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Does anyone here blog outside of Dakkas forums?
If so:
what blog sites do you use
how do you promote your blog
do you pay a host to blog or use a free tool
how time intensive do you find it
is it "easy" to blog i.e. putting up pics/videos or do you need basic software knowledge such as html etc

Im looking to start a gaming/video blog so any advice would be much appreciated!
Feel free to link to your own blogs here if you'd like to show what you do with them.

I have a 40k blog that gets updated from time to time, and a fiction/poetry blog that I've neglected for a few months but may well resurrect soon enough. I use Blogger (formerly Google Blogs) for both of them, as it's free to set up and run, can be quite varied in style/theme ect, and is rather intuitive. I have no knowledge of html or coding, and still find it no harder to use than a forum or word processor.

As for promotion, Twitter can be quite good for instant promotion (the posts I tweeted about did better than the ones that I didn't in terms of views), and sharing lings on relevant sites (like Dakka, for a gaming blog) is also a good way to reach your target audience.

As for time, it can take as long or short a time as you feel you have; a quick painting update that takes 5 minutes to type up for a few hours writing a battle report and editing pictures, either works. Unless you plan on having dozens of different pages (rather than the main page) and therefore have to update stuff multiple times, the only effort is producing the content and answering any comments you get if you want to. There's not any maintenance or anything that you need to do.

The best advice I can give is to have a clear idea of what you're doing and why. If you find yourself with no comments or very few views then maybe it's time to change up your stlye or content, but at the end of the day, if you end up finding it a burden to keep it going then there's no pressure to do so. On the other hand, if you enjoy writing stuff up then don't be put off by lack of views, keep at it and you may find things pick up.

I had a tech blog that I blagged for a while, but that fell by the wayside a year or two ago. Friends and I wanted to get a 40k blog going, but we never got around to that.

Isn't Twitter and Facebook addicts bloggers?

Edit
Snetence structure

Sometimes. I am very bad about 'marketing' it because I do it more for myself than for other people.

I have a history blog. Most people find history boring so I wanted to share why I love it. I have different historical characters on panels discussing historical topics such as the fall of the Roman Empire or the siege of Malta. It's history for entertainment.
http://minimumwagehistorian.com/

I am a blogger. Though I haven't been running my writer blog for a while since I actually wrote anything original. Other my darker comedies.

The best thing to do is to talk to people in the community. using multiplatform such as tumblr and blogspot. I believe you can connect the two.

It kind of helps to be friendly and be open to questions.

Any advice on what platform to use? I know theres wordpress, the old google one, blogger and tumblr?
Is there much of a muchness between them? Ideally I'll be hosting a lot of pics on it with a few links here and there to youtube etc.

My website(Currently on hiatus but that should be changing this month) is a sort of blog, It's built using the WordPress software hosted on an paid external domain. I personally find word press to be very capable with lot of customization options. Hope this helps

My vote goes to Blogger, it's simple and easy to use, so I can't see why not to use it. Wordpress is also good, but I prefer the interface on Blogger.

Thank you guys. TB you mention a paid for domain. Can you explain that? Talk tech to me like Im 6 years old

I don't blog, but I've used Wordpress before more as a content management thing for my old website and it worked good. It's really easy to use and theres tons of plugins and templates you can use for your site.

You can use wordpress.com if you want them to host it for you and you can pick your own domain name and all, or wordpress.org if you want to download the software and install it on your own server. If you don't know anything about building websites an stuff, I'd recommend having them host it for you.

 Ratius wrote:
Thank you guys. TB you mention a paid for domain. Can you explain that? Talk tech to me like Im 6 years old

You can buy a domain name for a year. They usually run about 8-15 USD depending on where you get it from and what TLD (.com, .org, .us.....) you have on it. Some have special restrictions. A regular person can't get a .gov or .mil, for example.

You can then make this take people to your website. It's a good way of building name recognition and getting people to take you seriously. After all, when people talk about your site, which URL looks easier to say and more professional: www.geocities.com/~dinosaurPoopForSale or www.dinosaurpoop.com?

(I don't know if those are real sites and I'm going to find out)

Ok Ratius what I do is I pay a company about £10 a month for them to host my website on there servers , they also deal with the domain name ownership stuff when that comes round once a year. I hope this helps

I have a blog.

I just use blogger. Its free, easy and its as simple as clicking a few buttons and you can get started. Whats great about blogger is you can set it up so you share others blogs and the google+ community gets involved as well.

If your blog is good enough you will find it spreads through other blogs and so on.

This was my first year blogging and I have got 104,000 views in 11 months. I havent spent a cent nor have I spent long doing it.

Honestly if you are gonna blog, dont pay for it. Its great fun to bounce ideas off others, motivate your self and keep track of things. it also opens you up to plenty of awesome blogs out there amazing stuff (wargaming wise anyway).

My advice for a decent blog, spend a few hours making it look easy to read. Link a few blogs to yours. Ask natfka to link your blog to theirs. Put up some decent content and then build up an audience over time.

http://theimperialpatrol.blogspot.co.nz/

I havent had anything on there for a few days, but if your blog is mainly wargaming related definetly get the more popular blogs to put yours on their theirs. It helps you gain repeat and new viewers.

If yours is mainly wargaming related ill put it up on mine if you want.

Thanks guys, all great help, thanks Swas too