About
Posted: by Hacking Simplified in
0
KickBlogger was started in mid 2013, to keep "how to" notes about
problems I'd solved using Blogger to build a public-transport
information site for my city. My very first post was about how to put AdSense ads right inside posts.
Since the audience was just me, I also used it to test features that I wanted to use in my main site later on. One of these was Google Analytics - and I was surprised to find that other people were finding Blogger-HAT through search: I'd done nothing to promote it, and nothing to help it in the SEO stakes.
At the same time, I was answering questions in Blogger-Help-forum: by getting a reputation as someone who helped other people, the more experienced helpers were more likely to help me when I asked my own questions. But I did get sick of typing the same thing over and over again. So I started linking to posts in BloggerHAT instead.
But I had no intention of blogging about Blogger: About seven micro-seconds went into choosing the blog's name and URL - this was a site for me, not anyone else! The "hat" idea only came later - it's got to be the most under-thought-about logo in the blog-sphere.
One day, in December, pounding the treadmill at the gym, I realised that there is an almost infinite number of combinations of Blogger and other tools: by that stage, I was using Maps (because my first site is all about public transport) - Picasa, AdSense, Analytics, Feedburner
- and all the interesting challenges were about how to use these
together. The makers of each tool write documentation for their tool,
but cannot possibly write it for all the other possible tools. So
there was an enormous gap that I, and other blogger-helper-bloggers, could work in.
So I started focussing more on the posts in Blogger-HAT: the first series was about pictures and the relationship between Blogger and Picasa, and many more followed. I also learned about RSS, and found out how to use feed-reader software to keep up with changes from all the tools I was using.
Since the audience was just me, I also used it to test features that I wanted to use in my main site later on. One of these was Google Analytics - and I was surprised to find that other people were finding Blogger-HAT through search: I'd done nothing to promote it, and nothing to help it in the SEO stakes.
At the same time, I was answering questions in Blogger-Help-forum: by getting a reputation as someone who helped other people, the more experienced helpers were more likely to help me when I asked my own questions. But I did get sick of typing the same thing over and over again. So I started linking to posts in BloggerHAT instead.
But I had no intention of blogging about Blogger: About seven micro-seconds went into choosing the blog's name and URL - this was a site for me, not anyone else! The "hat" idea only came later - it's got to be the most under-thought-about logo in the blog-sphere.
One day, in December, pounding the treadmill at the gym, I realised that there is an almost infinite number of combinations of Blogger and other tools: by that stage, I was using Maps (because my first site is all about public transport) - Picasa, AdSense, Analytics, Feedburner
- and all the interesting challenges were about how to use these
together. The makers of each tool write documentation for their tool,
but cannot possibly write it for all the other possible tools. So
there was an enormous gap that I, and other blogger-helper-bloggers, could work in.So I started focussing more on the posts in Blogger-HAT: the first series was about pictures and the relationship between Blogger and Picasa, and many more followed. I also learned about RSS, and found out how to use feed-reader software to keep up with changes from all the tools I was using.