How to Start a Blog from Scratch
Planning
Planning is the first and most important step! First decide the type of blog you want to create. Let’s say you want to create a photo blog or a photobook online; you need to choose your target audience and country carefully. Be ready with the content that you want to upload/publish. Decide upon the frequency you want to publish your content this can be daily, weekly or monthly. If you have a specific budget, plan accordingly and see to that the budget is feasible to build your blog. Free options on the web usually don’t work well while choosing domain, hosting etc. Do not compromise on the domain and hosting, as these play an important role in building your blog and maintaining it.
Choosing a Proper Domain Name
If you are hosting your website or blog on servers, to access them you would need an IP address. But remembering an IP address is not always easy. Domain names are the strings that get mapped to your IP address of the server. Once your Domain name is registered and transferred to your server, you can easily access your site by the domain name itself. There are many companies who provide very cheap domain names like Godaddy, Domain.com etc. Choose a proper and relevant domain name for your blog. If I want to start a blog in California about cooking, I would name the domain as “CaliforniaCooking” or “CaliforniaCookingHub” etc rather than “wendy”. Do not choose a domain name that represents a company or an organization as these may get you sued someday or have some legal issues.
Choosing a Web Hosting Service
Web hosting service companies allow your blog files to be hosted on their servers for a fee. The reason you would need a host is to make your blog available to public on the world wide web. Once your blog is hosted and setup, you can use your browser to visit your blog using your address. There are many free hosting services you can use, but we do not recommend you to choose any free service. Free hosting will always be limited and decrease user experience if you reach your bandwidth. There are companies who provide cheap hosting for your websites and fast support in case of any problem. Companies like HostGator provide hosting at $0.01 for the first month to try out their services.
Select Your Blogging Platform
There are plenty of content management systems (CMS) available on the web, like WordPress or Blogger. Choose a platform that you are comfortable with. If you are a newbie, I recommend using Wix website builder. Choosing a company like Wix will help you create stunning websites and blogs in minutes with ease. You need not know any technical logics or programming language. Wix has an easy drag and drop visual user interface (UI), which makes it very simple to create any type of websites in minutes. There are over 85 million users who chose Wix to start a blog, and for many other ventures, from hobby sites to small business sites. The great thing about Wix is that they have so many templates to choose from. So you can choose any one of their beautiful blog templates, or you can add a blog to any other template.
Create Content and Promote
Creating good content is the key to your blog’s success. Content you publish should satisfy the user’s needs and should be unique from other blogs. Copy pasting the content will get your blog banned from search engines and get you in legal issues. Creating good content will automatically bring your good traffic from search engines. Promoting your blog is also important as people out there do not know your blog. Facebook and twitter are the two main places where you can promote initially. You can also swap adverts from your fellow bloggers to avoid spending too much on advertisements. Build good relationship with other bloggers and gradually contribute to their blogs with your link in the content. This will get you some traffic from their blogs.
Still Need Help?
There are many companies out there who can provide you the platform to build blogs easily without having to set it up manually. If you are a beginner and would like to get some help, I recommend you visit this guide by Wix, which offers a lot of articles and advice about how to start a blog, including blog promotion. This article is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge. Content is for informational or entertainment purposes only and does not substitute for personal counsel or professional advice in business, financial, legal, or technical matters.
