How do I start a blog? This is the question that I asked myself and many others when I decided to give this a real shot.
I have always been the type of person that shares ideas of things that work and don’t work in our home. If I think that I can help you, I will share an idea with you. I think that God made us to help each other.
So, if you are thinking of starting a blog…
1- First you will want to just decide what you are going to blog about. I started out blogging about finances and then moved to organization and family. I like to cover it all. It keeps me from feeling tied to one thing.
2- Pick a name. Check to be sure that it is available.
3- Next, you need to set up a blog. You can do two things: Use a self-hosted blog or a blogger type of blog. I go with self-hosted, where you have a hosting company hold your site. (it costs money, but its worth it) You will want to watch a lot of youtube videos to figure it out at first. Or you can do a free on on blogger. If you do the paid, it will just be beckyandpaula.com (your name there). If you use blogger or something it will say beckyandpaula.blogger.com. I am not going to lie… it is a lot of work at the beginning. I spent probably 4 hours a night at first, until I got things up and running correctly. (Going back, I probably would have paid for a designer to set up my site for me, (or bought a cheap Wordpress theme on etsy for $20 just so that it would look nicer and not have taken me hours upon hours to set it up). The other side is that because I did it myself, I know so much more about setting things up and I can do it myself, so my lessons have been invaluable).
Back to the hosting thing- What am I talking about?
Think of it like this: The hosting company is the MALL and you are putting your STORE (your blog) there. You own the store, but they help with all of the details and maintenance of it. Is someone breaking in? They will handle it. You have too many people there at one time? They will move you to a ‘bigger’ server. They handle all of the “behind the scenes” things.
So, I would get a self-hosted blog with WordPress. I use a self-hosted blog for my blog, Your Modern Family.
I have heard horror stories about people using blogger and getting on to find that their website has been shut down. If you plan on making money on your blog, you will not want to use Blogger. They look down upon selling things on their page, so they often shut down pages for this.
I have heard of other ones, like Host Gator , IPage & more. Consumer Reports actually did a study on these not too long ago and picked blue host as the ‘winner’. I like blue host for beginners, because of the customer service. I call bluehost at least three times a week for technical support. I would be lost without them! If I have ANY questions, I just call them and then help me. I recommend them to everyone!Once you have had several viral posts, you will probably need to switch to a company that can handle a LOT of traffic. I get 3 million views a month & I am now using a private host, but I pay around $100 a month instead of the $5 that I paid with Bluehost, so a big difference.ps- another tip… Watch a lot of videos on youtube for how to set up your blog. I used a free theme on WordPress (weaver II theme) for years… and was very pleased with it. It was easy to use.
What do you want to know next? How to make money on your blog even if you are new? How to use Pinterest to grow your blog? How to double your page views? How to tell your husband about WHY blogging is taking so long at first?
OR… DIVE RIGHT IN!!! We created a book to walk you through exactly how to start & grow a blog!!!
