Starting a Blog

Starting a blog is easy, however, making money with a blog is not. The direction of this post will be towards the latter. You can still use this information as a stepping stone to start a non-monetary driven blog.

Buy a Domain

I don’t recommend starting off with a blogspot, wordpress.com, or a blogger style blog. These blogs are harder to brand, and once they become large become difficult to transfer over to a real domain. Buying a domain is easy, cheap, and establishes a legitimacy for your site.

One of the things you will want to avoid when choosing a domain is the urge to purchase a domain that matches the keywords in your niche. Doing this is shortsided. You want a brand that will transcend your initial niche, and by limiting it to a certain term will make this very hard to accomplish.

A domain name should cost you no more than 10$.

Hosting

Hosting is something people tend to worry about. Going with a host like dreamhost is a great first move that can get you the bare minimum hosting for a reasonable price. When you start off you aren’t going to need anything extravagant just get the bottom of the barrel plan and upgrade if need be.

The Right Blogging Software

My personal preference is Wordpress.

Wordpress is easy to install, easy to use, and scales well with an ever increasing blog space.

If you are a coder or an experienced blogger looking to create a community based site then you might want to consider Drupal. However, Wordpress also has an answer for this calling with WordpressMU.

Wordpress is going to fulfill all of your needs right off the bat. Wordpress has a ton of plugins for everything you can imagine that install with a few clicks. They have a wide range of support for any problems you might have, and they have a theming community that can cut any kind of design costs. Using Wordpress is a win, win situation with little drawbacks.

Finding the Time

This will be the key to your blog. A lot of people start blogs as a way to gain money on the side. This is possible, but it takes a commitment. The bloggers making a lot of money are putting an IMMENSE amount of time into their site. These people are working eight plus hours a day on their blog. If you just want to make some change on the site then plan on spending a couple hours a night on your site. Writing daily or every other day is imparative to keeping your site new and fresh. One of the main reasons people come back to blogs so often is for consistent updates.

There is a way around this.

If you have a lump of time available to you then you can write five or six posts and schedule them to be posted throughout the week. This will prevent you from having to work throughout the work week on your blog.

It is important to realize that your blog will be only as good as the amount of time you put in it. However, creating a successful blog based on a niche that you enjoy can be one of the most beneficial experiences of your life.