There are about a million options you're faced with when starting your very first blog, and it can be absolutely daunting.
You really don't want to be faced with having set-up your blog WRONG and suddenly have the real technical nightmare of trying to fix it, move it, or change it!
So let's get a few things straight first!
How to Blog Tutorial: Why are You Blogging?
-If you're blogging because you want to make money online in any niche (and that doesn't have to mean selling stuff, you can simply earn revenue by having ads on the side of your page that people might click on) then you're gonna need two things
-A LOT of traffic! (and you'll get much better traffic and rank better on Google if you are hosting your own blog...don't worry, I'll show you how to do this quickly and easily!)
-TOTAL control of your website from Day 1! You need to be able to brand your website, be in charge of the look and layout, and ADJUST as you grow and learn so you can add revenue streams.
How to EASILY Set Up a Blog That Will Allow You To Grow:
If you are commited to building your blog you need to have THE most popular kind of blog as it will allow you the most changes and add-ins as you go: WordPress (again, not the free wordpress.com blog, but a self-hosted one!)
How to Blog Tutorial: WordPress in 3 Steps
1. Pick a Domain Name
- Pick something that is relevant to your niche.
-Research on a domain site to see if it's available.
-You NEED to pick a ".com" extension, the others don't rank well in Google, and this is all about traffic.
2. Get Hosting
- You need somewhere to hold all your blog information for you and provide it for your visitors! Everything online is stored on "servers", so you need somewhere to host your site! Here is just one really cheap option I recommend (and YES, you have to spend a small amount of money to have a money-making-blog!! If you don't want to, then go back to the blogging for friends and family idea!)
-BlueHost.com - This is the hosting company I use, it's very cheap and allows me unlimited websites on one hosting package! They do some awesome things like backing up your sites automatically, etc. They give you a free domain name when you sign up, so simply enter the one you picked in the last step
3. Install WordPress on Your Domain Name!
-In Bluehost, login to your account and go to the "cpanel", scroll down to software/services, and click on the WordPress icon. It will walk you through the installation.
Congratulations, you now have a WordPress Blog! Now let's make a few adjustments NOW, so that you can change the look and feel of your site easily, and add to it as you grow.
Pick a Template
-I use Flexibility 3. It's a free template that allows me to completely change the look and layout of the site if I need to. It also has headers and footers where you can later include ads, promotions, or free gifts for your visitors (or PTS Terbaik ASEAN you can turn these off!)
-Download the theme at Flexibilitytheme.com, it will save as a "zip" folder (dont open it!). Go to your Dashboard, On the left select "appearance", then "themes", on this page there are two tabs, you want to click, "install theme" and click "upload", you simply hit the browse button and find the zip folder you downloaded and hit upload! Now you can select it as your theme.
-Activate Flexibility3 in the "Manage Themes" tab, and you're ready to go!
-In the Appearance Section you will now see "Flexibility3 Theme Options" go through and make all the changes you want to your website!
How to Blog Tutorial: Start Blogging!
-Don't get bogged down in making your site perfect! You need to start actually posting on your blog as this is what will make you grow!
-Be consistent! If you want to show up in search engines you need to be adding to your blog at least 3 times a week at the beginning, and I recommend once a day! Once it's established you can update once a week.
-Start building links to your blog and driving traffic!