Every thing you need to setup a successful blog
Hello Donald, Good to know that you are going to start a blog. Here is a brief tutorial on
- What is a blog??
- How to setup up my blog??
- How to design a blog??
- How to choose a niche??
- How to be a successful blogger??
What is a blog??
Here is the wiki definition for a blog
A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log“) is a web-site, usually maintained by an individual,with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order
A blog can be personal where you maintain a online dairy of the events in your life or you can use it to share your knowledge.
How to setup a blog?? Will it cost me anything to start a blog??
Free personal Blog:
For a personal blog with out any investment you should go for free blog at wordpress.com . The main advantages of a free wordpress blog over a blogger.com blog are
- Its clean layout.
- Easy to use control panel.
- SEO friendly ( This is not very important for a personal blog ).
- Lots of themes and plug ins to choose form.
- Easily customizable themes.
- Wordpress has a huge user base so if you are struck with a problem you are not alone.
Free Commercial blog:
If you want to start a free blog and start earning the best option you have is blogger.com. The advantages of a blogger blog are
- Unlimited bandwidth and storage.
- Reliable servers with 100% uptime.
- Your blog will not be shutdown if you suddenly get lots of traffic from social media like digg or stumble ( I shall discuss about getting traffic from social media in my future posts).
- Unlike wordpress.Com free blog you can place ads on a blogger blog.
If you want to invest some money..
If you want to be a serious blogger, I strongly recommend you to invest some money on domain and hosting. Domains and web-hosting are very cheap these days. In the early days of your blog if you don’t expect much traffic you can go for the cheapest hosting available. Once you start getting good traffic and start earning money, you can upgrade to a better host ( Changing host will not effect your traffic and Google page rank ). If you write very good articles then you may be flooded by traffic from social media even in the early days of your blog, So if you think that you can write good and original posts go for a better paid hosting from the start. Cheap hosting services can not handle such spikes in the traffic and they may shutdown your site. You loose traffic, reputation and money. If you don’t have much money to invest at least try to buy a domain name and use it on a blogger.Com blog. On a blogger blog you don’t have to worry about the bandwidth, their servers can handle any amount of traffic.
The main problem with many people who want to start a blog or a website is that they have money but they don’t have a credit card or paypal to pay. So you need to earn some money online to pay for the domain and hosting. Forums are a good place to earn some quick cash. There are many webmaster forums which pay you for posting and you can also sell your services like designing,content writing, promoting sites etc.. at digitalpoint forums. I will discuss about earning money for setting up your blog in my future post.
Read about How I suffered for not buying a domain name here
How to choose a niche for your blog??
This is one of the key factor for the success of your blog. Choose a niche about which your passionate and have good knowledge. You can not write an interesting article if you are not passionate about what you write. If you don’t enjoy what you write why will the reader like it?? . If you choose a niche about which you are passionate you will be able to hook the readers to your blog. Do not make a blog with just copy paste posts, you will not get anything out of it except for wasting your time.
How to choose a design for your blog??
Though content is always the king , design also plays a key role in the success of your blog. You should be careful while selecting a design.There are lots of free templates available for both wordpress and blogger ( Almost infinite for wordpress ). Choosing a theme for wordpress blog is very tough as there are lots of designs to choose form. Spend some to browse through the free wprdpress templates available and choose the one that matches your niche, then add your logo and customize it to make it stand out form other blogs. Once your blog is well established you can go for either a premium theme or a custom theme.
How to be a successful blogger??
Being a successful blogger is not a one day task. You should not lose hope if you don’t get traffic or don’t earn money initially. Just post quality content promote it on social media and wait for the results.One day you will surely earn a 5 figure income.
I will be answering these questions in my future posts.
- What is adsense??
- How to earn money from adsense??
- How to get traffic to my website??
- How to get on first page of Google??
- what is social media?How to drive traffic from social media??
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you have simple hosting?
Comment by Asanee Plienpun on August 11, 2008