Mr Beach Bum.com

In part 1 of this series we looked at some of the basics of getting your blog started. We opted for Wordpress but of course you have many other blog platforms to choose from, Wordpress just happens to be my personal favorite so I tend to stick with what I know and like.

Once you have your blog all set up and maybe even if you have a few posts up already then you should have a pretty good idea as to how easy it really is to get new posts up and yet how powerful the blogging process can be. Getting the blog up and running is a major goal that is behind you now, so what’s next?

Readership! Just like a magazine in many ways, your main goal is to get readers to visit your blog as often as possible. It used to be that if you started up a web page you would submit your URL to all the search engines and, aside from doing some advertising on your own and maybe building some link partnerships, hope for the best.  That has changed tremendously with blogging and it’s primarily because of RSS.

RSS (in it’s current 2.0 form) stands for Really Simple Syndication. Basically it enables web content to be syndicated across multiple platforms and read by all kinds of different applications - usually called readers or aggregators. For example, I have a My Yahoo page and on my page I have many different blogs that I have subscribed to. What is really going on in the background is my page is simply set up to grab a syndication feed from all of the blogs I have subscribed to. If you want more background information on RSS, be sure to read all about it on Wikipedia’s page on RSS and it’s history here.

So how do you create a feed? That is the beauty of using a blog platform such as Wordpress. It creates it for you and even goes so far as to notify all of the potential feed readers when you have an updated feed ready for them to grab. This is why blogging enables you to reach an audience quickly - no more waiting for the search engines to add you before you get any traffic (don’t get me wrong, you still need them, you just don’t have to wait for them anymore).

But how does WordPress tell all the subscription services that you have written a new post? Easy, it’s called a ping. A ping is essentially a little notification that is sent from your site after you write your article and post it. This notification tells all of the subscription services that you have new content ready for them. By default, Wordpress only has a single notification service set up, so you will need to do a little bit of maintenance in order to ping more services. The more services you ping, the better your chances of getting the word out about your blog more quickly. Here’s what you need to do:

In your Wordpress admin pages go to the Options page. Then click on the Writing sub-page. At the bottom, you’ll see an Update Services area as noted in the picture below:

It will already have 1 site listed but you need to add the following at a minimum, so copy this list now and update your blog with it:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc/
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php
http://bitacoras.net/ping
http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://www.blogoole.com/ping/
http://www.blogoon.net/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php
http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php
http://ping.amagle.com/
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc
http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/
http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://ping.weblogs.se/
http://blogmatcher.com/u.php
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.bitacoras.com
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/
http://xmlrpc.blogg.de
http://1470.net/api/ping
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

Yes that list is pretty big - so imagine what will happen if you start writing regularly and are constantly notifying all of those services that you have fresh content available. It’s by no means overnight success, but it is very powerful in terms of helping you successfully launch a site.

That’s a good place to stop for now. At this point in your blogging career you need to still continue to focus on getting articles written. Soon the readers will start to take notice and you’ll even find that the search engines will start to crawl your site more frequently as long as you just keep on writing.

In part 3 of this series we will talk about monetizing your blog. There really is no use in monetizing it all up yet if you don’t have any readers, so go on and write some more. Check back soon for Part 3.