How I Started Blogging Part I
Before I actually get into the purpose of this blog, let me tell you a little about how I got into blogging. This shouldn’t take long, I only found out about blogging last December (two and one half months ago).
I had heard about blogging and bloggers for a while. During the recent elections, presidential and mid-term, I would hear about bloggers and the new media (both left and right). I suspect the idea that blogging might be something to look into lodged somewhere in my subconscious.
From what I heard on radio talk shows and read about on the Internet and in the few magazines I read (I don’t read newspapers at all), I got the impression that bloggers were marginal people at best, and that blogging was a whacko activity.
So, it is interesting to me that one day right after Thanksgiving I found myself standing in the middle of my favorite bookstore (Borders on Ponce de Leon, if you know where that is) wondering what shelf I should browse next. You see I am an inveterate book store lurker. I actually could live in a bookstore.
The idea that I should wonder what to look at strikes me as strange. I have such a wide variety of interests, religion, business, exercise, self-help, all types of fiction, that it’s bizzare I should find myself at a loss of what to look at. But there I was wondering what to do next, when the idea struck me, completely out of the blue so to speak, that I should get on the book store’s computer and look up books on blogging.
I remember thinking “Blogging?” how strange! I typed “blog” into the inhouse computer and a whole screen of books appeared. I was immediately drawn to one by Andy Wibbels, Blog Wild. I noted where the book was, found it, and promptly bought it. Once home, I read it in about two hours. By the time I finished the book, I felt like a door had been opened for me. I didn’t know where that door lead to, but I knew I wanted to walk through it.
I decided to start my own blog. I hopped on Blogspot and created a blog called RationalTeacher. It’s still there, if you want to look at it.
My immediate idea was to blog about my day job, teaching. I did that for a few posts, then quit–for two reasons. One :I had been reading other blogs (something I had never done before) and the idea of what I really wanted to write about was forming in my mind, and two: I realized that I didn’t want to just complain about public education. I mean I have to live that charade every day, why write about it?
I stumbled on two blogs that really pointed me in the right direction, Steve Pavlina’s blog, and John Chow’s blog. I’ll probably give each one of them their own separate posts, but for now suffice it to say my mind was opened up to the possibilities of blogging.
I had no idea, for instance, that people really made their livings blogging, or at least made a healthy amount of extra cash. I had read that people did, but honestly I thought they were all smoking crack, you know b.s.ing. Pavlina says he makes thousands from his blog every month. John Chow makes a nice side income from his (as much as I make teaching–go figure).
As I recognized the possibilities of blogging, I also began to learn that other ways to make money on the Internet existed. Really, I had no idea! I thought Internet commerce was all about logging on to Land’s End and buying someone a sweater for Christmas.
One of the most pregnant ideas I learned about was writing and selling ebooks.
My wife and I have been selling collectibles on eBay for a few years now. Nothing big, just enough to make extra cash out of. I had gotten interested in possibly turning our hobby into a full-blown full-time business, so in my usual way, I started gathering information about how to do this. One person I ran into was Skip McGrath (aff.) . He’s an eBay Powerseller and also sells a line of products about how to run various eBay businesses. I bought his book on how to sell antiques and collectibles on eBay and was satisfied with it. About the time I was learning about ebooks and blogging, Skip came out with a book on selling information on eBay. I bought this course.
The course is a very thorough introduction to the information marketing business. Following Skip’s advice, I created my first ebook (How to Quit Smoking: The Harold Cole Method) and listed it on eBay. It’s been listed for a few days, now.
So, these are the directions I’m going in, blogging for profit, growing our eBay business, and creating and selling ebooks.
As I’ve been searching the Internet for information about all of this, I’ve realized that most of what you find falls into two categories. It’s either get-rich-quick hype, or it’s so geeky that a lay person like myself has to struggle to understand it.
John Chow has posted recently about new Wordpress plug-ins, which is great that he so freely shares what he finds. But what if you don’t know what a plug-in is? Heck, what if you don’t even know what Wordpress is? (A few months ago, I had never heard about Wordpress.)
I realized that there is a blog niche for someone like myself who can take complex technical information and translate it into simple steps that non-geeks can follow. Let’s face it, there are more non-geeks out there than geeks. Thank God. Me? I land somewhere in between.
I know a fair amount about translation. I teach mathematics, which could be viewed as translation. Also, I actually have a certificate in French-English translation.
Here’s what I propose for this blog. I’m going to follow these three threads in my life: blogging for money, growing our eBay business, and creating and selling information by blogging about them. I’m going to show you every step of the way what I did that worked as well as what I did that didn’t work. This way, over the period of a year of so, I can blaze a sort of trail that others can follow. Because, let’s face it, this Internet thing has just started! Web 2.0 is just the beginning. What this is going to lead into for all of us is what I’ve been calling to myself, Life 2.0. Of course, this will subject for a future post.
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