Blah, Blah, Blog

I have to confess that I am now in my second internet life. A few years ago I created my very first website. I began with Yahoo pages. I even used their "pagemaker" or whatever it was called. I added some text, in the form of experiences that we have had over the years. Then I found a couple of commercial sites that offered free content and hosted galleries. I signed up, decorated my pages with their banners and told people to go look at their pictures and movie clips. I made a little money, but I worked a LOT. Creating pages was tedious work, especially since I didn't know what I was doing. Writing all that content was tough, too. But I did it, and I enjoyed it. The return just didn't justify the amount of energy that I was dumping into it.

Then somebody invented the blog.

A blog (short for web log) is nothing more than a mechanism for an online journal. The idea is to add something every day, or however often you feel motivated. You are now reading a blog. They are everywhere and they are easy to use. No technical skill is required. The blog is built on a template so you don't have to do any of the dirty work. There are several places where you can start blogging for nothing. I mean for free. Gratis. Like right here at blogger.com. This is NOT a place to begin an explicit blog, however. (Truth be told, it is getting harder and harder to find free places to set up a blog. At least those that deal in adult subject matter, and porn, specifically. But there are some options. You will find information about them in future posts.)

Blogs are great for other reasons. Search engines love them. And you should love search engines. Very few people are going to just type in the address for your site. Chances are good that they will go searching for their favorite topic. Let's say, "Blue-eyed brunettes". Now you may have a conventional site with thousands of pictures of brown-haired girls with baby blue eyes. But unless you have done some fancy footwork, Google isn't going to know that. A blog that deals with that topic though will come up high on a search. That's where you want to be - right where people can find you.

Blogs also live happily with other blogs. A lot of bloggers look for similar blogs for content. If they find something they like, they are likely to write a little post about it. That sends even more traffic to your site. A few days ago the stats at one of my sites skyrocketed. I was getting 10 times the number of visitors that I normally get. Needless to say, I was pretty curious to find out where they were coming from. Another blogger saw - and liked - my blog, and told his readers about it. They came in big numbers, and they bought in big numbers.

Bottom line. Blogs are easy to create, easy to maintain, and easy to draw traffic to. We'll consider each of those ideas in further detail in the future. For now, go find your new blog's home and create an account.