Beyond goals about what you want to get out of blogging, it’s a good idea to set goals for what you’re going to put into your blog.

You can’t force readers to come, or to subscribe, or to buy your product, or to call you for …

Like most things in life, blogging is most effective when you have a target to shoot for. People write blogs for many reasons: passion about a subject; fame; direct income; getting leads for their existing businesses; even just killing time. Often it’s a mix. At first, the …

With a general topic and keywords in mind, you’d think it would be a breeze to name your blog. It would be, too, except that “great minds think alike” and you’ll be hard-pressed to think of something that’s never been thought of before.

The reason it’s so tricky is that you’ll really want to have .com domain name (like yourblognamehere.com) that matches the name of your blog, and each domain name is only available to one owner, so if the one you want is already taken, you’re out of luck.

I advocate getting a .com domain name in almost all cases (the main exception being if you can spell something clever by using a different extension, like del.icio.us has done). This is because most people naturally assume .com if they don’t remember (and most won’t remember), and that’s what they’ll type in. A .com address is especially important if you ever give your blog address verbally or in advertising). For the same reason, I suggest avoiding domain names with hyphens or numbers… they’re too easily misunderstood or forgotten.

It’s important that your domain name and your blog name match because, again, people will take the path of least resistance and type in your blog name plus “.com” and expect to find you. Even for those who would go to the effort of remembering something different, it’s a much easier memory task if they only have to remember one name to come up with the other.

This all makes sense (I hope) but it also limits your choices somewhat. When I’m brainstorming for a domain name, here’s what I do:

Many good writers get stuck when they decide to start blogging, mostly because they aren’t sure what they’re shooting for in a blog post.

I’ll write another post about how to choose a post topic in the near future, but regardless of the specific topic, there are some common characteristics of good posts. You’ll come across plenty of exceptions, but it’s one of those “know the rules before you break them” things.

Since the last batch of search engine friendly WordPress theme recommendations went over so well, here are five more themes for the full version of WordPress (and if you’re on WordPress.com, don’t despair; we’re in the process of reviewing the included themes right now and will publish our recommendations for you soon).
XV – Revised
We like this theme’s code because it:

validates
has better-than-average code structure
emphasizes your post titles
emphasizes your blog name
emphasizes your blog’s description
uses unique page titles