So You Wanna Start a Blog
Indeed as I mentioned last week, 20,000 people start a blog every day. That’s an enormous amount of blogs hitting the Internet at any given time. For you, the process is going to be easy because we are going to walk through the details, step by step. This will allow you the opportunity to work within the confines of various platforms and blog topics. For our ongoing project, I used the process of checking keywords for maximum exposure and for examining the niche’ that we plan to cover.
First and foremost, new bloggers must understand that right now, Google is the measuring standards for almost every website available. If you are looking to start a niche’ blog, you can easily use the Google Traffic Estimator & Keyword Search to decide on a blog niche’ and ultimately the blog title. A quick look inside the Google Keyword finder by using the term “blogging” renders a result that indicates that 550,000 searches are conducted for the word “blogging” each month. If you look at the search, you can see the other forms of the word and how they are searched. Using this keyword finder, I chose the name So You Wanna Start a Blog.
Once this important decision was made, I headed over to my favorite domain registration site, Go Daddy, and started to search for the best possible domain name that would fit within that blog name. I entered the name “soyouwannastartablog.com” into the search box and immediately I am greeted with Go Daddy’s approval page. That name is available and I have the option of choosing from .com, .net, .info and many more. Since purchasing domains has been a frequent event for me, I knew to also go to a search engine; I use Google again, and look for promo codes to help offset the cost of purchasing the domain. I was able to find a promotional code that gave me thirty-five percent off the cost of the purchase of a .com domain name.
When choosing your domain name, the general accept rule is that if you can get the domain name ending with “.com” you should be more successful. I have, however, used domain names ending in “.info” and “.net” with success. Depending on the type of website or blog, the “.info” is often a good choice especially if you are looking for a way to share simple pieces of information. If you have a blog domain name chosen and you are against changing it, you may be able to get that name in a “.net” even when the “.com” counterpart is already taken. The bottom line for me is cost and my plans for using the domain name. Some of my blogs are simply information only and since those domains are super cheap, I go with those often.
Let me quickly interject that if you do not feel comfortable purchasing your own domain and would like to take advantage of free services, you can use this same process and then head over to WordPress.com or Blogspot, or possibly even Squarespace. You can use your search for the domain and use those sites to get your blog started. If you choose to go this route, you will see that your domain name will read something like soyouwannastartablog.blogspot.com, soyouwannastartablog.wordpress.com or soyouwannastartablog.squarespace.com.
I quickly jumped over and created a blog in each of those areas. Blogspot did not have the simple “soyouwannastartablog” available so I added to the name, making it “soyouwannastartablognow”. Sometimes you have to exercise your creativity and come up with something similar that will help you get the domain you desire. I was able to secure “soyouwannastartablog.squarespace.com” and “soyouwannastartablog.wordpress.com”.
Normally you won’t need to set up a blog in all of these places. I am doing so to help you see the benefits of using the free platforms as well as the ones, wordpress.com, blogspot.com, that may not be free, squarespace.com, but require less technological skills. You can easily be up and running quickly once you decide which platform you prefer. I’m including links and photos on the new blog we have established at soyouwannastartablog.com. I’m going to move through the exact processes on soyouwannastartablog.com. You can then feel free to check those out for general overviews but keep up with us here as we build this blog slowly and in great detail so you can get your blog up and running. Obviously this is a slower process than it has to be but I can go from start to finish with a new blog in less than an hour if I choose to go that route. Feel free to join the process complete with photos and instructions.
Quickly recapping our blog start up, I used Google to get Keywords to choose a title since we already knew that our niche’ was going to be about starting a blog. I used Go Daddy to register my domain choice and Host Gator to set up the hosting of the blog. Once we get started and I’ve given you the basics for using Blogspot, WordPress.com and Squarespace, we will concentrate on the self-hosted blog using Host Gator. The process of writing, publishing and designing will converge once the initial set up process is complete. Hopefully that means this will be the last post with so much information and instead we can concentrate on the fun of blogging.
If you are interested in the documentation of links and photos of the set up process, feel free to visit our site and I welcome your input here on This Lil Piglet as we move along in the development process. Technically, I could get you a blog set up and running in a matter of hours, but in this situation, I’m going to go slow and coordinate as much information on the blog. You all will have the opportunity to work on this blog and submit questions and comments. Hopefully you have your niche’ in your mind and can now use Google’s Keywords to choose a name that will allow you for maximum exposure.
Next up, the actual set up process for wordpress.com hosted blogs as well as self hosted blogs. Don’t miss out, I am trying to provide you with the most information in the simplest way, feel free to email me with questions or comments.
**An invaluable resource for beginner bloggers is the ProBlogger’s Guide to your First Week of Blogging Click here to view more details**
This guest post was written by Jerri Ann of Mom~E~Centric. Jerri Ann is an Internet-junkie who has been writing online since 1999. She has 2 boys, ages 6 and 8, and is married to a man she affectionately calls Boy Genius. Mom~E~Centric is about learning life, learning how to take the punches and put them in their place. “Landing a punch is not near as important as feeling like you are in the fight.”
3 comments on “So You Wanna Start a Blog”