Welcome to Blogs.FanExtra!

Blogs.FanExtra – Our New Network Blog

Today we’re incredibly excited to announce that we’ve finally launched Blogs.FanExtra, the newest additional to the FanExtra network. We know that a lot of our FanExtra members and PSD.FanExtra readers are not only designers, but also interested in blogging. Many of you run your own blogs, whilst some of you are just thinking about getting started.

We’re incredibly passionate about launching great blogs, and have actually been launching websites and blogs as long as we have been designing. It’s been a privilege taking PSD.FanExtra from a random idea on a summer vacation to a fully fledged blog network, which has been read by millions of people across the world.

Now we want to share with you some of the knowledge that we’ve accrued over the last few years. We realize that the ‘blogging about blogging’ niche is incredibly saturated, which is why we’re going to be doing things differently here. Overall we feel that most bloggers are far too vague when talking about blogging, and rarely share any practical, real-world experience. The number of times we’ve read ‘produce great content’ or ‘the money is in the list’ without any real strategy or advice to go with it is staggering.

I don’t want to give too much away, but here’s what you can look forward to at Blogs.FanExtra.

Very in depth articles, with practical advice and strategies to use on your own blogs. No overly general, generic points here!
Plenty of real-world experience. We’ve learnt a lot running a large design network, so we know what works and what doesn’t.
Interviews with top bloggers and entrepreneurs. These interviews will get to the heart of what makes these bloggers successful.
Great resources, courses and the introduction of video content to our network.

You can check out our very first guest post below:

Writing an Effective Guest Posting Application Email

Meet the Editor: Tom Ross

This site will be edited by myself (Tom Ross). I’m the founder of the FanExtra network and still run editorial duties over at PSD.FanExtra.

I’ve gotten to know many of you guys over the years, and really look forward to interacting with you via this new blog. I’ll have a much more personal role with this site, including video content, more discussions with readers and question and answer sessions. I’ve been blogging for over 6 years now, and have really learnt a huge amount along the way. I can’t wait to share some of my crazy blogging experiences with you guys.

Launch Contest: Win a 6 Month FanExtra Membership!

To help celebrate the launch of our new network blog we’re giving away two 6 month FanExtra memberships. These memberships are perfect for any designer or blogger, as we now offer over 1600 quality design resources, including vectors, icons, textures, brush sets, ui kits, tutorials and more!

Check out our growing members area here.

All you have to do to enter this contest is leave a comment below asking a question related to blogging. This can be anything from ‘how do I get more blog comments?’ to ‘how do I improve my online brand?’. Whatever interests you, or whatever you’re struggling with simply leave a question below.

I’ll select my favorite two questions next week (Tuesday 24th) and will announce the winners. I’ll also be responding to the winning questions personally via Youtube video as part of our new ‘Ask Tom!’ Q & A series.

This is a great chance to get your blogging questions answered in a lot of detail, so please comment below.

Connect With Us

Of course as a brand new blog we’d love it if you’d connect with us and help share this post around.

You can connect with us on the following platforms:

Download Our FREE 7 Day Blogging Course:

We recommend that you check out our free 7 day blogging course to help you improve your own blogging. The course is based on our real-life strategies used at PSD.FanExtra, as well as older ventures of mine. We really hope you like it.

Download the FREE Course Today!.

About the Author:

Tom is the chief editor at Blogs.FanExtra and founder of the FanExtra network. He loves interacting with the community, so if you have any questions hit up the contact page and he'll get back to you.

FanExtra Membership:

>> Sign up to FanExtra Today

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24 Comments:

Bill Schultz says:

January 17, 2012 at 1:21 am

Great work! I love your site!

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 17, 2012 at 1:27 am
  
  Thanks Bill! :) I’m really buzzing to get this new site running.
  
  Did you have a blogging related question in order to enter our launch contest? I wouldn’t want you to miss out on your chance of winning!
  
  Reply
Su Hall says:

January 17, 2012 at 1:56 am

Congratulations, Tom! Your ‘baby’ is off the ground and running! Yay! I know you’ve been working hard for this for a while and the fruits of your labor have finally reached fruition. I am very happy for you.

I actually do have a question for you. Some friends and I are trying to figure out how we can add a widget of our own, like a Ning ‘badge’, to a WP blog. We are at the stage where we want to move to our WP blogs and are looking to be able to add our favorite side bar goodies. The ‘artsy’ groups we engage in are mostly Ning groups and other blogs, so, the badge is important to us. How in the world do you add a badge?

Whether you pick this question isn’t as important to me as just knowing this. I look forward to learning a lot from this site. I’ve had my WP blog for a year or more, but, sunk my time to learn into Photoshop. Now that I am ‘used to’ that program, I am ready to tackle learning WP.

Thank you for what you do!

Su Hall

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 17, 2012 at 2:18 am
  
  Hey Su! Thanks so much for the ongoing support and being with this site right from the start.
  
  Whilst your question is a good one, I’m not sure it’s something that’s going to be relevant to our wider audience, so I’ll just answer it here for you (and save you some waiting around). I had a look around and this was the best explanation I could find: http://www.screenr.com/90xs. I hope it helps you :).
  
  Reply
Bill Schultz says:

January 17, 2012 at 5:33 am

Tom, I’m a big fan of using Bufferapp to manage the timing of my blog posts when I post them on Facebook and Twitter, that way they are spread out during the day and I get maximum traction by making sure they are posted when my audience is there. (I am not affiliated with Bufferapp in any way.)
How important do you feel spreading posts out is, as opposed to dumping three posts out at once? Also, what do you feel is the saturation point for number of posts a day, before your audience gets turned off? Thanks!

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 17, 2012 at 3:47 pm
  
  Hey Bill, glad you had a chance to post your question here. I’m a huge fan of BufferApp myself and use it on a daily basis, as well as recommending it in our 7 day blogging course. They really know how to run an app well and it’s a huge time saver.
  
  Good question! I’ll certainly consider it for the upcoming ‘Ask Tom’ video response series.
  
  Reply
brad smith says:

January 17, 2012 at 6:26 am

hey nice site man. what are your thoughts on having a blog hosted on a main site, or on a service like blogspot or wordpress for instance.

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 17, 2012 at 3:53 pm
  
  Hey Brad. Thanks, and welcome to the early community here :). Good question, although I fear it may be a little basic for our video series, so I’ll go ahead and answer it here.
  
  I’m not sure if you’re referring to hosting a blog on a static site vs wordpress/blogger or whether you’re referring to using wordpress/bloggers free urls vs hosting your blog on your own domain.
  
  For static site vs WordPress/blogger I would say go with WordPress every time. You can integrate it as part of your static site and it’s really the best blogging solution.
  
  For hosting your blog for free vs your own domain you should always try and host your blog on your own domain if possible. Domains and hosting are so affordable these days it’s definitely worth investing in, and it’s vital to appearing professional not to run on a free blogging platform.
  
  Hope this helps!
  
  Reply
Stephanie Thompson says:

January 17, 2012 at 6:52 am

I am a Graphic Arts student, soon to graduate. I have had to blog for a couple of classes and didn’t enjoy it at all! However I understand that I must have a web presence and am unable to afford a website right now. So, my question is – would a blog be appropriate for this and if so how should I present representations of my work on it?

Congratulations on getting this up and running! I’ve been looking forward to it!

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 17, 2012 at 3:55 pm
  
  Thanks for your question Stephanie, and welcome to the site.
  
  Reply
Aniruddh Agarwal says:

January 17, 2012 at 8:53 am

Hi Tom,

Great to hear the news of the launch, now I can at last read tips on how to improve/start a blog the right way!

My question is that “Is categorizing really important?” I mean why sit and make categories instead of simply post your stuff? Because I have seen many blogs where some categories contain only one post or are empty.

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 17, 2012 at 3:57 pm
  
  Thanks Anniruddh, I appreciate the support. We’ll be posting some really in depth tips here, so I hope you’ll enjoy our early posts. As for your question I’ll consider it for the video response next week, but in a word ‘yes’ :).
  
  Reply
Raul says:

January 17, 2012 at 11:22 am

Hi Tom,

Great news !
What do you think are the most important things an blogger should focus on, when starting a blog ?

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 17, 2012 at 3:58 pm
  
  Hey Raul, great question! I’ll certainly consider it for my video response next week :).
  
  Reply
Chris says:

January 17, 2012 at 2:08 pm

Tom, the site looks to be off to a great start and I’m sure I will be gaining loads of valuable content from it, as I have from your Photoshop blog. My question is, what do you feel are the steps to growing a blog to at least a few hundred visitors a day?

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 17, 2012 at 4:03 pm
  
  Hey Chris, great to have you here mate. That’s actually one of my favorite questions, so definitely stands a good chance of getting a video response.
  
  Reply
Piyush Agarwal says:

January 17, 2012 at 4:58 pm

Congratulations Tom on the launch. Have been waiting for quite some time now. Wishing loads of luck and looking forward to your upcoming blog posts. I have 2 questions, one basic while other being a little advanced..

- Tips to improve User Subscriptions and Following.
- Efficient ways of managing multiple blogs/a blog network

Hoping to win the subscription as I am a designer-cum-blogger. ;)

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 18, 2012 at 2:22 am
  
  Great couple of questions Piyush, and certainly two areas I’ve had experience with. I’ll bear them in mind for next week’s video post.
  
  Reply
SzSza says:

January 17, 2012 at 5:44 pm

Hi there :) I’m looking forward to seeing new things around here! Thank you for the opportunity as well :)

Hm… a question you say… How do you determine how often should you write articles, the length of an article and how do you measure it’s (the article’s) success (comments/feedback, visitors, shares on social media – which one should be your main focus)?

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 18, 2012 at 2:24 am
  
  Hey SzSza, great to have you here! There’s really a few questions there, each of which deserves it’s own answer. Whether or not your questions are selected for the video response next week, we have some great upcoming content that should help answer you.
  
  Reply
Su Hall says:

January 19, 2012 at 2:25 am

First, I wanted to thank you for turning me on to the video on adding gadgets in WP. I thought it would be ‘hairy-er’ than that! LOL

I am just not real sure what all this form of blogging is about. I am curious, so I am more than willing to learn all I can.

To give you a brief idea, my blogging experience is posting about a topic I like and know, offering tips and tutorials and, occasionally, free related downloads. There is no commerce, I guess it is called. I don’t sell anything. It is just a small, friendly, community-driven spot on the web. So, I am thinking this form of blogging you offer may be out of my ballpark, maybe?

What are the advantages of this form of blogging over the type of blogging I do? I just don’t understand.

Thank you,

Su

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 19, 2012 at 7:42 pm
  
  No problem Su, really glad I could help :).
  
  Well first of all, there’s nothing wrong at all with blogging non-commercially. Loads of great blogs don’t monetize at all. We’re mainly going to be teaching techniques that are applicable for all bloggers, only a small portion of our content will deal with monetization.
  
  As for monetizing your blog being ‘out of your ballpark’ I think you can achieve what you set your mind to. I’m sure by following some of the tips here you’ll have a better understanding of how to profit from your blog. If you ever struggle along the way of course I’m here to help :).
  
  Reply
Steve Robillard says:

January 19, 2012 at 3:37 am

What is the best way to monetize your blog and what is the best timing for this (should it start from day one – even if it may outweigh your initial content)?

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  January 19, 2012 at 7:42 pm
  
  Amazing question Steve, and one that I know a lot of readers have. This is a strong contender for the first video in the ‘Ask Tom’ series!
  
  Reply

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