How to start a blog - for fun or to attract lots of readers

You can start a blog the easy way, to promotoe yourself and your opinions. After retirement you might want or keep up with your profession and preserve your reputation.

First blog - unfocused and private.

You could perfectly validly write a blog for your own entertainment, like a life shopping list.  Your shopping. Your outings. Your friends. Your family. Like a private Facebook. Keep it entirely private.

No risk of readers being offended or anybody suing you for defamation. A family history, shared with only your family.

Do not feel embarrassed because of low readership. Do not put yourself down nor let anyody else put you down.

Some writers use a daily journal just to start writing and get over writers block. 

Anne Frank wrote a diary which nobody else read during her lifetime.

Charlotte Bronte published a book of poems which was sold in her home fvillage where her father was head of the church and only two people bought her book. 

She then went on to become a novelist and was world famous after writing only four books 

But she had spent her entire childhood writing this and that with her brothers and sisters. 

Many millionaires make a fortune with their second or third or fourth or ultimate business.

So, get started. You have to be in it to win it, as the British lottery slogan said. As the Chinese slogan goes, (attributed to ...)  a journey begins with the first step.

I love blogger because it is so easy to use.

The first thing you need to know is your title and focus.

No risk that you will appear unprofessional. If you like what you have written, you can edit it and opy it elsewhere later. This works for a diary,

If you want to tell others where to find you blog, note that the blogger writing the blogger signs in on blogger. But the reader signs in on blogspot.

You can start a blog the simple way to promote yourself and your opinions, or very specifically.

The simplest way to start  blog is here on blogger.

To attract more readers - see next post.

Useful Websites
https://www.blogger.com/
https://www.fiverr.com/choose-website-platform

Author, Author! About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. (Not related to the actress.)
Author of twenty books including: Quick Quotations; Who Said What When.
See books and profiles on Lulu.com and Amazon, such as Wedding Speeches & Toasts. Also watch videos on YouTube.
See other posts on singers and statues and languages and destinations.

Online Toastmasters International Meetings
If you want to learn to speak the Queen's English, or Received Pronunciation. join me at my online toastmasters club,
Braddell Heights Advanced. Wednesdays, 7-9 Singapore time which is seven hours ahead of London, England.

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Harrovians, Toastmasters Club, London.
Tiarel.toastmasters club, Singapore.

Toastmasters International Find a Club
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Translating a sales email from German and how to teach German with rainbow cake

Problem
I am learning German and can recognise such useful phrases 'as the horse is in the field' or 'the plate is on the table' or 'the boy is eating chicken'. However that doesn't help me when I am emailed a German sales pitch. I was going through my inbox and about to delete it when I thought, let's translate this so that next time it's easy to see what the sender is on about. Here are the results

I tired Google translate, word by word, watching whether I could gain by learning both the words in a phrase and the whole phrase if it made a new concept, just as kinder is child and garten is garden but kindergarten is a pre-school class.

I managed to keep two screens open, one for my blog and the other for the translator, the third for the original German text. Using the F3 key on the top line of my keyboard I could open all these windows, but they only separate on the screen in thumb nail size.

(Aside: The very first computer  had, years ago. allowed a split or slit screen for when you were correcting a text so that you could compare the new and old versions. I am surprised nobody has yet devised an automatic setting to do this for comparing two or four screen.  I shall do an online search and hunt for it.)

b l e i came up as lead but b l e i b came up as follow. The entire phrase was different .

German - English
bleib auf den laufenden - keep up to date
folge uns auf - follow us on
laufenden - current
mitfeiern - celebrate
r e g e n s b o g e n t o r t e - rainbow cake

English - German
arc - bogen
celebrate - mitfeiern
current - laufenden
follow us on - f o l g e  u n s auf
keep up to date - b l e i b auf den laufenden
rain - r e g e n
rainbow - regenbogen

I was thinking about translating from English into German. The John Lewis slogan 'never knowingly undersold' is related to but not identical to other phrases such as: We won't be beaten on price. Bargain. Good value.

Another group of English phrases in sales advertisements and letters is:
Free for every customer.
For the first 100 customers only.
Competition. Free to enter. No purchase necessary.

Translation is very tricky. You have to get it just right. You don't want to mislead customers. You have to consider goodwill, plus legal requirements. One new business offered a free cupcake on a voucher site. A small item. But they were more successful than they dreamed, could not cope with the speed of the demand. They had thousands of requests which they had to honour and went bankrupt. That's why you see wording such as first fifty customers only. They are not trying to cheat you by saying they've sold out. They really do need to be prepared for too much of a good thing - success. So, translating as a ghost writer one has to consider the consequences to the writer or seller and the reader.

I have a friend in Singapore who teaches French and German to a mostly English and Chinese speaking group of students. Other friends of mine teach French in schools such as the International schools. Others teach English as a foreign language to teens and adults.

If I were to teach German to a group of student in a class, I would split them into groups and give each group of two or three or four or five an email or advertisement. I would have translated the text myself in advance. They would have ten to twenty minutes to translated it and instruct their representative on what to read back to report to the whole class. Then we would go round the group. For homework, they would have all four texts and be asked to translate all four and list the words dictionary style, English to German and German to English. if we had time, I would then ask then to make up their own advertisement or sales letter. They might do a short, succinct version of one or more of the letters. Or they could create a new subject, using the same phrases.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, teacher of English and other languages. Please share links to posts and have a look at my books.