How to Make Money with Your Wedding Blog (Part One)

400th post!

I’m starting another new thing on the blog today. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but towards the end of the wedding planning I started getting ideas for the blog that had to be pushed off until I could find a better time for them. Well, ta da! Welcome to a better time.

I’ve been torn, actually, between starting things like the new Esty Seller Spotlight and just plowing ahead with the trip report. After all, I have sooooo much left to cover from the wedding trip that I’m probably not going to get to receptions #2 and #3 until spring! And I do love talking about the trip because it forces me to remember all the happy details and makes me feel like I’m back on vacation with all my favorite people. However, I also love the fact that this blog has turned into a resource for people and when I do finally finish up and stop posting on here, I want to make sure that I’ve left information behind that will help other brides out.

I’ve been getting a pretty steady amount of e-mail from reader brides for the last four or five months and although most of them are simply compliments or quick questions, there are a couple of things that brides consistently want to know about. One is whether or not they can afford to have a Disney wedding. Another is how they can get their families and friends to be excited about the Disney wedding. The most common question, though, is this: How can I start my own successful wedding blog?

There are a couple of parts to answering this question, because the question is actually a few questions in one:

• How do I start a wedding blog?
• How do I get people to read my wedding blog?
• How do I make money off of my wedding blog?
  

So, since this is such a big question for a lot of the brides who come through here, I thought I’d put together a detailed answer that lays out everything I know about wedding blogging…which is going to take more than one post! Therefore, starting today and for the next four Fridays, I’ll be posting a series on How to Make Money with Your Wedding Blog, which should cover most of the questions that I get. The series will obviously also be helpful for non-wedding bloggers, but since I’m being questioned by brides I’m going to answer to brides!

Here is the short whowhatwhenwherewhy on this series...

• Who? People who want to learn more about wedding blogging (or blogging in general) and who have at least a half hour every 1-2 days to put into this hobby.
• What? Short lessons on how to make your blog successful without making yourself nuts.
• When? Every Friday for today and the next four weeks.
• Where? Um...here.
• Why? Because blogging is fun and it's not nearly as hard as it looks from the outside. Plus, if you can profit in any way from the blog than that's more money you've saved for the wedding!
  

In the series, I’ll cover these five topics:

1. Blogging 101.
2. Creating an attractive wedding blog.
3. Writing posts that people will want to read.
4. Directing traffic to your wedding blog.
5. Profiting from your wedding blog.
   

Excited? Me too. Let’s get to it…

Part One: Blogging 101

If you’ve never blogged before, the prospect of becoming a blogger can be intimidating and overwhelming. There are so many options open to bloggers these days that the possibilities are (quite literally) endless. However, there are also a lot of user-friendly sites that walk you through setting up your own blog and we’re going to use one of those: Blogger.

I have to throw it out there – Blogger is not that popular. Yes, a lot of people use Blogger, but the hosting service of choice for most profitable blogs is WordPress. If you google “set up a great blog”, you’re going to find millions of people who want you to use WordPress. So why am I wasting your time with Blogger? Simple – I think that Blogger is easier to use if you’ve never blogged before and I’m a Blogger girl because I heart Google very much. I just wanted to own up to the fact that I’m in the minority.

The first thing you need to do if you want to set up a blog in Blogger is to get a Google account. Honestly, you should get a Google account anyway. In addition to the ever popular Gmail, Google has a whole crazy-attic full of neat internet tools and toys to explore. To get a Google account, just go to gmail.com and set one up. Don’t worry about picking a username that you can blog with (coolbride@gmail.com) instead of one that you’d actually want to give out to people in your life (jane.smith@gmail.com). You can change your Blogger username when you set up a profile. I do have a thatdisneygirl@gmail.com account, but that’s to shield my “real” account from the readers who want to contact me.

Now I’m assuming that you have a username and you’re ready to start blogging. There’s also a good chance that you already had a username and a blog and I’m just rambling on and on about things you already know. So, the next part is going to be divided by specific questions. Scroll down to figure out what level you’re at and go from there.

How do I set up a Blogger account?

1. Get a Gmail account.
2. Go to Blogger.com.
3. Click “create a blog” and fill out the form using your Gmail address. The display name you pick will be the one that readers see on your blog, so choose it wisely. It’s a good idea to pick something that is easy to remember, unique, and related to the thing you’re blogging about.
4. Follow the instructions to set up an account.
5. This will lead you right into picking a name for your new blog. You have to pick both the name of the blog and the blog URL (web address). You can change these later, but it’s a good idea to put some thought into it the first time around, especially if you don’t think you’ll change it until after people have started reading you. Case in point? My blog was originally titled Budget Disney Wedding and therefore the address is budgetdisneywedding.blogspot.com. I later changed the title to A Disney Wedding because it was less of a mouthful and people looking for budget weddings weren’t necessarily looking for a $20,000 celebration. However, by the time I changed the title I was already getting around 400 readers every day. If I had changed the URL on them, they wouldn’t have been able to find me. So now I have a blog title and a blog URL that don’t match. Bad idea.
   

What is a Blogger template and do I have to use one of the ones they give me?

1. Templates are the way your blog looks when people view it. You have the ability to choose and modify templates to make your blog as attractive as possible.
2. You don’t have to use one of the templates that Blogger gives you when you first set up the blog, but you do have to choose one initially.
   
3. For now, if you’re creating a blog, just pick one you can live with for a bit until you have time to change it. Next week we’ll go over how to make your blog look unique and interesting.
   

How do I post?

1. The first time you set up a blog, you should go right into the screen that lets you write posts. You don’t have to post immediately – your blog will still be there if you close the window and come back to it later.
   
2. However, the next time you sign in, you will go to your Blogger dashboard, which lists all of the blogs you have on Blogger. If you only have the one blog, it will be right there.
   
3. If you have more than one blog, you’ll have to scroll down until you find the one you want to post in. Your blogs are generally listed from the one you most recently posted to and down. For example, I have 15 different blogs (eep!) but the wedding one is almost always on top because it’s the one I post to the most.
   
4. Under your blog name, there is a button that says “new post”. Clicking it will open the screen that lets you write posts.

No, literally, how do I post?

1. Put in a title.
2. Write your post.
3. Click either “save” or “post to blog”.
4. Your post is now online. Click “view blog” to see it.
   

How do I post pictures?

There are two different ways. Either

1. Go to the create-a-post page and click on the little picture icon that’s right above the area where you type out your post. This opens a box that lets you either upload a photo from your computer (easiest) or put in an image location from a photo on the internet already.
2. Use an outside photo service like Photobucket to store your pictures. Copy the HTML code from the photo you want to use. Come back to the create-a-post page and click on the tab that says “Edit HTML”. Look around until you see the spot where you want to put your picture and past the HTML code that you copied. Click on the “compose” tab to preview what your image will look like when posted.
   

Obviously using blogger’s photo button is easier for new beginners, but for people who are comfortable with HTML code, using an outside service like photobucket is faster and gives you more control over the size of the image.

How do I post videos?

Again, there are two different ways. Either

1. Go to the create-a-post page and click on the little video icon that’s right above the area where you type out your post. This opens a box that lets you either upload a video from your computer, which takes a long time but is pretty easy. The downside is that the videos come up pretty small and are of questionable quality.
2. Go with an outside video service like Vimeo or YouTube and upload your videos on their site. Then copy and paste the HTML code the same way you would for a picture code. Big upside of doing it this way is that it’s fast, especially if you already uploaded the video, and the picture is larger.
   

I use Vimeo instead of YouTube because YouTube vides are really bad quality and there are more creepy/icky people on YouTube for whatever reason. My only beef with Vimeo is that the videos seem to take a while to load depending on what time of day it is.

How do I post links?

1. When writing a blog, if there is a section of text that you would like to turn into an active link (for example: this is the cutest baby ever) then highlight that text and click the button that looks like a globe with a chain link floating above it (it’s between font color and alignment).
   
2. This will open up a box that lets you past in the URL for where you want your readers to go when they click on that text. I use text links to show people where I found things, to take readers to sites that I’m talking about, or to link back to things that I talked about in other posts.

What are “Settings” and “Layout”?

1. Go play.
2. Look around at all the features that Blogger has to offer. They’re user friendly and impressive. You can change settings for how your blog is published, who can comment on it, who can see it (password protect your blog if you don’t want strangers reading), and all that other jazz.
3. As far as layout goes, Blogger makes it easy to add things to the sidebars on your blog (like viewer count, etc.) so you can play around with them.
   

I’m actually a fan of practicing restraint when it comes to these little toys, though, so next week we’ll talk about

• Getting an attractive template for your blog
• Making the blog easy to read
• Avoiding blog clutter
• Deciding whether or not to put ads on your blog.
  

Stay tuned for Part Two: Creating an Attractive Wedding Blog

If you start a blog, feel free to leave your new address. The real show-and-tell will happen next week, though, when you guys learn how to make your blogs all pretty and fancy-like. If there are any basic blogging questions that I missed, feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll respond to them there. You can also email me, but chances are if you have a question, someone else is wondering about it too…