PB095: What Do I Need To Have Ready Before I Launch My Blog?

Note: this episode is available to listen to here on the site but also on iTunes and Stitcher. Do These Things Before You Launch Your Blog Today we are talking about launching your blog. I’ve been getting a lot of questions in terms of content and design and what types of things you should have ready before you launch your blog. Pre-bloggers often want to know how much work should they have done before launching their blog. They ask questions like how much content should I have ready? How many posts should be live? Should I have a customized theme? Should I invest in a logo? Sometimes excitement kicks in when launching a blog, and it gets launched before it is completely ready to go. Today we are going to talk about the ideal blog launching scenarios. In This Episode I used to be a partner in a blog network, and what we would do content wise is what I’m going to share with you today. We aren’t going to talk about choosing a blog platform, hosting, or choosing a domain today, but we have a post here on how to Start a Blog that walks you through those decisions. Brainstorm post topics - if you can’t come up with 20, your niche may be too narrow Write 10 blog posts, make 3 live and 7 drafts Ideally have a unique design - put your own logo and colors on a premium theme Setup your email newsletter before you launch - having an email list is gold Setup social outposts - choose most relevant social network and set it up You can register social accounts on all of the networks, but focus on the main one Tools and Resources for Launching Your Blog Premium WordPress Themes StudioPress Email Providers Aweber Mailchimp ConvertKit Email Opt-Ins SumoMe OptinMonster Note: I am an affiliate for some of the tools and resources listed above. Problogger Resources ProBlogger Training Event 2016 ProBlogger Job Board Further Reading for Launching Your Blog Home Bases and Outposts – How I use Social Media in My Blogging How I Use Email Newsletters to Drive Traffic and Make Money Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Hi there and welcome to Episode 95 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren and I'm the blogger behind problogger.com. You can find all of our stuff at problogger.com. We've got this podcast but there's also a blog, there's an event that we run which we will be releasing tickets for in the coming weeks, on the 27th of April. You can find information about that over at problogger.com. Follow the link to our events page where you can subscribe to get further updates about that event.  There's also a job board. Many of you have been letting me know lately that you found some great jobs for bloggers over on the job board. You can, again, find that if you head to problogger.com, you'll be able to see a link there to that job board. There are new jobs being advertised there every day. If you're looking to hire a blogger, check out the job board as well. I had an email from someone yesterday who said, "Please take down our job." This is 24 hours after they posted it, because they'd had 50 applicants, and they said they could've hired about 20 of them. The quality was really high. We're actually in the process of relaunching that job board at the moment. About $50 to have your job advertised there for 30 days. There's a whole heap of stuff going on over at problogger.com, check it out, that's in addition to this podcast. The best thing you can do, of course, is to subscribe to the ProBlogger PLUS newsletter which you'll find a link to there as well. Today, I want to talk about launching your blog. I want to respond to some questions I've been getting lately about what should you have ready to go on your blog in terms of content, in terms of design, and some of those types of things.