Hi All,
Well, the Project Blogger pack has rounded the last turn and is heading for home at break-neck speed. So, I think the time has come for me to cap this off nicely with a series of posts that (hopefully) will encapsulate my Project Blogger experience and could also help to serve as part of a blueprint for others to follow.
When I joined Active Rain and put up my very first post on March 31 2007, I had no idea what the future would hold. I had never blogged before anywhere and I had also never heard of Project Blogger. To re-cap for anyone who just joined us, I attended a seminar given by Dustin Luther of Rain City Guide fame about Internet Relevance and Real Estate. I had actually attended the very same seminar one month before as well but, like most folks did nothing with the information I received the first time.
The second time was an entirely different story. This time the penny dropped, so to speak and I decided to investigate Active Rain which had been featured prominently in his talk, and see what this blogging thing was all about. What clicked was when Dustin said that blogging was like writing an email to the world. I liked that and it intrigued me. I came home, settled myself on the couch and crafted my first ever post entitled "The Internet and Real Estate aka My First Blog". It was right after I clicked "Post Blog Entry" for the very first time that my world began spinning.
At the same time that I was posting my piece Drew Meyers from Zillow.com was announcing his need for an apprentice for Project Blogger. From the very first moment people were telling me that I needed to try for this. ARDELL and Laurie Mannychief among them. I dutifully followed directions, found Drew's post and began my quest. Incidentally, once I found out what Project Blogger was, what it could do for me, my business and more importantly, what it could do for Charity, I really wanted to do this but was absolutely floored when I was chosen from amongst all the very worthy candidates to receive this honor.
To my knowledge, not only was I the very last apprentice to be chosen by the very last coach to be included but I was also the newest to blogging entirely, having just a few days under my belt, and I was also the only apprentice that had to compete on such a grand scale just for the chance to get into the competition to begin with.
When Drew announced his choicewe had barely four days before the contest officially began to gear up and I had only put up seven posts in my entire blogging career. My eighth post was "Just Let Me Know When I should Start To Panic" and panic I did.
By the time I joined the party all of the other contenders had either started their personal blogs, been writing for months already or had at least known that they were going to be doing this and had some time to prepare.
The first order of business was to choose and purchase a domain name, and web hosting space. Drew and I brainstormed a bit for something that would be easy to remember, descriptive and appropriate for my market area but not so specific that you would have to know it already, to know it at all. We tossed around several different choices and then we tried them out on folks.
I remembered Dustin's advice during his seminar that a good blog name is one that is specific but general. And also that naming one's blog after oneself is not necessarily the best choice. Instead, I tried to think of what meant Claremont to me and also of what would be interesting to someone who was not necessarily looking for a Real Estate Blog, but might read one if they found it interesting.
Per Drew's instruction, I set of to investigate cost and availability of some of our tentative choices. I settled on GoDaddy.comas the place that I would purchase my domains from and my web-hosting as well. Again, I followed Drew's advice and purchased all the different permutations of Route66Living including .com, .net, .org, .tv, etc. As time goes on, I plan on purchasing more domain names and will point them to Route66Living.com as well. My total cash outlay to start my site was $64.85 which included the cost of the multiple domains and economy Linux hosting for one year.
Wordpresswas chosen as my platform for its ease of use, its popularity which means that there were more free templates and other goodies easily and readily available and for Drew's familiarity with the program. As a green-grass beginner, I had no preference one way or the other, but Drew was a fan and I also remembered that Rain City Guide is a Wordpress platform so that was good enough for me.
I spent a considerable amount of time on those first couple of days after the site had been purchased but before it officially debuted, joining a whole lot of things. MyBlogLog, Feedburner, Technorati, Google, Yahoo, Feedblitz, Flickr and Google Reader were among the first. I am sure that there were more and in hindsight, one of the things that I would strongly suggest for anyone following in my footsteps would be to record what you have joined, when and with what login information somewhere safe, like a word document or even a paper notebook. It is amazing how many sites and services you will need to join when you start a venture like this and keeping that record will sure make things easier. It will also allow you to be even more secure with your passwords and may prevent the urge to just pick a favorite password and use it for everything.
We decided not to build the site in secret and then launch it fully formed, but rather to build it from the ground up starting the first day of the contest in front of everyone, every single step of the way...
Tomorrow, I will talk about the launch phase for Route66Living.com and it's very first days of life.
Until then... Take care all, help lots of people and have a wonderful day!
Tisza
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