Calling all Newbie Bloggers!

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Welcome to 2009 and your spanking new blog you created at Blogger.com. 

Photo by Ben30

What are the next steps you should follow to make blogging an instantaneous and painless experience? How to be a successful blogger using only point and click and some fast keyboarding? Here are some fast tips for the ultra n00b................

The first thing when creating a blog is to select a short and sweet URL or blog address. You can change this afterwards also by login at Blogger.com and then go to Settings>>Publishing>>Blog Address. If the address is not available you can get a Custom Domain Dot Com address for only 10$ US and also get rid of the 'blogspot' in the address.

Do not change the blog address if more than two months have elapsed because you will have to start all over again from scratch with respect to the search engines. You will also lose the traffic going to the old address!

After creating a blog speed up getting it on the search engines by submitting blog to them and verify ownership using Google Webmaster Tools.

Creating posts and inserting pictures in your blog is made easy thanks to Windows Live Writer.

For optimum blogging experience download Firefox browser on a PC with a broadband connection. For checking your emails use Thunderbird. To follow and subscribe to latest blog updates use Google Reader. All are free!

Never delete the account used to create your blog. DELETING ACCOUNT DOES NOT DELETE YOUR BLOG. 

After creating a post open the post page in browser by clicking on the post title. Then from browser menu click File>>Save Page As and save it to a backup folder on your hard drive.  You should also backup your entire blog periodically. Backup your blog template (Login>>Layouts>>Edit Html>>Download Full Template)and widgets in same folder. Periodically record the folder to CD or DVD-ROM to insure against hard disk failure. Invest in a USB drive and synchronize backup folders to it. This will prevent piling up of backup CD/DVD-ROMs.

Keep passwords secure with Keep Pass - a free password encryptor and manager.  In your Google or Gmail account settings enter a secondary email account.

Open a Paypal account and put in some donation links in your blog.

On the Main Page of the blog show only an expandable summary of the posts followed by a Read More link. This makes the main page load faster.

Burn your blog feed at Feedburner.com and copy the new feed url and paste it in Settings>>Site Feed>>Post Feed Redirect box and save. Now you will be able to know your full subscriber count. Put in a prominent Feed Icon at the top of your blog sidebar so viewers can subscribe to blog updates.

Lastly add content regularly at least thrice weekly.  Do not make very long posts and add pictures and videos inbetween to break the monotony. Add Labels and social bookmarks to all posts.

Enjoy!

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