A Beginners Guide To Blogging: How To Start A Blog

by Peter Nisbet

It is logical for a beginners guide to blogging to begin with information on how to start a blog. However, first a brief introduction to what a blog actually is. A blog is nothing more than your online diary or journal, in which you can express your feelings, thoughts, and opinions or even advertise your products. There are few rules apart from keeping it clean. For that reason they come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and designs, and your blog page is literally yours to anything you want with.

You can include pictures, hyperlinks to your websites, MP3s and videos. Much depends on the type of blog you have and who is the provider, but Wordpress allows more than Blogger or Blogspot, especially if you have downloaded it to your own website. However, it is also more complicated and you might prefer to start off easy and then work your way up as you become more familiar with what you are doing. Many cPanel web hosts offer Wordpress facilities.

The basic components of a blog are:

Title: You can use the title to label your posting.
Category: You can add a category to keep blogs on similar topics together.
Body: This is the main content of the blog.
Trackback: This allows other sites to link back to your blog.
Permalink: This is the URL that goes with every blog that you write.
Comments: This allows readers to make comments on your blog – some good, and some bad.

By means of just one or two templates you can easily create new pages. It’s a bit like having a website and copying your home page as a template for all the rest of the pages, only the blog template is blank with spaces for the title, category and all the other aspects of your blog. The blogging websites that you sign up with offer a number of templates and you can choose one and literally start blogging immediately.

Blogging can be more that just your own personal thing, and you can join groups that blog about specific topics, such as football, movies, music, blogging, etc, etc. You can all share your expertise and knowledge and some are literally operating as forums. You can also use your blog to advertise a product, and to drive traffic to your website, while others have no website and use their blog as their sole communications window on the internet.

I could go on all day about what you can do and, sometimes, cannot do with a blog, but the best way is to get started and then find what you are capable of. The best way is to log onto the blog provider of your choice and sign up for a blog. Most newcomers to blogging find it easiest to start blogging from a provider’s website, and then graduating to installing blogging software on their own website

This is a bit trickier, but it allows you use all the plugins that allow total personalization of your blog so that it is completely unlike that of anybody else. You cannot use plugins when you run your blog from the provider’s site, whether it is Wordpress or any other blog. You cannot beat having your own blog software and being able to design any page that you want.

However, although this sounds great to be able to do, on the whole you are likely best to start blogging from the blog hosting site, and then graduate to your own website once you are comfortable with blogging. You will have enough to take in and learn when you upload to your own web space without having to worry about how blogging works.

Blogging is fantastic fun, and it can also be very profitable. However, there are specific techniques involved in making money using blogs, and it is very easy to get your fingers burnt if you are unaware of the pitfalls and the right way to do it. Nevertheless, blogging can be very rewarding, both personally and financially, so best of luck, and get blogging now. Don’t leave it a minute longer because you might have a lot to learn yet.

Once you have learned how to start a blog, then you can think of running your own from your own website.

About the Author

For more information on the main blog sites, and how to start blogging yourself, visit Pete’s website Create A Blog where you will be provided with some useful information and links, and also some great offers to help you make money while enjoying blogging.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

How To Make Money Blogging

by Peter Nisbet

If you know how to make money blogging, then it is possible to make a living from your blog. There is a lot of money in blogging if you know how to go about it, although not all of them are suited to all people.

To most bloggers, their blog is a means of communication, and something that they love doing just for the fun of blogging. They do not feel the need to money from their blogs, or at least not initially. However, the longer many people are involved in blogging, the more they tend to add monetization to their page. They can do this in a number of ways, although if you are new to blogs, you should probably get your blog known before trying to find ways of making money from your visitors.

Blogging is not so much a skill as an art, and there are many excellent bloggers that wouldn’t know where to begin to make money with internet marketing. So, if you are used to making money on your websites, then make sure that you understand how to blog before you try to make money from that as well. The reason for that is that blog readers are not like search engine users. They are not necessarily seeking information or the answer to a problem. They likely want to be entertained, or to find out what their favorite blogger has to say next.

When you are considering how to make money blogging, therefore, you have to consider what type of blog you need in order not to scare away those in it for the fun. Any ‘how to’ blog would be a good candidate, although it depends on the subject that you offering information on how to do it! ‘How to Avoid Spending Money Online’ would be a very popular blog, but not conducive to attracting people just dying to open their wallets for you!

‘How to Avoid Spending Money Online – only $97 Buy it here’. Ha-Ha! Some chance. So consider the topic of your blog. If you are offering information, for example info on training dogs, then you can add some Adsense blocks o your blog and make some money that way. If your readers want to, they can click on one of the links for more information.

You could also add an affiliate product that is relevant to your topic. Don’t overdo it, just add the one and see how it goes. To do this, you have to be able to control your blog content and formatting. To have total control you should run your blog from your own website, rather than from blogger.com or Wordpress.com. Download your own blogging software, and Wordpress offer a free download from wordpress.org – that is probably your best bet if you need total control.

There are other ways in which you can use your blog to make money, one of them being to advertise your websites on your sidebar. You can modify your sidebar using HTML from your Dashboard, though will have to be using the downloaded version. You can also include a good affiliate offer in your sidebar. Any product will do that is related to the topic of your blog. Don’t have a blog about carp fishing and offer dog training courses. I know it seems obvious, but you would be surprised!

Another thing you can do to make money indirectly from blogging is to include an opt-in form somewhere on your blog. You could add one to each blog, but the easiest is simply to put it on your sidebar. This works best with a three column blog, but you could add it to the top or bottom of your sidebar for maximum effect.

These are just one or two ways how to make money blogging, and it just takes a bit of imagination for you to think of many more that you can use to make money while enjoying your blogging. People don’t mind paying for stuff they want to buy, and those that are not interested don’t have to click on your links. Many people make their living from blogs and if you know to do it properly, you can do the same. All it takes is a bit of thought and the knowledge of what can be done and must be done to achieve it.

About the Author

For more ways in which you can make money blogging, click below where you find a whole number of possibilities for you to use your blog for profit: CLICK HERE: Blog Profits If you want to be a financial success, your blog can help you to achieve your ambitions.

Article Source: Content for Reprint