Redbox Biz Blog

The blogging bug has bitten many people because many people are asking us what blogging is about. From teens to senior managers, everyone’s excited about this new phenomenon called blogging.

Based on our talk last year at KDU Penang on how to blog right, it’s quite safe to say that blogging is very popular. So this post is for all of you who want to start a blog but don’t know how.

The number one consideration before you start a blog is this: what is your goal? Are you looking for a way to share your knowledge and expertise on a subject that’s close to your heart? Are you looking to earn quick money? Are you looking for a way to practise your writing skills? Are you looking to compile all these blog posts later into something you can publish or print as a memoir?

The second consideration is: do you have time to blog? As with toys, we get excited for the first week when we first get our blog up and running. But blogging for fun and serious blogging are two different animals.

Fun blogging doesn’t care much for anything else - the blogger just blogs because he wants to write what he feels like writing. Serious blogging, on the other hand, can be about marketing one’s business, earning money from adsense or pay per review, spreading one’s ideas and lots more.

If you are into serious blogging, it will eat into your time. You may need to plonk yourself right in front of the PC and blog away. We often tell friends that serious bloggers take a lot of time in creating blog posts for their audience. It’s not something you can type up in 5 minutes. And factor in too the time you need to resize photos or Photoshop them properly before you add them to your blog. So all in all, it’s not that easy or simple to be a serious blogger (or one that makes moolah from blogging).

Anyway, this post is to help you start a blog easily. We thought this post is timely since a number of our friends and clients have been asking about it. It’s not rocket science if you start with a simple blog solution like Blogger.com. The advantages? It is free and easy to start. It doesn’t need much technical knowledge (unlike other blog solutions such as Wordpress). Wordpress however is fairly popular and has lots of expansion potential and flexibility and is great for those who want to totally personalise their blogs.

To start your blog, just go to www.blogger.com. You must first have an account with Blogger (Blogger has been bought over by Google so if you have a Gmail account, signing up is even easier!).

The cool thing is, they’ve got new features which allow you to drag and drop features so you can in a way ‘design’ how you want your blog to look like. You can even change colours of the background and text quickly to reflect the kind of theme you want.

They’ve even thought about privacy. Let’s say you want to create a blog just to update family and friends about your life (which saves you the trouble of repeating yourself in your emails anyway) - well, you can set permissions within Blogger and only those you allow will be able to view your blog.

Or say you want to have a community blog where you and your friends/colleagues take turns to write about matters close to your hearts. You can have multiple authors in Blogger so everyone gets a chance to blog as and when they wish, from wherever they are.

Anyway, like Blogger says, you only have 3 simple steps to follow:
1. Create an account
2. Name your blog
3. Choose a blog template

When you are at www.Blogger.com, click on the orange arrow which says “Create your blog now”. You will be taken to a page which asks you to create a Google/Gmail account if you don’t already have one.

Next, you will be asked to name your blog. This will identify your blog from the gazillions of blogs out on the web. Remember, your blogname will be followed by blogspot.com (unless you buy a domain name of your own and use it to mask the blogspot URL). For instance, if the blog name is AuntieMargaretStories then the blog will be AuntieMargaretStories.blogspot.com when it is created. But before that name can be yours, you need to check its availability. So think of more creative names (well, it also helps you stand out anyway).

If you wish to host your blog somewhere other than Blogger, you can do that too. If you choose this option (under Advanced Blog Setup), you need to fill in your web server details.

After that, you are almost done. The next step is to choose how you want your blog to look like to the world by choosing the blog template you like. And that’s it - once that’s done, you can start posting!

And if you ever get stuck, you can refer to the Blogger Help Resources section which really is quite helpful with its tips, tricks and how-tos.

Here’s to Happy Blogging!

P/S:
We wrote an article not too long ago about blogging. Learn how you can blog better when you read this blog post of ours “You Can Blog: 9 Simple Secrets to Get You Started Successfully” (this article was published in the Malaysian Mensa magazine last year).

To your web success,
Nic

When we were in Kuching, Sarawak last month for the Chinese New Year break, we managed to take time off to visit a client of ours, Robert.

Robert had just moved to Kuching after 20+ years living in Penang. He had taught Creative Writing in USM for a decade before his contract ended. Almost as soon, he found himself a job in UNIMAS (Universiti Malaysia Sarawak) due to his credentials as a published author, editor, speaker and writing teacher.

Besides, he had intended to move to Sarawak as his wife’s family is from a place called Quop. (Robert’s an American by the way from Pennsylvania who has been living in Penang for the longest time and so considers himself a Penangite.)

We called on him at his office in the sprawling Jurassic-like campus of UNIMAS. We have not been to the new or old campus and this was a good time to sneak a peek at this institution. Plus we being USM alumni, we wanted to see how UNIMAS measured up! LOL.

The first thing which struck us was that the campus was huge, with even bigger buildings. Yet the campus seemed ghostly, even deserted although Robert said that the semester was still in session. Where were the undergrads? Probably holed up in their dorms or library as the campus, with its lack of trees and greenery, felt like a baking oven!

Unlike USM with its gorgeous old trees and fields of jade green, UNIMAS looked like it was all concrete. Spindly trees tried to grow along the rim of the lakes. But the lakes definitely did not look conducive for anything (in USM, one could jog along the lake, sit around and read under the trees, or just daydream while feeding the tilapia with stale bread… well, at least that’s what we used to do when we were undergrads in USM more than a decade ago.)

Robert gave us a walk-about of the campus nearest to his office as it was simply too hot to walk any further. We had visited his office and in contrast to the awful heat outside, his office was rather cold due to the airconditioning.

Soon it was time to visit his new double-storey home at Penrissen which was about 20 minutes away from the UNIMAS campus. In fact, Robert had kindly decided to cook for us! He apologised that he could not cook up a bigger feast other than spaghetti as it was difficult, not to mention far away, to get the ingredients he needed for his feast.

Ah, no problem. For us, it’s not so much the food as it is the company we were dining with. Plus we were there to advise him on his website as well as teach him how to blog and how to set up his first blog!

What we liked about Robert’s home is that he had no TV in his hall. He had moved the TV upstairs to the TV den (wise move!). In most Malaysian homes, the humongous plasma TV would be the first thing to greet you as you enter, but not in Robert’s home. It was warmly inviting, filled with antiques and knicks-knacks collected over his years of travel and living in Malaysia. Most of his furniture had endured the journey in a container from Penang to Kuching. Many of his pieces were memories of his life in Penang. (He even shipped both cars from Penang to Kuching! And they arrived unscathed… hurray for shipping)

We could see that he was very pleased with his new home, and new life in Sarawak with his wife and sons. He did see the differences of living in Penang and in Kuching - for one, he had a quality life where his sons could actually grow up near their cousins and extended family. Two, Robert’s wife, Jenny said she was surprised she could leave her office at 5pm! In Penang, she used to work till 8 or 9pm. And three, Robert has plans to discover more about Sarawak and its hidden charms - it is, after all, a big state to explore!

That is why he wanted to dedicate his first blog to his two-year-old Jason (isn’t he adorable?) who has the privilege of being of mixed parentage, American-Bidayuh. Robert was excited about blogging about his jaunts with Jason so much so he named his blog “Walking With Jason in Borneo“.

Go and peek into the blog. You will know why Robert’s a writer, teacher and speaker. His writing absolutely shines!

In our web design and development business, we constantly meet people who are always excited about taking their business online via an e-commerce website where their customers can buy from them easily.

While we are keen to help everyone, sometimes we have to be blunt and honest and remind them that e-commerce is not for everyone.

You’re probably wondering why. After all, isn’t this a good opportunity for us to provide them the very services they need i.e. help them set up their e-commerce website?

Of course it’s great for us. There’s nothing more gratifying than an eager customer, ready to plunge into the world wide web.

But we’re also cautious because behind the eagerness, some customers don’t realise that running an e-commerce website is not so much about going online but about the simple basics of business.

How so, you ask?

Order fulfillment, for instance. What is your order fulfillment process like? Can you handle it when overseas customers ask about distributorships and want your products by the container-load? (yes, container-load!) Can you fulfill their orders? How soon can you do so?

This boils down to how efficient your order fulfillment processes are and if you have never discovered whether your processes are any good, this is the time you will find out.

You will see how effective your production line is. (And in some cases, how glaringly inefficient your production line is!) Many a local e-commerce website owner have been overwhelmed when email inquiries come in fast and furious and they cannot cope with orders! They simply did not prepare for an onslaught of business.

Next, going online also means cultivating the right attitude towards email responsiveness. Of course, you can hire someone to answer your email inquiries but in many cases, you will be the main person who reads and replies emails which come in. But how soon can you reply them? Within the day? Within 2 days? Within the week? In 2 weeks?

It is not wrong that many people expect business to be done at the speed of light. It is, after all, the Internet age. So nurturing the right email responsiveness helps too. Don’t let inquiries languish in your inbox, or worse, forget to check your email on a daily basis.

Also, it is wise to focus on a segment of buyers situated in a specific region instead of trying to conquer the world. Having an e-commerce website allows you to sell to the world but unless you are selling downloadable products such as ebooks or software or scripts, transporting your products across the world can be a headache, and no minor one at that! Figure out your postage and courier costs BEFORE you launch that e-commerce website.

That’s why we often advise clients to sell local or regional first before they start attempting to sell to other continents. But it works in the US, some people say. Yes, it works in the US because their postal rates are reasonable and service is quick and most times safe.

Another point to note, these e-commerce retailers sell within the US, and sometimes to the UK/Europe but mainly, it is their own fellow citizens they sell to!

But over here, postal rates (and courier rates) can be expensive. Think of these factors when you decide to launch your e-commerce website. You definitely don’t want your postal/courier rates to be higher than the price of your product! (Unless your product is utterly unique and cannot be found elsewhere, and you have buyers willing to pay.)

So are we discouraging you? Not at all. If you want to start an e-commerce website, by all means do so but consider important factors such as order fulfillment, email responsiveness and transportation rates first.

The best retailers online aren’t just those who have a variety of products to sell but those whose emphasis is on efficient and effective order fulfillment, email responsiveness and of course, using a safe, affordable and fast method of shipping products out to their customers.