How to start your blog and start blogging?

So, you have decided to start your own blog? Great! Here is your free comprehensive guide covering all your queries like, what is a blog, the technology involved, expenses, income, and how to write, grow and maintain your blog.

What is a blog?

The word blog comes from the term Web Log. Any information, structured in form of an article and published on a website, in chronological order is called a blog. Blogs are generally based on a particular niche. This niche is selected by the owner or the writer of the blog, who are basically experts on those topics. For example, Fashion blogs, Movie blogs, Technology blogs, Lifestyle blogs, Travel blogs, Sports blogs, and others.

How to start your blog?

Anyone can start their own blog. It’s easy. Select a topic, on which you think, you have a good grasp on the subject or have some level of expertise. Subjects like:

Academic subject (e.g. physics, chemistry, history)
Your favorite sports (e.g. cricket, football, tennis)
A hobby (e.g. gardening, cooking, movies)

This is the easy part of blogging. Choose a subject (also called niche) as per your expertise and a subject on which you can write articles. When I say “articles”, I mean a “lot of” articles, based on and around the selected subject.

The tough part of blogging is to continue and maintain your blog. As a blogger, your primary task is to find new a new topic in your subject niche and publish an article in a periodic manner. Search what is happening in the world related to your subject niche and choose a topic. Research the topic and write your views and feelings and publish your article.

Many bloggers quit at a very early stage, as they lose interest. Those who continue to keep researching, and find new topics every day or every week receive equivalent appreciation.

So, now that you understand your own role, that you need to play as a blogger, let us continue and check out the technical part of blogging.

How to launch your blog website?

Creating your blog website is just like any other website and involves the same 3 common steps.

Register a Domain Name. Based on your subject, choose a decent name. Register the domain name if available.
Choose a Web Hosting Package. You don’t need massive storage to start a blog. 1 GB is enough to start.
Install WordPress and configure.

I have used RACTOW Hosting Services for all the 3 above.

There are many options available when it comes to choosing a CMS to manage and maintain your website. WordPress is the most common. It powers the majority of blogs in the world. It’s customizable, easy to use, mobile-friendly, search engine friendly, and it’s Free! Download the latest WordPress installer and install it on your website.

Read, How to install WordPress?

Once you have installed WordPress, it’s time to customize it. Choose a theme and start publishing your articles.

How to write your blog articles?

The writing part of blogging is sometimes considered a daunting task for new bloggers. We don’t find topics. To resolve this, there are tools to help. Tools like Google News, Google Trends, and BuzzSumo to name a few. Use these tools to figure out what is going on the web. What are people talking about, in the line of your expertise? It would help you to decide on a topic for your next article.

Once you have a topic to write, research it on Google, Wikipedia, News website, and other websites. Learn all about it, and then write your understanding in your own words. Compose Who What Where How of the topic. Add your viewpoints. Then use tools like Wordle, Hemingway Editor, and Yoast SEO to refine your article content.

Never copy-paste others’ content into your articles. It is lucrative to do so but, is extremely dangerous for your blogging career. Google and Copyscape bots take less than a second to identify copied content and will remove your ranking. Moreover, copying others’ content is stealing, and you don’t want to do that.

Be genuine, keep practicing and you will realize, with experience writing an article will come naturally.

What are the expenses involved to start your blog?

A blog website has some nominal expenses. Expenses for domain and hosting. A “.com” domains name will cost you around ?800 per year and a “.in” domains cost around ?600 per year. Prices may vary with different domain registrars and TLDs.

Similarly, hosting will also vary, based on the storage capacity you will buy and the hosting providers. Just like domains, hosting packages also cost you yearly. If you buy massive storage space and don’t use it within a year, or later decide not to continue your blog, you will waste a lot of money. That is why it is strongly suggested that you start with the very minimum and upgrade when you grow. We use RACTOW services for both.

Other than these, you may hire content writers and may wish to buy premium themes for WordPress, but both are not recommended for starting your first blog. You may go for it when you are earning enough from your running blog to afford it, and not pushing money from your own pocket.

Once you start getting some traction on your blog, means you are earning something out of it, that time you will realize that these are no more expenses, but are investments.

How much you can earn from your blog?

This is extremely subjective. All blogs need time to get traction. It all depends on the subject you have chosen, the number of articles, how long & frequently you are publishing, how relevant are your articles as per your selected niche, and most importantly does Google rank your articles. A blog with relevant and good content is naturally ranked by Google, and your blog starts receiving Organic Traffic, and your page views start increasing. This is when Google AdSense and Affiliate marketing can be used for monetizing your blog content, and you start earning.

When your blog start earning, it is your passive income. I have seen bloggers start earning approximately ?1,000 per month from their blogs. And after a year, the same blog was earning ?1,00,000 per month. There exist many blogs, which earn more than ?20,00,000 per month and more. So, you can very well understand in terms of earning, the sky is the limit.

How to grow & maintain your blog?

As mentioned earlier, starting a blog is an easy task. The tough part is to grow and maintain.

To grow your blog, you must be consistent. Don’t think of money, unless you have published 100 articles. Practice and make a habit of researching, writing, and publishing your articles. While starting, keep your focus on this only. By the time you publish 100 articles, you will gain a good level of blogging experience. This experience will drive you to success.

Learn new tools and techniques. Implement them on your blog. See what works and what doesn’t. Use online/offline tools to tune your content.

Don’t be money-minded. When you think of money, you will be demotivated very soon, as new blogs don’t get traction. It needs time. Three to six months, minimum. Some might take longer.

Make sure your sitemaps are updated in Google Search Console, and you don’t have any pages that throw errors. I will look forward to publishing some detailed articles on tools and techniques.

Read this article to prepare your website for Google.