How to create your own Blog

What is a Blog anyway?

Here’s a direct description from the Blogger.com website:

“A blog gives you your own voice on the web. It’s a place to collect and share things that you find interesting— whether it’s your political commentary, a personal diary, or links to web sites you want to remember.

Many people use a Blog just to organize their own thoughts or write about their experiences while others command influential, worldwide audiences of thousands. Professional and amateur journalists use blogs to publish breaking news, while personal journalers reveal inner thoughts.

The blogging experience is about not only putting your thoughts on the web, but hearing back from and connecting with other like-minded folks.”

So why do we need to publish a Blog?

Publishing a Blog allows you to instantly create new content-rich web pages. These new pages can be linked to from the home page of your current website, if you have created one already and/or promote the site separately. By creating additional content-rich website pages and promoting them from your home page or through other means, you’ll be accomplishing two important things:

==> You’ll provide more value for your website visitors. This increases the “stickiness” of your website making people stick around longer and ultimately trust you more. On the Internet, trust translate to profits!

==> Search engines LOVE fresh content created through Blogs. By publishing your own Blog and adding fresh content to it on a regular basis, you’ll attract the attention of the major search engines who will list your website in their directories for FREE. That’s right! As soon as you have pages of your Blog in the search engines, you’ll start attracting free qualified traffic to your site without paying a dime for it. This is called “organic listing” Remember, Google Adwords? Imagine running a large and comprehensive Google Adwords campaign without paying anything for it… That’s exactly what you can accomplish by publishing your own Blog!

Are you ready to get started?

Come on… it’s EASY, it’s FREE and it’s FUN!

In fact, you’ll have your own Blog setup in 3 easy steps.

Let’s get started…

Visit the Blogger website.

Once you arrive and look things over, click the “CREATE YOUR BLOG NOW” arrow.

Next, you’ll arrive at the “Create an account” page. Complete the fields on that page.

TIP: For your user name, I suggest using your first and last name combined OR the characters of your domain name without the .com, .net, .org, .ws etc.

Check the “Terms of Service” box and click on the “CONTINUE” arrow.

The next page is the “Name your Blog” page. Enter a title Example: YourName’s Home Business Blog or YourName’s Work at Home Journal or something like that… Be creative!

Now enter your Blog  address. Again, I suggest using the characters of your domain name without the .com, .net, .org, .ws etc. If the name is taken, try the characters of your first and last name combined or anything else you want to be your blog address. Whatever name you decide upon will create your blog URL such as: www.YOUR~BLOGGER~USERNAME.blogspot.com

Next, complete the word verification field by typing the characters you see in the picture above the field.

NOTE: Ignore the “Advanced Setup” option for now. The advanced setup option allows you to add your blog files directly to your Global Domains International hosting account. I strongly advise you against using the advanced setup option at this time (unless you are already extremely comfortable with uploading files to your hosting account). You will have to learn FTP to be comfortable with this. And there are many free tutorials online to do so. Click the “CONTINUE” arrow.

Next, you’ll arrive at the “Choose a template” page. This page allows you to choose a custom look for your blog.

Take a look at the designs available and select one by marking the selection circle inside the blog template image. You can easily change the template later, or even create your own custom template design once your blog is set up.

Once you’ve selected your blog template, click the “CONTINUE” arrow.

Congratulations! Your blog has been created!

Now it’s time to add some content to your Blog…

Now that you have your Blog setup, it’s time to post one of your articles to it. If you haven’t got an article, start writing one now. The next step is to format your article. Some great tutorials of the HTML scriptlanguage can be found HERE  on how to format your article:

Once you have written you first post, click the “Publish Post” button at the end of the page.

Congratulations! You’ve just published your article on your own Blog! Now, every time you have new articles to post, simply repeat the process described above.

At this point, you have the option to view your blog or simply move on and continue adding articles. If you decide to view your Blog first, click the (in a new window) link.

Give yourself a pat on the back. You are a blog publisher now!  Congratulations!!

Now it’s time to tell people about your new Blog.

Andy