Starting a guitar blog

Connect with other guitarists

The one thing guitar players like more than playing guitar, is talking about playing guitar.  If you don't feel like you get the chance to talk to your fellow axemeisters enough, then starting a guitar blog is a really easy and fun way to get in touch with them.  If people find your blog and find that you write interesting posts, then they'll be likely to engage with you.  Especially if you are active on other guitar blogs and forums.

Improve your playing

There's a saying that "the best way to learn something is to teach it" and it's true.  If you start doing your best to help other guitarists by sharing ideas, thoughts, and the things you have learned from playing guitar, you won't be able to help but become a better player yourself.

Help people

You don't need to be a supreme guitar god to have something to say that will benefit somebody.  My favourite definition of expert is "somebody that knows more about something than somebody else."  So if you've got anything at all to say about playing guitar, then why not share it with the world, and accumulate some karma, pay it forward, and all that good stuff.

Make a bit of extra money

Starting a guitar blog is not something you should do just for the money.. to start with you'll only get a few cents when somebody clicks on an ad on your site.  But if talking about guitars with people on the internet is something you'd do anyway, then why not make a couple of dollars on the side?  You can place Google Adsense on the site, or sign up for an affiliate program and place affiliate links in your posts whenever you talk about a particular product, so that if somebody clicks through and buys something you'll get paid a commission.  There are even companies out there that pay bloggers to do a post on a certain topic, or will send you some free gear to review!  If you're blogging just to make money, it's probably not going to be worthwhile, not at first anyway.  But if you're blogging for other reasons, and you were going to write the stuff anyway, then monetising your blog is basically just free money.

Become better known as a guitarist

It stands to reason, doesn't it?  If you have a blog out there that people read, then they will know you as a guitarist much better than if you don't.  This can help you when it comes time to find a band, promote your music, or anything else you might want to do with your playing

It's fun!

This is the main reason we do it.  Playing guitar is fun.  Writing about guitar is fun.  Sharing what you love about playing and appreciating good music is also fun.

Thoughts, ideas, opinions

A guitar blog is the perfect place to share your ideas, or your likes and dislikes about guitars, guitar playing, guitarists and recordings.  Talk about what constitutes good tone, or interesting playing, or anything else that's on your mind.

Share your playing

Post up videos or mp3s of your playing.  Whether it's your band's latest studio recording or just a video of you jamming on your amp in the lounge room, it's always cool to hear what other people are doing with the instrument.

Review gear

This is a big one! We guitarists love toys.. and with so much stuff out there, far more than any of us could ever actually try, let alone really use.. it's always cool to hear what other people think of different guitars, amps, effects and accessories. You can just write about what you're using at the moment, or things you've tried, or even go the whole hog with some review demos.

Talk about guitars

Guitarists love talking about guitars almost as much as they like playing them.  In fact, a lot of the time, they like talking about them even more!  So just say what you got on your mind at the moment and join in the conversation online.

Access to a computer and the Internet

I assume you have these things already, seeing as your reading this hub at the moment. Perhaps somebody printed it out for you, or sent it to you via smoke signals or telegram, but I'm pretty sure you're online. If you have your own computer and net connection, then you'll be able to update your blog whenever you feel like it, but in theory you could run a blog just with publically available internet-connected computers at the the public library, or internet cafe.

A free blogging account

You can get started blogging straight away and for free with one of the free blogging hosts out there. There are too many free blogging sites out there to list them all, but some of the most popular include Blogger, Wordpress.com, and Livejournal.

Your own domain and hosting

If you want more control over your blog, and want to own the thing completely, then you can go and buy your own domain name, and some hosting for it.  This isn't free, although it is pretty damn cheap.  The main difficulty though is not paying a couple of dollars a month for the hosting, but having to set up and configure the blog yourself.  This is not that difficult, but there is more of a learning curve to it than the free blogging sites that just let your register and start posting straight away.  The cool thing about doing it all on your own though is that you get to own the entire site, and you can do whatever you want with it.  Awesome.

Blogging Software

If you're going to run your own blog, with your own domain and hosting, then you will need some software to manage your content.  Wordpress is by far the most popular blog publishing application out there, because it's completely free, simple to install, extremely flexible, looks fantastic and is easy to use and maintain.  One of the cool things about Wordpress are all the "themes" available, which you can just install over the top of your site to completely change the look of it without effecting any of the existing content or functionality of the site.  If you don't want to use Wordpress though, there are a great many alternatives, such as Moveable Type and Joomla.