I follow a number of bloggers and one that I want to acknowledge today is Chris Guillebeau who writes the blog The Art of Non-Conformity. I finished reading his article on 279 Days to Overnight Success this morning and found it jammed full of little pearls of wisdom and useful resources.
One I plan to embrace is to avoid Adsense and related technologies. I may point out products I’ve found useful and may even establish affiliate accounts with the provider in event a reader does follow a link to purchase. I will not however be creating space on the page specifically targeted for advertising products that are not my own, should I eventually have any. Another way of stating my intent is that the Firefox plugin AdBlock Plus should not block any content on this site.
I also plan to take things slow. Chris recommends building a store of content, about 3 months worth, before really launching a site. I like this idea, even though it means a fair amount of work with little external validation on the effort. I already have about 10 draft articles started, some are just concepts, others a bit more roughed out and still needing some polish before they are ready. In the early stages, the published articles will be focused on setting up the web site and track the evolution of my thoughts on what this site will become.
If you are thinking of starting a blog, or even want to re-imagine one you already have, I strongly recommend checking out Chris’s site.