Deciding on the aims and objectives of a blog

So you have your area of blogging interest well under your belt. It might be that you have one or two specific interests and will try a seperate blog for each one. Great. But then what are you actually looking to achieve through your blog? Is it a place to wax lyrical in the hope that like-minded others follow you and comment? Is it a traffic builder for another website? Is it a grand money making device? Have a think.

Before I built my own blogs I intended all of them except my personal blog to make some kind of money. I think that relevant, targeted advertising on a niche blog is okay if not overdone or ugly. And it must work on my blogs as I have the click-through to prove it...(although that's for a later post).

The objective of your blog I feel will influence the blogging platform you choose and the design options available to you. Some platforms such as Blogger are very easy to use and speedy. Others like Wordpress are much more interesting design wise yet it requires a slightly steeper, (but not much), learning curve. Some are more suited to personal, diary layouts. Others to portal or magazine styles - better for larger amounts of content and monetisation.

So once you know WHAT to blog about think about the outcome - what are you in this long blogging haul for?