To be a top blogging trainer in Singapore, I must learn more!
I figured out a couple of days ago that if I want to really make a good living out of blog marketing, training people on blogging, and advising corporations in Singapore how to establish their blog to reach out to their stakeholders, I must learn more than WordPress and its plugins.
While WordPress is a brilliant platform for anybody to get started, I think a trainer has to be a master, and mastery is about knowing as much as possible, about the race within yourself to be better than yourself.
Giving a go at other platforms
So there I went, I started some other blogs - blogs in all kinds of combinations in the three most popular blogging platforms, WordPress, TypePad/Movable Type, and Blogger, all in the hosted and self-hosted version, using the platform’s subdomain, as well as my own domain. The TypePad account and using my domain on a WordPress.com blog costed me some money, but I think the investment is worthwhile the experience. Besides, its a very small investment anyway. I’d skip a meal today and another tomorrow to recoup the money. 
But of course, I’m not going to market or post everyday on all 12 blogs! That will kill me! 
(hey, I’m human okay?) These blogs are more of exploration and learning… and also for demonstration for the upcoming workshop I will be holding (hopefully in January).
After trying out all the combinations - I must say, the self-hosted version of WordPress is still the easiest to learn and manage (or maybe its because of my prior experience with PHP applications). It took me several tries before I managed to get Movable Type working - working with CGI and Perl isn’t as friendly. 
I’m quite impressed with Movable Type once I got it installed - its functionality is very much like Blogger - files are created when you hit publish. This is not the case for WordPress because WordPress uses all the mod rewrite stuff for nice URLs as permalinks.
WordPress still rocks!
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Tan Kian Ann is blog marketing coach based in Singapore. He is passionate in helping individuals and small businesses reach out to the world using blogs. 
December 17th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Visit Mike
I think you will be much better off writing your own, then you pritty much learn everything involved with it.
It takes time but in the long run can be alot better.
December 17th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
Visit ky
Some online marketing from Amazon that might interest you, check out here
December 18th, 2006 at 1:08 am
Visit Kian Ann
Hey Mike, thanks for being the regular visitor and commenter again
Haha… frankly, I’m not as into programming as I was before. I was a programmer a couple of years back, reading all the books on .NET programming, analysing how to use all the Java classes and how to do callback methods and all those stuff.. but I got sick of debugging code
So now I’m focusing more on the use of technology for business.
Maybe I’ll consider doing up a short app in the future when I have more time. For now, I’d better work hard on blogopreneur to bring it up top the ranks. I should spend more time reading and writing articles, instead of pulling my hair over a missing brace after an “if” statement.
December 18th, 2006 at 1:11 am
Visit Kian Ann
Ketyung! Thanks for your recommendations, I’ll check them out. I’m still not done with the books I bought the previous time! I’m a real slow reader… or rather I always re-read my books!
December 18th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Visit Shi Hengcheong
Hey Kian Ann,
I was speaking at Certified Professional Trainers (CPT) Course** yesterday and tried to show off your Blogopreneur ranking in Google. But I COULD NOT find it in the third page - you were supposed to rank at 26th for the keywords: blog marketing!
The strange thing was I did not panic, I just asked KC (my mentor, the KC See, was helping me to operate the notebook while I spoke!) to go the page 2 and viola, you were at 19th…
Congratulations!
The audience was quite impressed with your achievement in blog marketing and determination to become a professional trainer/blogger.
** CPT is a professional trainers certification course conducted in Singapore/Malaysia by Master Trainer KC See.
December 18th, 2006 at 11:54 am
Visit ky
Perhaps there are some good books about wordpress and blogging here that might interest u
December 18th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Shi! Yeah, I realised that yesterday too
So now next target is top 10 hur! 
Thanks for helping me to promote my blog to the CPT people too!
December 18th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Ketyung!
BTW, I have removed your third comment and moved the correct link to the second one - better for you SEO wise!
December 18th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
Visit Shi Hengcheong
Must GET into the first page of Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask and Baidu for the search terms blog marketing. Also, have you optimized for the keywords blog marketing course yet, must work on this also.
I see that your Alexa ranking is moving real fast. Want to beat xiaxue’s 18,700th or not?
December 18th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Hahaha… I target 50K first la~~ reach 50K then see how
I will also start to optimize for more phrases related to blog marketing!
December 18th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
Visit ky
Hi Kian Ann;
Btw, why don’t you turn http-compression your wordpres? Therefore your web page will load faster on browsers? Check out this http compression report of your website here, it shows uncompressed! A compressd example is here, you can see how much bandwidth is saved. Although turning on http-compression might take up some resources of your webserver, I suppose you have a powerful enough web host and a fast loading website is more welcome by users. To turn HTTP-compresskon on wordpress, just goto your admin account and then Options->Reading, then tick on “WordPress should compress articles (gzip) if browsers ask for them”. Have fun !
December 18th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Ketyung once again, for the tip. I’ll go read up more about http compression and check with my host if they are okay with the compression
December 23rd, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Visit My Blog Marketing Articles Blog
[...] My Blog Marketing Articles Blog A couple of days back I was telling you guys about me going all out to try out other platforms to learn. [...]
December 31st, 2006 at 6:32 am
Visit Reflections for 2006
[...] I think it was a good thing for me to venture out to other blogging platforms, to learn how they work - hands on. You know, I can read the whole Typepad, MovableType, Blogger and Wordpress manuals (if they exists in the first place), but nothing beats getting down, creating a blog and posting some articles. [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Visit Henry
Hope to share my 17 years of investments experiences
http://investments-henry.blogspot.com/
Hope to learn the SEO from you, thanks
February 3rd, 2007 at 12:42 am
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Henry
February 14th, 2007 at 12:19 am
Visit Harro!
Hi Kian Ann, how was the training. Was helping out at a friend’s wedding, and by the time it finished it was late. Looking forward to the next one….
Cheers.
February 14th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Visit Kian Ann
Hey Terence, the training went wonderful!
Thanks, look forward to seeing you in the next one too! 