When I started blogging 5+ years ago there was no manual to inform you how to blog well.  All you could do it is check out what other already established bloggers were doing and iterate along the way.  Luckily for novice bloggers today there is such a manual.  You can’t beat the price either:  free!

Josh Brown at The Reformed Broker blog has just finished up a series of posts laying out a virtual Chicago Manual of Style for financial bloggers.  Josh has become a blogging superstar by following these rules.  In short, he has learned through hard work, and trial and error, what works.  We can’t recommend the series highly enough.

To be clear, Josh isn’t telling you what to write.  Rather he is telling you how to best present your ideas to the blogosphere and the mainstream media.  The point being that ideas well-presented will always outshine ideas presented in an unprofessional or shoddy manner.

There are any number of reasons why a trader or investor might want to blog.  The worst thing you can do is to waste your time by making it harder for others to appreciate what is important:  your ideas.  If you internalize Josh’s advice you can be sure that, at the very least, you are putting your best foot forward to the financial blogosphere.  Now all you need is a blog name, URL and an idea for that first post….