You're right in that design is one of the most undervalued aspects of not only blogging, but also any Internet-related venture. It's not easy to crank out amazing content or to create a valuable service for others, but if the design isn't captivating/unique/user-friendly/(insert design-related adjective here), then potential engagement is lost.

Keep up the good work–looking forward to part 3!

This is great advice, simply laid out, and totally do-able for someone wanting to start blogging. I love your advice of, "Don't be boring"! Chris Guillebeau said once "You can break most of the rules, but not all of them at the same time" (in 279 Days to an Overnight Success, I think). I love that advice for life, and especially blogging.

I have learned so much just from checking out other people's blogs- from the most successful, to the person next door. I totally agree that design is super important as well… most people are visually attracted to a site, before they even give the content a chance to pull them in.

Keep up the good advice!

Karen

I should have also mentioned that any of these rules can and have been broken. For example, Chris Guillebeau's Art of Non-Conformity is chrisguillebeau.com. Guillebeau is unusual and difficult to spell if you are just telling people, and yet he has one of the top blogs on the internet. Its like the saying goes… you have to know the rules to break them. This post defines them, but they definitely aren't the only way to go about things.

And I agree, it's hard to find a premium theme that's anywhere close to what you want, let alone a free one. Some people just have better luck (or at least feel safer) buying from a company who can support them later on.

I just checked out Freestyle Mind. You and I have a pretty similar background. I just subscribed! I hope to see you around here again.

I linked to your business because it's still the first and only business of this kind I know. I read on your blog that others exist, but I've never heard of them so yours stands out in my mind. And who can argue with free. It's a great service.

Glad you could stop by!

This isn't my MacBook Air, though. I have a MacBook unibody. I just thought this picture looked sufficiently badass.

The idea was that I already went through the traditional education system, and learned an incredible amount running a series of businesses and all that entails. What I wanted to do was learn what I could from travel, the world, the people out there…to get a third education, if you will.

So I bought 3rdEducation.com (and a bunch of subsidiary domains) and built my site.

A week later, I realized that every single time I told people about the site, or they discovered it on their own, a lengthy explanation was required in order to convey what the project was all about, why I was doing it, etc etc etc. It seemed great in my head because I knew what I was doing (the so-called 'burden of knowledge,' which makes it difficult to explain things to others because you already know all about it), but it just wasn't clicking the way I wanted it to.

Long story short, I ended up rebranding the second week of the project as 'Exile Lifestyle' and since then everything has been just dandy. Taking stock of this kind of things more carefully (and less emotionally) from the get-go would have saved me quite a bit of time, so it's good advice to everyone out there to consider it carefully!

I'm loving this serious on how to be a blogger! Really helpful for those wanting to start their own blog, either just for fun or to later turn into a full time income!

I personally found the design a hard thing to complete, and eventually ended up buying my WP theme I am currently using, simply because free WP themes are just not quite what I was looking for.

Your theme looks pretty sweet! Did you do a lot of customizing to get it like that?

Keep up the good work! Diggy