How to Blog

Posted by Felix Okoli on Sunday May 18, 2014 at 13:8:3:

Everyone wants to become a blogger and why not? It’s a great experience for the blogger and the readers. A blog is a great media for self-expression, reaching out to people, satisfying people’s need for knowledge and information as well as a great way to make a lot of money. Below is a step by step process on how to blog.

Blogging Niche Choice: Firstly, you need to decide what it is you want to blog about. There are so many niches to choose from. Too many bloggers-in-the-making give up too early in the game; this is usually as a direct result of not being passionate about the niche they have chosen. To be a blogger you need determination, strength of character and a lot of knowledge about what you want to blog about. It is important to note that you don’t always need to know a lot about your niche if you have great researching skills. Passion for chosen niche is extremely important because sometimes success takes some time to show up at the door. In that period of time, passion is all that can see you through and help you continue putting in the hard work when it seems like it’s not doing you any good.

Decision Making - Paid vs Free: This is one of the biggest decisions you will ever have to make in your blogging life. They both have their pros and cons. Free hosting is great for people who just want to start up without having to spend a whole lot of money. The fact remains that there are quite a few people that are wildly successful bloggers using free web hosts. However, one of the cons is that over time blogging needs change according to the amount of traffic coming in. If you start off with a free web host and become successful, it is quite likely you will one day decide to go the professional route – paid hosting in order to take advantage of the features and flexibility it offers.
The only con of having a paid host would be actually paying for it. This is usually a deciding factor for a lot of people who don’t have the resources to spend on paid hosting service.

Get a Domain: Finding a domain name is always fun and there are so many places you could go to get one. Godaddy is one of the most popular domain name services with domain names ranging from about $2 - $10 per year; pretty affordable if you have the cash to spare. If you have made the decision of hosting you need to find a good web host (free or paid) as they are thousands of them and you need to find one with the features that meet your needs the most.

Theme Selection: A theme is basically the life and soul of the blog. It actually reels in your traffic like a fishing line would reel in fish. First of all however, the bait would be their search for content on your blog. They are actually going to take the bait if your blog seems like you know what you are doing. Some people would not spend more than a few seconds on a terrible blog, so be sure to choose the right theme and great colours that will combine to give the great user experience every blog visitor desires.

Create good content: Ever heard that content is King? It sure is true. Once again, people search the internet for information and if your content does not have the information they need in it, they won’t stay. Another thing that really matters when typing content is the quality of your content. You should also update your blog regularly as a regularly updated blog stands more chances of being ranked higher in the search engines and of getting return visitors.