Article Avenue - free articles and downloads - How To Start A Blog, Have Fun, And Increase Website Traffic

When it comes to generating traffic, nothing beats starting your own blog. For years, blogging was considered a place to record your thoughts and connect with family. Maybe the blogs of yester-year branched out a bit to include friends and business associates.

Nowadays, if you haven't started a blog, you are missing out on some of the best website traffic freely available, and losing out big time.

It's a fact. Warm-blooded humans love to read blogs. Search engines, like Google and Yahoo! adore blogs. For the search engines, the reason is pretty simple; content is constantly updating and search engines feed off these updates. For humans, much of the best in information, resources, and product reviews (and products themselves) can be gleaned from following good blogs. It's easy to create loyalty and keep your readers coming back for more, when you have your own space to pour your heart and soul into.

The key to successfully starting your own blog is to first know your limitations (we'll cover passions in just a bit). While Google does have their own blogger area, will you have the know how to make yours stand out from all the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of other bloggers using this blogging platform? If you do not know how to draw traffic to your blog, you face the same trials and tribulations as you would putting up a static website. You must know how to increase traffic, draw and keep visitors, and use the tools and tricks of blogging to be successful.

Let's presume, for now, that you are only interested in the first stepping stones to creating a successful blog. Your first step would be to determine (ah, here it is) your passion!

Bloggers passionate about their fields, hobbies, know how, etc., joyfully exchange information with their readers, yes even years down the road. Conversely, individuals who choose to blog about subjects they have no real know-how for tend to abandon their projects. No heart, no blog.

You need to think outside the box. Remember, when it is your own space on the internet, you have the freedom to do what you want, not do what you are told. You also gain the flexibility to introduce a wide variety of subjects to explore and still maintain the overall essence of your blog. Blogs allow for the creation of categories and tags, and make a neat, easy, simple system all their own to "file" your information. By using a blogs filing system effectively, you make it easy for humans to find your information, and have the search engines worshipping you. Humans need humans, search engines need data.

The next step to start a blog is to choose a platform. As mentioned above, Google has their own, with a limited amount of (not very attractive) templates to begin. Sure if you want to learn the ins and outs of code-related blog themes, you can substitute templates found out online. However, the platform most recommended for starting a blog is Wordpress.

Wordpress does allow you to host your blog on their servers, but we would highly recommend not going that route. Purchasing a long-lasting (keyword driven) domain name, and finding (excellent) hosting for that domain should be your aim.

So what do we have so far? We know you must:

Unearth your passion - talking with knowledgeable individuals often helps you discover what it is your really love in life!

Research and buy your domain name - again getting help so you don't end up with a loser of a domain name is important.