You’ve decided to start a blog of your very own! A fantastic decision that can help shape your life.
Blogging has come through leaps and strides with the modern era.
From a popular pastime to a way to have your voice heard. It can make you feel accomplished, expand your boundaries and help you reach out to people with similar ideals and beliefs.
Setting up a blog can help boost creativity and give you a freedom you didn’t know you were capable of having all while learning a new skill or going as far as to earn a little extra income on the side.
Getting started is easier than you might think. Learning how to start blogging a pretty straightforward process. With a little bit of effort, you can have your new blog up and making money in no time at all.
By taking the initiative and finding this guide to start blogging you’ve already started the process from wondering how to start blogging to becoming a full time professional.
How to Blog
Learning how to blog is only the first task. After you make that choice, you need to decide what you want to write about! It could be anything. There is literally no limit to what you can discuss and post on your blog. It’s yours!
The best advice is to write for the correct reasons. Find something that interests you, take off with it and know that you’ll be happier in the long run creating something you can take joy out of.
You can blog about your life, the things around you in your local area, wildlife and pets or do it yourself projects. You can even go as far as to blog about blogging ideas or how to build a blog.
The list never ends. Find your passion and work with it!
How to Make Your Own Blog
Your next step is going to be the domain and hosting. It’s simpler than it sounds.
Take the time to sit down and decide on a short, simple, to the point name for your website. One that will be easy to remember and clear enough that it won’t throw your readers off. If possible get one that ends in .COM, .NET, or .ORG.
There are many places that offer this service but the best that I’ve personally found is Bluehost. It’s affordable, cheap and easy to use with a live chat feature that they’re quick to answer if you have any questions during or after set up.
On top of that, it has the free install of WordPress, which is an extremely easy to use platform that will help you continue to manage and curate your blog simply. They even have a tutorial to show you how to make your own blog.
This short video here walks you through the installation of WordPress on your website.
After you pinpoint what you want your blog to focus on, name it and claim your domain you’re going to need to build it.
Next, you’ll find yourself wondering how to set up a blog.
How to Setup a Blog
Coding isn’t something everyone is knowledgeable in. Fortunately, you don’t have to be to create an attractive blog. With minimal effort you can have a great look to help bring in a reading audience to your personal space of the web.
Knowing how to setup a blog and create good looking blog posts goes a very long way. It’s easy to get a stunning theme for your blog even if you don’t have the time or skill to put into building it yourself.
Finding one may include an upfront price, but don’t be deterred. Once you buy it, it’s yours for life and you can use it as you like. A worthwhile investment if it saves you the effort and frustration of having to do it yourself. Installing a theme whether you paid for it, found one for free, or made it yourself is as simple as using WordPress.
After you’ve chosen your theme, you’re going to want to make it your own. Tweaking and adjusting your site is all part of the process. You can almost consider it a growing thing, always changing to suit your desires and needs as you like it to.
Again, always simple through the program we’ve chosen to use. Before you know it, you’ll have created the perfect place that will reflect your personality to frame your thoughts and opinions!
How to Build a Blog: Platforms and Plugins
There is a little more to blogging than just typing.
You’ll want to install some plugins to keep up with what you have going on. Even simple ones can assist you.
The best ones to mention here would be the Google Analytics for WordPress and a simple plugin to offer social media sharing.
The Google Analytics for WordPress will give you the ability to easily access your blog stats making tracking them all that much easier. Giving your readers a means to share your work with the click of a button you will allow them to post to their Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. This increases your share value and can bring in more foot traffic.
Both of these are simple to add through WordPress and only take a moment each. You may also consider going in and adding a free Feedburner account to allow people the option of signing up for a newsletter so you can notify them of upcoming projects and new posts.
Figuring how to build your very own blog is nearly done.
The Last Few Details
You are almost ready to start writing up that first post but before we get to that point, there’s one last thing in this guide to starting a blog, and you need to do this before you can bring in the quality content. Set up the basics. Check out this great website launch checklist to make sure you have covered all of the basics.
Put up a nice header that people can relate to. A picture of yourself or of the topic you’ll be primarily writing about works great. You can find free pictures easily, but it might be best to take your own for this one. After you do that you can pick out a nice logo as well! Have fun with this part, it’s all part of putting yourself in the blog.
Afterwards, set up a few necessary pages that are a core part of any blog. An About Page is where you’ll give a little information about yourself and what your new blog is about.
A Contact Page is where you can give an email or different means of directly contacting you if you’d like to give the option. A Start Here page is a space that might include not only a link to the About page but also some key posts you’ve made.
Later you’ll be able to add on more as time goes on and your blog grows.
Finishing Up
The basic setup is done and you have built something you can continue to be proud of.
Start by writing some great posts. Space them out and upload them over time. Give your readers something to look forward to and grow an audience. Primarily, enjoy yourself and the pride that comes with setting up a blog.
Hopefully you enjoyed our guide to starting a blog. Please ask any question you have in the comments section and we will get right back to you.