So you’ve been reading blogs for a while, and you want to know how to start a blog. It’s really easy, it pays off long term in your career, and it’s a great way to meet awesome people. I’m going to tell you all the things I wish somebody would have told me way back when I got started blogging in 2002.
Decide Why You’re Starting a Blog
People decide to get into blogging for different reasons. Understanding exactly why you’re doing it will help you determine what kind of blog you need to write and how you need to set it up:
- Make Money Blogging: the easiest way to make money blogging is to blog for an existing site like SQLBlog, SearchSQLServer, SQLServerCentral, SQL-Server-Performance, SQLTeam, or one of the other established blogging sites. They’ll pay you by the article right from the start, and these sites are run by good guys who really do want to hear from you. Go to their site, go to the Contact area, and send them an email talking about what you’d like to write about. As of this writing, at least one of those editors is paying new authors (as opposed to established big-name DBAs) around $25-$50 per article. It will be a long, long, long time before your own blog will be paying you anywhere near that much money. I have ads on a few of my most popular articles, and I still barely make enough to pay my hosting fees.)
- Blogging for Name Recognition: Again, talk to one of the big blog sites. They’ll get you the most name recognition in the least amount of time. Starting your own blog is going to mean toiling unappreciated for months or years before you hit the “big time” – or whatever that means for blogging.
- Blogging for Career Success: If you want to make a personal investment of your time in order to gain long-term career traction, then start by writing your own blog under your own domain name. It’s not going to pay off for a while – in fact, it’s going to cost you around $100 per year, and it’s going to suck up some of your time. I’m not saying this is an either-or proposition: you can write both for yourself and for other sites. (That’s the approach I take.) I highly recommend starting with your own personal blog under your own control, though, to build your own brand and benefit your career.
If you’re going to blog to make money or gain name recognition quickly – and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that – then you can stop reading here. The hosted blog site will handle the plumbing for you.
If you’re going to blog for yourself, then listen up and repeat after me: “I am blogging for my long-term career success.”
As you read through the rest of this article, there’s going to be times when the advice will seem odd, but we have to circle back and remember why we’re blogging: for our personal long-term career success. Not to make money quickly, not to get our name out there overnight, not to make compromises on our integrity in order to get popular, but for our long-term career. So now let’s get started with some of that questionable advice….
Don’t Expect Overnight Success
Whether you define success as visitors per day, money from ads, or the number of paparazzi camped outside your door, you are not going to be happy with your success metrics for months or years if you start your own blog on your own domain name.
If you want to achieve any of those things, I’d suggest that instead of blogging under your own domain name, go blog for one of the big SQL Server blog sites like SQLBlog, SearchSQLServer, SQLServerCentral, SQL-Server-Performance, SQLTeam, etc. There are some brilliant people blogging over there, and success over there is contagious. If you like one blog at SQLServerCentral, for example, odds are you’ll go subscribe to more of them, or at least check them out. You can piggyback off guys like Andy Warren just by blogging for the same site as him – your name will be on the site near his stuff.
The downside is that you don’t really own that. You can have a falling out with somebody, you can get pissed off, you can get pissed on, or the site might get bought by somebody that decides to festoon ads all over your content. If you decide to publish a book later, and you include snips of your blog entries in the book, you won’t have to worry about content ownership. Or, like in my case, if you suddenly get some community visibility because you go to work for somebody huge (cough)QuestSoftware(/cough), you own your own web presence that people will see and remember. Or, in Tom LaRock’s case, if you decide to run for PASS Board, you can put anything you want on your site without worrying whether or not it’s okay with the editorial board at your hosted blog site.
Why You Should Start a Blog Under Your Own Domain Name
When you decide to start off on your own, it’s really tempting to use a blogging service like Blogger, Live Spaces or WordPress.com. These sites have all the plumbing already set up for you, and they take care of all the tricky parts about web hosting. On the other hand, you end up with a blog domain name that looks like this:
http://myblogname.blogger.com
The problem with that is that you never really own it. The provider can change how your blog looks, change how it works, or just plain go out of business. A company that seems huge today may be nearly gone tomorrow, and it’s already happened in the blogging business – think GeoCities and Tripod. When you get fed up and want to change blogging providers, your web site name will change to:
http://myblogname.someotherblogservice.com
You’ll start over from scratch in the search engine rankings, people will have to move their bookmarks, and you’ll lose a lot of what you’ve worked for. If you’re going to take the hosted service route, just save yourself a lot of heartache and go right back to the first step where we talked about writing for a SQL Server blog community like SQLTeam or SQL-Server-Performance.com.
My recommendation: spend $10/year to get your own domain name like www.myblogname.com. I use GoDaddy.com for my registration, and I use Namedroppers to help pick domain names. Give Namedroppers a list of key words that you might want in the domain name, and it’ll mix and match to show which ones are taken and which are available.
It can be intimidating trying to pick a web site name – there’s so many choices! – but I recommend that you….
Use Your Real Name as Your Blog’s Domain Name
When I first started my site in the 1990s, I had WickedLife.com. At the time, I was into the goth thing (I know, I know) and I thought it was the coolest domain. It was catchy, people liked it, and I had a little following going, but times changed and I stopped being wicked. I realized that wasn’t really the image I wanted to project, and not everybody was going to think it was cute, so I switched to BrentOzar.com.
Back then, I wasn’t blogging about SQL Server – I was blogging about systems administration. Then I got a couple of read-eared slider turtles, and I started writing about those because I couldn’t find any good information on the web about them. I got most of my hits from people searching for how to set up their aquariums, what to feed their turtles, or how to take care of them. I also wrote about a server monitoring program called ServersAlive, and I wrote ASP templates for other sysadmins to track their database servers. Then, over more time, the site’s focus shifted to SQL Server, and here we are today. Two or three years from now, maybe this blog will be mostly cloud-focused, because that’s the direction my interest seems to be aiming.
The beauty of using your real name as your domain name is that the site always reflects YOU – your interests, your personal focus, and your career. You don’t have to worry about rebranding some blog, worrying about whether people will find the new one, getting your readers to read a different blog, yadda yadda yadda.
Right now, you might be really deeply excited about SQL Server or .NET, and you might want to pick up a cute, funny domain name like SQLServerTriggerMaster.com. What happens five or ten years later when you’ve started working with Oracle or MySQL, or when Microsoft changes the product name?
This recommendation isn’t a hard and fast guideline. An online persona like SQLBatman or SQLAgentMan works for some guys, and I think it’s funny as hell. Other guys start up a different blog for each of their technology focuses – Dmitry Sotnikov took this approach when he started CloudEnterprise.info, for example, and I follow all of his blogs too because they happen to coincide with my interests. If you’re passionate about that, go for it, because a big part of long-term blogging is to…
Be Yourself
I’ve talked to a couple of startup bloggers who’ve asked about what they should or shouldn’t include on their blogs. If you want to talk about it, you should blog about it. If you’re worried that your potty mouth will cause people to avoid your blog, I give you TheBloggess.com, one of the funniest blogs I know. She is gut-bustingly funny and censor-bustingly nasty. If she tried to clean up her act, I’d unsubscribe.
Would you want to go out to lunch with somebody who only talked shop, constant shop, and nothing but shop?
Nah, me neither. I like knowing that the person on the other end of the intertubez is a real human being with a real life that has great days and crappy days. I know other blog readers who say they don’t want any of that personal stuff, and I point those readers toward sanctioned, cleaned-up blogs hosted by corporate sites. If you’re writing a personal site, it should have personal stuff. Not too much stuff, though – I want to know you have kids, but I don’t want to know when they did their first #2 in the toilet instead of the diaper. Save a little something for the family reunions.
I’ve also been asked what to write about in terms of SQL Server content. The big rule of writing is to write what you know. The more you know about the topic, the easier the words will come out. If you try to write about a subject that you don’t already know, even if it’s CLOSE to something you already know, you’re going to have to spend time learning it and getting it right before you can write about it. You don’t have that kind of time, because you need to…
Blog At Least Once a Week
If you’re not expecting to spend an hour a week updating your blog, hang it up. Look at your calendar right now and point at where you could work in that hour a week. If you can’t do it, throw in the towel. Or maybe consider blogging for one of the commercial sites that I talked about early on, because they’ll be thankful to get your blog entries whenever they get ‘em, and they have enough other bloggers to make up for your periods of quiet.
In reality, blogging sucks up a lot more than an hour a week, and you can’t just budget a single hour on one day a week to do it. You’ll be responding to comments as soon as they come in, answering questions, tweaking your blog look and feel, etc.
I have a routine that makes it easier: I’m hard-wired to wake up at the crack of dawn, and Erika sleeps in for a few hours. On the weekends, I still can’t sleep in, and if I’m in a writing mood, I’ll spend that time writing blog entries in advance or checking up on my web site metrics. Sounds vain to look at your own metrics, but I’m not doing that to find out if I’m in the “in crowd” yet. I like to find out where my users are coming from, because people will write articles on their own blogs or web sites, and those articles might include a link to me. I can see in Google Analytics when people are coming to my site from another site, and then I can go look at that other site to see what they said. (Brent Ozar is a narcissistic as-HOLD ON A MINUTE….)
Just because I’m writing on the weekends doesn’t mean my blog entries come out on the weekends, though, because you need to…
Post Your Blog Entries on Weekdays
Internet traffic curve looks like this:
Weekdays are high, and weekends are low. It sounds creepy to say that you should only post blog entries when people are looking, but here’s the sad fact: some of us get in on Mondays, look at an avalanche of blog posts that hit over the weekend, and we just hit Mark-All-As-Read. If your blog comes in during the day while we’re working, on the other hand, it stands a better chance of getting read.
That doesn’t mean you have to be sitting by the computer waiting to hit Publish: good blog software will let you schedule posts ahead of time.
Which brings us to our next part – in the next parts, I’ll discuss what blog software I recommend, how to set it up, what plugins you want and how to configure them.
Great stuff Brent, as usual. However, I have to disagree about blogging subject matter.
“If you try to write about a subject that you don’t already know, even if it’s CLOSE to something you already know, you’re going to have to spend time learning it and getting it right before you can write about it. ”
Not all of us are a SQL Jedi Knights, in fact some of us aren’t even Padawans yet. I find that I do my best learning while researching something for my blog. I check and double check things to make sure that I’m right and even then I sometimes make mistakes.
Since one of my reasons for blogging is to document what I’m learning, I intentionally pick topics that I’m not expert at for that purpose.
Even though you gave me advice about using my name as the URL, I chose to ignore it. I think I will eventually move to my name as well and use URL forwarding so as not to lose the readers when I transition.
You know, I almost used Made2Mentor.com as an example of how to pick a blog name that wasn’t your own personal name, but was still long-lasting. No matter where your career goes, that blog name will still fit. I like it. You did good.
And you’re right about how writing on a new topic will make you learn it, but learning it does take time. If you have a few hours to invest in yourself and in the blog, it does pay off. I learn something pretty much every time I write a blog entry because I have to double-check my facts (okay, well, single-check, hahaha). I just wanted to warn readers that when they take on a grand new subject for a post, preparing for it will be exhaustive. If it’s not hard work, you’re not working hard enough, and you’re doing copy/paste style blogging. Some people do that and get away with it, but not guys like you and me.
Keep up the great work, man!
I have to agree with David. My blog was born to be a sounding board so I could straighten out my thoughts. Besides, it’s more fun than explaining SQL Server to my toddler, who keeps stealing back her crayons from me. I don’t really care about hits, I mean sure it’s flattering that someone wants to read my stuff but I do it for me primarily.
I started a personal blog in 1999, over the years my family knows to go there to get news about my kids and my life. Once I really got into “geeky stuff” and started blogging about it they gave me a hard time, had no idea what I was talking about and so I moved my geek stuff to a new blog. I have yet to decide my favorite domain for it I own two and can’t decide but I leave my personal blog at myname.com
I had no idea about posting on weekdays, I use wordpress, and I’m going to take your advice there.
Oh, and I can’t believe you were a goth. Does the Goth Talk SNL Skit hit close to home?
http://barney.gonzaga.edu/~tlarson1/gothtalk.jpg
This picture from college will probably help illustrate it:
http://www.brentozar.com/images/1993blackhair.jpg
Good post! Couple ways you can split the difference on domain names. One is to use Feedburner and publish that URL as your blog URL, then if you change hosting you just update Feedburner and it all works. The other method is to use Blogger (or others I assume) and set it up to point to your domain, usually something like blog.blahblah.com.
Absolutely! I’ll talk about Feedburner in part 3, too. I like it quite a bit.
1. I would pretend to be offended but my last post is about rape, midgets and phone sex calls so you might have a point.
2. I was the only goth chick in my totally agrarian high school where people (true story) drove their tractors to school. It was a rough time.
You, madam, are a gentleman and a scholar – wait, that’s not right. I mean, you’re super polite, because you could have said, “Look, Mr. Smartypants, I ain’t done none of that them there SEO stuff and I’m way the hell more popular than you.”
Not that I’m keeping track of that stuff or anything. It’s not like I make a living managing systems that track numbers and metrics. (sigh)
And your G1 review is freakin’ awesome.
I’ll admit I’m a little behind the curve, but this series is shaping up to be good stuff. Are you going to get into the design aspects of it as well? Themes, fonts, etc. to maintain good readability or is that taking it into the weeds?
Thanks! Glad you mentioned it – that’s the topic of Thursday’s post.
I love your tips..
regular blogging is one of the most important factors in technical blogging. IMO
it’s good to learn new everyday, it will also improve my blog and thank you very much for that.
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Crazy as it seems, in a world reeking with Blog-Smog, I have done it. I've gone and started my own blog. I've no idea what I'm doing, so I researched and found your very insightful article. I'm not spending my future 6 digit earnings at this point, but I do know what I know, and my clients call all the time with the same damn questions, so my blog is a space where I can answer them once and for all. I type faster than I can answer multiple phone
I took your advice about my url and registered it on GoDaddy and now plan to publish articles only on weekdays. Thanks!
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I love reading your blogs. Thanks for the tons of info!
I would like to set up a blog software package on my website. Do you have any recommendations that aren’t too expensive?
Thanks,
Bob
703-787-3552
Bob – yep, keep reading the next page of the article and I give recommendations for that.
This reply written on Sunday, mailed on Sunday and could be deleted by you on Monday morn? 50 years, I have been a genealogist, family historian and a focused specialist for women’s lost lineages. There are stories I can tell. Some already written and are being sent all over the world as e-mails. Mostly, I’d like to see them all in one place.
—a blog? well, there is an ability to answer questions due to experience and there is a gleam of fun in the process. If I post the stories to the web site GROUP HUGG in Ancestry.com? then THEY own everything I post and sell it back to people. Free enterprise? Is it possible to make any money from something so simple and complex as Granny Chronicles? thanks
Judy – I don’t know what you mean by “Granny Chronicles”, but when I search the web for that, I find several web sites and blogs that already exist by those names. You may want to contact those authors to see how they’re doing it. Generally speaking, though, you can make money off blogging, but it’s not much.
Brent,
I just want to say thanks for the information. I have created a blog name for over two months and just haven’t been able to get started. I have co-authored a book, Pro SQL Server 2008 Administration, and it has been published now. So, I have to get going. I wish I would have read this article before I published a blog name, http://sqllazywriter.blogspot.com/, in the book. Now, I really don’t know what to do about my existing name. Do I add a link to a newly created site using my name or stick with the one that I have? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Sylvester Carstarphen
Sylvester – great question! I would add a single post at Blogspot explaining that your blog moved, and a link to the new domain name. That should do it. Hope that helps!
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