How to start a blog – The Blogger Way
The blogging bug has bitten many people because many people ask us what blogs are about. From teenagers to top managers, everyone is excited about this new phenomenon called blogging.
Based on our talk last year at a local university on how to blog properly, it’s pretty safe to say that blogging is very popular. So this article is for everyone who wants to start a blog but doesn’t know how.
The number one consideration before starting a blog is this: what is your goal? Are you looking for a way to share your knowledge and expertise on a topic that concerns you? Are you looking to earn fast money? Are you looking for a way to practice your writing skills? Are you looking to compile all these blog posts later into something you can post or print as memoirs?
The second consideration is: do you have time to blog? Just like our first toy, we get excited for the first week when we first launch our blog. But blogging for fun and blogging seriously are two different animals.
Funny blogs don’t care much about anything else: the blogger only blogs because he wants to write what he wants to write. Serious blogs, on the other hand, can be about marketing your business, making money with AdSense or paying per review, spreading your ideas, and much more.
If you like serious blogging, it will take up your time. You may need to get in front of the PC and write a blog. We often tell our friends that serious bloggers take a long time to create blog posts for their audience. It’s not something you can write in 5 minutes. And also keep in mind the time it takes to properly resize or Photoshop photos before adding them to your blog. So all in all, it’s not that easy or simple to be a serious blogger (or one who makes money from blogging).
It’s not rocket science if you start with a simple blogging solution like Blogger.com. The advantages? It’s free and easy to get started. You don’t need a lot of technical knowledge (unlike other blogging solutions like WordPress). However, WordPress is quite popular and has a lot of potential for expansion and flexibility, and is ideal for those who want to fully customize their blogs.
To start your blog, simply go to http://www.blogger.com. You must first have an account with Blogger (Blogger has been purchased by Google, so if you have a Gmail account, signing up is even easier!).
The good thing is that they have new features that allow you to drag and drop features so you can “style” how you want your blog to look. You can even quickly change the colors of the background and text to reflect the type of theme you want.
They have even thought about privacy. Let’s say you want to create a blog just to update family and friends about your life (saving you the trouble of repeating yourself in your emails anyway). Well, you can set permissions within Blogger and only those you authorize will be able to view your blog.
Or let’s say you want to have a community blog where you and your friends/colleagues take turns writing about matters close to your hearts. You can have multiple authors on Blogger so that everyone has the opportunity to blog whenever they want, from anywhere.
As Blogger says, you just have to follow 3 easy steps:
1. Create an account
2. Name your blog
3. Choose a blog template
When you are at http://www.Blogger.com, click on the orange arrow that says “Create your blog now”. You will be taken to a page that asks you to create a Google/Gmail account if you don’t already have one.
You will then be asked to name your blog. This will identify your blog among the millions of blogs on the web. Remember, your blog name will be tracked by blogspot.com (unless you buy a domain name of your own and use it to mask the blogspot URL). For example, if the name of the blog is AuntieMargaretStories, the blog will be AuntieMargaretStories.blogspot.com when it is created. But before that name can be yours, you need to check its availability. So come up with more creative names (well, it also helps you stand out anyway).
If you want to host your blog somewhere other than Blogger, you can do that too. If you choose this option (under Advanced Blog Settings), you must fill in your web host details.
After that, you’re almost done. The next step is to choose how you want your blog to look to the world by choosing the blog template you like. And that’s it, once that’s done, you can start posting!
And if you ever get stuck, you can check out Blogger’s help resources section at http://help.blogger.com, which is very helpful with tips, tricks, and additional information.
Here is Happy Blogging!