Exactly three days ago I took on the daunting task of "blogging". I did not know what to expect when I published my first blog; but like any enthusiastic person who takes on a new task, I was hoping my blog would reach out to people who share the same interests as me. This did not happen! And this got me thinking, Could it be that I am not cut out for blogging? Could it be that in a world of 7 billion people no one else shared the same emotions, feelings or interests as me? These questions needed to be answered and indeed I have found them. The answers lay hidden in how the whole blogging scene works and this is exactly what I will be sharing with you guys today.
My Own Domain? Or a Free Hosting Blog?
So, you have decided to blog..what now? The greatest decision you have to make in the world of blogging is whether or not to register a domain name and start a blog on your personal website or use a blog hosting service such as blogger.com. Now, registering a domain name and creating a website to function as a blog may sound intimidating to those who may not be tech savvy but it really is a piece of cake when you get into it. Many websites offer hosting services and also offer free webpage templates if you register your domain with them. One can also opt for using blog hosting sites such as blogger.com to create, author and publish their blogs and have them exported to your personal blog/website. Having a blog on your personal domain can be very rewarding, especially if you have a huge fan following and this is exactly what you need to ask yourself before you decide which way to go.
I opted for the "free" blog services offered by blogger.com.. why, you ask? Well, for one blogger.com is owned by Google and that would make one assume that Google should display your blog right at the top of the search results right? Unfortunately, that is not entirely true at least not for novice bloggers (Stay tuned lol) My second reason was that blogger.com is fairly easy to use, it gives you pre-designed templates to apply to your blog, allows you to share your content on Facebook, Twitter & Google+ and also supports the option of exporting your content to your personal blog/domain. Some free blog hosting services frown upon, condemn and even forbid using your blog for commercial purposes and selling your business. Many blogs are deleted on a daily basis without any prior information to the blogger for violating these rules. Blogger.com does not have any such policy in place (yet!). My last reason was "uncertainty" do I really need to pay the fees of owning and hosting a personal domain? Would the theme of my blog create a huge fan base? Do I have the time to publish one or more blogs on a daily basis? If you are not sure of the answers to those questions then I suggest you opt for the free blogging services. Besides, many bloggers who are earning well into the six figure income from blogs started off with a free blog; built a fan base and then decided to host their blog on their own personal domain - So, this is always a possibility. The rest of this post will focus on what to do and expect after signing up for a free blogging service.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Now, that you have signed up with your blog hosting site; you get to play around with the various templates the site has to offer. This is pretty straight forward and can be fun if you get into customizing the layout of your personal blog. Then, the only logical thing to do would be to create a blog, publish it and sit back and enjoy the page visits and comments from people around the world right? This was my mindset and I was proven wrong very quickly. I posted 15 blogs of personal quotations that I enjoy using on Facebook as my status; these statuses were applauded by hundreds of friends and hundreds of people on various Facebook groups...but this did not seem to be the case for my blog. A day passed and I had ZERO hits, a second-day passed and the page visits remained NONE! Once, again I had to put on my thinking hat and set out on a quest of answering the question WHY, IS NO ONE VISITING MY BLOG? This question was answered fairly quickly when I decided to search my blog on Google..and..guess what? No matter how I searched for my blog, Google refused to display a link to it in the search results.This was really frustrating. After, spending a considerable amount of time on the internet I was introduced to "Search engine optimization" or "SEO"
SEO, is basically the process by which search engines improve or display websites. This means if you have created a blog; you need to PROMOTE it! For this you need to do a few things like submitting the link of your blog to GOOGLE in order for it to be displayed in the search results.This process is known as indexing your website and can be done by doing the following:
- Visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en. You will need to sign in with a Google account.
- On the top right side you will see an option that says, "ADD A SITE". Simply, click on it and paste your blogs URL. Your blog will now be indexed although it might take a few hours to become visible on Google.
I followed this method last night and when I woke up my blog was visited by a few people. HURRAY!
Pinging your blog
This is another popular way of increasing the visibility chances of your blog. There are numerous pinging website on the web that take your URL once submitted and sends it off to major search engines and platforms for it to be displayed. Ping-o-matic ( http://pingomatic.com/) is the service that I have used to ping my blog. You simply visit their site, enter the name of your blog, the URL and ping away! How effective is this? I do not know.
Advertise on social networks
The general consensus is that the best way to advertise/promote your blog is on major social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and a site I personally was not aware of until recently, Stumbleupon. This sounds fairly simple enough but can take a huge amount of dedication, discipline and patience. In order for people to follow your blog; you have to become a person that participates on Facebook in various groups, a person that Tweets about trending topics on Twitter. Advertising on social networks is basically, "You scratch my back and I will scratch yours" The more friends you make, the more blogs you follow - people will return the favor and spread the word of mouth. It is always a good idea to have a link of your blog on your profile on all the social networking sites you are associated with.
Making Mooolah ( Money, lol)
Everyone has heard stories about people becoming millionaires by blogging. How is this done? It is simple. Create a blog, generate a massive fan base that will visit your blog every month and charge companies for advertising their product on your blog. These advertising companies many different advertising options from which you can make money. I will get into those in a different post. This brings me back to my own situation I signed up with Adsense this is the partner advertising company to blogger.com. So, the way it works is you publish your blog and sign up with Adsense and submit an online application to be a part of them. If they approve you, you get to pick which ads to display and how. Adsense,however, disapproved me and did not provide a reason why -_-. I will be looking more into it later.
Is it worth it?
I do not know. As it stands right now, it feels like having a Facebook account with no friends and talking to your self on own your wall haha. I will be updating this as my experience with blogging grows. Until then, if you were able to magically make your way to this blog; may God bless you and stay tuned!
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