Thinking About Starting a Blog?

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Thinking About Starting a Blog?

Submitted by Marc Pina on November 27, 2009 – 11:21 amOne Comment

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If you’re considering starting a blog, I highly recommend doing two things:

Use a WordPress theme

WordPress themes are great. There are great ones for novice bloggers at http://wordpress.com/. These are free blogs that look much more professional than Blogspot/Blogger blogs. With WordPress, you have to choose between wordpress.com and wordpress.org. .Com is pretty good. I used that for three months and then opted for some of the better themes from designers that are available for upload ONLY IF you have a wordpress.org web site. That means that you’re going to have have it hosted. BlueHost is a nice, easy-to-use, inexpensive web site host. They can also host your e-mail.

I researched over 1,000 wordpress.com and wordpress.org themes and stumbled across the Arthemia theme. You can go to the ColorLabs website or the Michael Hutagalang web site to research it. For general research on blog themes/designs, check out Woo Themes, WordPress, Studio Press and HongKiat.

Go for the Premium Version

This was a tough decision for me. I used the Arthemia theme for about 2 or 3 weeks before becoming frustrated with the functionality. It is very good, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re looking for lots of great plug-ins and customization, you really have to pay for the premium version, which I did this week. Literally all of the problems I had with the free version went away with the purchase of the premium version. I was about to pay for a code wizard to edit the web site template to get it do what I wanted it to. I solved that problem with a $70 expenditure which is a far cry from what I would have paid to hire a code expert.

Here is a look at the first version of my blog via WordPress.com using the Arthemia free version:

Arthemia Free Version via WordPress.com

In my opinion, the difference is staggering! I think most would agree. The colors, the graphics, the Flash, the number of plug-ins make for a truly remarkable site.

So that’s my two cents. I am no expert blogger or code expert by any means. I did need a little bit of help sorting some of the things out but I really believe that anyone can manage a WordPress blog. AND, I believe every Realtor should have a blog. The barrier for entry is low and work involved is minimal. Now, let’s see if there is a payoff.