Blogging 101 - How to Start a Blog
Few months ago, we mentioned starting a blogging 101 series to help you start and run a successful blog. We spent the whole summer getting ready for this series, so we can answer your questions and guide you into the world of blogging. Thank you for being here!
Note for the seasoned bloggers who are interested in this series as well: we are starting with the basics of setting up a blog but will be quickly addressing more advanced topics such as which ad networks pay the best, how to ad stack to get the most money per pageview, how to increase pageviews by changing your blog structure, which social media is worth your time, how to rank highest in search engines, etc.. Stay tuned!
But let's start from the beginning as we received a lot of request from beginner bloggers or those who want to start one. It would be easy to just give you some instruction to set up your blog and say have at it, but we are going to take it one step further. We are going to make this interactive by starting a brand new blog along side of you! We will go through step by step what we are doing and hope you will join us with your own blog.
1) What do we want to blog about?
You probably have some ideas already of what you would like to blog about. It can be something you have expertise in or maybe something you would like to learn about. Looking back I knew so little about baking, and I still have a long ways to go, but what I have learned by trying things and interacting with the food blogging community, these are things that have given me lifelong skills I will always be able to use.
Would you like to save this recipe?
2) What name should I use?
(this is what we call a domain name, or website name, such as www.crunchycreamysweet.com)
A lot of this is going to be determined by what's available, and we will show you how to check that easily. You might want to think about how people see you as a brand or entity. You will be involved in social groups and communities that you want to be easily recognizable. Of course simple is best: 2 or 3 words, no hyphens, characters or numbers and stick with the dot coms. Your content is what is going to drive traffic not your name.
Okay! Now that you know what you want to blog about and have a name, the next step would be to set up your physical blog. We are going to approach this as you might not be a wiz at HTML and CCS but you do know how to turn on your computer, open a web browser and navigate pages. I mean your here so your doing something right.
3) To self host or not? What does that mean?
This page and the information on it is sitting on a computer in some company's big computer lab. They are going to have lots of computers or 'servers' that holds lots of peoples websites. They are hopefully always available online for you to access and change what you want on them. These companies are called hosts. Some hosts are free, examples being Blogger and WordPress.com. If you just want to test the water these are great options. I love free, I hate to spend money on anything I don't have to. In fact CCS was started on the free Blogger site. Eventually though, when I decided it was time to monetize my blog I had to move over to a self hosted website. In future lessons we will show you how to accomplish that. Note: although it can be done, knowing what I know now I deeply regret not going with a self hosted website at the start.
Which brings us to the 'self hosted' option. That just means instead of using the free service provided by Blogger you pay a fee to have a company such as Bluehost or the hundreds of other host companies to 'host' or store your site. Big question: why should I pay money for hosting? Well first off all, so you can make money which is why I assume you are reading this. Most free hosted sites will not let you monetize your site and in some cases will want to run their own ads on your content. Second, most ad networks and virtually all industry business reps will not work with you as you do not own your site. Free host sites own whatever content you create, plus they have the right to take down your website as they see fit.
As we are gearing this series to monetize and grow your blog as fast as possible, we will be focusing more on self hosted. It is what we will be doing with our new blog. But please check out WordPress and Blogger, like I said this is how we got started and eventually we have gotten to where we are.
Start your blog now! Click HERE to go to our Bluehost tutorial and learn how to set up your blog!
Curry and Comfort says
Excited about this series..... I have still a lot to learn. 🙂
wearenotmartha says
Even though I've had my blog for what feels like forever, I still love reading these posts 🙂
Sues