Webisite is now live

[DLZ]

Hi All,

Any opinions on my site are much appreciated. The blog is brand new and the site is not yet monetized or heavily marketed. There will be many changes in the next several weeks.

http://downbroadstreet.com/

Thank you for looking. Please stop by often.

Regards,

-- Doug

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hi Doug,

Congratulations on getting your blog set up and running.

Love the intro page - looks great. And congratulations
on setting a big goal for yourself. I wish you the best
of success. I should do likewise in the running/exercise
department. Used to LOVE running.

The only thing I'd recommend now is that you keep
posting your running and training experience, and also
perhaps change your header and colors to reflect what
you've accomplished on the homepage.

Once you have a number of posts together, apply to
affiliate programs to promote running products - particularly
those that you use and like.

Last, but not least, get a Feedburner account and
promote the heck out of your feed, so folks will sign
up to get your news. Then get out there and start chatting
with folks about what you're doing on social networking
sites and forums to start getting traffic.

Once again, I wish you the best of success with both your
blog and your running goals.

Cheers,
Ros

[DLZ]

Ros,

Thanks for looking at my site. I feel quite honored I think we're on the same page as far as promoting it. I'm still familiarizing myself with WordPress and haven't played around with design yet. I'm excited about taking DownBroadStreet.Com to the next level. Please tell your friends & stop by often!

Best Regards,

-- Doug

[Lowell Rieger]

Doug,

Ros has said a lot. Here are some other things to think about.

Adding an RSS feed is essential. But did you know FeedBurner also offers a free email subscribe function that will email your blog posts to subscribers? Some people WILL want to follow you by email, and this is a great way to do an email list without an autoresponder service.

I use this FeedBurner service instead of my Aweber account on a few of my niche blogs where Aweber is overkill.

Some Wordpress plugins are available to help make your blog more SE friendly and also to make sitemaps, ping update services, contact forms, and for easier adds to bookmarking sites.

The hardest thing to do with a blog is to keep posting. You just have to do it. It can be a grind, but you have a great topic because you are documenting day to day struggles.

If you need any info on the above topics I'd be glad to point you in the right direction. Just leave a request in a post here or better yet email me through the link on my profile. (just click on profile in this post)

Best of luck,

Lowell

[DLZ]

Lowell,

Thank you for your valuable input. I am definitely adding RSS and am looking into Feedburner. There is so much involved right now to get everything where I want it but I'm having a blast. There's a good chance that I will contact you about your recommendations. Please stop by often.

Regards,

Doug
http://downbroadstreet.com

[Lowell Rieger]

Doug -

Feedburner has many handy rss functions. Most of them you won't need right away but it's one of my essential blogging tools.

I'll be posting a list of plugins I use (I just updated the list) to one of my blogs this weekend. I'll let you know when I do.

Lowell