You are confused, you don’t know how blogs work, you don’t know what a trackback is, don’t know how to meddle with plugins, don’t know how to upload images, don’t know about comments, don’t know about Technorati, don’t know about feeds, don’t know don’t know about everything! How do you start?

The answer: Just create an account and start blogging!

Ted from Blogging for Business was talking about the concept of throw away blogs, which originated from Rick Short.

The key idea is to really dive in and get your hands dirty playing with blogs, it doesn’t matter even if you mess up, because you are going to throw the blog away anyway! You can post garbage, post about what you ate for breakfast, what you did with your kids, go try taking a photo and try uploading it. Its when you do, where you learn.

Throw away blogs are also useful to overcome the fear of corporate blogging. Understandably, not every organization has an Internet savvy personnel who knows all about WordPress and Blogger and MovableType, especially in today’s world where leaner organizations are the trend and the boss and his wife are the only people in company… but don’t let that deter you from starting, you don’t have to start with a corporate blog, right? You can target to set up your corporate blog two months down the road but start a personal or throw away blog immediately, just to learn about blogging!

My Own Experiences?

I didn’t start with a throw away blog when I started with Blogger.com because everything just went so fine, and I just continued to write and write and upload photos, but it was MANY throw away blogs when I ported to WordPress! I was basically messing everything up in my web host, trying out subdomains, messing with the templates, and even messing with the .htaccess files and stuff like that – I didn’t know of the concept of the throw away blog then, and every installation I did, I wanted to make it really nice, but I always messed up anyway , so I took it down, uploaded again, installed again… until I finally got the right configuration.

Its fun, and you really learn a lot!

And if you meet obstacles, just go ahead to Digitalpoint Forums or any forums out there, for that matter, and shoot! Better still, come back here and tell me about it so I can help you through it personally.

At the time of writing, in fact, I have a WordPress MU throw away installation. I was fiddling with the installation time and time and time again just to get the right configuration. Tried subdirectories, subdomains, templates and everything… that’s how I learn.

So, are you aspiring to start a blog, but haven’t done so. If you are, PLEASE… leave this blog entry now to create your blog now using any of these three links to Blogger.com, WordPress.com, or WordPress.org (if you want to host the blog yourself) … and come back and bug me if you face any roadblocks!