3 basic blog questions

[sunfunbill]

I can see I'm gonna start asking a lot of questions, maybe I should start asking in the newbie section. If so let me know. Anyway back to my blog questions. I am going to start "the Bilinda blog", a blog devoted to cross-dressers, transsexuals, trans-genders, trannies and other "in between." I have 3 basic ones:

1. Is it better to have your own domain and hosting for your blog, or is it better to start a blog in these blog "communities" that are out there? Would you get more traffic in a community blog since people are already going there? I personally would like to keep it my own domain and all, but if it's better the other way then I'll go with that.

2. Should I have a forum? I have checked other cross-dresser forums and don't see many post. Also a forum seems like it would take a lot of time to monitor. BUT, I also have googled questions before and many times the search was a forum question, so they might be a good way to get traffic, what do you think?

3. What is a good blog software or template? Any popular ones most use? I see Hammer offers a blog template, maybe I should get one from him? Any good free ones or are most out there for a fee?

Ok that is it for now!! I will try to make my blog a more humorous, entertaining type of blog. I have seen very serious blogs out there about the problems cross-dressers and all go through, but I think I will keep mine light, and of course down the road a path to my Bilinda paysite! Thank you all for all the help!!

[theviking]

1: own domain

2: no

3: wp is good.

good luck

[sunfunbill]

Hey theviking, short and to the point, I like that! Don't seem to be many people on the board this weekend. I assume wp means wordpress. Thanks for your input!

[Hammer]

I agree with Vikings answers to 1 and 3 and although a forum would be some work, if there aren't any it might be a good idea. Why not start a transgender community site?

[sunfunbill]

Hiya Hammer! Well that settles two questions for sure, get my own domain blog and host, and use wordpress.

As for the forum, I'll have to look around more and see what is already out there. It would give them more reason to stick around, but I thought of something you may have overlooked:

A lot of these people have been through a lot, and are sensitive to any perceived "slights" to them. A lot would look at Bilinda being in a porn site as trashing them. So if I use this blog as a way to get traffic to my, or other porn sites, they may get mad if they start using the forum to help each other, only to see it's being used to push porn.

Do I have a valid point, or am I being parinoid? I want to keep it a light site, sorta like "hey, Bilinda loves all you transgender/crossdressers/others, so let's party!!!

[mynameisjim]

Normally I would agree with Viking and say no forum but since the idea is to build a transgender portal and not just a standard porn selling platform, I would say a forum would be worth the effort. To get it off the ground you will probably need to make 5-10 fake accounts to get discussions going. There are services you can hire to do this but you can do it yourself as well.

As for the template, if you can afford it I would say a custom template and header would be a wise investment. Once again, you are trying to build a community and look like an authority site so branding will be a big deal and a standard theme might not cut it. Just off the top of my head I like the idea of maybe a toon header with a caricature of you in "Billinda" mode and then use that image as icons and such throughout the site. But like I said, that's just off the top of my head.

[sunfunbill]

Thanks for your input mynameisjim! But what about what I said in my post after Hammer, about maybe them being mad there is porn links and such?

[phuckbunny]

I've toyed with the idea of building forums. I think it's a pretty cool way to get traffic and interest but they do require a bit of work to build up and are also easily susceptible to spam and sabotage. A x-dressing forum may be something to think about but get the blog going first.

But I think you are being a bit paranoid about the sensitivity issue. Don't make the forum as blatant porn plug - you don't need to - just make it a comfortable place for surfers to visit and hang out at, kind of like cozy except it will be hosted on your money making domain e.g. billinda.com/forum and your traffic and recurring vistiors will grow. No need to hard sell the site, start some discussions about x-dressing issues, events, places to meet, etc. only leave one discussion for the site; no one will be offended. I think it's a good idea.

[mynameisjim]

I'd agree with what phuckbunny said. Say for example I was into BDSM stuff in real life. If I went to a message board and they had a few porn links sprinkled in I would not even think twice about it. Obviously if you fill the forum with phony posts about how awesome this or that site is or make it look like a banner farm, you will risk looking like a fraud.

99% of the world understands nobody does anything for free and they accept a certain amount of advertising in any medium if they are getting some value out of it.

[Cozy Monica]

I think you should focus first on setting up the blog and getting the posts rolling, learn how things work and get into the swing of it before you start adding a forum.

Forums are a LOT of work. It takes a very long time to build up a user base that actually posts. For every person that posts, there are at least twenty more that lurk.

And people don't want to read a forum only full of your own posts. So you have to populate your board with threads from other people (often yourself pretending to be other people).

It can be very hard to get it underway.

But once your blog has decent traffic and you have begun to establish a reputation, I bet you would find it a lot easier.

And be sure you get your own domain and your own hosting, it's the only way to go with something like this.

The blog software I use is Wordpress. It has some downsides though, so I'm interested to see if anyone here uses anything else.

As for templates, there are thousands of free templates out there. You really need to scour the web and find one as close as possible to what you want your site to look like, and then go from there. You will probably want to tweak and customize it. If you don't know how, you will probably find someone here that does.

[sunfunbill]

Hi Monica. Yeah what you say makes sense. I got a big learning curve in front of me. So for now I'll start the blog, get my post up, learn more about the whole thing. Then once it's well under way and I feel better I'll look into the forum. Thanks all!!!!

[Hammer]

I think Monica has a valid point. Sometimes, Bill, you tend to get way ahead of yourself with wishful thinking and dreaming instead of focusing on one simple step at a time. Rather than thinking about a huge trans portal that's going to be the Yahoo of the trans community and make you rich and famous, concentrate on putting up a simple blog for fun. There's nothing wrong with dreaming big, but I think your goal at this point would be to start a blog with some advertising that would be useful to the trans community and hope to make a few hundred bucks a week while you're having a little fun with Bilinda. Let things progress naturally from there.

For example, some of you have probably seen Ventibate.com by now. When I started that site, it was started from a simple script I bought and intended to be a little something I added as part of Hammer Uncut for fun. I know that people like to bitch and complain and other people like to read and comment, so I had an idea that something like this might have a chance of becoming big, but that wasn't my overriding motivation when I started the site.

Now, things are picking up and I'm starting to see that a site like this is actually more popular than I even expected. I've been working on setting up a few trades and got one going with CollegeHumor which sent me over 8,000 hits on Thursday and the site got over 500 posts and comments. I spent nearly the entire day on Thursday approving comments because the script was set up for manual approval.

So, over Friday and Saturday I had a programmer make several major changes to the script so now I can allow automatic posts or moderate them, can batch approve posts where before I had to do them one at a time, and can record IPs and ban users that abuse the system.

My point? I didn't buy a script and then spend a bunch of money having all of these modifications made right away, because I wasn't sure the idea would fly. I started slow with modest goals and as things went better than I expected, I expanded my goals and now I'm beefing up the site and getting ready to start doing some paid advertising and send out some press releases.

Another benefit to moving slow is that it gave me, and will give you, time to work out the kinks as you go instead of finding out all of a sudden, once the site is getting slammed with traffic that you've got some major problems.

[sunfunbill]

Very good points Hammer. You are right, I always think "THIS IS IT" and spend all my money and time on it. I have been away from porn, and the web, for a while now as far as really doing anything. So I need to take step at a time. What I will do is:

Do more reserch on my subject, hell that will be a continuous project.

Put up a basic blog that Bilinda starts for herself and others like her. If it gets big add a forum. Get some ads, sponsors and adsense.

Start doing some shoots of Bilinda, lots to learn there, get use to my girls shooting me, have some fun! Maybe try to sell some sets to content providers, see if it's a hard sell or if Bilinda seems popular.

If all goes well, Bilinda gets popular, then open a paysite.

Worst case, I learn a lot, maybe be open to new ideas, ,,and oh yeah,,, have some fun with my girls,, I forgot that part!!

[razor]

And people don't want to read a forum only full of your own posts. So you have to populate your board with threads from other people (often yourself pretending to be other people).

Who else are you pretending to be at Cozy, Monica

[Randythefirst]

Originally posted by razor
Who else are you pretending to be at Cozy, Monica

Razor,

There is only 6 people registered at Cozy actually and 2 never post.

Randy

[Titmowse]

Hey, Bill. Here's my take:

First, I think you need to know where you're coming from. Cross dressing does not = Tranny.

People who like to dress as the opposite sex but still identify themselves as male or female are called Transvestites. Some transvestites are gay/lesbian but some are straight. Either way, on the whole, these folks take their fetish very seriously and don't want to be made fun of.

If you're going to start a community for transvestites or transsexuals or transgenders or encompass all three, I would hope you do it from a perspective of respect and acceptance.

Here's a very nice site, that I have found helpful when it comes to understanding:

http://sexuality.org