mimi

Gender:

I'm thinking of starting one on my experiences with my son and autism. But I have no idea where to start. This is pretty much the only social networking community I am involved with, and I've blogged some here about the autism, but more for support since many of you have become friends over the past two years.

I think I have some great observations and ideas, and want a place to showcase them, and not be lost in a forum.

So some of you who have them, how did you get started? Did you have any fees? How do you get an audience?

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"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)

Nomad

Gender:

My independent blog is just a little thing for family and friends from old duty stations, mostly to see new pics of the kids, so I haven't gon the route of getting a real wide audience for it.

BUT, I know people who have. Most start out with something like blogger or wordpress, and then join different blog rings. BlogHER is a popular one (but you have to have your blog for a month before you can join it!!) You can list your blog under certain categories (mommy, DIY, photo, etc, there are many to choose from) and people who want to read blogs of those categories can follow yours. There are also other blogrings you can join. You could google up some for autism, I'm sure.

Once you get on with one or more blogring that seems to be bringing decent traffic to your blog (get a sitemeter to moniter this. It's free.) then you want to kind of network with other bloggers. You follow their blog, many times they will follow yours, and when someone follows your blog, your link will show on their blog, and you will get more traffic that way.

Basically, from there, it's a matter of just giving the people what they want, and keeping your audience. Oh, and it's pretty much all for free. I use blogger, which is free. Membership in the BlogHer community is free. Sitemeters are free. Most layouts are free, or easy to make by yourself. It shouldn't cost you a thing beyond the time it takes to get your name out there!!

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^See the feather duster? Somebody's gonna get beat!

Jenner

Gender:

Oh, hey, I do this for a living (online media, not blogging!).

Some very easy and free things to do:

1) Start the bog (I like Wordpress, but Blogger isn't bad either)

To build an audience you can list your blog on various "listing" sites:

Technorati
StumbleUpon
Bloglines
GoogleBlogs
YahooBlogs
Kinja

I'm sure your active on a few autism forms. I would be careful on how you do it, but starting a thread to say "Hey, guess what" isn't spamming. Also, keep the URL in your sig(s).

Start a twitter account too, and link it to your blog. Also, allow people to "Digg" articles your site (Digg.com). That way people can pass on your stuff if they find something they find interesting. Is there any autism blogs you are a fan of? Link them on your site and ask them to do the same. Helps generate traffic for both.

If you feel comfortable, you can even write up a simple press release and send it to various sites and news outlets that you think would be interested and see some benefit in your blog. A little press never hurts either

Good luck!

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What if Prince Charming had never shown up? Would Snow White have slept in that glass coffin forever? Or would she have eventually woken up, spit out the apple, gotten a job, a health-care package and a baby from her local neighborhood sperm bank?

mimi

Gender:

For those of you who don't read my AL blog, I've recently started a more serious, personal blog on wordpress.

I have to say, I'm addicted! It's so theraputic for me. I feel a bit creative too, even though I'm really not :P

Anyway, I love readers!! I'm definately attached to the blogstats page, seeing how many people are reading and where they are coming from.

Anyway, here's a link if you're the least bit interested.

Miracle Baby

mimi

Gender:

I am having such a good time with this. I'm more careful to do article style blogs, and some old peices I've written and posted in the past have gone up.

It's fun to see where your traffic comes from, I've had a few hits from AL, a few from other autism bloggers, some from google even!

It's not been a month yet, but I definately will take some of the advice from Nomad and Jenner about expanding my audience. My busiest day so far has been 64 unique visitors.

But I average about 12 a day, 25 on new post days.