You’ve learned about blogging and its uses in the previous post. Now, in this article you will learn how to start a blog with step by step explanation. Before we discuss about how to make money with a blog, we should know what we need to start a blog. This article aims to instruct beginners and newbies to guide them to start their own professional blog on WordPress CMS. I will post detailed WordPress guides and money-making guides in upcoming articles. This article is just a starting point to guide you on the steps in creating a blog.
I don’t mean to say that we should blog only for making money. There are many bloggers who don’t care about earning money and keep on posting good articles useful for others and there are some who blog as a hobby and to share their personal experiences. It is left to us whether we take blogging as a profession or hobby. But, this article is written keeping blogging for money in mind.
Six Steps to Start a Blog
Step-1: Decide Your Budget and Purpose to Start a Blog
If you want to start a blog this is the first step. You can create a blog without spending a penny. There are some free blog hosting services available and Blogger is the most famous one. But professional bloggers prefer self hosted WordPress platform than creating blogs on Blogger.com. As I’ve said in my first blog post, WordPress has rich SEO features and Blogger.com has not. That is why every successful blogger relies on WordPress and we should follow their footsteps. That does not mean that one could not make money using the Blogger blogging platform.
There are some bloggers who make huge money from their Blogger blog. But, if they use WordPress they will earn more than the current earnings. Because, WordPress has plugins to make all tasks easy. But, in Blogger.com we need to do them manually, which is a time-consuming one. There are some other blogging software available. But, WordPress is installed by millions and has a huge number of plugins and thousands of tutorials online to learn.
So, to start a professional blog we need to invest some amount that will be discussed in the next article. Hobby blogging doesn’t need any investment. You can create a blog for free at Blogger.com by following this guide.
Step-2: Choose the Topic You are Going to Blog
One should not create a blog just for the sake of making money and posting articles that are unnecessary for the readers. A blog should have a content theme, the articles should be focused on the niche and of course they should be useful for others. Choose the topic you plan to blog about and try to make hints about the important concepts for future reference which will help to write articles fast. Think about the topics you love and choose one and try to learn more about it before starting to blog. If you have an interest or passion on any subjects, it is a good idea to choose topics related to them.
Some are really genius in some fields. If you are one among them, your knowledge will help others and there are many internet users who seek an expert’s guidance. So, starting a blog in your area of expertise is the key to succeed. For example, if you know very well about HTML and CSS or if you are working as a web designer, you can start a blog to help others on web designing, explain about HTML and CSS, your experiences and the problems faced while developing web applications. This will surely be loved by others and your blog will become a successful one.
While browsing, you might have come across many hot topics. Some of them may very well-known to you. You can choose them to blog. If you have no idea about what topics to choose to start a blog, analyze the internet to find it. For example, Yahoo Answer is a community driven website where users post questions to get answered. If you browse this website you will get loads of ideas. So, choosing a topic to start a blog can only be done by finding and analyzing your interests and demand in the internet.
Step-3: Register a Domain
After deciding why you want to blog and the topics to blog, register a perfect domain. If you want to register a top-level domain like .com and country domain like .co.in, you have to buy it from a domain registrar. There are some free domain providers giving fourth level domain extensions free. But, these domains are treated as spam and may not be indexed by search engines. So, never think of it. You have to get your domain from a top domain registrar like BigRock and Godaddy.
Which TLD (Top Level Domain) is Suitable for Search Engine Optimization?
All TLDs will be treated like same by search engines and there is no priority given while showing search results. Yet .com and .net are famous TLDs and user-friendly.
Tips While Registering a Domain:
- It should not be too long. Recommended length is maximum 20 letters.
- Use a demanding keyword in the domain name.
- The domain should be memorable. So, use simple words and never use more than three words.
- The domain name should be grammatically correct. Using misspelt words will create a negative impression among visitors.
- Register .com, .net, .org and .info domains as visitors can easily remember them. I suggest always go for .com domain name as this is the famous one and there are some people who still thing a website means “domainname.com”.
- Never use free domain extensions as they are not suitable for a genuine business.
Step-4: Buy a Hosting for Your Domain
After registering the domain name you have to get a hosting space to host your domain. This hosting space is needed to host your blog files. WordPress needs to be hosted on a server to make it live. We can host it on our own server or hosting on a server that is purchased from a web hosting service like HostGator. There are some websites providing free hosting. But, they are not reliable and have many limitations. Some of the limitations are Bandwidth (The monthly transfer limit), hosting space and CPU usage limit.
Three years back, I didn’t want to spend money to create websites and I hosted my sites on free hosting services. I was facing many problems with them. My websites would be down for at least two hours per day as those hosting services limit the resources. After three or four months the websites were getting deleted by them. The reason they said for the deletion is over usage of resources. Almost I tested 20 free hosting services. No one is reliable and genuine. Later I moved to Blogger which is highly trusted by millions. Now I moved to WordPress and I am hosting this blog on HostGator. This is because, Blogger lacks in SEO and to become a professional blogger one should have full control on one’s blog.
Why You Should Host Your Blog on a Paid Hosting Service?
- It is reliable. As paid hosting companies want to get a good reputation, they offer good services to their customers. This will help them to get more customers.
- Reputed companies won’t harm their users. You will get great service as you pay for that.
- Free hosting services may delete your site at any time if they want. But, in paid hosting services you own your website and have the full control.
- Paid hosting is much safer than free hosting.
- Free hosting will shut down at anytime. A successful paid hosting service will never go out of business.
- Paid hosting services give great support. If you face any issue, you can get a solution from their customer support team.
- Search engines don’t like sites hosted on free hosting servers as most of them are used by scammer to cheat others. So, never host your blog on free hosting. Only trust reputed paid hosting services. As I am happy with HostGator, I will always recommend it.
Step-5: Customize Your Blog
After installing WordPress you need to customize it by adding some plugins, changing settings and the look and feel. You have to install a professional theme to attract visitors. Error free theme will improve your search engine ranking. I recommend you to purchase a theme from a premium WordPress theme website like MyThemeShop.
Step-6: Start Posting Articles
After setting up all the things, your blog will be ready and you can start posting articles. You will get readers and they will comment on articles. Like this way you will build an online community and a reputation for your blog. The articles you post should not have copied content from others’ websites. You write your own articles based on the needs of your members. The guides how to write articles and how to write better articles will help to start posting articles.
Your Turn
You learned about how to start a blog. I am sure this will be helpful for the beginners to create a blog. Detailed guides on how to get hosting and installing WordPress will be coming soon. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to comment.
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Hello, Neat post. There’s an issue with your website in web explorer, may check
this? IE still is the marketplace leader and a large portion of other folks will pass over your great writing because of this problem.
Thanks for your concern. I think you are using an older version of IE. There is no issue in the recent version.
wonderful issues altogether, you just won a new reader.
What might you suggest about your put up that you simply made
some days in the past? Any positive?
I put up my articles in the past for time passing only. But, now my experience has enriched my knowledge and forces me to come out with well planned formatted ideas. Here I publish all my articles one by one with a new face along with good aim and motivation, just for your use. Thanks for your felicitations.
I am really impressed with your writing skills as
well as with the layout on your blog. Is this a paid theme or did
you modify it yourself? Anyway keep up the nice quality writing, it’s rare to see a great blog like this one today.
The theme I use is schema from MyThemeShop. But, I put my own effort to make it unique. Thanks for your heartfelt comments.
Your method of describing the whole thing in this paragraph
is actually nice, every one be able to effortlessly be aware of it, Thanks a lot.
Thanks for your appreciation. Kindly mention your name instead of your domain name in future comments as to make them more genuine.
What a data of un-ambiguity and preserveness of precious knowledge concerning unpredicted feelings.
Thanks for your nice comment.I request you to mention your name instead of your business name as to avoid treating as spam.
Hello, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was just wondering if you get
a lot of spam responses? If so how do you reduce it, any
plugin or anything you can recommend? I get so much lately it’s driving me
mad so any assistance is very much appreciated.
Yes, indeed I get lot of spam comments. Sorry, yours’ also can be considered as spam since you have not mentioned your name. Hope you will avoid this. I use Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin to reduce spam.
Hi there to every body, it’s my first visit of this blog;
this website consists of amazing and actually excellent data for
visitors.
Howdy are using WordPress for your site platform? I’m new
to the blog world but I’m trying to get started and create my own.
Do you require any coding knowledge to make your own blog?
Any help would be really appreciated!
Yes, I am using WordPress for my blog. You can search for WordPress tutorials in Google to learn more about it.
Hurrah! After all I got a web site from where I be capable of in fact take helpful data concerning my study and knowledge.
Very good info. Lucky me I ran across your site by chance (stumbleupon).
I have saved it for later!
I love what you guys are usually up too. This sort of clever work and reporting!
Keep up the terrific works guys I’ve included you guys to my own blogroll.
I’m impressed, I must say. Seldom do I come across a blog
that’s both educative and amusing, and without a doubt, you’ve
hit the nail on the head. The problem is something too few men and women are speaking intelligently about.
Now i’m very happy that I came across this during my search for something relating to this.
Very descriptive article, I enjoyed that a lot.
I wish to start a blog. I think I’ve got all the information that I need as a beginner. Thanks for the wonderful write up.
Nice guide. Thanks for sharing some valuable tips.
Wonderful guide for beginners to start a blog. Your writing skill is good. But, if you add a video for every article you post, it will be more interesting.
Thanks for your opinion. I’ll try to follow this in future.
Hey very interesting blog!
This guide clearly explained how to start a blog. Thanks.
You are welcome.
Hello! Quick question that’s completely off topic.
Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly?
My web site looks weird when browsing from my apple iphone.
I’m trying to find a theme or plugin that might be able to fix this problem.
If you have any suggestions, please share.
Thanks!
You have to use a responsive theme for your blog to make it mobile-friendly. Purchase any responsive theme from a professional theme provider. I suggest MyThemeShop(http://www.richinfo.site/recommended/MyThemeShop/) where all the themes they provide are responsive and high quality themes. Alternatively, you can install a wordpress plugin to create a mobile version of your site. I suggest to use the WPtouch(https://wordpress.org/plugins/wptouch/).