There are literally thousands of ways to make money on the internet, however, one of the most attractive and lucrative can be by blogging on a topic that you are passionate about.  Blogging is not an overnight get rich quick scheme, but if you put in the time and effort into your blog you make substantial long-lasting income that will give you the freedom and financial security that we all want.

This Beginner’s Guide to Blogging is aimed at those of you who are new to blogging and will walk you through the basics of setting up your first blog and posting your first content.

This guide is completely free, and you can view it all online below.  If you enjoy it, please pass it along to others and consider subscribing to my RSS feed or joining my free newsletter for free tips on making money and building successful sites and blogs.

What is Blogging?

Although this video is from 2007, I believe it still gives one of the best overviews of what blogs are and how they work:

Selecting a Topic

Now that you have an understanding of what blogs are, you need to decide what you want to blog about.  This will be one of the most important decisions you make when setting up your blog, as you will be investing quite a bit of time and effort into it over the next few weeks, months (even years!).

Tips when choosing your topic

• Choose a topic you are passionate and interested in.  Something that you think will still enjoy writing about consistently over the next several months.
• Make sure your topic is not too broad or too narrow.  Too broad of a topic and you won’t be able to cover everything and too narrow will drastically limit your audience.

Finding a Domain Name

A domain name is your website address (for example the domain name for this site is www.BigManta.com).  You want to try and find a name that is easy to pronounce and spell, and it helps if it relates to the topic of your blog.  This can sometimes be a time-consuming process, but you want a domain name you are going to be happy with and proud of.

Tips when choosing your domain name

• Try to avoid hyphens if you can (-)
• The shorter and simpler, the better
• Try to make it easy to pronounce
• Try and make it relate to your content

Where do you register a domain name?

I highly recommend (and personally use) GoDaddy for my domain name registrations and hosting.  You can buy your domain name through them for about $10 per year.  To start – go to GoDaddy and check to see if your domain is available,  if it is – congratulations!  If not, you may have to do some more searching until you find one that is not already registered.

Domain name registration options

Once you have found a domain name you will be presented with several options:

• Length of registration – I usually start with 1 year
• Business, Private, or Standard Registration? – I go with standard registration the majority of the time.  If you don’t want people knowing that you own the domain name, select Private Registration and it will cost you about $10.
• Click here to visit GoDaddy and find a domain name

Buying & Setting up Hosting

Now that you have your topic selected and domain name registered, it’s very easy to set up hosting.  As I mentioned earlier, I use GoDaddy for everything and I’m going to assume that you registered your domain name through them.  Your next step is to select hosting:

1. On GoDaddy’s site select “Hosting“
2. Choose the “Economy Hosting Plan“
3. They will ask whether you want Linux or Windows – choose Linux
4. You will be prompted to choose how many months you want to pay for.  I go with the yearly hosting because it saves quite a bit of money and it’s very inexpensive (about $60-80 for the year).
5. Once you have purchased hosting you will want to set your domain name up on your hosting account.  This link will walk you through how to set it up.

Installing WordPress

It may take a few minutes (sometimes up to an hour) for your hosting to get set up.  Once it is, you will now want to install WordPress.  If you’re not familiar with it, WordPress is the most popular (and completely free) blogging program in the world with millions of blogs running using it.  You can also check out this post on the basic overview of WordPress.

GoDaddy makes setting up WordPress extremely simple with just a few clicks.  You can see how to install it by visiting this link.

WordPress Plugins

Plugins are tools that enhance the features and functionality of WordPress.  There are thousands of different plugins that let you give WordPress all types of additional features (like contact forms, tracking your traffic, and tons of other cool stuff).

There are several plugins that I use on just about every blog that I set up:

• Google Analytics – Lets you track how many visitors you have, pageviews and much more.  You will need a free Google Account and need to sign up for the free Google Analytics before you install this plugin
• Google XML Sitemaps – Adds a Google sitemap to your blog that helps Google and other search engines view the content on your site.
• All in One SEO – Makes your blog search engine friendly so you will show up in the search engines better.

WordPress Themes

A theme is what gives your blog its design and layout.  You may have also heard of them referred to as skins, layouts, or templates.  There are hundreds of free themes available in WordPress’ Free Themes Directory for you to choose from.

If you are wanting a professional design for your blog and would like support if you run into any issues, I would also highly recommend checking out “Premium” themes.  Typically a premium theme will range in price from $20 – $100, but you get a professional design support (most of the time) to help you if you have any problems or questions with the design or layout:

Places to Find Premium Themes:

• Gorilla Themes
• iThemes
• RichWP
• StudioPress
• ThemeShift
• Viva Themes

Creating Your First Posts & Pages

Now that you have your blog setup, you’re ready to start pumping out content!  Consistency and persistence are the two keys to creating a blog that will thrive and grow.  Readers become accustomed to a blog that has fresh, new content – and you want to keep them happy so they will keep coming back!

Look at other bloggers and blogs in your industry or topic and see what they are writing about.  This will give you a feel for what people like to read and give you a sense of direction on what to write about.  An excellent source for creating content is Copyblogger, who gives you the ins and outs of creating content.

Important Pages to Have on Your Blog

There are several important pages that just about any blog should have:

• Privacy Policy – Explains what you do with the information that is collected from the visitors on your site.
• About Page - This tells your visitors a little about the site or who you are
• Contact - Giving your visitors an easy way to contact you will encourage dialogue and allow people to easily reach you if they need to.

Consistency & Persistence

As I mentioned in earlier, consistency and persistence are the two most important keys that will determine the success (or failure) of your blog.  Thousands of blogs are abandoned everyday, it’s not easy – but if you keep at it, I guarantee you will succeed.