So you want to start a blog but are lost as to where to begin.  Well, let’s start at the beginning and define what a blog is.  A blog is a type of website that is usually maintained by a single individual to deliver commentary, advice, instruction, news and just about any type of information the individual chooses. 

Blogs are the perfect companions to Web 2.0, a dynamic web that is ever changing, unlike the static web pages we remember from not so long ago.  An individual makes regular entries into the blog, sort of like a diary entry.  The use of media, such as videos, allows a visitor to interact and the use of certain “widgets” allows for the constant changing of the blog content, just enough to let the search engine crawlers know that there is new material for potential visitors.

Most people by now have a general knowledge of what a blog is and many also know the potential uses for a blog, but here are some examples:

1. Keep family members and friends posted on your life.
2. Document your goals and achievements as an educator or politician.
3. Start a fan site that is dedicated to your favorite celebrity or TV show.
4. Document your favorite sport or team or sports figure.
5. Teach visitors how to cook, sew, paint, sculpt.
6. Introduce visitors to your culture.
7. Document your hobbies.
8. Teach people how to earn money and flea markets or craft fairs.

There are no limits to what you can achieve with a blog. It is as wide as your own imagination. The important thing to remember is, stay on topic. If you have many different interests , then have many different blogs. Let’s get started.

Choose a Niche

Notice how I didn’t say choose a topic. A topic can be broad like baseball, cooking, or politics. A niche, on the other hand, is a subset of that broad topic. With the broad topic of baseball, a niche topic might be Countdown to the World Series or Coaching Youth Baseball. For cooking we might use Cajun Recipes or Homemade Candy Recipes. For politics we might use Congress Weekly Roll Call or Conservative Congress Profiles.

Narrowing down a niche is necessary if you want to earn money from blogging. However, if money is not in your interest from blogging then more general topics can be used. For instance, if you’re a local city councilman and want to start a blog, then its name recognition you are after and monetizing the blog shouldn’t even be considered. However, providing information on how to legally donate money for a campaign fund is acceptable.

Is the niche topic popular?

It’s important to choose a niche topic that is popular, one that is being searched for in the internet.  It makes little sense to start writing and hope someone notices your topic.  It makes more sense to carefully research your niche topic by examining certain keywords.  By searching keywords you can see how many people are searching for your niche and gauge its popularity.  By far, the best keyword tool around is Google’s very own keyword too.   To use it, just type in a word or short phrase that is relevant to your niche, enter the captcha letters to let the tool know you are human and let the tool go to work.

The most important values to look at are the advertiser competition, the monthly local search volume, and the cost per click (CPC).  With these values you can determine if your niche is being searched for with reasonable monthly volume, if there are a lot of competitors bidding on the same keywords, and the average cost per click the advertisers are paying. 

The trick is to find high search volume words with low competitions.  For more information on choosing keywords check out my article on finding keywords here.

By searching for popular keywords you can narrow down your niche topic and also avoid wasting your time on keywords that will generate minimal traffic, if any at all.

DOMAIN NAMES AND DOMAIN HOSTING -------> Part 2 of How to Start a Blog

GETTING STARTED WITH WORDPRESS ------->    Part 3 of How to Start a Blog

Here are a few tips to consider before choosing a niche topic to blog about:

1.  Choose a topic that you are genuinely interested in. Don’t choose a topic because someone else may be making money on it. Consider the time its going to take to build up a following. Are you passionate about the topic you chose? Will you be just as passionate a year from now? If the answer is no or even I don’t know then choose another niche topic.
2. Is the niche topic popular? Remember that the blogosphere is a global community. Are there enough people searching for your niche topic to make it worth your while?
3. Is your niche topic part of a fad? Find something that people will be searching for a year from now and not just some flavor of the week.
4. How much competition does your niche topic have? Competition is a good thing because it means the niche topic is popular, but being too popular means you will have a lot of work cut out to get your blog circulating. It’s not impossible.
5. know your competitions and deliver what they are not. Opposing view points are just as popular.
6. Do you have enough content to deliver on a regular basis? A sure way to lose viewers is to not deliver on the promises made by the blog.