So You Want Your Own Blog…Where To Begin?

A blog, short for web log, is simply a type of website that allows you to post content to the Internet, almost as easily as typing up a Word document on your computer, and the blog organizes the content you post in a chronological order, starting with the newest post at the top and going backward in time as you scroll down through the posts.

Blogging is a great way to get your thoughts out to the world via the Internet, without having to know anything about programming, web design, or other technical things. And, it allows you to do so in small chunks like short diary entries, or in long essay form…whatever your style is, a blog will accommodate it. Many journalists and media personnel today use blogs as their primary medium for disseminating their work to the world.

You can also include interesting media types to your blog to “spice it up” and make it more interesting: such things as images, audios, your own videos, embedded videos from YouTube, and even attach your own files and documents (PDFs, Word, Excel, etc.)

Those are the basics of what a blog IS. Now, let’s cover the details and nitty gritty on how to make a blog you’ll be able to use for whatever purpose you like.

How To Make A Blog The Free Way

There are many free ways to have your own blog…and this is what the majority of bloggers do. Most bloggers do so to talk about and share with the world what interests them, for no other reason than it’s just fun, and it’s like writing a diary that the world can see.

I know bloggers who talk about the daily happenings of a stay-at-home-mom, the latest recipes they’ve tried, the places they’ve traveled around the world, their religious beliefs, intellectual or political topics, and more. So, for these purposes, where you don’t need to customize the look of your blog or do anything fancy, and you just want to share your thoughts with the world, getting a free blog already set up for you to use is the best option.

There are websites that provide free blogs, with themes you can choose from to give you the basic look you want, so you can get right down to typing out the content you want to post.

Some examples of these are Hubpages, Blogger.com, WordPress.com, and TypePad, just to name a few.

With these sites, you simply create an account and they give you a blog. It’s simple, it’s quick, it’s the easiest way to get your own blog. But as with most things in life, choosing this route has both pros and cons…

The cons of this way is that you don’t own the blog yourself, it’s owned by the site your blog is on…this means the blog could be deleted if they ever feel you’re talking about something they don’t want you to talk about, they can censor what you post, and you have little control over the details of your blog. And if you have the intent of making money with your blog, it’s going to be difficult to do so with these free blog platforms.

How To Make A Blog That YOU Own

What I just explained is the easiest way to create a blog, but using a blog provided by somebody else does have its downfalls, as I just mentioned.

In general, if you’re going to be a “serious” blogger – wanting to get a big following, you have a goal of doing it professionally, for a living, and want to make a lot of money through your blogging efforts, then you will want to make a blog that you own…one that you have control of.

Creating your own blog used to take about 15 boring, tedious steps that required a good bit of ‘tech savvy’ to accomplish. But in the last couple years, Internet advances have made it much easier to set up your own blog.

Today, you can purchase a domain (ie. www.YourWebsiteName.com) from a web hosting company, which is where your website data will all be stored on their servers and served to anyone in the world who is accessing your website. Once you have your domain (web address), and your account with your web hosting company, you can then log in to your account and click to install WordPress…with just a couple more clicks, your blog will be installed on your domain and ready to customize and finish setting up.

Unfamiliar with what WordPress is? If so, that’s okay, there are many terms and phrases to learn when getting started blogging and working online. WordPress is an open-source platform that manages your blog on your website. It’s similar to your computer operating system, like Windows, that is allowing you to use your computer.

Once WordPress is installed, you’ll be able to simply log in with a username and password to get access to the “back office” of your blog where you can change the look and feel of your blog, modify the functionality of your blog with tools called Plugins, and post content through Posts & Pages.

There are definitely some steps involved in getting your own blog set up this way, and there will be a monthly cost to keep it up: a web hosting account typically costs around $10/month, and there will be other costs involved in improving the look and functionality of your blog over time. But, the positives far outweigh the work required and costs involved, and it’s still worth it in order to have full control of your blog…especially if it’s more than just a hobby blog and you’re serious about being a successful blogger.

The downside of owning your own blog is that all the maintenance is on you, the ongoing costs can get quite large as you grow your number of visitors and followers, and you will be responsible for everything like keeping your blog running, keeping it updated, etc.

How To Make A Blog That Makes You Money

So you know now that there are several ways to set up your own blog: the free way, or paying a little bit to have your own that you control.

Knowing that, you can go make a blog now…and you can start blogging and getting people to read what you’re writing right away. BUT, if you want to make your efforts worthwhile, getting paid for all that effort spent on writing your blog posts and building up your website, then you’re going to invest some of your time into learning how to actually make money from your blog.

There are millions or billions of dollars – who knows how much, but it’s a LOT! – being spent online every single day…and you can get a piece of that, actually quite easily through your blogging efforts. My opinion is that if you’re going to be spending the time to blog, even just for fun and sharing thoughts on your mind, you might as well get paid for doing so!

How’s that sound to you? If you want to make a blog and make money doing so, then click here to get access to “Online Business Jumpstart”, my video series that will teach you the basics of building an online business that pays you for your efforts, and how to build a blog that makes you money.

But, the basic ways of making money from your blog are:

• Having ads placed on your blog that you earn a few cents on whenever visitors to your blog click on them (can add up fast if you have lots of visitors.
• Selling a product you own – could be physical products, crafts or items you’ve made, services you provide (coaching, consulting, etc.), or educational/information products (ebooks, video courses, pdfs, training, etc.)
• Selling other people’s products and earning a commission for referring people to buy them (this is called being an affiliate)
• Offering access to memberships that charge a recurring monthly, quarterly, or annual fee (called continuity)

Fast Action Steps To Having Your Own Blog

• Set up your web hosting account with Bluehost (starting around $10/month for hosting + $10 for your domain/web address)
• Use their one-click WordPress install function to install the WordPress platform on your website (free)
• Get access to my free Online Business Jumpstart where I’ll walk you through all the steps necessary to customize your new blog to your liking and so you can hit the ground running with your new site.