It looks like I’ve finally done it. I’ve accepted that my current system of building websites with Notepad, HTML and some very crappy CSS just isn’t gonna cut it in the fickle Web 2.0 world. People want gadgets and gizmos and content that’s updated 3 times an hour and RSS feeds and all the bells and whistles that, until a couple weeks ago, I had pretty much zero knowledge of.

Why I am a Blogging Convert:

• Community - This is by far the major advantage to starting a blog. They’re interactive and you will be almost instantly connected to a community of like-minded people. Bloggers are a lot less anal about sharing a bit of link love and following people’s blogrolls is a great way to find other people who are into the same things as you.
• Instant Feedback - No matter how great the content on my static websites is, it’s very unlikely that I’ll get any feedback on it. Sure, I can see how popular a page is in the stats, but it can’t compare to getting a comment with feedback on what you’ve written. I know I can set this sort of thing up on my sites but I’m too lazy to figure out how to do it and using Wordpress makes the whole process painless.
• Loads of Templates - I hadn’t realised how many websites there are out there with free Wordpress themes for me to get my greedy paws on. Even if customisation is beyond the blogger, the availability of templates means that we’re not subjected to loads of sites that are clones of one another.
• Customisation Easier Than I Thought - When I made my first few head exploding attempts at customising my Wordpress theme I was downloading and uploading everything with a separate FTP program. I hadn’t realised I could do all the customisation in the admin area and this discovery has made everything a lot less confusing.
• Widgets - Why didn’t anyone tell me about the wonderful world of dragging and dropping plugins? Now that I’ve discovered the mighty widget, all is clear. It’s great being able to add cool features to the sidebar without having to wrestle with coding I don’t understand.
• Can Be Up and Running in Minutes - There really isn’t much to getting a blog up and running and that’s a totally new thing to me. Most of the sites I design from scratch take a month or two before they’re alive and kicking. Setting up a blog gets things going quickly and if I want to add static pages to teh site later I still have that option. Things move fast in the online world and wasting a month tweaking a design really isn’t the best use of my time.
• Non Techie People Have Things to Say Too - Ok snobbery aside, I suppose I can share the net with people who might be a bit HTML challenged. There are pleny of people out there who have stuff to say but might be a bit techie challenged and I still want to be able to read their ramblings. Blogs have opened up the internet to one and all and for every crappy blog out there I’m sure there are a few that I’m glad I’ve found.

So I have been mostly converted to the powers of the blog but still have a few reservations. I’m still a bit dubious about a few things like the long layout of the intro page (although I know this can be tweaked) and I think static website have an advantage with search engines (this isn’t based on anything really… just my own experiences) but I love the interactivity and sense of community and that outweighs any negatives.

Once I start working on my mighty web empire full time I might experiment with moving a static site over to Wordpress. Travoholic.com is in shambles so I think this site might be a good candidate. I always seem pretty resistant to change (I still use Notepad to build my sites!) but I think I’m sold on the merits of blogging and Wordpress as a content management system.

Is anyone else an anti-blog convert?

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I’ve never been a fan of blogs and I tried to fight the power but it seems like if I want to keep up with the Jones’ then I’ve really got no choice but to hop on the bandwagon and start one. Since my web host offers a one-click installer thing for Wordpress, Wordpress it would be! But it was not without much reluctance on my part.

Why I hated blogs:

• Everybody and Their Dog Has a Blog - Anyone who knows how to turn on a computer and get online can sign up for Blogger or Wordpress and get a site up and running in no time. I have to admit to being a web development snob and I don’t like this! I spent ridiculous amounts of time learning HTML, FTP, CSS, Photoshop and all the other tools of the trade and so should everybody else dammit. Where were all these time saving tools when I needed them?!
• Cookie Cutter Type Sites - I’m a bit of a design junkie and, while I have had it drilled into my head many times that content is king, I’m still a sucker for a well designed website. More people seem to be customising their themes now but it still irks me when I see a site using that has been used a zillion times. I can handle a theme being used a billion times, but a zillion is just pushing things too far.
• Super Long Pages - Am I the only person who thinks the main page of a blog is generally ridiculously long? My index finger would cramp up after 2 minutes with all that scrolling. Coming up with a good navigation system is always a major focus for me when I build a new site and having to scroll down for 4 years is not good navigation in my most humble, blog hating opinion.
• Posts Displaying Most Recent First - I read a lot of travel blogs and I really don’t think displaying the most recent post first cuts it. It makes more sense to me to be able to start at the beginning and some travel blogs make it difficult to actually get to the first post. Caused endless frustration. Endless I tell you!
• Wordpress Made My Head Explode - I had a few cracks at getting Wordpress blogs up and running and the whole experience left me with a splitting headache. Being the design freak that I am I wanted to tweak seemingly small things here and there that would end up turning into a 4 hour session of hair pulling and keyboard abuse.

I was gonna do this as one long post but since I’ve said I hate long main pages I think I’ll break it up. So tomorrow I’ll tell you why I have seen the light - AMEN! - and have accepted blogging into my life.

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Hi, welcome to my blog.

So… ya. The first post. It’s a pretty big event. Firecrackers just went off behind me and the Mayor is about to cut a ribbon and smash a bottle of Champagne over my monitor. Or is that just for boats? Hopefully it’s just for boats since I’m at work at the moment and I don’t think my boss would appreciate the mess. He’s already suspicious about why the mayor is here.

About Me

I’ve been guest blogging over at Working Nomad since September 2006 but have since decided that the internet needs one more blog so have jumped ship and started this baby. The guy that runs that site has been travelling around the world working on his websites from anywhere and raking in some serious cash in the process. I figure that sounds like a damn fine way to spend my time so I’m attempting the same thing.

I’m from Canada but have lived in London, UK for 5 years. I’ve done working holidays in Oz, NZ and Ireland and have an itchy feet thing happening at the moment and plan to hit the road again in January 2008, this time with my laptop in tow.

My Websites

While new to blogging, I’ve been a net nerd since 2000 when I started Travoholic.com, a semi-neglected website about backpacking mainly in Europe and Australia. I didn’t do much with it until 2005 when I discovered Google Adsense.

In the early days I was only earning pennies a day and when I hit the $1/day mark I was probably a bit too excited judging by the looks people gave me when I told them of my new found ‘riches’. But I got to thinking… if I grew Travoholic then I could earn more. Or even better, build more sites and watch the money roll on in… slowly.

I’ll go into my sites and earnings in more detail other posts but the gist of the operation is that I’m currently earning an average of about $700/month for 2007 from 3 main sites and a couple of smaller, niche sites.

The Plan

I’ve given my boss plenty of warning and my last day of work is December 13th. The plan is to head home to Canada for a few weeks, visit the friends and rellies, and spend a lot of time getting my sites up to scratch. Then I’m off to Asia one way with laptop. No plans, no deadline, and no budget! Ok that’s a lie, but it sounds good. My only plan is to be in Beijing for the Olympics and my budget will be dictated by what I’m earning. So if I bring in $700, that’s what I’ll try to live on during the following month. If I earn more than I need to survive as a meager backpacker then I’ll whack it into my savings account.

So… what’s the blog about?

I’ll be posting my earnings, tips on making money online, the cost of living in places I go to, how much I spend and various other things that sound very uninteresting as I type this but will be filled with wonder and amazement and will change your life for the better! Ok maybe not that but hopefully you’ll find a few nuggets of interesting blurbs now and then.

That’s all. Wow, the first blog post. Bit longer than I expected. I wonder if anyone will read it? Who knows. Ah crap, now I’m talking to myself… probably a good time to sign off.

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