When I wrote my earlier post here, I said I had been doing a lot of research. In this post I set out some of the sites that I have been using.
Probably the best blogging site is Problogger which is written by Australian blogger Darren Rowse. He is a full time professional blogger who apparently makes a very good living from it. If anyone is contemplating starting a new blog, I highly recommend an evening reading the Problogger site.
He has also written two books. One is an e-book called 31 days to build a better blog, and is excellent. I bought it some time ago, and often read it when I am stuck for ideas, as it gives me inspiration. Although it is an electronic rather than a ‘real’ book, this is actually really useful, because it makes it so much easier to follow the many links out.
The other book is called ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income
Finally Problogger has now started a blogging forum, which I joined when it was very cheap (I think the price has gone up substantially since). It also is very helpful, as you can ask questions if you are stuck about something.
The next person whose blog has helped me is Grant Griffiths, a former American Attorney who blogs as Blog for Profit. His son, Clay, wrote the Headway theme which is used for this blog, and his blog has also been a bit of an inspiration to me. Perhaps in some ways more so than Problogger, as he understands lawyers. He has now given up the law and runs a business designing blogs, mainly I think for lawyers.
In October 2009 he ran a series, called 31 days to Kick your Blog in the Butt (not a title, I am sure, that would have ever been chosen by an British solicitor, but there you go, its another country over there), which was also extremely helpful, particularly as at that time my web designer and I were building my new Landlord Law Blog. After his 31 days, Grant too turned his series into an e-book, which is also highly recommended, and you can buy it from his web-site, along with a work book and helpful book on twitter. Although actually you can also read the blog series here.
Those are the main two sites that I have used. However there are several other sites which I have found very helpful. Blogussion, which appears to be run by a bunch of school boys and college students, is a brilliant site and just shows that we old ‘uns can learn a lot from the modern yoof. Copyblogger has some great posts on writing, although recently I have been finding some of them a bit irritating. Lawyerist is another blog about legal blogs, interesting but not as good as Blog for Profit. Remarkable Communication is a helpful blog on marketing, particularly online marketing, and if we are talking about marketing, we also ought to mention Seth Godins blog, considered by many to be the master of marketing, and whose blog is good for ideas.
You will probably have noticed that none of these blogs are British. I haven’t really found anything similar here, mainly I suppose because we have not taken up blogging to the same extent as in other countries, or have not been doing it for as long (I set up my Landlord Law blog in February 2006 and I was one of the first legal bloggers here, Problogger (an Australian) however started way back in 2002).
What do you think of these sites? Had you come across them before? Have you found any sites you would like to recommend?
Incredibly helpful — I’m just about to set up my first blog and I think your article tells me everything I need to know. Many thanks.
Good luck with the blog. Let me know when it is online and I will go and comment.
But please read the post I have just done on green web-hosting first. As businesses we have a responsibility to be as green as possible.