How To Set Up A Blog?

What i am gonna show is pretty straight forward and require no great skills on how to set up a blog? I am gonna share with you my experiences on setting up a blog using the necessarys tools, where to get them, how to write contents and how much you need to fork out? But first, you need to know this.

If you are serious about blogging you need to know blogging is a Great Internet Marketing for a number of reasons.

1.Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get your piece on the net is through blogging. No skills are necessary? an average adult can read and type, or at least click a mouse. It's like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. If you have a PC and an Internet connection (who doesn't?) then you can blog and advertise.

2. Blogging is authentic. Everyday in the world we are living, everywhere you go, you see saturated advertising products claims that are great. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, unscathed by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience. Do you go for first-hand experience products or famous people advertising products for corporate companys.

3. Blogging is free. Blogging is the most use tool by people who wants a piece of action on the cyberspace. It can also generate you income if you want to build an online growing business using adsense for example. That is one way to monetize your blog.

4. Blogging builds credibility. As you get more and more into writing your experiences on a particular product or industry, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts for their own information needs. As your readers grow to such an extend, corporates or companies will notice and will ask you to promote their products as their affiliate or joining them as JV partners. You can even a percentage cut if they think you have the potential to grow your readers in millions.

First And Foremost.

You need to chose a version of your blog. I suggest you use Wordpress. The latest version is Wordpress 2.7.0.

Next, you need to choose a topic for your blog. Topic must be relevant to your blog. Don't write about dogs if your blog is something about online business. it is better to write about blogging tips if you like to blog. Make sense.

Next you need to choose a domain name for your blog. Something like Jeffreyblogonline if you are writing about your online journey. Writing about my online journey is relevant to the contents of my blog.

As your blog need a space to live in, you need to get a webhosting company to store your datas. It is advisable to get a webhosting yourself so that it's own by you. You don't need a webhosting company if you are self hosted. That is to say, you don't have control on your blog. If anytime wordpress decided to shut you out from cyberspace for whatever reasons, you don't have the right to stop them.

Basically, that are the four main things you need to start your blog.

Number One.

You need to get a wordpress blog. That is what i am using so , i suggest you go along with wordpress. I don't want to go too technie on do this and do that. Do a google search on how to set up a wordpress and whoailah, tons on informations for you to choose and get started. It's real easy.

Choosing a topic for your blog is not a easiest thing to do. Before you a select a topic for your blog, you must ask yourself what are your passions in life? I have check out a lot of blogs before i decided on my journey to online blogging where my blog covers internet marketing, personal developments and making money online. Here are some of topics or ideas to get you started :

1) Parenting

2) Football

3) Gardening

4) Personal Development

5) Real Estate

6) Fitness

7) Finance

Movies

9) Programming

10) Your Journey Online

11) Dating Tips

12) Collect Stamps

13) Rear Pirahnas

You can start literally anything as long as you remember this : You must have passion and lots of interest to keep on blogging because blogging is about contents and it's evergreen. What you don't want is to let your blog die on it's own say after a month, ownership lost interest in it. i do a lot of research on other blogs (some on Alex Jeffreys students) and constantly improving myself. That's is why i don't feel like it's a hassle when i am writing contents for my blog because I am documenting my life long journey in internet marketing.)

Where do you get a domain name for your blog? Go to http://www.prouddomains.com or http://www.namecheap.com and search a name like your own name or topics related to your blog to see whether it is taken up or not. It is advisable to get a name that is related to your topic in order to do very well with Google or any other search engines. It cost about less than $10.00 for a domain name and you can own it for a year.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES : You can get a complete step by step guide on getting a domain name at www.deanholland.com or if you love videos presentation then head on to http://www.courtneytuttle.com. I actually started my blog when i watched court's video tutorials. Enough said, now what next?

A web host is a computer on the internet that store your website. You buy a web hosting so that your site/blog has a place to "live" on the internet. I strongly suggest you get a Host Gator Account at http://www.hostgator.com for your web hosting. Select the baby package when you started out. I have been using them for sometime now and so far haven't got any problems whatsoever. They have a support phone number that you can call if ever you messed up something. After you setup your hosting, it will take a couple of hours before it becomes active.

It cost less than $10.00 a month for your web hosting and it's cheap consider where you can get a piece of action on cyberspace .

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES : You can get a complete step by step guide on how to host your blog. Here are the links.

http://www.deanholland.com. Check out his free e-book there.

http://www.courtneytuttle.com. Check out the free videos tutorials on how to start a blog series there.

After you set up your web hosting, you need to install your blog. As i mentioned earlier, i am using worpress and i strongly recommended you use wordpress. It is the best around and it has a lot of functions. Recently, it has been updated to version 2.7 and it does a lot of work for you. It requires a little a bit of work on your part to install it and what better way to guide you thoroughly from start to finish is to read up Dean Holland free e-book and watch video presentation - how to blog series by Courtneytuttle. After you have install your blog, go and check all the functionalities. You would want to get a feel of your blog. After you install your blog, you will start writing contents to your blog.

That's a scary thought for newbies, isn't it. What to write, how to write or style of contents/words to use or write to the whole world. fred not. If you don't have any clues or ideas to write, i suggest you check out some of the Alex Jeffreys students blog at my sidebar. You can check out other bloggers to read what they have to say. You should also reading news of blogs that offer the same topics as yours. From there, you can pick up ideas to start blogging. ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS, DON'T EVER COPY YOUR COMPETITORS BLOG CONTENTS EXACTLY TO YOUR BLOG CONTENTS. You don't want your blog to be just follow/copycat/static from others but to stand out from the rest or yoUr competitors. Think of uniqueness.

Some of you might be asking how many times or how frequent should i write. If possible, write a post everyday. A blog can really gives you the unique abilities to attract a lot of visitors to your site everyday. If the visitors like what they read on your blog, they will come everyday to check and read your blog. Most readers will know if what you blog will give them added value or if you just put up contents that sucks or no value. So, i recommend that you write contents that is a lot of value to your readers and they will follow and be your regular visitors. Okay, i hear you saying, we are not writers. Then, write at least three to four posts a week.

When i put up my first post on my blog, i tried to write a perfect post and i can't get going. Took me about an hour to realize that my mistakes in order to write a perfect post is not to write a perfect post. JUST DO IT.

Check out my first post and you know it is not perfect. (this is how feel)

Here are some of the points to remember when you write on your blog :-

- write in your simple language

- write about yourself, your online journey in blogging, what you want to achieve in life and what it's mean to achieve it,etc%u2026 (if you don't know what to write)

- it doesn't have to be perfect or same style like mine (you know what i mean). Everybody have their unique style of writing and trust me people will comment nice things about your contents.

- make sure your contents is of great value to your visitors. they will follow your blog and will be your assets for life.

- learn your mistakes (eg spellings, grammers) by writing frequently.

Recently i just install a RSS feed on my blog. So, what is a RSS Feed? RSS FEED is time reducing for your visitors who frequently read your contents. They can subscribe to your feed and anytime you put up a new post, they will be able to read your new post without spending time to go over to your blog and read your new blog.

For this, i want to laid it out step by step for you to save a lot of your time to implement it hassle free. To be honest with you, i was really struggling with setting it up for about a week.

Where to you start ?

1. Go to feedburner website at http://www.feedburner.com and follow the following instructions and your RSS feed will be quickly set up in about 5 minutes time.

2. At the feedburner website, put in url of your blog and hit next. Put in your details to sign up. Once is done, click "Activate Feed".

3. You will see your success link like this http://feeds.feedburner.com/*YOUR_NAME*

4. In your FeedBurner account page click on Optimize tab and activate "SmartFeed". This will ensure your feed is compatible with most readers.

5.Next, click Publicize. Then under services in the left hand menu bar select "Chicklet Chooser". I select the standard feed icon.

6.Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will see your html code to copy and paste. Before you do that, I usually change the part in the html code that says "Subscribe in a Reader" to something like "Subscribe to My Feed" this is totally up to you.

7. Log into your wordpress blog and (in version 2.7) choose appearance and then select widgets. You want to add a next "Text" widget to the widget area you want your Rss feed to show - usually the top of your right sidebar.

8. Now copy and paste the html code from FeedBurner into this text widget, save and your done!

Now, my fellow friend of Alex Jeffreys student, Ryan Price also put up a superb post on this. Go check it out at http://ryans1.com.

Okay, i did promise that i have a blogging tip to share with you in my previous post. When I started my make money online adventure about four months ago, i began with affiliate promotions. If you sign up as an affiliate promoting products for merchants, normally you will given an affiliate id like this : http://www.youraffiliateid.clickbank.hop.php.numbers. What you need to do is to cloaked your affiliate link id so that some online fraudster won't be able to steal your commission.

Go over to http://www.tinyurl.com to shorten and protect your link. It's so easy. The last you don't want to happen to you when you made a sale and realise your commissions has not been credited to your paypal account.

Dear readers, i hope i have cover as thoroughly as i can so you won't get stuck or miss out anything. Some of things for example Web Hosting, i didn't put up step by step is because it will be a very biig monstrous post and i didn't want my blog post have a ten thousands word count. That is why i have put up the two recommended resources to guide you all the way for my fellow readers. I would like you to fully utilised the recommended resources and you will not miss a thing. If any readers have any comments/feedbacks/stuck with some of the steps above or questions to ask, do drop by my comment box. I hope it has been enjoyable reading for you and if it's been any help to you or value informations that you have been searching for, then i am so pleased.

Blogging is evolving all the time. You need to keep reading by checking other blogs that are related with the topics to your blog and implement it to your blog. By giving value contents, helping and sharing with your readers, only then your readers will grow by leaps and bound.