Do you want to start a blog? If so, what is holding you back? Perhaps you’re not sure how to get started. Or maybe you’re worried that you have nothing to write about or that nobody cares what you have to say. I definitely fell into that category. A couple of years ago I managed to take the first steps in creating a blog via Blogger. I then went on to write at the amazing rate of one blog post every six months for the first year and a half. Recently I’ve gotten a little more consistent with a peppering of posts here and there, but I’m still not where I want to be.
Starting now, this will change. I was lucky enough to come across an excellent three-week email course about starting a successful blog. It is provided completely free courtesy of John Sonmez. John teaches you from his own experience and lessons learned while creating the very successful blog Simple Programmer.
The course is broken down into a couple small lessons per week, making it manageable for even the busiest person (I have four kids under 7 and have to provide off-hour support for my job). Each lesson has a homework assignment which actually vaults you to your ultimate goal of getting your blog up and running and ready to succeed. John also interacts with you for each lesson providing feedback, ideas, encouragement and answers to any questions you might have.
The lessons focus on how to get started by creating and hosting a blog and picking a theme (topic-wise, not GUI-wise). John gives you lots of ideas on how to do this so that you can brainstorm many blog post ideas well in advance ensuring you always have something to write about (lack of ideas kills your momentum and you end up with two blog posts a year like I did). Once you have your list of topics, schedule time and commit. Hold yourself accountable and go for it.
Once you get started, John goes on to cover how to make your blog succeed and how to boost your traffic (legit ways, nothing shady). I’m excited to get going. The course has breathed new life into my motivation now that I have a focused theme and many ideas. I will do my best to blog a minimum of every other week starting with this post.
So if you’re looking to start a blog or improve your existing one, go check John’s free course out. You won’t regret it.
One final note about John Sonmez. He is the author of the excellent book Soft Skills: The software developer’s life manual. If you want some more great ideas from John about various life skills (productivity, career, fitness and more), I suggest checking this book out. I am about 3/4 of the way through the book and I’ve found it to be a great read with lots of sound advice. I will be writing a review of the book in a future blog post.