Do You Want to Start your own Blog? I really appreciate your decision!
Blogging is a full time career now and thousands of bloggers around the world including me are making 6 figure income.
In this article, I am going to show how you can create a blog effortlessly for almost free and make some good money like me.
The great thing about running a blog is you not only make a good amount of money with it but also get to do so many other things.
I personally started blogging for two good reasons 1) I wanted to help people and 2) Of course to make money with it.
There could be other solid reasons for starting a blog like
Blogging makes you a better writer and thinker.
You meet thousands of new people & followers through comments, social media or email.
You help and inspire others through your blog.
You can promote your own business or services through blogging.
You become popular and more confident.
Whatever is the reason, the point is a blog can be a very powerful tool for achieving various goals.
When you get so many benefits and you can create your blog almost for free then why not create your own blog today.
You just can’t ignore it.
Take my example, I started blogging in 2009. After a year, I started my blog Readscrub.com focusing mainly on jobs and career.
For next few years, I single mindedly focused on this blog and in just a period of 5 years I was able to make more than $1 million.
I bought 2 apartments with it and last year I purchased a BMW 520d Luxury Line. Moreover, I frequently travel to nice places twice a year with my family.
I could support all this lifestyle only because of blogging. (To be honest, I maintain more than one blog.)
And now I want to help out others who want to learn blogging.
So let us get started!
Free Blogs vs Self Hosted Paid Blogs
There are 2 ways to make a blog- one is free and other is by paying around $100 (Rs 7000) for a domain name & hosting.
You can start a free blog with Blogger.com, Wix.com, WordPress.com etc. but there are many limitations for creating a free blog with any of these.
To make things clearer I am giving you 6 compelling reasons why you shouldn’t start a free blog.
Domain name of your blog will look like YourBlogName.blogspot.com or YourBlogName.wix.com which is too lengthy to read as compared to a paid blog that reads YourBlogName.com.
You will face serious limitations incorporating many design changes.
Monetization will become difficult affecting your revenue adversely.
The whole process of shifting from free platform to paid one is very tedious and you might also lose some of the traffic & revenue.
Your readers, advertisers and clients are not going to take you seriously.
Lastly, you are not in control of your content because everything is in the hands of the free platform you are using. If anything goes wrong with your blog, they will suspend your blog & you can’t do anything.
I hope the above 6 reasons are good enough to convince you for not creating a free blog.
And if you want to buy a self hosted blog with any web hosting company, you have to pay $100 or more.
But today, I will show you how to get a full-featured self hosted blog in just $12 (less than Rs 1200) and that too for full 1 year.
This is less than a single outing for a movie or dinner for a family. For me, it’s like almost FREE.
When you can start a blog for just $12 then why wasting your time and effort on a free blog for few bucks?
How to Start Your First Blog in $12
Now bloggers can start a blog from getting a domain name to hosting for just $12 (Rs 1200/- in India).
Here is the step by step procedure to get up and running your first ever blog.
Step 1: Choosing a Right CMS
Step 2: Selecting an Appropriate Domain Name
Step 3: Selecting Best Hosting Provider
Step 4: Setting Up the Blog
Step 5: Designing Your Blog
Step 6: Start Earning
Let’s dig deep into each of these steps.
Step 1: Choosing a Right CMS
CMS or Content Management System is basically a blogging platform like Blogspot, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Wix, TypePad etc where you are going to put all your files in.
Out of so many blogging platforms available out there we are going to go with WordPress because of following great reasons.
It’s free.
It’s very easy to design a blog and understand its dashboard.
WordPress gives you so much flexibility to design any kind of website with the help of their 5000+ free and paid themes.
Right now there are over 70,000 free plugins offered by WordPress to run your blog faster and efficiently.
Lastly, there is a whole WordPress community out there who can help you for anything you might need while setting up a blog. Join their WordPress Forum.
98% of blogs in the world are currently using WordPress. Even I use WordPress for all my blogs including this blog Readscrub.
So I highly recommend you to create your blog with WordPress CMS.
Step 2: Selecting an Appropriate Domain Name
Step 2 is very important because a domain name is going to reflect your blog’s niche. So you have to do justice to your blog by choosing a right domain name.
My blog Readscrub.com is all about jobs and career as the very name suggests. I chose the name keeping my niche and audience in mind. So you have to do the same thing.
If you are planning to start a blog on Football or Cricket then choose names like CricketingWorld.in or SoccerFan.com.
If you love dogs and cats then go for something like CatsnDogs.com or PetsWorld.com etc.
I think you got the idea!
Following are the few things you have to keep in mind.
#1 Domain name must be in sync with the purpose of your blog.
#2 Name must be easy to remember and pronounce.
#3 While Choosing an extension you can always go for .in rather .com. If your blog is targeting Indian Audience then .in is much better. My extension is also Readscrub.com
#4 But if you are not getting the desired Domain Name with .com extension then feel free to go with other extensions like .in, .org, .net, .info, .co etc
#5 Give priority to choosing .com or .in extension.
Finalize on one of the most appropriate domain names.
Step 3: Selecting Best Hosting Provider
WordPress is just a software with which you create a blog by putting all the necessary files together.
But where are you going to host your blog?
Well that is what you need a hosting provider for?
A hosting provider stores all your content of your blog like text files, css files, images, videos etc at one place and make it available to the world.
So you need a hosting provider to use your domain name and make it accessible all around the world.
But which hosting provider are you going to choose?
In last 9 years I’ve used and experienced over a dozen of hosting providers. But one of the most reliable hosting providers I came across was GoDaddy.com
WordPress.org and most of the other top bloggers recommend GoDaddy as their first choice.
To Learn More Why GoDaddy/Hostinger Go Here!
Step 4: Setting Up the WordPress Blog with GoDaddy/Hostinger
I have an exclusive tie up with GoDaddy for my Readscrub readers.
And you get your domain for FREE.
To make things clear and simple for new bloggers we are using images with pointers.
Visit GoDaddy here.
Click on the “WordPress” Menu. Then click on “WordPress Hosting” under “Personal & Business” Section.
