All you need to know about starting a blog

If you checked out some awesome blog and decided to start your own little blog, you are up for a challenge. If you are serious about making money you should be aware of the difficulties you will face. In this post I will take you through the experiences you will face as a blogger. If you want to blog for fun and experience, you don’t have much to worry about, and this tutorial can greatly help you.

Introduction

Blogging might be the hardest project you take on, It seems very easy to write down one or two posts a day, well its not.

Crafting a successful post needs a lot of hard work, strong concepts and good writing skills. If you are motivated you can learn all this in no time.

So you think you can take the pressure and responsibility of a blogger, you want the freedom of speech and fame is your second name. Lets begin

Principles of blogging

A few principles every blogger should stand by;

• Patience - You will need patience when no one advertises on your blog or if no one comments on your blog. It will be compelling and easy to abandon your blog, you will need to think ahead and in the long term.
• Consistency - There will be times when blogging will feel dull, you will want a break from the posting and you will dry out. You will stop posting for a while, but laziness will take over and your blog will become more useless. It is hard to keep going on a steady rate, which is significant to the success of the blog.
• Creativity - Blogs are special, they are written by real people in the real world. They are unique in their own special way. If you are here to copy content to your blog,  don’t bother as it will gain you nothing but insult.

Getting Started

Before you start you should decide :

What is your blog about – This will help you select an appropriate design and functionality relating to your audience.

How much content will you host – The amount of content decides what type of blog theme you will choose, we will come back to this later.

Your budget – if you want to blog professionally or you want to use your blog as your full time business, you will need to set aside a budget.

Free blogging – if you want to start a blog with no expense you will have to make a few sacrifices, you have lesser control over your blog and its functioning but on the upside you dont have to spend a penny.

Self hosted vs Freely hosted

When you start blogging you will have two choices:

Self hosted :

Pro’s

• You have total control over plugin’s, themes, hacks, statistics.
• You can expand your blog into a more professional one by simply upgrading your hosting plan to accommodate more traffic and redesign your own theme for uniqueness.
• It gives the impression of a serious blogger as you are committed to it.
• You will be more motivated towards blogging as you have invested your money and efforts which can be very helpful during those dry days.
• You can advertise on your blog without any restrictions using your preferred service or using flat rates.

Con’s

• You will need a budget of 6-10 $ a month or more depending on your blog.
• You have to install the blogging software on your blog manually.
• You have to manually update your blog as newer versions of the platform are released.
• If you decide to abandon your blog, you will be charged for the remaining hosting and domain package.

Hosted with a blogging service

Pro’s

• You do not have to worry about updating your blog or installing software.
• No basic knowledge required other than creating posts.
• Usually free and takes a few minutes to sign up and you are done.

Con’s

• If you decide to advertise, you will have lesser options like Google adsense which are not worth your time.
• You usually cannot create your own theme and you have to choose from a template.
• It does not look professional and not suitable for a business or a professional blogger.

Using a blogging service

There are loads of services you could use, which are very user friendly and feature packed.

I would recommend using wordpress.com , its got a larger community and some exciting features like statistics.

the wordpress service provides 3gb free space and that’s more than enough, if you post a lot of images you can use image hosting services to host the pictures so you will hardly run out of space.

If you want to host your blog on a custom domain like yourblog.com, you will have buy the feature for an extra charge. [optional]

learn more about the features and premium features.

Although there are other services like blogger which allow you to use your own domain free of charge, Wordpress.com is much better than blogger.

Self Hosted

if you want to blog professionally, self hosted is the best way to go.

Platform

The best blogging platform is wordpress without doubt with extensive support and flexibility. Although if you want to try something else out for some reason, smashing magazine has a great article about the different blogging platforms.

Hosting

This was the hardest part when i started out as all the options looked very convincing but they all charged for a whole year in advance. If you are just starting out you will want the ability to abandon your blog and cancel all the services in case of failure.

Godaddy – They charge for 2 months in advance which is better than paying for a whole year. At only 5$ a month, its easy to start your own blog. NOTE: IT HAS ONE OF THE WORST USER INTERFACE AND CAN BE VERY DIFFICULT FOR A NEWBIE TO FIND HIS WAY AROUND.

Dreamhost – This is probably the BEST host in town, its got a very neat web panel and one click installs. The customer support is swift and very helpful.

[use promotion code "KUMAILHT". This promo code adds 1 extra FREE lifetime domain registration to any plan signed up for with it!]

Installation

Download wordpress

Wordpress in 5 minuites

The famous 5 minute install is a legend, and its TRUE.

Testing

Now you should be able to see your blog, the default theme is a blue and white one.

The first thing I did was to change my password.

Themes and Plugin’s

I am going to continue this post later on with the best Themes and Plugin’s for wordpress, but if you are anything like me and cant wait to go ahead with installing and customizing your blog, you should be able to get them from here.

Keep posting

There is not much to starting your own blog, the most important part is maintaining it by posting quality content regularly.

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