Blogging is simply writing in your own personal style about a topic or niche on the internet for others to read. Most blogs are updated on a schedule and they can have several new posts each day or maybe only one or two post each month. Some blogs are written by just a single author and others contain several different ones, maybe even hundreds on some of the larger sites. Most blogs focus on one topic or genre. Then they explore deeply into that topic by dividing it into sub-topics or categories. There are no specific rules to make a blog a blog. Anything can be considered a blog and the every single thing I said can be the opposite and it still be a blog. Isn’t that fun!
You might ask “Well what’s the difference between a blog and a website?” That’s like asking me whats the difference between a cheeseburger and a big mac. A website can be any piece of information on the internet for any purpose. A blog, an e-commerce site, a video site, pictures, etc. Referring to a website as a blog in basically just being specific about what kind of information that site will contain.
If your thinking of starting a blog and don’t know if you should ask yourself some basic questions. Are you doing this for a hobby or to make money? How much money do you have for a start up cost? Do you like to write? How good are you with computers and the internet? Those are some very basic questions you should ask yourself. You will find me being blunt sometime and here it goes now. If you don’t know at least a good basic foundation of computers and the internet then you are going to struggle with making money online, even with something simple as blogging. I know that sounds harsh but it is true. Don’t worry I can help you get there.
If you and I make a blog about the same topic with similar ideas, how are you going to get more traffic then me? Without traffic you might as well write your blog articles on a piece of notebook paper and put it in the drawer in your kitchen. It has a better chance of being seen and making you money there. All jokes aside you can’t go into the business of making a blog barely being able to turn on a computer and typing at less than 10 words per minute. It won’t happen stop wasting your time and go get a second job.
The good news is that anyone with enough determination and dedication to learn the skills they need will be able to succeed, even without any good computer skills to start with. It just takes some time. You don’t wake up and decide to be a doctor one day and go apply at your local hospital for a job do you? NO! You have to go to school for at least 8 years to even qualify to make basic diagnosis of patients and perform medical practice.
As far as the start-up cost goes, a blog can be started for under $50 and that makes it an awesome idea for somebody on a tight budget. Your domain name will run you about $10 / year and the web hosting can be done for about $5 / month. If your site gets larger and starts getting more traffic you might want to consider a more premium web hosting package such as a private server and those can run around $100 / month, sometime less.
Writing is a must if you are starting a blog. You don’t have to be an expert with a college degree, but what you put down at least has to make sense. You can use the wonders of spell check and grammar check to fix most basic mistakes. However, they fix small errors they do not rewrite a piece of information to make more sense to the reader. If they did 1000s of editors would be without a job right now. If you absolutely can’t write or don’t want to you can source content from other places. It’s a much harder or more costly route to go but it is very possible to do. There are websites like textbroker that have an army of freelance writers ready to produce content for blogs on any topic you give them. They can range from $10 on up for a single 1000 word article.
If you are doing your blog for a hobby don’t worry about all of this, just get started and have fun. But, if you are doing this with the intent of making some money, you need to get real serious and start studying and learning. Blogs generally make most of the revenue from advertisers and affiliate sales, some sell their own products, courses, and even eBooks to generate the sales. I have one more powerful secret that I use a blog for and it’s made me a lot of money, but I’m not ready to give that information out yet.