Sometimes it can be pretty easy for an experienced blogger to forget that blogging is a foreign concept to a lot of people. They probably read blogs every day and don’t even know it.

So, what is a blog?

Wikipedia calls a blog: A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.

Darren Rowse at Problogger says: a blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

The Beeb says: Blogs (or Weblogs) are basically online journals or diaries which are great for sharing information and ideas.

So you get the idea. A blog is a website where data is entered and posted in a time stamped manner which makes it easy to read chronologically.

So what! What can you do with it?

Well, that really depends on what you want to do with it. For some people, all they want is to keep an online journal they can share with their friends and family. Or they want to keep it private, but want the convenience of an online format. Others want to share their passion for garden gnomes with the world. Some more ambitious garden gnome aficionados yearn to earn a living by recounting their travels to well adorned gardens around the globe.

The beauty of blogging is that it allows one to express their desires, in private, in public or for profit.

Next up, we’ll explore the next steps towards launching your very own corner of the net.

My name is Gary and I’m an addict.

A blogging addict.

Way back in September 2004, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, I first ventured online to learn about these things called blogs. I Googled the word blog. Of course one of the first links to turn up was Google’s own free blogging service, Blogger. I was intrigued, but also intimidated. There was discussion of designing your own blog and that terrified me. I needn’t have worried, as I was publishing my own brain farts in minutes.

Brain farts only keep one’s interest for so long, and rarely attract the interest of anybody else. I needed something to blog about. The obvious choice for me was cars, so I began blogging about cars.

A few months later, I discoved this cool Aussie guy called Darren Rowse who published a blog called Problogger. I was stunned. Here was this great resource on everything blog related from how to create traffic to how to earn money. Wait a minute. Earn money? How the hell can you do that? Darren’s work spurred me on to create The Garage and even our own little network of blogs.

Fortunately, through all this I’ve had a team mate. Jaimie Macpherson takes car of all the techie details that scare the stuffing out of me and makes sure that everything works. Together we’ve been able to put together some pretty cool bloggers who work on some pretty sharp looking blogs. The one thing we’ve never blogged about though is blogging.

There are lots of folks doing a really good job blogging about blogging, so why would we even think about it as a topic. Well, because we’ve learned a lot over the past few years and it will be nice to give back to the blogging community. Oh yes, and maybe earn a few bucks along the way!

Blogtater will be a blog about blogging with a bit of a twist. We’re going back to our roots a little bit and starting out on a free blog service. Except this time, I’m going it alone. I will show readers how I’ve chosen my format, my template (and what a template is) and even how I’m dealing with hosting. As we move forward over the next few weeks, I’ll be moving Blogtater from the free service to an independently hosted domain. I’ll be doing it myself, without my trusted tech guru to smooth out the wrinkles and I’ll be bringing readers along for the ride. As we learn together how to generate traffic, we’ll begin looking together at ways to make money with a blog.

What do you think folks, can I create a blog from scratch? You’ll just have to keep reading and see!