February 18

How I Actually Spent My Day As A Blogger

2  comments

I am in the process of building a new blog. Every single blog brings new challenges and new revelations. In this post we are going to discuss the questions and issues that came up in one day of building blogs.

I realized that the WordPress Shortlink was missing on the blog.

How do I use the WordPress short link?

When prepping a Podcast I want to put the link to the associated blog post in the Podcast description. Most of the time, the blog post is not released yet. I try and release them right around the same time. This means that I need a link to a blog post that is not yet published, which is where this short link comes into play.

1. To get the WordPress short link, I had to turn on Jetpack.

I had completely forgotten about that and I actually had to Google it. It is funny to me how quickly I can forget something.

Here is how I did it:

  1.  Installed Jetpack
  2. Associated Jetpack to my WordPress ID
  3. Clicked on Jetpack inside of WordPress dashboard
  4. Clicked on Settings
  5.  Clicked on the box for Wp.me Shortlinks

2. I am currently in the process of building out a new blog. This blog will dedicated to video tutorials. This meant that time needed to be spent on design issues.

I decided to research font pairings. Fonts are something that have always fascinated me but design is not my gift. So I Googled it and found some great pairings.

Choose a font for a blog

What I decided to go with:

  • Oswald Font
  • Montserrat Font
  • Cooper Hewitt Font

3. Considering this is ultimately an affiliate blog, I wanted to spend a bit of time on the ads and/or buy buttons. I had read in the past that custom designed web banners are more effective. With this blog, I am going to put that to the test.

Note: In the future I will be doing a detailed post about affiliate marketing but for now let me briefly explain what I am doing. I am building a new blog that will have detailed tutorials on how to use specific WordPress plugins. Some of these plugins are free and some of them are premium. Premium just means that they cost money. My hope is that if I provide enough value, people will use my link to buy the product. When they do that, they will not pay more money but I will get a percentage of the sale.

Of course, designing your own ad sounds simple right?

No, it really isn't.

I had to ask myself a series of questions:

  • Where do I want to ad to be placed?
  • What dimensions do I want the ad to be?
  • Will it be a square?
  • Will it be a rectangle?
  • How big of a rectangle?
  • What design style do I want to use?
  • What colors should I use?
  • Should I use colors from my design palette or from the vendor's palette?
  • Should I use a logo from the vendor?
  • Is it ok if I use a logo from the vendor?

Once I answered all of those questions, I then had to design the ad. I used PhotoShop and went to town. Below is the ad that I designed.


By the way, I watched this tutorial video to learn how to do the sunburst effect:

So that was a day of blogging for me. It was filled with plenty of decision making and research. In the midst of this day, I did manage to create two tutorials for this new blog.

What happened during your day of blogging? What did you learn about blogging today?


Tags

blog design tips, how i started a blog, Start a new blog


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  1. Hi Renee,
    The first ever visit to your blog :)
    Your blog design is just outstanding.
    Coming to the post,
    the way you explain each and every point is really impressive :)
    Followed you at Twitter,
    Let’s be friends :)
    ~ Ahmad
    P.S. I just updated the look of my blog TutorialsFist[dot]com, please do have a look and share a short feedback with me :)
    I’ll be waiting.

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