Basic Steps for Starting Your Own Blog

Are you thinking of starting a blog? As a blogger, I will obviously say that that’s a fantastic decision and has been one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made. I say go for it! After all, you can start a blog for just $20. You may struggle at first but, with every post, you’ll gain confidence. With every passing month, you’ll be close to earning your first side income. Those initial days are pretty hectic, you’ll need to devote a good chunk of your daily time.

Once you are passed first 6 months, you can put blogging on autopilot. All you need to do is post regularly twice/thrice a week and try to make one concrete post a week. and, if you have a day job to take care of then that’s the maximum time you’re gonna get anyway.

But the reward is unlimited, here’s my latest income report. There are tons of bloggers who earn more than I am. And there are bloggers who earn less than I am. Actually, the income is not directly proportional to the time spent. It depends on how many of your articles rank high in search engine ranking. More articles you have ranking high, more money you can earn from advertisers.

But first thing first, and that is the most important points that you’ll need to think through.

Fundamental pointers to create your own blog

Choose Your Domain Name

Your domain name is actually very important. It is better to go with something original, easy to remember, easy to spell, and that leaves an impression. Just your name @ WordPress or Blogger is not going to stand out and won’t be successful.

So, be creative and think of how you want to brand your blog to your future readers. Think of the things too that you would be interested enough to click on if you came across a new blog.

Once you think you have a good idea, run the domain name through a WHOIS Domain Lookup to see if it is available. This one costs nothing and easy to use. If your name of choice is free, then you’re in business!

Choose Your CMS and Design the Blog

With so many website builders out there, the options are pretty much endless. Pick a Content Management System (CMS) that works for you, whether it is something like WordPress, or something more advanced if you have the know-how to design the website yourself.

Make sure that the design is clean and straightforward so that it is simple enough for your readers to navigate and isn’t visually overwhelming. Be sure to embrace a good design, and incorporate a lightbox subscription pop-up, as well as links to your social media accounts.

These will all be extremely important features for later when you want to start making money through your blog.

Get Hosted

The easiest way to host your blog is on the domains like blog spot, WordPress, TypePad, etc. But self-hosted blogs (blog with its own domain. Like, my blog) generate more visitors and money. Advertisers prefer blogs with its own domain. Whereas the blogs hosted on Blogspot, etc will be free but self-hosted domains will cost you money.

A fixed amount of money every month you need to pay to keep the hosting service uninterrupted.

Although the bigger blog site builders – WordPress and Blogger – are already hosted, if you go with another CMS or design on your own, in order to be less cookie-cutter and end up with a really intriguing blog, then you will also need to look into a company to host your site online.

There are again almost an unlimited amount of options for this, so go with a company that meets your immediate and future needs, and one that you trust. The best way to know if a company offers good service is to read through customer reviews.

This blog is hosted on SiteGound, I am satisfied with SiteGround service, for starters, they provide attractive discounts, you can start with as little as $3.95 per month. For established sites, you’ll need to pay more to keep your site functioning well with a larger number of visitors.

Launch with Creative Content

The last step is to actually write your content. Make sure that it is well-written and engaging, as well as includes a lot of high-quality images. People like to see the beautiful travel destinations that you’re talking about after all – it’s pretty much the whole purpose of reading travel blogs.

Of course, you will have to learn how to come up with great ideas for multiple blog posts out of a single trip, since you most likely can’t afford to travel to a new destination for every single post and don’t want your posting schedule to be so irregular that your readers lose interest.

It’s good to try and think of at least 5 posts ahead for new and exciting content ideas, and really make it a daily practice to come up with new ideas and jot them down.

The other ways that work for me is to read other blogs and news articles on finance. I get a lot of good ideas to write about. Often, I go to Reddit forums for ideas. Check out popular blogs on your domain and try to see which of their posts are really hit.

But there’s nothing better than having your own voice. Express everything in your own voice. Copycats don’t usually succeed. People will read a blog for personal opinions only. For news items, there are billion dollar media websites in the market already exist.

Getting started is actually pretty easy. Within a couple of hours to a couple of days, you can have your blog up and running. The hardest part is maintaining a regular posting schedule and building up your blog readership and authority enough to start making money through your blog. This I will cover in another post, so stay tuned!