Want to start a Blog of your own but don’t know how to ? Read this Now
How to Start a Blog that will be Successful
So you want to start a blog? Well you have come to the right place because we will show you exactly what you need to do to start a blog that will be successful. Before we get into the detail you need to understand a couple of important things.
The first is that successful blogs take a lot of work. You cannot expect to create a blog, make a few posts and then achieve success. You will have to put in the necessary effort to keep it going.
The second factor is time. There are no overnight blog success miracles. It is going to take time before a blog starts to develop a readership, rank in Google and the other search engines and make money for you.
What is the Purpose of your Blog?
Deciding on the purpose of your blog is critical. The essential factors here include the niche that you will blog about, and what you want people to do when they read your posts. Do you want to build an email list and then promote related products and services to them? Or do you want to monetize your blog using another method (such as Google Adsense)?
If you have an existing business then you can create a blog around the products or services that you offer. The aim here is to discuss the advantages of having a product or service like yours, and then steer your readers to take action.
If you are an individual then choose a niche that has a lot of scope. You want to pick a subject that you can write a lot of content about, and that will appeal to a market of a reasonable size. If you are an expert in a subject area already then make your blog about this. The more that you enjoy writing about your subject, the more likely it is that your blog will be a success.
You want to position yourself as an expert in your chosen field. You want to be seen as the “go to” person in your niche. There is bound to be competition in your niche, so take a look at the popular blogs and check out their subjects and writing style.
What Blogging Platform should you choose?
There are two ways that you can go with a blogging platform. You can use a free blogging service such as blogger.com, wordpress.com or livejournal.com or you can invest in a domain name and web hosting and use the WordPress self hosted blogging platform.
There are a number of reasons why a free blogging service is not recommended. The first is that it looks cheap. People know that these blogging services are free, so it is not likely that they are going to trust you as much if you have a free blog.
When you use a free blogging service you can be severely limited, and you are also at the mercy of the company providing the service. If for some reason they don’t like your blog they can take it away from you without giving a reason. Can you imagine spending a ton of time writing blog posts then it all disappears?
To create a self hosted blog (where you are in control) you will need a domain name and web hosting. A domain name will cost between $10 and $15 a year and you can get web hosting for as little as $5 a month. Register your domain name at either godaddy.com or namecheap.com, and checkout hostgator.com for cheap web hosting.
Why use WordPress?
Once you have your domain name and hosting account you will be able to install WordPress on your domain. WordPress has many advantages and the most important of these is that it is very easy to upload new content to your blog.
Once you have installed WordPress you will need to choose a theme that works well for you. There are many free themes available as well as premium themes. You can also enhance WordPress by adding different plugins to it.