Get Free the Easy Guide to Being a Successful Professional Blogger
Would you like to be a pro blogger? brilliant notion! begin blogging now!
But, how and where to blog? There’s so much info available or present on the web, and everyone’s telling you to accomplish distinct belongings. Who do you hear to? Where’s the beginning point?
Just
follow us, and we will help you until you grown up and run alone!
Well,
hold up. We used to be a blogging newbies too. We had the same problems. We
started our blog way back in 2013, and we knew less than nothing about
blogging. In fact, it was only the week before we’d learned what a blog was.
Now we
know a ton about them, and my blog’s doing pretty well – We receive more
than 400,000 unique visitors per month which makes me consider
myself someone you could listen to and learn from when it comes to building
your own blog. We are not some sort of Guru, but we certainly do
know the basics.
We
promise it’ll be simple, relatively easy, and
definitely easy to understand, let’s move on.
Why you should create a blog and join the
blogging community
So
below, I’m going to outline exactly what you need to do to get started
and set up your own personal blog. Before we dive in though, I really want
to talk about WHY you should build a blog.
1. Blogging
has quickly become one of the most popular ways of communicating and spreading
information and news. There are literally millions of blogs online (don’t
worry, you can make yours stand out and get noticed!).
2. It’s a
great way to express yourself and also a fantastic way to share information
with others.
3. You
become a better person and a better writer.
4. The
best reason? You can make money doing it!
We bet
you already knew all of that, but it’s nice to be reminded.
How to Start a Blog in 5 Steps:
There
are five main steps you need to do in order to start a blog.
If you follow this guide exactly, you’ll have your own blog set up in 30
minutes or less.
1. Choose
a great blog platform
2. Choose
a web host for your blog
3. How to
Set up a blog on your own domain
4. Design
your new blog
5. Useful
resources for blogging
So, we
made it. Phew. Better late than never! So, without further ado, let’s jump into
step 1.
1- Choose your preferred blogging platform
Choosing
where you want to build a blog is pretty much the first thing you have to do. I’m
going to take a leap and assume you’ve heard of WordPress, and this is the
platform I advocate. It’s massive.
It’s by
far one of the biggest blogging platforms in the world, with countless plugins
and add-ons and almost infinite ways to design and layout your blog.
There
are more than 82 million active users of WordPress = a lot, basically.
There are other
alternatives, however, and they are listed below:
- Blogger –
Definitely the next best thing to WordPress.
- Tumblr –
Half social network, half blog. Interesting, and very simple to use.
Even
though WordPress is bigger (and probably better) than those two, here are my
reasons why you should still go with WordPress:
1. Super
easy set-up and is free to use
2. Tons of
free themes and layouts (I’m not kidding, there are gazillions).
3. There’s
a massive support forum in case you get stuck (you won’t, but it’s nice to have
it there if you need it).
4. Your
blog will be insanely fast and it’ll also look Functionality and form
– perfect!
5. People
can interact with you easily. Your content can be shared, commented on, and so
on.
2 – Self-hosting or a free alternative?
Whoa,
slow down there! This is the biggest decision you’ll have to make before we go
any further. You need to decide whether to pay for your blog or grab a free
one.
WordPress,
Tumblr, and Blogger all offer free blogs for anyone. Awesome, right? It’s
perfect for those of us who aren’t super serious about blogging. But it does have
downsides:
1) You
won’t be able to get your OWN domain name
On a
free blog, your blog’s web address (your URL) will be butt-ugly. Like, really
ugly. In short, create a free blog with any other of the above free blog services
and it’ll look like this:
- yourblog.wordpress.com
- yourblog.blogspot.com
- yourblog.tumblr.com
I know,
ugly right?
2)
Limits and more limits
There
are some limits to free blogs. You can’t fully monetize it, and you don’t have
the possibility to upload all those videos and images you want to show everyone
– it’s all limited. Worse still, you won’t even have access to the free themes
offered by WordPress.
3) You
DON’T OWN your blog
It
might sound silly at first, but you don’t actually own your blog. It’s hosted
on someone else’s web property and they can delete it if they want to. They
have done so in the past, and keep doing it in the future. Which means all your
hard work on your blog, all those countless hours of writing blog posts might
have vanished within seconds. Sad…
On the
other hand, with a self-hosted blog on your own domain name – you
are the REAL owner of your blog. You’ll be able to name your blog whatever you
want, for example, “YourName.com” or “YourAwesomeBlog.com. You can end it with
.com, .co.uk, .net, .org, or virtually any other web suffix. Add to that
unlimited bandwidth for videos, images, and content plus the free themes and you
have a winning combo.
So how
much is hosting and a domain name? Not as much as you’re thinking, fortunately.
It usually works out to about $5 to $10 per month, depending on your hosting
provider which is less than a couple of coffees.
3 – Start a blog on your own domain choosing self-hosting and a custom domain
I’m
going to push ahead based on the premise you’ve chosen WordPress, and if you
haven’t, you should. Seriously, it’s the best.
If
you’re still a little confused by what a self-hosted blog is, allow
me to explain and how you can go about setting one up for yourself.
You’ll
need to come up with a domain name you like and also choose a hosting company
that can host your blog.
- Domain: The domain is
basically the URL of your website. Examples: google.com (Google.com is the
domain), Facebook.com (Facebook.com is the domain).
- Hosting: Hosting is
basically the company that puts your website up on the internet so
everyone else can see it. Everything will be saved on there. Think of it
as a computer hard-drive on the internet where your blog will be saved.
Disclosure: I
recommend using Hostgator for web hosting. If you click through one of my links
and make a purchase, I will receive a commission, which helps me keep
bloggingbasics101.com up and running.
4 – Designing your WordPress blog
Now,
the fun bit.
Let’s
make your blog look exactly how you want it to. To choose a
new theme, you can either head to Appearance > Themes and install a free WordPress
theme or you can head to a premium theme website.
You may
choose something that looks professional and is pretty easy to customize. WordPress
also has this awesome feature that allows you to change themes with just a few
clicks. So if you start getting tired of your current blog template, you can
just switch to another one without losing any precious content or images.
Remember,
your blog’s design should reflect both you and your personality, but also what
the blog is about. There’s no point in having a football-orientated theme if your
blog is about tennis, understand?
On top
of that, it should be easy to navigate if you want people to stick around. If
it’s tricky and difficult to move around it, people won’t stay. After all, design is a subjective art; meaning everyone likes different
things.
But no
one likes ugly websites, and they especially hate websites
that need a university degree to navigate. Make it easy for them.
5 – Useful Resources for Beginner Bloggers
Bloggers
come to the blogging arena with varying degrees of online and social media
experience, but we’ve all made more than a few newbie mistakes – there’s always
room for more learning and improvement, whether you’re a beginner or you’ve
been blogging for years.
And
that’s it! I’m more than confident that your initial blog set up should
now be finished and ready to go, and all that should have been really damn easy
(unlike my first time, lucky you!). If you are having any problems installing
WordPress on Hostgator then this guide may help.
If by
some unfortunate circumstance, you get stuck or have any questions for me about
how to create a blog, just get in touch with me or leave a comment below.
Happy
easy blogging!!
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