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How To Start a Blog – Beginner’s Guide for 2017

There’s so much information available online about starting a blog that you may feel overwhelmed. We have been offering advice on how to start a blog, based on our own experience and expertise since 2003. In that time we have launched several of our own blogs, and helped hundreds of others do the same.

Starting a blog is simple, relatively easy, and definitely easy to understand. Follow these 5 steps and within thirty minutes you will have set up a blog and can begin writing.

Start a Blog

Step 1 – Choose your preferred blogging platform

Choose where you want to build your blog. Companies like WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr are well known and have millions of active users. These sites allow you to set up a blog easily and at no cost, providing a broad range of styles so that you can create a blog that combines the functions that you need with the style that you want. They also have support forums if you get stuck.

Step 2 – Choose web hosting for your blog

You need a web host to start a blog. Web hosting is like a computer hard-drive on the internet where your blog will be saved. There are free web-hosts, but they have their downsides. First, you will not have your own domain name. On a free blog, your blogs URL will incorporate the name of the free blog service that you use, so it will look like yourblog.hostname.com.

There are also limitations to free blogs. Uploading all your videos and images may not be possible. Also, if you want a blog to create an income, that is not possible on a free site.

Finally, you do not own your own blog on a free site. As it is hosted on someone else’s web property, they can delete your site if they wish, causing you to lose all your work.

Step 3 – Setting up a blog on your own domain

A self-hosted blog is yours to own and allows you to choose your own URL or domain name. You can end your URL with .com, .co.uk, .net, .org, or virtually any other web suffix. If your chosen name is already taken, they all offer alternatives that are close to what you want.

You will also get unlimited bandwidth for videos, images and content. This means that your website will be fast and interaction with your clients simple. The cost for this is between 5 and 10 dollars per month. Nearly all hosting companies have a ‘one-click’ hosting company button that will automatically install on your blog.

Step 4 – Designing your blog

Choose a new theme in a style that reflects your personality and what the blog is about. Choose a theme that looks professional and is easy to customise. If you want to change your theme once you’ve started, this is usually possible without losing any of your content.

Your blog must be easy to navigate. If it is difficult to move around your site, people will neither stay nor return.

Step 5 – Useful Resources For Bloggers

There’s always more to learn that can improve your blog. There are several resources online to help you fix blogging mistakes when you start, lists of FAQs and tips to boost your success.