With the current dynamics of the digital world, the trend towards blogging practices is rapidly increasing. If you are considering starting a blog of your own, I would highly urge you to do so. Now where to get started? That is the most integral question in blogging. The internet itself offers a variety of approaches on starting a blog of your own, but with the wide plethora of solutions and techniques available, there is a high probability that one might get flustered and be pushed back to ground zero. To deal with this situation, let me guide you through a fairly straightforward approach to start your own blog.
Remember that every blogger was once a newbie, so there is always a starting point. When I started this journey, I myself had a lot of ambiguity about it. I started back in 2010 and knew almost nothing about it. Through consistent efforts and sparkle of luck by my side, I can confidently say that I have acquired enough blogging knowledge to guide you safely through this process. In the present world of blogging and ever-increasing digital awareness, it is important to stand out from the crowd. Keep in mind that blogging is an art and practical experimentation is the best way to learn. With that being said, let us move forward.
Why start your own blog?
Before I tell you how to create a successful blog, you need to have a justifiable reason to why you want to start blogging in the first place. Why not indulge in any other activity besides blogging? Let me address this question through some simple pointers.
Note: If you already have a fair idea about the “why” to blogging then you may skip this and go right ahead towards the “how”
- Blogging is an effective way to directly communicate with the masses at once. Spreading information, news and awareness are just the basic purposes behind blogging.
- In the present day world, you can earn an entire livelihood through effective blogging practices. If you amass a formidable following, you can market your views and preferences in front of them, which will in turn direct traction towards certain offerings
- It is also an incredible channel to communicate your opinion to the world and contribute to the lives of masses.
- It helps you in writing effective content pieces that can actually make a difference in the lives of the people.
Start your blog with these following five steps:
There is a general perception that creating a website requires a lot of effort and a good knowledge of technicalities. These things might be important but they aren’t as difficult as one might think. You can find several videos on YouTube, which will guide you through every major and minor step in detail to build yourself an interactive website. No knowledge of coding is required these days to build a website. Good news, right? Facilitating software can take care of the complex algorithms while the helpful GUI makes everything seamless.
- Choose your blogging platform:
This is the first and important decision you have to consider. Here I’m going to take a leap of faith and assume that you all are aware of WordPress. Many bloggers are using this platform for blogging and believe me it is massive. A wide chunk of the blogging crowd facilitates from this platform as it provides countless plugins and add-on features. You can find infinite themes and ways to design your blog through WordPress, therefore you always have a new taste up your sleeve to add to your blogs.
The following picture illustrates the use of various major/minor blogging platforms across the globe.
WordPress contains almost around 82 billion active users. Besides WordPress, there are certainly other platforms as well which can help you jumpstart your blogging career. For instance, Blogger and Tumblr are very decent blogging platforms to create and publish your blogs. However, if you are new to blogging, I would personally recommend giving WordPress a go. There are a number of facilitating factors associated with WordPress, some of which are mentioned below.
- It is free to use and has a very user-friendly interface
- Millions of free themes and layouts to use
- WordPress provides a dedicated support forum facility in case you get stuck at some point ( you will rarely get stuck but it’s always nice to have a support forum)
- The best thing is that your blog will be faster and more optimized as compared to the majority of blogs created on other platforms
- It lets people interact with you easily
- You can readily alter and enhance the content created with the provided editing tools
- Do you require self-hosting or an alternative free service?
The second major thing you have to ponder over is what you want – paid hosting service or a free one. Options WordPress, Tumbler, and Blogger all offer free hosting and these would be the viable approach for beginners. That being said, paid hosting services are much more comprehensive. A few limitations to free hosting services are listed below.
- You won’t be able to use your own domain name with free hosting. It would be something like “XYZblog.wordpress.com” or “123blog.tumblr.com”
- Like the majority of free services in the world, there are certain limitations to monetizing your blog. You will have to follow some basic guidelines/rules to be able to use these services.
- You most certainly don’t own the blog. If your blog is hosted by WordPress, Tumbler, or Blogspot then they have the authority to delete it as per their convenience.
- Starting your blog on your own domain (if you choose to go for self-hosting and custom domain):
If you’re still confused among domain and hosting then let me clear the ambiguity here.
- Domain basically refers to the URL of your website page. For instance, google.com and forbes.com are domain names.
- Hosting refers to a company putting up your website on the internet so that it is available to the masses online. Everything is saved on their servers, which provide a digital hard disk to save and update your data in real time.
Hosting services generally charge a semi-annual/annual fee against which you are offered hosting services. HostGator is a dependable hosting service in this regard; and after the contract is made, you can enjoy a number of exclusive benefits that paid to host brings with it.
Where we require internet to help us become more visible and successful we badly require a high-speed internet connection to make it happen. Make sure that you are well catered in that department to support your cause. This will constantly keep you connected around the globe and in turn, bring you a step closer to your dream of becoming the “internet star”
- Designing your blog:
Design of the blog has a significant impact on the audiences. Make sure that your blog is sufficiently interactive, user-friendly and attractive, all at the same instance. Don’t go for heavy designs as they will directly impact the load speed of your website and its content. Select the design while keeping the speed and other factors in mind, so that the visitors don’t get flustered with excessive content, and neither do they have to wait too long for your website to load. As I hinted earlier, certain aspects of your blogs are dependant on practicality, and once you start running things, you can accordingly alter to the needs to obtain the best results.
- Helpful resources for beginners:
Remember that research and knowledge are extremely important in this field. The internet itself offers valuable resources to acquire a better grip on your blogging knowledge. Therefore, you should carry out your own style of research in matters that you require assistance. To further facilitate this cause, I have listed down a few links to help you start.
- How to choose a blogging niche?
- List of best hosting service providers along with their features
- The promotion of blog
Covering all these factors will surely help you start a blog of your own. Remember that consistency and dedication are important. With a positive yet practical mindset, you will surely be able to achieve much more from your blog than you might have expected in the start.
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