Starting A Blog
Starting A Blog
Starting a blog can be done for a number of reasons. Many people have blogs simply for the joy of writing and maybe even that awesome feeling that comes with having people read and enjoy your work. You can also go about starting a blog to help promote your website/business or to make money. If you’re just looking to make money from a blog, you can submit your website to Google and hopefully get accepted into Google Adsense. Then you’ll be able to place Adsense ads on your website and make money every time someone clicks on the ads. You can also make money by promoting affiliate products from places like Clickbank or Commission Junction. But enough about that, let’s go over the basics of starting a blog.
Before you go starting a blog , you’ll need to figure out a few things. Do you want a free blog or are you willing to pay to have a blog? If you’re willing to pay, do you want to get your own hosting and domain or have another site do it for you?
Free Blogs
Free blogs are great. You don’t have to pay anything and most will allow you to add Adsense ads. You may have your blog moderated for the first few weeks though. Websites like Blogger don’t like you starting a new blog just to promote your own website/business. So if you go with a free blog then you’ll have to sort of fake your way through it for a while. You can write about anything, just don’t start linking to your own website until you’ve had the blog running for around 2 weeks. You have to understand that starting a blog on a website that is giving you access for free means that you have to play by their rules. They can shut down your blog at any time if they feel you’ve violated their Terms of Service (TOS).
You’ll also find that some free blogs are very restricting on what you can do. They’ll give you enough options to play with that you can make your blog unique, but you can’t do everything you can dream up. Usually you’ll use a standard layout and drop widgets in allowed areas. You can get a free blog at places like:
- Blogger
- WordPress.com (don’t confused with WordPress.org)
- Blog
- LiveJournal
- MyBlogSite
There are obviously MANY more but these are some of the top rated blogs and generally will rank better in search engines than unknown blogging websites.
Paid Blogs
There are 2 main types of paid blogs. The first choice is to use a website like TypePad in which most sites will give you your own domain name and host your website for you. You get an editor that is similar to those used with free blogs but it is more powerful. If you just want to dive straight into blogging, this may be the choice for you.
The second (and possibly best) choice is to buy your own domain name and set up a hosting account. This will give you 100% control over everything. If you happen to know a programming language like HTML or PHP then you can completely create your blog from scratch, customizing every little thing you add.
But if you don’t know the first thing about programming, don’t worry! You can download WordPress (from WordPress.org) and install it on your website. Starting a blog with WordPress is very easy (and Google loves WordPress blogs). If you use HostGator for hosting then installing WordPress is a piece of cake. HostGator offers a program all Fantastico which will ask you for some basic information about your website then install WordPress for you. If you choose to go with another hosting company then you can install WordPress with an FTP (file transfer protocol). Once it’s installed then you’re most of the way done with starting a blog . You can go on Google and look up “free wordpress themes” and choose a theme that you like. All that is left after that is personalizing your settings, adding plugins, and writing your first post.
