If you’re a blogger there are a couple of things you can’t live without (or at least can’t do without to blog in a professional way).

1. Your own domain name
Your blog may not be big or important today, but in a couple of months or years it could be one of the most important resources for information in your niche. That’s why it’s so important to get your own domain name from the start, instead of using a subdomain at a free blogging service. It’s hard to move all your hard earned traffic from a sub domain to your own domain in the future, so start it the correct way from the beginning

2. A camera
Even if you’re only writing about mathematics or web development a camera (or a mobile phone with built in camera) is a really helpful tool for any blogger. Remember that a pictures says more then a thousand words . Also a picture can make a boring text look more interesting

3. Sitemaps and RSS feeds
Some bloggers forget to setup sitemaps to make it easier for search engines to find all your pages and posts in their blogs. There are free plugins for most blogging softwares or you can use any of the free online sitemap creator services found on the Internet (search in for example Google for “online sitemap creator“).

RSS feeds makes it possible for your visitors to subscribe to your blog. This may sound silly, but it’s deadly important because not everyone would like to visits your blog daily to see if you have written anything since the last check. Using feeds they don’t have to revisit your site to find new posts. When someone subscribes to a feed it’s also less likely they will forget about your blog since every time you write something new they will see your headline

4. An EntreCard membership
If you want new readers and subscribers in your blog the easy way you have to have an EntreCard account. EntreCard is simply a service that lets you advertise on similar blogs . It’s free and easy to use so check it out here.

5. Inspiration
Last but not least the most important thing you need as a blogger is inspiration. Without inspiration you can’t write anything at all. So how do you get inspiration then? The RSS feed tip above doesn’t only apply to your readers, it applies to you too when you find an interesting blog. You can also setup Google Alerts so you get an email when someone is writing about something you like or you could simply just subscribe to industry news from news.google.com.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Blogging, Domain Names, Google, HTML & The Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.