Blogging is one of the most powerful forms of media in the world today. People turn to blogs for news, advice, recipes and more, often choosing a blog instead of a magazine or newspaper on the same topic. If you’ve been following blogs for a while, it’s likely that you’ve thought about starting your own. After all, blogs are a great way to share your knowledge with the world and build your authority on a topic. They can even earn you some money, with many bloggers earning full-time incomes just from their blogs.
If you’ve always wanted to try your hand at blogging but weren’t sure how to get started, don’t worry: Blogging is a lot easier than you might think. In fact, you can launch your new blog in less than an hour, so there is no reason you can’t get started right away.
Step One: Choose the Right Host
Blogs, like all websites, need to be hosted somewhere. As a new blogger, you have two options: Free or paid hosting.
Free Hosting
Many websites offer you the ability to start blogging for free by hosting the blog on their website. These services include Blogger, Tumblr and WordPress.com. To use the service, all you need to do is sign up with an account, choose a name for your blog, select one of the available templates and start blogging.
Free hosting is convenient, but it comes with some serious drawbacks:
Your blog will always be a subdomain, such as “yourblog.blogspot.com.” These are harder for people to remember and can be cumbersome to share.
Free blogs don’t show up as well in Google results, so you’ll have a harder time getting visitors.
The content of your blog will be limited by the rules of the business, and your blog could be taken down at any time.
If the company goes out of business or decides to stop hosting free blogs, your blog will be deleted.
You’ll usually be limited to using one of a handful of premade templates, so your blog will look generic.
Most free hosting sites won’t allow you to monetize your blog or profit from it in any way. If they do, your options will be limited, and you’ll owe them some of your earnings.
For some people, a free blog can be a good choice. If you just want to use your blog as a diary about your life or to share with a few friends, it’s probably a suitable option. If you want to get a lot of visitors or turn your blogging into a business, you need a paid hosting platform.
Paid Hosting
Paid hosting provides you with plenty of flexibility. You’re in complete control of your content, and you can make your blog look exactly the way you want it to. You’ll also be able to monetize it without any limitations.
To use paid hosting, you buy space from a hosting company like HostGator or DreamHost. Web hosting usually costs around $10 per month, but you can often find special offers that will drop this to as little as $3 per month. Bear in mind that you’ll usually have to pay for a year’s hosting in advance, so this can be a bit of an investment, but it’s well worth the cost. Once you have a webhost, you’ll be able to host multiple domains on it, so you can run multiple blogs without buying any additional hosting.
You’ll also need to buy a domain name for the blog. The domain is the web address that you type in a search bar to access a website, and every site has its own unique domain.
The easiest way to buy a domain is to use a service like GoDaddy, which allows you to search for available domain names. Just type in a name you like, and the site will give you a list of similar available names. Ideally, you’ll want your blog hosted at a .com address since these are easiest to remember. You’ll also want a domain that’s memorable and easy to spell. Most domains will cost around $10 per year.
Step Two: Set Up Your Blog
Once you’ve chosen a host for your blog, it’s time to select a blogging platform. If you’re using a free blogging service, you’ll be limited to whatever platform that site uses. Otherwise, you’ll be free to choose the platform of your choice.
Essentially, a blogging platform is a framework that allows you to publish blog posts without knowing any HTML. The platform does all the coding for you automatically, so you can write your posts, format them the way you want and insert images simply by selecting options from a screen.
Several platforms exist, but WordPress is hands down the most popular and powerful. It’s free to use, and it allows you to massively customize every aspect of your blog’s appearance. You can use a free premade theme, buy a custom theme or even design your own with HTML.
Installing WordPress
Many hosting companies will allow you to install WordPress directly from your dashboard. Look for a “plugins” option and select WordPress from that directory. It will automatically install all of the files you need.
If one-step installation is not available through your host, you can install WordPress manually by downloading the necessary files and uploading them to your site. Full instructions for that are available here.
Step Three: Develop Your Content
After you’ve installed WordPress, you’ll be able to customize the look of your blog by choosing from the available themes. Individual themes can be further customized by modifying colors, adding different images and moving components around, all of which you’ll be able to do from within WordPress itself.
Once you’re happy with the way your blog looks, it’s time to start posting content. When creating new posts, it’s a good idea to keep your audience in mind. Think about what people are most likely to be searching for, then draft posts that will answer those needs. This will help draw traffic to your site and make the blog a useful resource that people will want to share and bookmark.
Maintaining a blog takes some hard work and dedication, but starting one is easy. If you’re ready to start sharing your knowledge with the world, you can launch your new blog in minutes with these three simple steps.
