A blog is a blog but is it? Help!!

It is the promotion you do, the SEO and the content that actually gets the visitors, especially if you are hosting the blog in your own servers, not if they are done with Wordpress or Blogger.

Hi Craig,

Starting a blog is always a good idea. It's true that blogs are booming and that there are blogs getting millions of visitors. Nevertheless, there is always place for an other blog.
If you provide solid content that is at the same time helpful and entertaining, you will get your loyal readers.

As for the platform, there is no doubt. Use worldpress.org and host your own blog to have full control over it.

To promote wait till you have some content on it (like 10 core articles) and the do the usual:
-Update your pinging list or ping the blog yourself.
-On page Seo (use the all-in-one-seo plugin)
-Start building backlinks through social media (squidoo), article marketing, wikis, PR.... No-follow links help also with direct traffic: comments on other blogs, forum posting (some do follow)
Of course you should post regularly to your blog.
The more content, the better.

So don't ask yourself twice whether you should start a blog. Just do it and you will see great results if you stay consistent.

Hope I could help... and this is an impartial info.

All the best,
Houcem

Something that has confused many people is the distinction between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. Let's clear it up.
WordPress.org is free blogging software. With WordPress.org, you can install themes and plugins, run advertisements, edit the database and even modify the PHP source code. WordPress.org is the home of this software. Anyone can download the software for free but it must be installed on a web server before it will work. Web servers are generally not free. Hosting your own WordPress software can be fun and rewarding; it also places full responsibility on the blogger. If you mismanage your web server, you can lose your entire blog.
For no charge, WordPress.org provides downloadable blog software, community mailing lists, community support forums, hosting recommendations, documentation, and free themes and plugins.

WordPress.com is different. You do not have to download software, pay for hosting or manage a web server. When you sign up for a WordPress.com blog, you will get a URL like 'andy.wordpress.com'
You do not control the software or the database; FTP and shell access are not included. WordPress.com is based on multi-user version of the software which does not permit uploading PHP themes or plugins. Javascript and CSS are also restricted for security reasons. What you can do on WordPress.com is blog for free.
For no charge, WordPress.com provides web hosting, unlimited database storage with redundancy and backups, automatic software upgrades, community support forums, multi-lingual administration and themes, basic traffic stats, comment tracking, blog and post rankings and other features not available anywhere else. These features will always be free for blogs started on WordPress.com; if you ever find yourself being charged for these at WordPress.com, pinch yourself and wake up!
WordPress.com is a commercial enterprise owned by Automattic, a company started by the founding developer of WordPress and staffed by full-time developers, designers and support agents. It runs a multi-user version of WordPress called WordPress MU. WPMU is also free, open-source software. Developments sponsored by Automattic are regularly contributed back into WordPress.org so the community can benefit.
WordPress.com offers paid upgrades as a way to provide premium features without forcing bloggers to host their blogs elsewhere. These upgrades are optional. Basic blogs will always be free on WordPress.com and the basic services will continue to be upgraded with better features.

Hi Graig,
For pinging: I actually use a private tool right now but I used to use Ping-o-Matic! . Give it a try.

If you want to plug old and new projects together, then I would suggest you just place a link in the blogroll pointing to your old ones. As for the blog itself, try to keep it as focused on a specific niche as possible. This way you get search engine benefits and your audience will be very targeted to your offers.

As I said, if you have a worldpress installation on your own server, then you have full control. WP.com could ban you if you hit it hard with affiliate promotions. This will never be the case with your self hosted blog.

@Bladerunner: thanks for the explanation on WP.com and WP.org.

Hope I could help,
Houcem

Hey: Thank you for an interesting situation to ponder. Thank the rest of the nice people for the advice that followed.

I prefer to use Wordpress hosted by myself because I have more control over it and I can easily add useful plug ins. There is plenty of room for another blog and yes you can get traffic.

I set up a blog last Thursday on a domain that I've had for a while and was only getting on average 17 visitors a month. I set myself a 6 month traffic challenge and have done a little more every day and already it is averaging 114 visits a day and got 284 unique visitors in the first 4 days of this month.

I have still got a lot of things that I can do to build traffic and the way things are going it looks as if I will complete my challenge long before the 6 months are up. I've been writing about what I've been doing step by step on the blog. If you want a look see check out the traffic challenge in my signature.

I prefer to use Wordpress hosted by myself because I have more control over it and I can easily add useful plug ins. There is plenty of room for another blog and yes you can get traffic.

I set up a blog last Thursday on a domain that I've had for a while and was only getting on average 17 visitors a month. I set myself a 6 month traffic challenge and have done a little more every day and already it is averaging 114 visits a day and got 284 unique visitors in the first 4 days of this month.

I have still got a lot of things that I can do to build traffic and the way things are going it looks as if I will complete my challenge long before the 6 months are up and will have to set myself another one. I've been writing about what I've been doing step by step on the blog. If you want a look see check out the traffic challenge in my signature.

Craig,

Definately a Wordpress man hosted by myself. The many plugins allow you to automated several tedious functions. The plugins also allow you to monitize in different ways that don't look to pushy.

As for Blogger, about 3 years ago I had a blog setup and wrote all my own articles, totally unique content and had it running for 1 year with hunderds of posts and with only the Adsense on it for monitization. I had about 300-400 visitors a day and one day I woke up to find it was gone.

Not only that, but my actual site I was blogging for, went from a PR 5 into Google's supllementary index and basically killed my business overnight.

Keep any ownership of your hard work away from Google period, unless it's in their rankings!

Also, to get indexed pretty quickly, if you have a Yahoo, MSN and Google account add your RSS feed to your main account page and it will be indexed pretty quick. My last blog was picked up in 3 days!!

Hope this helps,

Neil

I highly recommend Wordpress. It is search engine indexing friendly, has lots of plugins to extend its features and is very easy to use.

I recommend you have your own hosting and install WordPress on your own hosting. This way WordPress has no say over your content, you don't have to be a subdomain of theirs and you have full control.

Blogs are like books. It doesn't matter how many there are, what matters is getting yours read. Don't focus on how many other blogs there are, focus on how you will be totally different from all the other ones.