Completed So Far:
So far, I have decided on how I want to monetize my blog and have begun developing a blog that will support the sale of information products. I have also sourced a number of resources that I can use to help me develop my virtual business, but have already run into my first little snag.
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New Developments:
In running a critical eye over my blog, I very quickly realized that I would need to put some major effort into it before I could even begin thinking about marketing issues and plans. So over the past couple of days I focused on three things:
- I renamed and slightly refocused the blog;
- I migrated the blog over to wordpress.org; and
- I began planning and developing content.
1) Renaming and Refocusing The Blog: The original name of this blog was Boomer Nomads, which was fine because the major audience I am focusing on is baby boomers. However, in planning the content I realized that the practical information works for anyone at any age – hence the change in name to Ageless Nomads.
There will still be some material on the blog that focuses specifically on baby boomers. This material will address unique issues and circumstances faced by baby boomers, for example, my articles Boomers as Entrepreneurs, and What is This “Third Age” Thingie? begin to look at some boomer-specific issues.
The other reason for the name change is that I am also working on a second blog, Ageless Explorer that looks at a number of other lifestyle design issues (e.g. dealing with major lifestyle transitions; preparing for retirement; finding a purpose and a passion, etc).
The path less well taken
2) Moving the Blog to wordpress.org: Wordpress.com has some real advantages when you are learning to create a blog, and works great for a personal blog. It’s easy to get started on, easy to use, offers a good selection of functions and it’s free. For a business blog, however, it’s limited in what it can do. Wordpress.org, on the other hand, offers functions that are perfect for a business – and is still relatively inexpensive and easy to use.
I am a techno-phobe and am constantly concerned about getting in over my head with stuff like this, so I called on my tech-guy (my son) to act as my go-to person in case I ran into any difficulties. My concern was that everything I had read about getting started on wordpress.org talked about having to download the program onto your computer, then setting up an account with an online server, then creating your blog. But nothing ever stepped you through the whole process.
As it turns out, if you use one of the hosts recommended by wordpress.org, or any online host that already runs wordpress.org on their servers, you don’t need to download anything onto your computer. All you need to do is to set up an account with the online server (I used BlueHost only because it was one of the hosting services listed on wordpress.org), pay for the account (mine cost less that $85 US per year), click on one button (your hosting service will tell you which one), fill in two or three little bits of information including the username and password you want to use for the account, and the blog is up and running. It was really, really easy!!
The original wordpress.org blog theme that is created is a very plain theme, so you will probably want to change it fairly quickly to something a bit more pleasant to look at. Over 800 free themes can be found on wordpress.org (just click on the “Extend” tab, and then on the “Themes Directory” link), which you can just download and then import into your blog. This process creates a unique theme gallery for your blog that you can use to preview the themes you like while deciding on which one you want to use. Scads of other free and purchased themes are available online – you can do a Google search to find thousands of theme sites.
The first big theme-related question for me was whether to go with a theme that was search engine optimized or not. I chose not to go with an SEO-ed theme mostly because I didn’t like the look of any of the ones I saw. For me, having the blog look nice was important. Most SEO aspects, like keywords and links, can be added quite easily. However, changing the look and layout of the blog is not something I am comfortable with doing – yet.
Once the theme was selected, I spent some time familiarizing myself with the basic functions, including finding how to use the “Text” widget to begin developing an affinity program with Amazon.ca/ Amazon.com. OK, so adding a proper eBookStore is something I still have to work on 
3) Planning and Developing Content: Now that the blog is up and running on wordpress.org my next step was to begin planning and developing content. My goal was to make sure that there is a good amount of content on the blog and that I know what other content I want to develop before I begin marketing. This way I know that when the marketing begins to provide results, there will be enough content here for people to begin exploring and hopefully come back to. I have also planned the content for this blog to overlap somewhat with my other blog (Ageless Explorer) which will, hopefully, benefit both blogs.
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Next Step:
My goal for Wednesday’s post is to explore how to Search Engine Optimize the blog and it’s contents. I figure I might as well begin developing the content with search engines in mind right from the very beginning.
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