Casual Stroll to Mordor (CSTM) is joining the Newbie Blogger Initiative (NBI) for the month of May! This is a program set up to inspire players to create an MMO blog of their own.
The whole purpose of the NBI is to make the process as easy for you as possible and to give you a ton of support and initial traffic. Getting readers is always hard at first, we know and we want to help!
There are over 70 established bloggers supporting this event with the goal of helping you get up and running! These blogs will be posting up helpful advice articles throughout the month. You will also have the opportunity to ask questions about blogging to people who’ve been there and can help you avoid some of the slip ups they made early on.
When Merric and I started CSTM, we pretty much didn’t have a clue what we were doing. We are nearing our 3rd anniversary of CSTM so hopefully we’ve learned at least something that can assist you in starting a blog of your own. We are happy to lend our support to this event and to give any assistance we can to those interested in blogging about video games.
To participate in the Newbie Blogger Initiative, simply follow these steps!
- Register on the NBI forums. This forum is where you can ask your questions or get a list of articles that have been submitted by the sponsor blogs.
- Create your blog! You can do this wherever you like, although many bloggers prefer WordPress or Blogger (both offer free blog hosting and tools). We’d like it if your blog was related to MMOs somehow. It can be specific to just one game or the genre as a whole.
- Once you get a post or two published, go to the “Newbie Blogger check-in” forum and sign in so that we can all be aware of you!
For more information: http://nbihq.freeforums.org/index.php
And spread the word!
May 1, 2012 at 10:29 am
To register on your site, I had to watch an advertisement video to see the validation code and then click Pass on 7 (seven!) other advertisements. I almost didn’t go through with it.
May 1, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Just to be clear, this is not CSTM’s initiative. It’s something we support and are participating in but we are not organizing or hosting.
May 1, 2012 at 11:40 am
Cool program. It’s honestly very hard to keep a blog going at first and the largest reason, really, is lack of visibility and support. This sounds like it could address those issues head on, I’m sure, give more confidence to new bloggers.
I had a really hard time with it on my own — you really need to push through the whole “no one else sees this despite my outreach efforts!” stuff at first and not get all down about it. If you’re doing something you like people are eventually going to notice it.
May 1, 2012 at 2:10 pm
Sorry about the forum ads — I have noscript on my browser, so I never saw them and didn’t realize they were obnoxious.
May 1, 2012 at 5:44 pm
Yeah, this sounds like a brilliant program. I’ve been considering doing a proper blog (honestly, Tumblr doesn’t count) for LOTRO or something, and this sounds like an excellent way to get started.
Thanks for sharing, and supporting, the NBI!
May 2, 2012 at 2:20 pm
I’ve paid to upgrade the forum to an ad-free version.
May 10, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Might be an odd question. I created a new blog under MMONBI. Already have over 200 page views which I’m shocked at. I’ve tweeted when I’ve posted a couple articles. Are there other ways people are finding me? Or how do I see fellow people from MMONBI and their pages? I thought going to http://www.blogspot.com would show new posts but just shows my info.
May 10, 2012 at 3:48 pm
I should clarify- I’m not looking to boost page views. I’m just curious how blogspot works.
Thanks