Recently, I’ve had a few people inquire about my blog. The inquires have been focused on how to start and run a blog. These types of questions have inspired me to write a little guide. To be honest, I don’t know everything about blogging. However, I have been doing it for about 5 years. In addition, I won’t talk much about monetization because I currently do not monetize my blog. In order to monetize your blog, you have to get your own domain which you can either buy from your blogging platform or other websites. Then for WordPress at least, you have to upgrade to above the free version. Its not that expensive, but you probably want enough readership to cover the cost at least. For me, this blog was never really meant to be anything but a passion project. I can’t rule it out in the future either, but for now my readership isn’t as high as I’d like for monetization.
Introduction
The first thing you probably want to consider before even creating the actual website, is consider what your blog name, content and style. For me, it was a no brainer that I should write about history and politics because that is what I’m most passionate about. I decide on the name “Life Experiences” because I see this blog as written from my point of view. Although I often cite and use other sources, I tend to always put my perspective on everything I write.
Once you have decided on that, then look into making a website. You can use a variety of different platforms. WordPress, Blogspot, and other website providers..etc, but from personal experience, I have primarily used wordpress. I think I tried blogspot a long time but don’t remember anything. I would recommend WordPress though, because its easy to use and its doesn’t cost anything if you don’t want to pay. WordPress also provides a bunch plug ins and analytic tools to measure and see how your blog is doing. You can see the statistics for views and visitors in categories like days, weeks, months and years. You can see where people found your blog. You can see statistics for each individual post. You can see yearly stats that show you the average words written, likes, views and other metrics. WordPress also allows pretty advanced customization of your website. They have a lot of free templates, plus you can edit them to make it how you want it. I have switched my look at two times. At first, I had like a red background with white writing. Then I decided to switch it up a few years ago to be black and yellow, my current layout.
Style and Writing
Its your blog so you can decide how to write it. Here my recommendation is that you stick to the same style. I think that style can be dependent on the topic and content as well. For example, I write in more of academic style like an essay. Whereas if you were to do, for example, an old English literature blog I am certain your style would be different. My other recommendation is keep it as short as possible. There is an old saying: Long enough to cover the topic, short enough to make it interesting. I live and die by this cliche. I would say that ideally, you don’t want to go above 1500 words. The problem with very long posts is that your readers attention span is probably less than 10 minutes. So its in your best interest to keep your posts as short as you can to retain your audience.
Content
When you are thinking up ideas about what to write about, consider all your options then pick the one you are the most enthused about. I’ve written previously, in another post about writers block. You can read that here. Content can be the hardest thing about blogging. You really have to be creative and desire to put out blog posts consistently. As I wrote in that post, I have personally struggled with posting consistently especially before December 2019. I would go months without posting sometimes. I wouldn’t recommend it. If you post consistently, your views and visitors will go up or keep steady. Some of the things that help me create content is reading books, reading other articles, looking at memes, daily conversations. You should consider all interactions in your daily life as possible kindling for creating a new post! I can’t tell you how many times, I’ve read or seen something that made me go, WOW thats a great blog post!
Goals/ Intentions
This is an important topic to me because I think it weighs heavily on the integrity of your blog. In the page, About Garrett’s Blog, you can find what is basically my mission statement. From the beginning, I have vowed to educate, nothing else really matters. Also I don’t obsesses over the views/visitor numbers. I get that if you monetize those are the important numbers. Also it feels good to have people read and enjoy your work. To me, you should start a blog because you want to share your knowledge or your passion. If you start a blog just to make a little cash, its alright but it won’t be as good as the person whose drive is passion. Take this advice or don’t, it up to you. Let me also suggest that you set a goal to write consistently and gain reasonable amounts of readers. Once you have acquired some readership then turn your attention to monetization if you wish.
Sharing
One last thing, make sure to share your blog on all your social media platforms. Nothing wrong some shameless self promotion. I plug my blog on every social media I can possibly handle. Sharing on social media along with word of mouth, is how you will get the majority of your readers. Also I would recommend googling your website to see if it shows up. Sometimes you can mess with settings to make it more visible on google. I get anywhere from 5 up to 20 hits from search engines a month.
Conclusion
I hope you find this guide helpful. If you have any questions, you can drop a comment. Also I do welcome guest posts if you would like to write something but don’t feel like a whole new blog is necessary. I always enjoy helping people to learn something so I hope this does exactly that!
Thanks for reading
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