Why you should blog? There are several reasons and motivations why one would blog. First, blogging is a good source of passive income. There are more profound reasons why one would blog that doesn’t relate to any monetary reward.
Blogging as self-expression
Blogging is an expression of what you love to do and share it to the world. It gives you a venue to share your ideas, thoughts, opinions, workmanship, expertise to the world who have similar interest as yours.
- Online reputation as an expert in your field or niche.
- Help people find solutions to their problems.
- Boost your business with engaging blog topics.
- Improve writing and communication skills.
- Meet online people with similar interest as yours.
- You can really make passive income out from blogging or even make it your bread and butter.
Overall, the benefits blogging will make you a better person. You will gain more confidence, manage your time wisely, make new connections and hopefully, a financially independent.
What to blog
I’ve been blogging for over 5 years now and I have several blog niches of my interest and what would I love to write. Blogging isn’t easy! It really takes up your time, energy and effort. It has ups and downs like most of our day to day things to do.
- Your blog must be, what ignites you, it would be your passion.
- It is a topic where you can consider yourself knowledgeable about.
- Engaging write ups, invite other people to discuss, share ideas, thoughts, and opinions.
Blogging is a “to do” item that must frequently be done to become successful. Your blog topic must be something you enjoy doing.
Blogging Niche Ideas to keep you started
- Personal Finance – many people look for saving, growing, investing and money management.
- Health and Fitness – you might want to share your fitness journey, diet and exercises.
- Beauty and Fashion – latest beauty and products, dresses, etc that you have been tried to and looks great.
- Lifestyle – talks about city living, country side beauty, artists and trends.
- Travel – shares places you have visited, the people, culture, etc.
- Food – if you are a food hunter or have own menu to share.
3 Basic Steps to get your Blog Up and Running
1) Blogging Platform
There are several blogging platform to choose from. These two are the most favored free blogging platform. You can immediately sign up these free service and start writing your first article.
1. WordPress.com by Automattic
2. Blogger.com by Google
However, if you want your brand or blog to stand out, experts recommend to get a self hosted services. A quick look between the two:
Self-Hosted – e.g yourblogname.com
Free hosted – yourblogname.freehosting.com; freehosting.com/yourblogname
Self-hosted sites are limitless while the Free hosted are dependent on what feature is available or allowable by that host company. Checkout the difference between the two in detail here.
If you need help in setting up in a self-hosted environment, I am more than happy to assist you. Please check the services page for more information about the services I offered.
2) Domain name for your blog
Your domain name will be the web address of your blog site, eg webblyfrog.com/blog. It is where people type in the url to read your articles. There are exhaustive guide out there in choosing a name for your blog, however here are the 3 main keys:
- It must be short and easy to remember.
- It should be unique and descriptive to what your blog is about.
- Use primary extensions such as “.com,” “.net” or “.ph” .
Once you’ve decided your domain name, next step is to get a good hosting company.
3) Get a hosting company
There are several considerations in choosing for a hosting company and it each have its own strong and weak points. For us in blogging community, we don’t need much that of high end providers and their high end services. There are actually three considerations to make:
- Uptime – We don’t really need 99.9% uptime, 98% is fair enough unless there are critical losses for your blog if it goes few hours of downtime.
- Speed – Speed is important, this is the time it takes your page to load on a computer or device. The faster the loading time the better. Many visitors liked those pages that loads fast.
- Cost –different packages from different providers, select a package that is enough for our blogging needs. The better the package, the higher the cost.
There are several top providers that meet these needs, to name few, there is, Go Daddy, BlueHost, HostGator and many more. If you just get started, our recommendation is get Bluehost. The GUI is super user friendly which you can setup yourself in few minutes. They have good CPanel interface and even have one-click install for WordPress!
That’s all the 3 main steps to keep your blog up and running. From here, you might want to play along with various themes and plugins that suites your tastes.
Your blogging journey has just begun! Enjoy and write exciting stuffs!
