The blogosphere is a busy place. It’s hard to nail down a firm number, but the best estimates indicate that there are more than 200 million blogs bumping around globally in cyberspace. It can be daunting for a beginning blogger (or even an intermediate one) to comfortably find a spot of his or her own in such a crowd. Where can you learn all the technical jargon you need to know? How do you host a blog? How do you manage a community? What do you do about privacy concerns? Is it really even possible to make money in the blogosphere?

Fortunately, TypePad exists as a very large and streamlined toolbox to help bloggers of all levels of experience and interest manage their home on the Web. It is widely regarded in the blogging world as a simple, affordable, and easy-to-manage platform, used by millions of bloggers around the world. TypePad is frequently updated with new features — including a complete overhaul in 2009 — in an effort to offer users the best of the blogosphere.

We have our own TypePad history — professional and personal. Melanie is a technical writer who has blogged professionally for years on numerous blogging platforms, including TypePad, giving her a solid basis for comparison. Shannon is a personal blogger who has been hammering out posts from the TypePad Dashboard since 2006. Just like you, we started out as beginners. We studied the TypePad help section and submitted help tickets. We discovered some shortcuts and found out other things the hard way. We asked the same questions you’re asking now, and we’re eager to show you what our own TypePad experience has taught us.