The background: I knew zilch about web authoring or blogging, until in 2004 I read somewhere about this new trend called blogging, decided to give it a try and started sharing my thoughts anonymously on the Web. Some people found my blog, and liked it, and I kept writing a little more. At some point I learned about website statistics, and installed a counter on my blog. I started getting some traffic, and my blog even started appearing on Google searches. It was not only a nice way to keep a diary; turned out it was somewhat addictive. I'd found my inner blogger.

Encouraged, I started another blog - only this time it wasn't a diary anymore. I started an interactive blog, in which I answered my readers' questions on topics in which I was somewhat of an expert. This blog soon became ranked #1 for its niche keywords in one of the major search engines, and started getting a steady flow of traffic. I was pretty excited. A complete Newbie to all things Net, I started reading up about Search Engine Optimization, Pagerank, Contextual Advertising, and so on. I dabbled in SEO a little bit, and learned some valuable lessons. I started running Adsense on my blog. Amazingly, the blog started bringing in earnings, not much at first, but steadily growing. Before I knew it, I'd earned my first $1,000, and my blog was getting 500 unique visitors each day, and steadily growing.

As I learned more and my demands grew, I moved my blog from a free blogging service to its own Top Level Domain (at the time I didn't even know what that meant). I also changed the format from a blog to a hybrid website with static and dynamic content. Google started loving it immediately. I kept my original diary-blog where it was, as it had accumulated a PageRank of 4 and worked nicely in directing the search engines' attention to where I wanted it. Also I had developed some link exchange partnerships with other bloggers and wanted to keep the original address for that reason, too.

I'm not an IT professional, far from it. I painstakingly charted the web in order to find the Path of Least Resistance - a way for a not-so-technical person to engage and utilize the most up-to-date tools available to a blogger. I spent endless hours looking for some single great source of information, covering all aspects of blogging and initiating me step-by-step into the secrets of blogging. I found no such resource. So I figured: I'll make one, so I can share the fruits of my research with fellow Newbie bloggers.

This blog is going to be an experiment, a metablog if you will. I hope to provide the Newbie dummies out there (myself included) all the information we need to become succesful bloggers. I start from scratch, and I'm going to blog about blogging, a step-by-step account of how this particular blog will emerge from oblivion to become a profitable endeavour. I'm going to blog every change, every development, every useful link, chart the web for the best tools and advice for the Newbie blogger. I hope you will start your own blog together with me, and follow me as we aspire for blog greatness. If I can do it, you can do it, too.

If you have any questions about blogging, technical questions, etc., please feel free to contact me and I'll be happy to assist you in any way I can.

Welcome to innerblogger.com!

Joshua