What is a Blog?N 1
Building content websites with hundreds of articles or e-commerce websites, and marketing them through search engines have a steep learning curve and the process takes considerable time. However, such difficulties don’t exist in blogs.
A blog is a non-technical man’s website. It is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically — like a what’s new page or a journal. A blog is a kind of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent entry at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom. A blog is also known as a web blog. It is a type of online journal or diary that can be frequently updated.
For example, if you start a blog on cooking, you will publish your thoughts, ideas, experiences, advice, stories, jokes and tips on cooking on your blog regularly using internet. Each thought is an entry. Your readers will post their comments on your thoughts on your blog site.
You can even blog about your daily mundane activities such as buying vegetables, watching television episodes and let your family members and friends know what you have been doing today and they can comment on your blogs.
You can start a blog on any topic. Some blogs are for play. Some are for work. Some are for business. Some are for career. Some are for self-promotion. Many are for making money. If you want to make money out of your blog, your topic must be useful to others. Only then they will come to your blog site and read your blogs.
The content, aims, goals and purposes of blogs vary greatly — from website links or advertisement links, to reviews about products, to discussion of ideas, to news about a person, to stories, photos, jokes and poetry.
The blog’s money earning power is activated when you get your thoughts, ideas, views and opinions - about a topic useful to others - out in the world and develop a small or big community of like-minded readers.
Blogs are different from online forums. In an online forum any member can start a thread – topic – and others can join the discussion. However, in a blog, only the blogger or the person he authorizes can start a topic. Others can only comment on the blogger’s topic. Maintaining and updating a forum is cumbersome.
Blog Hosting
When you want to start blogging, you need to buy a blog domain name and blog space. Fortunately, there are excellent free blogging services that will host your blogs and allow you make money.
When you sign up for a free blog account, you will get the name in the format yourblogname.blogspot.com. If you buy your own domain name, the format would be yourblogname.com. At this moment, let us accept what Blogger gives for free.
Wordpress and Blogger are popular free blog servers. Wordpress does not allow you to commercialize your blogs.
Blogger is a free service from Google. Blogger is completely free. You can create, publish and host your blog all for free. You will use Blogger for your first project. You don’t need any special hardware or software for your blogger blog. I will explain the setup procedure in a moment.
Publishing Blogs
Writing blogs and updating them are the ’technical know-how’ for your first project. You must be able to write well on the topic of your choice.
You want to write like Shakespeare. But you slept through your English grammar in the school? No problem. You can collect interesting materials from other people and publish them on your website.
The third option is to motivate, with ’a stick or carrots’, a friend or a relative who can write well on your thoughts. Hiring professional writers at this point of time will not be a viable option.
If your visitors, the blog readers, are personally known to you, they wouldn’t mind mistakes in your writing. However, when you grow these small things will have a great role to play in the growth of your business.
If it is possible to you, get a high school grammar book and refresh your knowledge.
You must keep your blogs fresh and must update the content regularly. Be prepared to spend at least 3-4 hours a week. If you are hardworking and have plenty of time at your disposal, you can spend 2 hours or more every day on your website.
Don’t worry about internet connection charges. You can compose messages offline using Microsoft Word and then connect to the Internet when you are ready to publish.
Keep learning to earn