Well, I already busted my one tip a day goal. Oh well - I have an excuse: I was at the eBay Developers Conference in Vegas. So, on to tip #4.

In blogs, as in eBay listings, pictures are very effective at getting attention. If you are going to be blogging about your life (as in, things that you see or experience during your day), I recommend investing in a camera phone. I got one off the site about a month ago (Nokia 6682 -- great phone) and already I've been able to use it to capture things that would have been lost unless I had it with me. The quality you can get on a camera phone has improved significantly. Check out this picture I took of the courtyard at eBay HQ:

Nice, huh! And I bet that when you read this post, the first thing you did was look at the picture, proving my point that pictures are effective at getting attention for your posts. Just make sure the pictures are relavent -- please, no pictures of your cat unless you are blogging about cats (eBay forums in-joke there).

-Alan (my regular blog).

While I am an eBay employee, these opinions are my own

Tip number 3 is not just about the usual "be yourself" line. Sure, thats important and all, but what I really want to talk about is writing unique content. Most of the traffic to your blog will come from people using search engines. On my regular blog, I get about 2/3rds of my traffic from search engines. I know this because I religiously check the referral logs on my blog to see where my traffic is coming from (more on that tip later on).

So, how do you get people to find your blog on search engines? There are books and articles and blog posts galore about "search engine optimization": the practice of making tweaks and implementing strategies that help raise your search engine relavence. But the real answer is this: write unique content that can't be found anywhere else. Heres something to try: in your favorite search engine, search for chef li san jose. The first result that comes back will probably be an article from my blog? Why? Not because I did anything special -- I simply chose to write about my favorite Chinese place, and since no one else has written about it, my blog comes back first in the search results.

So what do you know about? What are you interested in? The more unique it is, the more attention you are likely to attract.

-Alan (my regular blog).

While I am an eBay employee, these opinions are my own

eBay product manager Michael Bierman has already posted some great tips on how to get started with your eBay blog. I don't know if he saw my blog and got the idea, but I'll take credit for it ;-).

Bookmark his blog and keep coming back for more good stuff.

Oh, and hi to those folks who are coming over here from Robert Scoble's blog.

-Alan (my regular blog).

While I am an eBay employee, these opinions are my own

If you are just starting out blogging, I recommend that you read some other blogs first to get a feel for whats out there. Of course, you can choose to approach blogging in your own unique way -- more power to you if thats what you choose! But if you are a conformist, I mean... if you want to learn about blogging before you try it out, then read some other blogs first.

Of course there are plenty of good blogs on eBay to read (even though its only been open 1 day!). Here are some other blogs I read:

• eBay Chatter eBay corporate blog :-)
• Robert Scoble, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft
• John Battelle's Search Blog (about the internet industry)
• Best of eBay Blogs (eBay employee blog aggregator)
• Guy Kawasaki (only been blogging for a few months, but he is on fire!)

Theres plenty more, but I'll save some more choices for another post. Technorati is a great blog search engine you can use to find content you are interested in (I read blogs that are mostly focused on technology, but there are blogs on every topic imaginable).

Help blogging beginners out, and post a comment with your favorite blog!

-Alan (my regular blog).

While I am an eBay employee, these opinions are my own

My name is Alan Lewis, and I'm a technical evangelist (yes, thats my real job title) working in the eBay Developers Program. This blog is intended to a collection of tips and information about blogging, and how to get the most out of your blog (whether it is an eBay-hosted blog or not). My other blog on Typepad is the place where I talk about more general stuff, including thoughts on working at eBay, my opinions on the Internet industry, a minimal number of rants, and more.

I've been blogging for about a year and a half, and while I make no claims to be a blogging expert, I do think I have lots of good information to share. My first tip is simply to give blogging a try. Everyone has their own reasons for doing it, but I have met lots of people through my blog. As an example, at a conference I attended a few months back I ran into two guys from Australia who happened to read my blog. We went out for dinner and had a great time.

Keep reading for more tips! My goal is to post one a day, until I run out. Lets see if I can hit 100...

-Alan

Standard disclaimer: While I am an eBay employee, these opinions are my own.