How To Start a Blog
If you are you looking to start a blog, then you will find out how in this article. You will discover different things to consider and decide on when starting a blog. So let’s take a look at these:
1. Why do you want to start a blog?
Before you decide on opening a blog, the first thing to ask yourself is why do you want to do it? Do you want to blog for fun or for profit? If you direct visitors to your blog, what do you want them to do when they arrive. Or maybe writing is your thing, that is great. Blogging can be therapeutic in its own way.
2. What will your blog be about?
Having decided on why you want to own a blog, the next thing is to decide what you intend blogging about and what it is you want to blog about. What you will blog about will also be influenced by the people you are trying to talk to. There are several things to blog about like trending news, viral videos or hottest topics. You can be general or stick to a topic like pets or how to look leaner and fitter. This will make people see you more credible and knowledgeable about your field if you stay consistent. You can also blog about product reviews, they seem to be getting plenty of attention.
3. Do you want a free blog or a paid blog?
There are plenty free blogs all over the web. If you carry out a simple web search, you will find some. The most popular ones are blogger.com and wordpress.com. A more recent one is weebly.com. However, with most free things in life, there’s usually a caveat. A free blog is not entirely yours. Your domain name will be locked under a subdomain for example if your domain name was petdogs.com, with WordPress for instance, it will be petdogs.wordpress.com. This kind of domain is nothing like the normal ones you see out there. Also, most of the free platforms will not allow you to set up advertising on the site, which can be a bit of a setback if you are looking at paid blogging. If you are looking to make money from blogging, free blogging services are not recommended. They are only great to dip your feet in the water and get a feel of what blogging entails.
On the other hand, with a paid blog, you will pay for a domain name of your own and hosting for the website. The blog belongs to you and you have greater control over the blog when you start trying to earn money.
4. Choose Domain Name
Building on the paid blog discussed earlier, you will register a domain name for your blog. You can get a domain name for as low as $3 but it can also cost thousands depending on how popular the name is. Godaddy.com is the most popular domain name service to buy and register a domain name. You can have more than one domain name pointing to the same webpage. With your domain name bought, blog hosted, you are up and running and you have completed the first stage of starting your blog, the next stage is to focus on content and traffic.
5. Content
Now that your blog is up and running, the next thing to do is to start posting relevant content such as articles, pictures and videos. If you are lost for what to write on, you can look for trending news for popular news providers like CNN, ABC or visit YouTube to get trending videos or simply search for the latest news and information on Google.
5. Traffic
To round up your blog setup is to start receiving traffic. All of your hard work up till now will be wasted if traffic is not coming to your blog. You obviously want people to read your articles and watch the videos you post. There are many options for getting traffic. It all depends on your expertise and your budget. Traffic can be broken down basically into free or paid traffic.
Some free traffic sources include search engines, social media, forum posts, article marketing. Paid traffic includes PPC(pay per click) advertising, Banner advertising, and solo ads.
Now that you know what it takes to start a blog, you can fire up your computer and get started right away.