Blogging, the new ‘it’ term of the 21st century.
But how do you start a blog? And is it a difficult thing to do?
This post will bring you through the general steps needed in starting up your own blog, and when I say general, I mean general.
Because if I had to write down each and every step, from getting your own domain, to hosting to installing WordPress and installing a WordPress theme – this post would be very long indeed.
Identify What You Want To Talk About
It’s all well and good to say, ‘I want to start blogging’ or ‘I’m going to become a blogger’ but what are you really blogging about?
I can tell you from first hand experience that blogging without a purpose will get you nowhere fast.
“I Hate Work and I Had Noodles For Lunch”
Most people start here – they have an opinion, they’d like to share that opinion, so they start a blog and tell people about their opinion.
Their first blog probably has a domain like xanydude.blogspot.com (this is the name of my first blog – seriously) and they share stories about what they had for dinner, why they’re angry at work, why they’re angry at the government and so on.
But truth be told, unless you are a really really interesting person, or you’re a model, politician or some sort of celebrity, this kind of blogging won’t get you anywhere.
After all, it’s your ramblings. Would you expect someone to enjoy reading your diary full of ramblings if you gave it to them?
Then why should they read about your ramblings on a blog?
Know Yourself
This blog aims to teach people how to make money online and if you blog without a purpose, then don’t hope to be able to do that.
Notice how I’ve not mentioned that you CAN’T make money online with a personal blog, it’s just it’s harder – but it can be done.
Firstly, identify why you’re writing on your blog in the first place. If you’re already popular, great – you’re halfway there as it is.
If you’re not, if you’re like everyone else, with a medium sized group of friends, working in a mid-level 9 to 5 job and are starting fresh, then identify what you’re good at.
Let’s face it, everyone is good at something or another.
Some people are good at making people laugh, some people are good at teaching finance, some people are good at drawing/ art. What are YOU good at?
For me? I’m good at writing about things, things like this for example, how to start a blog.
That’s why I started Online Business Malaysia (OBM) – that’s what I was good at. But note, this blog, is NOT a personal blog.
A true personal blog will be someone who blogs about:
- Day to day life
- The experiences they have encountered (such as travelling, holidays, studying etc.)
- Their like/ dislike for the government, work etc.
- Some people make up stories
- But most important of all, it is written with feeling, emotions and in a way that lets your audience relate with you at a personal level
Brand Yourself
Now that you’ve identified what you’re good at, it’s time to plan out what/ how you’re going to write out your posts and how to make money from it.
Since you’re intent on writing a personal blog, I would suggest you buy/ use a personal domain name to go along with it.
That would be:
- yourname.blogspot.com
- yourname.wordpress.com
- My recommendation – yourname.com or yournameonline.com or yourname.net
Of course you’ll need to get hosting too, a home/ small business package should be good enough for your uses. Blogspot and WordPress.com blogs don’t need to get hosting, they’re free, but less effective.
Building a Community
It’s time to go about building a community of followers who will come back to your blog, reading all your new posts as they come out, who tell other people about your blog, repeating the cycle.
Easier said than done.
Building a community is about writing engaging blog posts, they don’t need to be long, but they HAVE to be engaging.
Let’s take for example, you’re writing a personal post and it’s about going for a movie, let’s say that movie is Avatar.
Most people would write part of their blog post like this:
Today I went to see Avatar with Ben and Jenny, it was damn good, great effects, loved the 3D effect that you get from the glasses!
To make it more engaging, you could write the same sentence in these ways:
Funny:
Today I went to watch a James Cameron picture about tall Smurfs, which were trying to take back their world from us puny humans. They can talk to trees and for some reason, the lady Smurf looked hot in 3D.
Interactive:
Today I went to see Avatar with Ben and Jenny, it was damn good, great effects, loved the 3D effect that you get from the glasses! I gave it 4 out of 5 stars, but Ben and Jenny both hated the movie. What do you guys think?
Of course there are many other ways to engage your audience, but little things, like asking them questions as if they were right next to you, help in building your community.
Upload interesting pictures, videos, links to news articles, make use of Twitter and Facebook. These things will ultimately increase you readership and traffic – just remember to post regularly and engage your readers.
Making Money From Your Personal Blog
A personal blog can be harder in some ways and easier in others to make money online.
Due to the random nature of a personal blog (you’re talking about different stuff all the time after all), it tends to be quite hard to get targeted Google Adverts on your site, you’ll get adverts matched to what you could be writing about at that one time.
But it’s unlikely your readers will click through, as they are on your blog looking for your opinion, rather than the content of your posts.
But what can be easier could be using 3rd party advertising instead, such as the Nuffnang network or Admax.
The reason it’s easier with these kind of networks is that they are used to having personal blogs as part of their community and hence they know their advertisers are already targeting personal bloggers.
You would then be served a more general, main stream type of advert, like adverts for cars, movies, food and fashion etc.
These adverts are more likely to be clicked through by your audience, since they’re evergreen topics, mainstream subjects that people might be interested in.
A good example of someone who’s doing well with Nuffnang is Malaysian blogger Kenny Sia who gets asked to do a lot of advertorials, where he is paid to write a blog post about a certain product, in his own way, with his own character.
As your readership grows, as your traffic increases, you may get approached to do advertorials for businesses and that’s where some good money comes in, with advertorials on some of the bigger blogs paying out a few thousand RM for a single post.
Remember To Have Character
Last but not least, remember to have an interesting character. Yes it’s probably the hardest tip on this page, after all, what does this involve?
Well the easiest way to do it is probably to write like how you would talk. Talking is where most peoples’ character comes out in the first place, so replicate it into written words and you should be settled.
Making money with a personal blog isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible.
In fact most things aren’t impossible if you put your mind to it.
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