How to create your own blog: 9 steps to start with a personal blog or business blog today
If you will ask me where I get topics to write every week’s blog post my answer would be my interaction with people. My recent interaction motivated me to write a blog on this topic “How to create your own blog”. No doubt we all have so many ideas and writing is one of the best ways to express your ideas. Everyone can be benefitted from blogging from small businesses to individuals. Read this post to know why blogging is important for your business
In this post (how to create your own blog), I will be covering the prerequisites for starting a blog and how to post your first blog post. I will try to be detailed so that you can continue writing your posts and make your blog a success.
Pre-requisites for how to create your own blog
- Think of an idea
- Decide paid blog Vs free blog
- Explore Domain provider
- Explore hosting provider
- Integrate hosting with domain
- Decide the theme of your blog
- Shortlist important main pages
- Start with the first blog post
- Be consistent with your posting
1. Think of an idea – The most important step of how to create your own blog
The idea should be unique or should really intrigue you. Starting a blog is easy because we have 4-5 ideas for blog posts. But struggle starts after initial months when we don’t have enough ideas for posts. So, create something which involves your learning and can generate new ideas for you. It is good if we have an idea which is unique as we will have less competitors but having a common idea is also fine as long as your motive is to add value in lives of people
2. Decide paid vs free blog
I never recommend going for spends till the time you are sure about the idea, audience and the most important your commitment. In case you are just trying the explore writing or your genre of interest, there are various options for free blogging. Blogging sites like blogger & wordpress(wordpress.com) help you create free blogs. You need to sign up and create a blog with the name you want. Without deciding this step, you cannot move to the next steps of how to create your own blog
Benefits of having a free blogging account
- No cost involved
- You get a link of your blog and can share on social media
- Some platform allows you to run ads on your blog once you start getting significant traffic
- Best way to know how your audience is reacting to your content
- Offers analytics tool to track the performance of blog and blog posts
How can you tell the difference between paid & free blog?
A free blog is hosted on a different domain. For example, you create a blog on blogger with the name stayfitinlockdown, your domain will be visible as stayfitinlockdown.blogger.com
On the other hand, if you have a paid blog you will have a simple domain that is accessible form google. For example, stayfitinlockdown.com or stayfitinlockdown.in (you pay for this domain & hosting). We will talk about buying domain & hosting in detail.
Benefits of paid blog
- Your website is hosted publically and accessible from search engine
- Complete control in your hands from customisation to enabling of important tools
- Better chances of visibility on search results
- You own the blog so it’s your business
- Easily convertible to website or eccommerce platform
- Choose theme & better tracking through Google Analytics and webmasters tools(These are tools by google which helps you in tracking traffic on your website)
It is important to know the benefits of paid vs non paid blog before starting with how to create your own blog
3. Explore Domain provider
The domain is the name of your blog with .com. co.in, .net or .in at the end. There are various options of domain providers like godaddy, hostgator etc. While starting a new blog, it is not advisable to spend money without research. Steps recommended are
- Search on Google – best domain providers
- Read reviews and look for providers which offer support & guidance
- Select providers who have decent reviews
- Compare pricing models
- Go for 2-3 year package if you are sure about consistency. Otherwise select for one year plan
- Select the basic domain which is easily available, don’t hunt for premium domains. Starting with .in & .co.in is also fine
4. Explore Hosting provider
Hosting is like space you are renting on the web for your website.
The process of selecting and finalizing the hosting provider is the same as for domain providers. Almost all domain providers provide hosting service so one needs to look at the combo plan for all. Combo plans are much more convenient as it is easy to integrate domain & hosting on the same platform.
Read my post to analyze the web hosting service for your new blog – Host4Geeks Review 2020. It is best to consider review posts while selecting hosting service for yourself in your journey of How to create your own blog
5. Integrate hosting with domain
When I bought a domain & hosting, I was confused that why these two are required. I used to think having a domain is enough for the website. In simple words, if have to explain it would be
Buying a domain means you have bought a house but you need an area or address of it. The address of your house is your web hosting. You are renting some space on the web so you need to pay for it (in the form of hosting). I will soon write a hosting review on Ahead with digital which can help you decide which hosting service ie better for you
6. Decide the theme of your blog
Have you ever noticed some websites are so easy to navigate and look simple & user friendly. This is because of theme they have selected at the backend. There are so many backend to select for blogs but wordpress is the simpler one from my experience. Some themes are paid but unlimited options are available for free themes. Check other blogs, see which theme you like and try to find the same on wordpress. You can change theme anytime so you can experiment.
Important point to note
I had a blog earlier and I selected a theme which was complex and appealing. The theme was incomplete without logo so I was quite panicked about not having logo. I tried creating one but it didn’t look professional. I wasted so much time figuring out logo instead of writing. My main lesson for you from my experience is Have a theme which is simpler and focus on writing and creating an audience base. Beautification and everything else is possible later so start with a basic theme
7. Shortlist important main pages
Start your blog with the most important pages like the main page where all blog posts are visible and the about us page. About us, page is important as it will communicate your vision and motive about your blog. Other pages can be added basis the requirement. For example, if you have multiple services or categories in writing, you can create a specific page for that
8. Start with the first blog post
Once you are done with the above steps of How to create your own blog, you can start writing your first post. Writing a post is simple as we have content images boxes to add. We can simply add those and make our content more readable for the users. I will cover a separate post on how to improve the readability & SEO of your blog posts. So, stay tuned
9. Be consistent with your posting
The most important thing to ace the blogging game is consistency. It doesn’t matter if you post 5 blogs in first week and no blog for next two months. What matters is consistency. Pick a day in a week and be consistent with a posting. Organic rankings will take time to appear but your efforts will pay off. Subscribe to Ahead with digital to ace your blogging game
Frequently asked questions related to How to create your own blog
How do I start a blog?
The most important thing required to start a blog is motivation followed by action and consistency. Once you have these then you need to have an evergreen theme around which you can create multiple posts. Once these pointers are confirmed then refer to prerequisites for how to create your own blog mentioned above.
Here is the blog post Host4Geeks Review 2020 to help you decide how to buy a domain & hosting for your blogs. All your queries are welcomed in the comment section below.
What are the basic steps to start a blog
The basic step to start a blog is create a free blog on wordpress, blogger, medium and other blogging platforms. Start writing blogs and see the performance and how people are reacting to your posts. The most important thing to note are
- If you can be consistent with posting
- Can your theme help you in writing multiple posts
- How big is your audience
Once you are confident about above pointers you can consider buying a domain and hosting and having your own blog ð
I believe these are very important pointers to consider while thinking of how to create your own blog.
Nice one
Nice and useful information.
Splendid..