With the advent of Internet and Communication Technologies and the rapid progress made in online communication and transaction, many people have resorted to earning a living through the virtual world. While there are many online earning and freelancing options that have emerged in the cyber arena in the recent past, Blogging has become a rage across the globe. Blogging is not only a great way to make a living but is also very liberating, unlike many other online earning alternatives. It is like keeping your own digital journal, and allows you to express yourself the way you want and whenever you want. You can decide what you want to say, how you want to say and who do you want to address on your blog.
The main idea behind a blog is to maintain the quality and frequency of your content so that you are able to attract a good traffic, which can help you monetize your blog. Unfortunately, many people who are otherwise excellent writers and have all the ability to attract a good viewership, yet they are reluctant to start a blog because they feel they are not tech savvy enough to be able to do so. If you are one of those people, the good news is that starting a blog is probably easier than you think. You can set up your blog following these 5 simple steps on your own.
- Choose a Blogging Platform
The very first step is to choose a blogging platform on which you will run your blog. There are a number of free and paid blogging platforms available such as Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, Wix, Ghost etc. However, if you are looking for something that is not only extremely user friendly for beginners but also gives you a lot of customization options, then WordPress is your best bet. WordPress is by far the most favorite blogging platform of most bloggers today due to its affordability, super easy interface and a large variety of customization options that it offers. If you are looking for some serious blog following and monetization for your blog it strongly recommended to steer clear of any free blogging platforms.
- Choose your Blog’s Niche and Domain Name
Once you have decided about the blogging platform. You are now required to choose what you want to blog about. You can choose to blog about a particular niche such as beauty, food, lifestyle, travel, parenting etc. depending on your interest and knowledge. Make sure that you have a good command over the topic of the blog that you are choosing for your blog as that will define the following and reputation of your blog. Once you have your niche finalized, decide upon your domain name and extension. You can either incorporate your blog’s niche in your domain name or use your own name. Make sure that your domain name is easy to remember and spell for your viewers and does not include any special characters. See if your chosen blog name is available.
- Setup Web Hosting
Web hosts are responsible to ensure that your blog is up and running smoothly all the time and is easily accessible by everyone around the world. It is therefore very important to choose a good web hosting company as a poor web host could mean a slow or inaccessible website, which could impact your blog’s traffic. iPage, Godaddy and Hostgator are some of the reputed hosting companies. You can easily setup your hosting account and buy your chosen domain from one of these companies.
- Customize your Blog’s Appearance
Blogging platforms such as WordPress have a number of themes available for you to choose from and they gave you a lot of control to customize your blog’s look and feel. You can customize the back drops, colors, fonts, headers and footers, style and structure and the overall appearance of the blog. While there is no rules as such about blog design and you can be as creative as you want, make sure that your fonts are easy to read for the readers and the color scheme is easy on the eyes, a heavily cluttered and loud website can put the viewers off. Make sure your chosen theme is mobile friendly and SEO ready.
- Write your First Blog
You are now down with all the hard tech savvy steps and are ready to enjoy writing your first blog. Simply login to your WordPress dashboard and choose Add new from the posts menu and enjoy writing your first post. Feel free to add images and videos. It is advisable to write your blogs using headings, subheadings and bullet points and in a way that it holds reader’s attention. Click Publish once you are done writing your post. Congratulations! Your journey as a blogger has started off.