basis has elevated them to the position of trusted news sources.  People go to them for updated information on a constant basis, most of the time BEFORE they go to traditional media.   Stripped to the core, though, the sites are nothing but blogs.  You don’t see those sites shutting down and moving to friendfeed.  It’s just silly.  Like I said before,  blogging is just a way of delivering content.  If you’re good at it you’ll have readers, if not, you won’t.

Jason Calacanis likened himself to Bob Dylan at Newport in 1965, bringing out an electric guitar at a folk revival.  Unfortunately I don’t think that holds up.   I wouldn’t exactly call the acoustic guitar dead.

Like any instrument, blogging has it’s place.  It’s just a matter of people playing it the right way.

Family Guy – Former Life of Brian

Courtesy of FOX and Hulu

Blogging for fun and profit: Brainstorming Ideas.

Note: This will become an ongoing series of articles on how to blog as a serious hobby. Covering topics such as building readership, monetizing, etc. To read the series in its entirety when it’s completed, click the Blogging for fun and profit category to the right. Thanks!

Part 1: Brainstorming Ideas.

So as the typical 1950’s PSA would go, “So, you’ve decided to start blogging?” Well as someone who’s been in the internet scene for a years, but only a blogger for the past year or two, I have a bit of advice to give you. This series of articles is designed to help people avoid the pitfalls of blogging that I’ve encountered over the years, so that hopefully you can thrive.

The first thing you need to do is to pick a topic. This may seem like common sense, but the number of people who don’t follow it shocks me, so listen up. Make absolutely sure that you write about something that you’re actually interested in. You may see a niche that you can exploit in the riding mowers area, but if you don’t like or know anything about riding mowers, you’ll soon find your blog without readers, and without you writing on it.

Also, try to focus on one general topic. I know I shouldn’t talk considering all the things I cover here, but I consider this more of a personal blog than a business venture.

Once you have your topic and tone down, you should pick out your domain name.

This is where you say, “Wait! Domain name? Does this mean I have to… spend money?”

And I’m going to answer yes. Sure there are places like blogger and wordpress.com where you can host a blog for free, but eventually if your blog starts to take off, you’re going to want to move your blog to it’s own domain with it’s own special design, and its own hosting. If you decide to move from one of these free services, the chances of you retaining your old readers is almost nil. You will have old links going to one site and new links going to another, and it will be very difficult for your readers to find you again.

You’re better off spending the money ahead of time if you’re serious and setting up with your own domain, hosting, and installing your blog platform on your own server. Don’t worry it’s not as hard as it sounds.

I’d recommend DomainDiscover.com to buy your domain from, and Hostgator.com to purchase your hosting from. Hostgator has a great feature where you can do a 1-click Wordpress install automatically. The domain should cost you around $10, and the hosting around $10/month or so after that.

For your domain, pick something that fits with your topic of conversation, something catchy and interesting that people will remember. Try your best to keep it short. People are lazy, they don’t like to type in long URLs.

Ok, so you’ve got your idea, your tone, your domain, and your hosting. Come back next time for part 2: Why Wordpress?