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The digital growth has opened more avenues into how we interact with friends and share information. Blogging is one of those ways which many people are using to claim their stake in the ever-expanding possibilities on the internet.
Blogging is an effective way to share information, whether it is your personal experiences or your expertise on a professional subject. It is also a good way to make some little money on the side while engaging in your passions or even a fulltime job. Many people have done it and are doing it, and you can do it too if you have the right content and follow the right steps.
Here are a few tips to get you started.
Choose a CMS or a blogging platform
CMS in full is Content Management System. It is the platform upon which you build, create, edit and manipulate the content of your blog.
The CMS you choose will determine the format of your blog. They usually have various types of standard themes that you can choose from. These themes determine the appearance of your blog although, with more experience, you can learn how to manipulate them to get the appearance that you want.
Some of the most popular CMS platforms by market share are WordPress, Joomla, and Blogger. There are also several other small players like Drupal and Magento.
Know your target audience
You should know what you want to write about before you start a blog. You should ask yourself what your passions are. What would you describe as the prevailing theme in your blog? Is it a lifestyle blog, a travel blog, a news site, or perhaps a sports blog?
Who are you targeting with your blog? What are the demographics you want to appeal to? For instance, you cannot start a parenting blog and be writing about politics. Knowing your target audience is important as it determines how much traffic and conversions if needed, you have. Websites such as yourcontentshop.com may assist in sorting your content.
Decide on a name for your blog
You need to choose a name for your blog. The name of the blog should be aligned with your target audience and the content of the blog. This will also be the blog’s domain name.
It should short, simple and catchy. It should lead on the internet user to know what to expect.
Decide on the hosting options
Several CMS platforms have the options for a free blog or a self-hosted one. A free blog often has URL like startblogging.wordpress.com.
Free hosting has limited monetization options though since the CMS are the ones who place their ads on your blog. They can only allow you to incorporate Adwords if your content is wildly popular and you have huge traffic.
Self-hosting is the best option if you want to have a lot of control over your blog and possibly make money off it. With self-hosting though, you have to pay for the domain’s registration and annual renewal fee. This amount averages around $25 but may vary depending on your hosting company, the RAM and bandwidth you are allocated on the server and the hosting packages they have.