I’ve become so convinced of the potential impact of the practice of blogging that I seem to try to convince everyone I come in contact with to start a blog.
Blogging is arguably the most powerful, accessible, and adaptable platform for mass communication in the world today. In you have a message . . . if you have something to say . . . if you have a contribution to make to the world that requires communication . . . there is no better way to say it than by creating a blog!
There are two extremes to avoid as you wade into the waters of blogging.
The first extreme is hobbyism. While there are 31 million bloggers in the US right now, the vast majority of them are mere hobbyists; they’re goal is self-expression and fun. The title of this site is Bloggerpreneur for a reason: for me, blogging is not a hobby; it is a business. I’m serious about creating content that will make a difference in the lives of people, I intend to get better and better at doing it, and I expect my platform to yield a return on the investment of my time and energy. While I’m not trying to make money from my readers, I’ve discovered that there are some very non-invasive ways to monetize your blog with integrity . . . once you’ve done the work of building your platform.
The second extreme is perfectionism. Perfectionism will rob you of your contribution because you will never think it’s good enough. If you have yet to start a blog, it’s probably because you feel inadequate as a communicator. You’ve written things that you don’t feel are good enough to be put out there. You need to break free of that mentality. Your blog doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough. You can improve it as you go, but the most important thing is getting serious and getting started!
The extremes of hobbyism and perfectionism come into play from the very beginning. The first thing you will need to do to create a blog is choose a platform, and there are many out there. Here’s two suggestions that will help you avoid both extremes:
- Don’t use blogspot or janga or tumblr. Those platforms are for hobbyists. What you will need is a self-hosted, WordPress platform (and not wordpress.com either), and I’ll explain why in a moment.
- Don’t hire a professional to build you a custom site with all the fixins. That’s what perfectionists do (that’s what I did!). You don’t want to spend a whole lot of money on your blog until your blog is making a whole lot of money!
Hobbyists use free platforms and free templates to build simple blogs with limited functionality. Perfectionists pay thousands of dollars to have a professional build them a custom template and then pay for their own hosting account as well.
I suggest you skip the pro web designer and save yourself a couple thousand dollars, but you will need to pay for your own hosting account. The difference is that hosting will cost you less than $100 a year on average, while a custom design will cost you thousands.
A self-hosted, WordPress blog gives you at least three long-term advantages over a hosted blog (blogspot, tumblr, etc):
- Customizability: While you will find a large number of beautiful free templates whether you go with self-hosting or not, self-hosting gives you the freedom and flexibility to customize your site outside of the boundaries of your chosen template.
- Capacity: With a self-hosted site, you can upload and store audio and video files, as well as pictures, graphics, documents, and other types of files at will. This is great for adding a podcast, or for integrating videos as you develop your site.
- Capability: A self-hosted site gives you access to a vast array of plugins and extensions that can provide you with more functionality than a hosted site will give you (like a shopping cart, etc).
Here are the steps for launching your self-hosted, WordPress blog:
1. Go to bluehost.com and signup for an account. It will cost you about $84 for the first year, and you pay that upfront.
2. The first step will be to choose a domain name. I recommend using your name, if it’s available. Don’t be too fancy with the title of your blog. People need the opportunity to connect with you before they connect with your ideas.
3. Once you are in bluehost, install WordPress under “Website Builders”
4. Once you install wordpress, you’ll receive an email with your wordpress admin url and login info. Go ahead and log in.
5. In wordpress, you will have the opportunity to choose from dozens of free templates. Not all of them are as easy to use as the others. I used Standard Theme for this site and for my personal blog, but it’s not available anymore. Have some fun with this process.
Building your wordpress blog will take a little time to figure out; its a learning curve. But once you get it, you’ve got it! In fact, I built Bloggerpreneur in one evening, and I have absolutely no training as a web designer!
Along the way, feel free to ask me questions! You can leave your questions as a comment below this or other posts, or you can leave me a voicemail using the voicemail tab on the right of your screen. I’ll be intentional about answering them either in the comments, or in future posts.
