Why I Started Blogging

Recently, my friend and local blogging entrepreneur Wade Kwon here in Birmingham, asked me and other local bloggers to chronicle why I started this whole blogging thing in the first place. So... let me tell you a little about the history of The Horse...You may wanna make yourself comfortable.

The History of The Horse

So, I started The Horse waaaaay back in 2005 on Blogspot (now Blogger) right after Google had purchased Blogspot and were introducing some new features like, mobile uploads via SMS/MMS and email. I found out that my new Samsung phone could send pictures directly to Blogspot, So I decide to try "mobloging" with my cell phone. The first picture I uploaded was a picture of my little palm tree that I kept on my front porch. I had kept it alive for over 3 years so, I was kind of proud of it.

I remember sending that first cell phone picture. Right after I sent it, I ran into my computer room and loaded up "Josh's Cell Phone Blog" and THERE IT WAS! My plant was on the Internet! I was so excited! I showed everyone I could. After that, you couldn't stop me. The next few years I kept "Josh's Cell Phone Blog" as a personal journal and moblog of my life. I uploaded more cell phone pictures and wrote a paragraph or two every once in a while about what was going on in my life. One particular era that I'm glad I blogged about was the job I got on the Wil Ferrel movie Talladega Nights. I shot as many cell phone pics as I could without getting in trouble with the director and actually blogged regularly during that time. Over time my blogging skillz evolved, (kind of like my nun chuck skills) and late last year (2008) I decided to start blogging seriously. I read all I could about professional blogging, studied SEO, keywords, copy writing and marketing and started up two more blogs where I could share some of my "expertise" about the random things that I have learned over the years (like Wedding Photography, writing, and computer/geek/nerd stuff). I converted a few posts I had done on The Horse about photography to my new blog The Wedding PhotogBlog, specializing in the wedding side of photography. Around that time I also converted Josh's Cell Phone Blog into what you see now as The Horse, a blog about technology, geek and nerd stuff. My most recent venture into online affiliate marketing was to start up a blog specifically to route traffic and business to my affliate, thereby making me money as a middle man. As of the time of this posting, I'm putting the final touches on it and I will be announcing it soon via all of my social networks and blogs.

But why do you blog Josh?
Seems like kind of a waste of time. I guess it boils down to a few reasons for me:

1. Monitization - This economy has everyone worried. I needed a backup job, just in case I lose my primary source of income. Blogging can bring in a small profit if done professionally, you know what you're doing and you're willing to stick it out for a year or so. Google AdSense and other ad networks and affiliate programs DO work, if you are good marketer and know how to promote yourself.
2. Keep Learning - I've always been on a quest for new knowledge. I'm always reading and Googleing and Wikipediaing and writing is a great way for me to have fun learning and finding out about cool things in the world.
3. Helping Others - everyone says I'm a good teacher and that I seem to have a knack for explaining things and making things easy to understand. It gives me a certain satisfaction to know that I've helped someone learn something new that they can use to improve themselves or their business.
4. Chronicling - I also use my blogs (especially The Horse) as a personal journal or diary so I can go back and see what was really important to me at the time and see how and why I've changed. Also I in the new Internet age, I want my kids, years down the road (after we get the new holographic blog), to be able to read and see what was important to me and to know who I was and what I believed in at that point in my life.

Why do you blog? Do you want to learn how to blog? Check out the Birmingham Blogging Academy if you want to get serious or maybe just become more informed about the blogosphere.

(Photo by john_a_ward)

SEO and Blog Advertisements, Annoying or Essential?

So, I've been kind of obsessing about learning all I can about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), AdSense and web / blog advertisement companies lately. I've found some great ones and some not so great ones and I've been playing around with ad placement, size and color to see what works best for me.


(Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney.com, an ultra successful SEO marketing guru and his little AdSense check back in 2005)

I know some of your may find ads annoying, but they are an essential tool for any working blogger or webmaster to have in their toolbox. They allow us to continue to provide you with great content that you can use and relate to and helps compensate us financially for the money and time we put into creating our blogs / websites in order to keep our readers up to date with new and interesting content. And that's all I'm going to say about that (before I wander too close to the Google AdSense TOS electric fence ;-)...

So, for all you webmasters, if you are not using an advertisement network on your self hosted website / blog or Blogger blog you should definitely check it out. I think the best thing that implementing an ad network does for bloggers is motivate them to pump out good content and think about keywords (writing interesting / popular articles about topics that they love).

Here are some great ad networks to start you out:

• Google AdSense / Adwords: By far the most popular and most widely used, Google pretty much started the modern ad network and is still the biggest player today. If you've got subscribers, you WILL make some money... and another bonus is the amazing integrated Google Analytics that tells you everything about your website.
  
• AdBrite: Smaller network but high payoffs so far for me. I've been seeing some encouraging numbers from AdBrite lately
• Netklix: They claim to have ads on sites like Photobucket and Drudge Report. I just started with these guys this week so we'll see how they are. I'll report back later.
• WidgetBucks / Yieldsense: This looks like a great affiliate style ad network. (I haven't tried it yet but it might be next and definitely in my new blog.)
• Infolinks: An "In-Text" linking style ad network. This is one of those double underlined mini pop up bubble style ad systems. To keep your readers on your page. Paid as CPC (Cost Per Click)
• Clicksor: Both an "in-text" and full featured text and graphical banners as well as full pages and pop-unders.

So, check those out on your own time (after you get done reading The Horse... of course!) and leave me a comment if you think these suck or you find any new ones that I might be interested in.

Next time: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and why you should care...

My new Wedding Photography Blog

In the past few months I've posted a few articles about my wedding photography business (JSP) and the reaction has been pretty positive. So, I decided to create a blog devoted to the starting and day to day running of a freelance wedding photography business including:

• What gear is worth the money
• sales techniques
• what to sell to your clients (what goes over well)
• shot ideas and examples
• how to shoot engagement pictures
• what I learned the hard way (so you don't have to...)
  

The blog is called The Wedding PhotogBlog.

Basically, you get to follow me around as I start up my business, and we can all figure out how to do it together. I've got about a year head start, but that doesn't mean I know it all and I'm not learning anymore. I learn new things every time I get a wedding gig and each shoot I do.

So, if you are interested in wedding photography, or you're a beginner, want to start your business or have been around the block a few times, please come check it out and leave me a comment! In the mean time I'll be posting all wedding photography related articles over there from now on. I'll still be posting pics and talking about regular photography and gear and geek stuff here on The Horse as well as your normally scheduled program, but I just thought I would let you guys know about my new project from... The Horse's mouth.
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Making a FavIcon, Widgets galore, Blogger hacks (Part 1)

This post is going to be a little more geeky than normal but that's what I'm all about! I promised great geek and tech tips and tricks, so here's some random stuff I've learned recently. You could call this a tutorial or a "get yo learn on".

(Note: All these hacks and customizations are so easy, a monkey's uncle could do them. They require little to no coding experience. If you can customize your MySpace page, you can add these to your blog. So don't label me an expert (yet). I'm just going to show you where I found them and the steps that I took to install them on a Blogger hosted blog. I don't know if they work with WordPress or any other blog hosting sites, but I don't see why they wouldn't...)

Here are a few cool things I have done to THE HORSE recently:

My own FavIcon!
Do a Google search for "Icons" or "Favicon" and you'll find 3 billion sites that make or host these. I personally use Chami.com's HTML-Kit FavIcon from Pics for my own hosted sites and I use IconJ for hosting for Blogger. Both do a great job of creating icons from any square image that you upload and IconJ hosts it and gives the the code right from their site!

Basically, just grab the code that IconJ gives you and the trick is to post it in your HTML or CSS template to just after the ]]></b:skin> and just before the </head> statement. Preview it and if everything looks all right, save your template. Then view your new FavIcon in a new reloaded tab! Coolness huh? I did my little old school Suction Horse logo for my FavIcon on THE HORSE (Check it out in your address bar!).

Create a Facebook Badge for your blog (or MySpace!)
This one is super easy. Just log on to your Facebook profile and go to your "Profile" page. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and look at the bottom left. There should be a link that says "Create Profile Badge" follow the instructions to customize. Then get the code and paste away! Be careful how much of your private info you want to give away to public readers though. I like it because I can update my profile pic on both Facebook and THE HORSE at the same time plus there's a link to my FB page right there!

Are there any cool blog widgets that you've discovered that I don't have? Let me know! I collect them all! The trick is to use them in good taste on your blog. I use things that help my readers and point them to interesting content and I use widgets that keep me and my readers informed about the stats of THE HORSE and my personal social media sites...

Josh

Next time: Twitter gadgets, Flickr Widgets, and a cool keyword cloud for your posts!