The specifics of starting own poker blog. Where and how you are going to start? The future of the blog depends on selected platforms and blogging services. Is Wordpress the only option for your poker blog?
Poker blog is not some extraordinary type of media. It is usually a regular blog with specific poker-related content. It is managed by someone who plays the game or is at least interested in poker. These are regular guys – firemen,
construction workers, teachers, lawyers, drivers, accountants etc. They usually do not know any smart internet technologies like HTML or JAVAscript, they do not have their own domain name or a hosting service. So is it really easy to start your own poker blog? What blogging engine should be chosen?
The blog can be built in 3 ways:
- Programming the entire website by using some free or paid content management system (CMS) such as Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, Silverlight etc.
- Setting a blog at some free blog hosting service like Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, Weblog, Bloglines, MSN Spaces etc.
- Creating a blog at some poker blogging communities and social networks such as Pokerweblogs.com, PokerKnave, my.Pokernews, PokerVibez etc.
The first option requires programming skills and can cost you some money as you cannot just ask your friend to do it. A Web Design Company or at least a freelance programmer is needed. That’s just unacceptable for an amateur blogger. Maybe later, when the blog is already known and the owner can afford spending a few thousand dollars on a nice website. Anyway, the main poker blogger's focus should be on the content and not the fancy graphics.
The second option requires basic HTML knowledge and skill to be able to manage various widgets and HTML objects. If the blogger spends at least 2 hours a day on the internet, they might not find it too challenging after reading a couple of tutorials. There are also hundreds of useful tools and services, which can be easily integrated into the blog.
The third option does not require any skills except those of writing, as members of such blogging engines can easily publish their posts in just a few minutes. Of course they have less additional features than those that have been discussed previously. The blog content is often moderated, so there's no guarantee that it will stay there forever.
There are 3 important steps that every blog owner should follow:
- Create the blog; set its URL and appearance
- Update it constantly – think of interesting topics, write periodically
- Promote the blog – the number of readers should increase, more and more people should learn about the blog
Once the blog is created and updated, comes the 3rd – the most complicated – stage. The blogger is also a webmaster of the blog therefore they must take care of their readers. This is not a big issue at the poker blogging communities, as new blog posts are being automatically listed on the home page, so that the visitors could see the latest entries and read them. That’s the main advantage compared to the free blog hosting and programming options. Much more effort is needed to attract readers to these kinds of blogs.
Every blogger should decide if they want to put more effort into their blog's content and nice features or the organic readers. If the blog does not have comments, it is not interesting. Making your own comments by pretending to be someone else will not help build the blog's reputation. An amateur poker blogger faces a lot of challenges. Therefore the majority tend to first decide what’s best for them and then constantly develop their blogs.
If you are already a blogger, what option would you recommend to someone, who wants to share their poker experience, interesting videos and photos, rumors, bad beats, home game experiences, online plays and winnings, etc.?
