Many people would love to start a blog but do not know how and where to begin. I’m guessing why you’re here, is because you’re not sure and may not have any idea on where to start, right? Staring a blog is not difficult, even the most-inexperienced internet newbie can learn how to start a blog and how to make money blogging, but I thought I’d help you by sharing these 11 Things I Wish I Knew When First Starting.
I am an experienced blogger and by following these simple steps you’ll hopefully get a good head-start in the world of blogging. Oh yes! Blogging is a good way to share your views, make new friends and even make money blogging doing what you love.
- Choose a niche
One of the secret for a successful blogging is choosing a niche of your interest or abilities. You should choose a niche depending on your ability. Also the number of target audiences is essential, but you should understand that your first priority lies in your interest, then the volume of audience. To start a niche blog around a subject you’re passionate about has a very good advantage – you won’t get frustrated and quit. When you’re genuinely-interested in your chosen topic, you will see that you can easily come up with new and interesting content ideas.
- Choose a platform
When you want to start a blog you need to ask yourself whether you want to use blogger or WordPress. These are two most used blogging platform on the internet today. Blogger is a blogging platform owned by Google, and is free, reliable and has enough space for you to publish your content. If you build a blog on blogger, remember it’s not owned by you, google runs the service and can shut it down any time without your consent. On the other hand, WordPress is also a free open source software. You will host you your site and you can decide how long you want to run it. You own your site- the data as well as the information you share on your blog without any fear of being shut down. There are also more beautiful themes and plugins on WordPress than Blogger or any other platform out there.
- Get a domain name
Once you have decided on the platform to start your blog, the next step is choosing a domain name. Bluehost or Godaddy are the best place to get a domain name at a very good rate. A domain name is the name your blog will be known as – that is your brand. It is important to do thorough research before you chose a domain name, and is also good to choose a name related to your niche. It is easy to register for your domain name just go now to Bluehost or Godaddy.
- Get a hosting company
Again, you need a place to put your blog – hosting. Bluehost is a great host to start your blog, there prices are moderate. You will install your WordPress through Bluehost. If you sign up through my link here, you’ll get a discount and I’ll get a small commission. Win/Win! I did a lot of research and Bluehost is my #1 pick and who I host with, Hostgator is my #2 choice and GoDaddy would be my #3 choice.
- Chose a theme
There are beautiful free and premium WordPress themes you can use for your blog. A theme gives you the beauty and the feel you desire for your blog. Once you purchase a good theme like Genesis or ThemeForest, it will look awesome on your blog and blow your mind. Most WordPress theme are inexpensive and once you purchase it, you own it for life.
- Good Permalink Structure
Don’t promote your blog if your URLs looks like, my name.com/blog?id=1468. It’s not difficult to reset, go to your permalink options in your WordPress settings, and change it to something like myname.com/my-content. You can install some useful plugins such as, SEO Yoast, Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall, Limit Login Attempts, W3 Total Cache, WP-PageNavi and other useful plugins. Do not install too many plugin on your blog, because it could slow it down.
- Set-up Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free traffic report powered by giant tech Google. It gives free reports of your sites traffic; like where your traffic comes from. This free tool will help motivate you, because you know that people are actually visiting your blog, and you can plan your content or advertising based on the demographics that it reports as well. It’s an invaluable tool. Try it out today.
- Google Search Console
Google Search Console (formerly webmaster tool) is a free useful tool from Google as well. It has numerous functions, like submission of your sitemaps to be indexed. It also alerts you to malware security issues as well as keeps track of 404 errors. Although Google Search Console is an optional tool, it’s really nice.
- Quality Content is King
Another one of the 11 Things I Wish I Knew When First Starting A Blog is that content is so important and the way you structure it is crucial as well. Before you start your blog make sure you have at least 15 to 30 quality articles/post. It is totally wrong to announce your blog when it has just 5 to 10 posts on it. What I mean by quality content is from 400 original words or more. If you don’t want to get penalized by Google search engine and other major search engines, never copy contents from other blogs, even if you want to copy, give proper credit to the original author. Once you have that many posts, you can apply to Google Adsense or affiliate marketing, like Amazon, to make money blogging.
- Join forums
Find forums which are related to your niche and establish a presence. Add value to people’s lives by writing a thoughtful comments or advice on others threads, and make sure to not advertise your product while doing so. Make sure to include your website link on the forum signature, which could increase traffic on your site slightly.
- Expose your contents to social networks
Exposing your contents to your own social networks –Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest and StumbleUpon will help you to bring traffic to your blog. Also boost your post through Facebook advertising and you shouldn’t promote absolutely everything you wrote. Pick three to five of your best posts to boost, and you’ll get a good volume of audiences to your blog than promoting crap and end up pissing people off your blog.
I hope you found these 11 Things I Wish I Knew When First Starting A Blog helpful. I would love to hear about what you found the most helpful and if you have any other questions about blogging in the comments below.
Here’s to your health, wealth, and happiness!
