How to start a blog and get into blogging.

To start a blog you need money. Hosting costs money, a domain costs money and you probably want to have a nice professional designed theme.

That is the basic things needed to start a blog: A domain A domain name (obviously a domain is the domain name but I want to seperate looking for the domain name and paying for the domain) A hosting package A theme. Common sense and interest in the topic you are planning to blog about So. First of all register yourself a account at Google.com/Adsense. That is how you will get the money to pay for the above. Next you create yourself a free blogger account.

Takes about 5 minutes. While you register there you will need your site url. But you dont have one, so before you type the url into Google Adsense you quickly register your free blogger account and use that as your blog url for registering with Adsense. So now you have your blog and you have your method to get a domain and some hosting. Next up is getting some traffic to your blogspot blog.

Start blogging on blogspot about a niche that you have interest in. Whatever it is as long as its not tech or News, you will be safe. After about 10 blog posts you then insert your Google.com/Adsense codes into your blogspot blog. Your blogging should be aimed towards search engines not caring about regular readers. Traffic from search engines are most likely to click on your ads. So blog till you have the required $50 or $10 which ever you need to get payed by Google. This might take some time. But remember to back up your posts.

Payday When payday has come and you get your first paycheck from Google, buy yourself a domain name using checkdomain.com to look for it. Once you find a great domain name register it. Use Siteground or find a good host for your blog and domain. Remember to get hosting for your blog as well.

The blog Once you have your domain and hosting you need to upload a wordpress install file from wordpress.org and install it that way. Installing wordpress with fantastico will give you a lot of issues later on. Install wordpress and get a theme. Do a few searches on Google for nice gpl wordpress themes. Setup your blog and remember to choose the correct url format otherwise you will have more issues later.

So you have your own blog now, get thunderbird and start commenting on blogs, comment only if you have real interest but read a lot and comment a lot. Network with other bloggers. Install entrecard from entrecard.com and start clicking. Register at blogcatalog and mybloglog and embed. Remember to move your posts from blogspot to your blog and redirect your blogspot to your new home. Embed your adsense in your blog and start blogging. Install stubleupon and read blogs about blogging. Your blog will now start to grow.

I guess its as easy as that.

originally published April 6 2008 republished 5 August 2008