subject: How To Blog [print this page] Blogging can be a very interesting and exciting exercise to engage in. Imagine if you have a thought you want to share, an idea or conviction you want to propagate, a blog provides you a platform to get such views across to a world-wide readership audience you would not have otherwise reached if you used your local media with their limited coverage.
The term blog besides being a noun is also used as an active verb to denote setting up a blog site as well as other associated knowledge based skills to get the site populated with relevant contents and up and running in the cyber space.
In learning how to blog, therefore, it is important to decide either to use a free or a paid blog or even both. The free blogs are blogs for which you, the blogger would not be required to pay a dime to set up and run. Two main internet giants namely, Blogger.com and Wordpress.com stand out as hosts of free blogs. There are, however, other sites that have joined in this generous act of hosting free blogs on the internet.
The difference between a paid and a free blog is that instead of your domain name ending with say, http://yourdomain.com or .net as in paid blogs, your domain ending will now bear the name of the host like in http://yourdomain.blogspot.com or http://yourdomain.wordpress.com. In addition, the site remains online at the pleasure of the host and the blogger is allowed to use the site only within the framework of the rules stipulated by the host. For instance, Blogger.com would insist that you should not use the site for obscene matters like pornography, promotion and sale of illicit drugs, to abuse someone or foster some undesirable interests. You will get the details and the exact wordings in their site.
The good news, however, is that many of the free blogs have remained online as long or even longer than some paid blogs in as much as their owners continue to play by the rules. Again, some of the free blog sites also rank very well in search engines like paid blogs and can be used to promote legitimate businesses like affiliate programmes in the same way you do with paid blogs.
However, people who want to be more professional and would like to be taken seriously as such would prefer to have paid blogs instead. To start a paid blog, the first thing you will do is to look for a good domain registrar, search for the availability of your desired domain name and register it. Of course, you must be guided in your choice of domain name by certain factors such as the name of the business around which you may wish to frame your sites domain name. For people who want to couch their blog domain around their personal names, they are free to do so. They can search for availability and coin it as it suits them. On the other hand, if you want to do niche blogging, you must do some keyword research to know how profitable your proposed niche is, to enable you secure a domain name in a profitable niche area.
Having found an available domain in your chosen niche area or in line with your personal or company name, as the case may be, you will proceed to register it accordingly. The next thing you will have to do is look for a reliable blog host with dedicated servers to host your blog. Having completed all your registration and hosting processes, you will be assigned your log in particulars that will enable you access into your Control Panel and your host Admin Area, from where you can commence the setting up of your blog.
When you have completed the setting up and your blog is up and running, you can now log in to your blog Dashboard to configure your blog according to taste. Then, you can begin to populate your blog with contents as you may deem appropriate.
