Starting your own blog can be one of the most rewarding and exciting activities that anyone can do, but it can be particularly beneficial for modern wives and mothers. A blog can be a great outlet for creativity, or it could be a way to draw attention to your small business. If you are good at it and able to build a decent following, it can also be very profitable and eventually provide as much money as any full-time job.
However, the prospect of starting a new blog from scratch can also be very intimidating, particularly if you are not especially comfortable with technology. Creating a blog can seem like a complex world of technical acronyms and unfamiliar terms, and all this new information may seem overwhelming. You may have wanted to start your own blog for years but been too afraid of entering this unfamiliar terrain.
Literally everyone who has started a blog felt this way to some extent in the beginning. Even your favorite bloggers had to begin somewhere, and most of them were just as overwhelmed and nervous when they started as you are now. But now that blogging is increasingly common, even among those who are inexperienced with technology, it is easier than ever to begin a blog of your own. This guide will go over a few simple steps to start a blog and share your unique talent, perspective, stories and ideas with the world.
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Decide the Subject of Your Blog
This may seem like an obvious starting point, but choosing the subject of your new blog can be a bit more complex than it seems. It will depend largely upon your motivation for starting the site in the first place. If you are simply looking for an outlet for your creativity, you still need to have some basic format such as short stories, news editorials, parenting discussions, fashion advice, etc.
If you want to draw attention to your small business, you need a blog that will contain helpful, informative articles related to your industry. It needs to be broad enough to allow for a wide variety of articles but specific enough to fit into your niche. For instance, an aircraft mechanic would not create an entire blog about Weldon pumps, but he may include an article about them within his blog about aircraft engines.
2. Choose Your Platform
There are many options for this, but WordPress is the most popular, by far. However, you need to be careful in choosing the right kind of WordPress site for you.
- WordPress.com provides hosted blogs that are simpler to set up at first but allow for much less control.
- WordPress.org provides self-hosted blogs that may be slightly more complex and slightly more expensive at first, but this will usually prove to be worth it in the long run.
3. Choose Your Domain and Host
If you go with a self-hosted blog, you will need to choose your own domain registrar and web host. The domain registrar will only be used to buy your domain name. Choose something simple that relates directly to you or the subject of your blog, and it should be easy for your potential readers to identify and locate. Sites such as GoDaddy, Namecheap and others provide .com domains for as little as $5.
Then you will choose a web host that will maintain and help you build your site. Bluehost, 1&1, HostGator and others provide helpful tools that allow you to create a professional-looking blog in a small amount of time. These hosts will offer multiple plan options, but the cheapest plan usually works for anyone who is just starting.
4. Begin Writing and Spread the Word
From this point, you should have your blog up and running, and you are now ready to share your wonderful insights, ideas, stories and perspective with the world!