How To Start a Blog
How to Start a Blog in 12 Easy Steps
Are you serious about building a solid income from blogging but don’t know where to begin? Here’s how to start a blog in 12 Easy Steps.
1. Decide what you want to blog about
The first step to building a successful blog is to choose a topic that you’re passionate about. Assuming that you’re going to do the writing yourself, it would be very difficult to work on a boring topic even if there is a lot of money to be made in that market. (Even if you decide to outsource the content creation, it still helps to have some knowledge and interest in that particular industry if you’re going to supervise the entire project.)
On the other hand, you don’t want to pick a niche simply because you’re interested in the topic. You may find ancient history or literature to be quite fascinating, but that doesn’t mean that these topics would be lucrative. You need to find a balance between your personal interests and topics that make good business sense.
Another important consideration when choosing your topic should be monetization. In other words, how exactly are you going to make money from this topic? If you’re going to include advertisements like Google AdSense, you might want to take a look at the stats for relevant keyword phrases (like the cost per click or how many advertisers there are on Google Adwords). Are there available products on Amazon.com or other e-commerce websites that you could promote as an affiliate? What about information products — could you write your own e-book on the topic?
You obviously don’t have to use all of these monetization models to be successful. You should, however, have some idea of how you’re going to make money even if your plan is simply to put up advertisements.
2.Buy a Domain
Godaddy is a very popular domain registrar that you can use for your non .co.za websites. For local domains I recommend Whizzihosting. You’ll need to determine whether you want to use private registration (that is whether you want your name and mailing address to be made public) or not. Any will do, it is a personal decision.
In many Internet marketing projects, marketers recommend that you have an exact keyword phrase in your domain name, such as “how-to-lose-weight.com” or something similar. If you are building a long-term blog or authority blog, however, you might want to consider something more general that can eventually be recognized as a brand name.
3.Buy Hosting
Hostgator is an excellent option for non .co.za hosting. For local .co.za domains I use Whizzihosting. Hostgater and Whizzihosting uses cPanel for your hosting controls which I prefer for easy usage and management. If this is your only website project, you can choose the cheapest option which often costs $10 a month or less. If you plan to have a lot of websites, however, you might want to consider investing in a reseller account which might cost $20-$30 a month. Try to go with a hosting company that has 24 hour support in case you ever get stuck on any problems.
4.Link domain name and hosting
You’ll need to point your domain name servers to your hosting account. Whizzihosting will to this for you, but at Godaddy you need to add your nameservers yourself. You get your nameserver names from Hostgater.
5.Create email address in cpanel
In order to look more professional, you will want to log into your control panel and create an e-mail address using your new domain name instead of a Gmail account or Hotmail account. I use this email when I upload my WordPress files.
6.Upload WordPress
WordPress is an excellent piece of software that takes care of all of the formatting and content management issues so you don’t have to worry about mastering HTML or CSS. After you have set up WordPress and installed a few plug-ins, you simply have to add your own content. The easiest way to install WordPress is to use the Fantastico option within your cpanel that you got from your hosting company.
7.Login and Start building your website by selecting a theme
There are plenty of free and paid themes available, with the paid themes giving you more options and features. You can certainly start with a simple free theme and then consider upgrading later on when you have money to invest.
8.Add plugins for functionality and SEO
Plugins like All-in-one-SEO will help you to use correct on-page optimization. This means that your keyword phrase will appear in the title tag and header tag of your website so you can have an excellent chance of ranking well in the search engines. This so-called on-page optimization is the foundation of search engine rankings, but you’ll also have to do inbound linking which we will discuss in a moment.
9.Add content
This, of course, is what blogging is all about. Like we said before, WordPress takes care of the technical aspects so the main thing you have to worry about is adding high-quality content to your website. In the past, many online marketers would write mediocre content and then throw in a few relevant keyword phrases that they wanted to rank for.
This kind of strategy, however, is becoming more and more difficult to rely on because of the constant changes in Google’s algorithm. In other words, the search engines want to see high-quality content that makes sense to a human reader. As long as you’re going through all this trouble to start blogging, make sure to create high-quality content — the kind of articles that you might show to a friend or family member who wanted some information on a particular topic.
Focusing on providing value to your readers can help you gradually build other streams of traffic outside Google. Meanwhile the search engine rankings will take care of themselves (assuming you follow some basic principles of search engine optimization).
10.Do link building
If you want to rank well in Google and other search engines, adding great articles and using some on page SEO will simply not be enough. A major factor in search engine rankings is link building. All other things being equal, the more links you have from other websites (and the higher quality links you have), the better your rankings will be. The idea is to get as many links as you can from a variety of sources while making things look as natural as possible. In other words, you need to have link building strategy that you can do continuously to keep ahead of the competition. Building 1000′s of backlinks overnight will get you in trouble with the search engines.
11.Monetize your website by adding relevant ads
There are many ways to make money from blogging, but the simplest is to add relevant advertisements. These can be pay per click ads, which means you will make money every time a reader clicks on the advertisement. Once your blog increases in popularity, however, other online business owners might simply pay you a monthly fee for displaying your ads on your blog.
12.Get Traffic to your blog
Search engine traffic is really only the beginning when it comes to building your readership. You can take advantage of Facebook and other social media sites, do some article marketing, participate in forum discussions, use paid advertising like pay per click campaigns or e-mail solo ads, and much, much more.
