Want to Be a Blogger

This is the first post in our ‘How to Start a Blog’ series, you’ll want to read this post before heading on to the Day One of Blogging Post. If your already a month in jump straight to our Second Month of Blogging post.

Deciding to start a blog is a wonderful, creative decision. A blog gives you the opportunity to share your thoughts with the outside world, whether they be on your life personally or on a niche topic.

However before you go live with your blog however there are a few preparations you should make:

1. First of all decide if you have the time to run a blog. While running a blog based on your feelings and going-ons in your life may not require a strict schedule, a commercially aimed blog will require time, effort and commitment.
2. Identify your area of expertise: Whether your area of expertise is travel or just plain talking shit you’ll need to narrow down what topic will be the key theme throughout your blog. Your blog is more likely to gain an engaged, constant audience if you pick a niche as opposed to blogging about all genres under the sun (e.g. blogging about politics and fashion in the same blog).
3. Research: Search through the Beginner Advice for Bloggers section we have here on Want To Be A Blogger. You’ll find all you need to know on the ins and outs of blogging, and read our Beginners guide to SEO page which is regularly updated with our best beginner tips for those in the early stages of starting a blog. You’ll want a bit of basic knowledge in SEO (not necessary for personal  journal type blogs) before starting to give your blog the best start for the search engines.
4. Once you’ve decided on a niche you can then decide on a name. Do a bit of brainstorming on this one as changing later on could cause some problems.
5. Buy your domain name and sign up for hosting, or start a free blog on WordPress or Blogger. If you go the independent way and buy your own domain name I recommend separating your hosting and domain companies.
6. Write an About Me section for your About page and choose a photo to go with it.
7. Write a couple of articles that will go online as soon as your blog goes live so your early visitors will have a choice of articles to read, again this is not as important in a personal journal type blog, but is essential in a niche blog. You may even want to set up a few posts to come out at different times over the first week.

Now you should head straight to Day one in the series. If you found this post helpful in your efforts to start a blog don’t forget to like us on Facebook or follow us on twitter.

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