March 29, 2012

How To Start Your Own Blog

This post comes from a question I was asked by a reader. If you haven't noticed I have a contact form now on my contact page so if you want to ask me questions I can easily answer them! My reader asked if I could tell them how to start their own blog. Now I will not say that I am an excellent source of information but I will give you all the basic knowledge that I have .

I have been making my own websites (they were freely hosted though) for years. It started in middle school and quite a few of the sites I made got me in trouble because of my teen angst and not caring what people thought. Now when you start your own blog or website you need to think first of where you want it hosted.

1. Hosting Sites
If you want to just start writing and do not have a large background in HTML or CSS then you will want free hosting sites like Blogger or Wordpress.com. These sites host your page and you can just start typing and adding pictures as you want. However with this free hosting comes restrictions like advertising and the extent to which you can really customize the look of your blog and control it.

There is also hosting sites such as GoDaddy, and Bluehost. With these you will also need your own domain name which is yourblogname.com , these can usually be bought at the same place you buy your hosting. This allows you must more control of your advertising, blog content, and expanding your readership. If you want a big readership and want to reach out to brands more then I suggest just starting your own .com and finding hosting. I will be switching to Wordpress soon!

2. What's your niche?
A niche is pretty much your topic, what are you going to blog about? Do you want to be a review blogger ( I will   write more about how to do this later) , how about just sharing your life as a parent? Do you like beauty and fashion? Pretty much anything you are passionate about or have knowledge in can be turned into your blog niche. The more narrow your topic the more you will attract your specific readers. 

3. Write, Write, Write and Communicate
Yes I will admit that when you start you will get very little traffic and comments. If you go back to my first few posts there are no comments. When I had my previous websites they were really made just for me to let stuff out and show my friends. This time I needed to go out and really find my audience that would interact with me. Once your niche is established go and check out other blogs that write about the same thing you want, find posts that interest you and comment! Making friends on the blogosphere is so helpful and fun to interact with each other!

These are just my basic tips on how to start your own blog. I will be adding another few posts about how you can make money off your blog and get products to review. Thank you reader for the question and I hope I helped you!
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4 comments:

  1. I think the biggest thing is to write write write... and also read read read... the more blogs you interact with the more you'll find that they'll want to interact with you...

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    1. Cannot agree with you more! When I first started I was such a lurker and afraid to comment, then I started to talking to people and everyone is so nice and helpful!

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  2. Great 411. Great info for the new bloggers. Thank U

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  3. Thanks for sharing, this is great info for new bloggers!

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