Starting a Blog is undoubtedly one of the most popular Internet business opportunities at the moment and I regularly emails asking for advice on starting a blogging business. There’s a good reason for this popularity, it’s a cheap business to start and it appears to be an easy way to make a six figure income. Unfortunately while it is cheap, it’s certainly not an easy option.
Starting a blogging business involves the following fourteen simple steps:
- Decide on a topic for your blog. The topic of your blog should be broad enough that you will be able to continually add new content, but narrow enough that there is a specific target readership for your blog. You can blog about absolutely any topic you like. You don’t have to be an expert in the topic (so long as you don’t claim to be one). The best topic will be one you are interested in (it’s so much easier to write about a topic you like) and that other people will be interested in (without customers your business will fail).
- Arrange some hosting. If you are serious about running your blog as a business you will need to have your own domain name and hosting. I use Heart Internet (UK based) who provide an excellent service.
- Register a domain name. When it comes to choosing a domain name you can opt for a brandable name, your own name or a descriptive name (see my post Choosing A Domain Name for more tips on choosing a domain name) Again I use Heart Internet to actually register my domains.
- Install your chosen blogging platform. I recommend WordPress as it’s the most popular blogging platform and therefore well supported. Many hosting providers have a quick and easy install process for WordPress.
- Install a theme. Assuming you’ve gone for WordPress you can find a range of themes here.
- Register with Feedburner. This allows you to offer email subscriptions and to track the number of people that subscribe to your feed.
- Install the plugins you’ll need. I suggest you install the following as a minimum to get started:
- Sitemap Generator – creates and maintains a sitemap for your blog.
- Secure Form Mailer – Can be used to create contact forms.
- FeedSmith – redirects your RSS feed to FeedBurner.
- All In One SEO Pack – helps make WordPress more search engine friendly.
- Write your first post. Nowadays I use the first post to describe my vision for the blog, it’s useful to then be able to refer back to this when you need some inspiration.
- Get some links. Visit the following sites and get your blog listed:
- Technorati
- BlogCatalog
- A quick search on Google for “blog directory” will suggest many more.
- Write your second post. Make this something special. Make it a passionate piece, outlining your philosophy on your topic for instance.
- Monetorize it. Join an ad network, Google Adsense or find some affiliate schemes that you can promote on your blog.
- Social network it. Join a few social networking sites which you can use to promote your site and to find other related sites (Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon).
- Network. Find other blogs on similar or related topics and start posting (useful) comments on them and try to get to know the authors.
- Keep on writing. Try to add a new post daily, don’t worry writing gets easier the more you practice.
- Respond to every single comment you get on your blog.
Then it’s just a case of repeating 12,13,14 and 15 on a regular basis.
This post is an entry in the PureBlogging How to – group writing project
This blog is about business opportunities and ideas that I spot, think of or hear about and think are useful and interesting. It is intended to provide ideas and inspriation for you to help you find the right business idea for you to then grow it into a successful business.
This makes it so simple. I have a couple of people who ask about this; your article gives them easy steps to follow. Thanks.
Thanks Sharon. Unfortunately I fear some readers will still struggle on some of the technical aspects (installing WordPress for example).
P.S. Your blog looks interesting too, so I’ve just subscribed.
couldn’t agree more however having a plan and implementing it are two very different things. As the saying goes 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration s so true.
I just really began with a serius blog using wordpress. I thing that may be I need more expertise but wordpress 2.5 it’s easy and some plugin are clear and usefull.
I’ll take some tips that you share and implement at my blog.
Thanks,
[...] How To Start A Blogging Business by John Crickett [...]
[...] Crickett presents How To Start A Blogging Business posted at Business Opportunities And Ideas, saying, “14 steps to creating a blogging [...]
You forgot to mention to participate in group writing projects
Jacob – ssssh! I kept that back for a follow-up post! In which I’ll no doubt be linking to your blog
Sweet
Actually, there is one another important thing to point out.
Blog advertising will only take you so far. It’s more effective to focus on potential affiliate products that might interest your readers.
Also, although it’s good for a new blogger to write a lot, many experienced bloggers start additional blogs by preparing content pre-launch and not just any; 3-5 “pillar” or “flagship” articles that have a good chance of going viral and bringing lots of visitors to the blog early on. However, I would go even further, when visitors arrive and find an almost-empty blog, it’s a bit of a turn-off.
[...] Crickett presents How To Start A Blogging Business posted at Business Opportunities And Ideas, saying, “14 steps to creating a blogging [...]
I agree although I think most new bloggers need to learn their niche before they are able to produce good pillar/flagship content.
[...] How To Start A Blogging Business by John Crickett [...]
Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival Issue 4…
Welcome to the June 1, 2008 edition of Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival.
Terry Dean presents Quality Website Traffic posted at Integrity Business Blog by Terry Dean.
Webmaster_1 presents 5 Reasons Why Blogging Is Beneficial poste…
Having just started my own blog – this advice is very very spot on – and I am using this as a template! Thank you
This really seems to break things down for me a little, but what is the average startup costs?
Your start-up costs can be as low as £10 – if you use a .co.uk domain name and some cheap hosting – or as high as you can afford – if you choose to employ writers, buy a premium domain name and pay for advertising.
You can certainly do well investing little more than £50 and some hard work.
So.. just looking to start a blogg, I can find info on how to set up and start… but, how do you get paid?