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How To Create A Blog

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If you spend enough time browsing through the internet, jumping from website to website, chances are you will have come across someone who claims to be a “full-time blogger”. Someone who claims to make all their money online, and pulling down a respectable income while never leaving the comforts of their own house. Are you curious about how they do it? Do you want to do it as well? Do you want to create a blog? We’re here to help, and here’s how you can make money from a blog in Malaysia.

Step One : Come Up With A Name

If you’re looking to create a blog, then this is undoubtedly a no-brainer for the first step. But this doesn’t meant that coming up with a name for your blog is easy and simple.

When it comes to naming your blog, always remember that it is indefinitely better for your blog to have a name that is connected to your topic.

Which is why the first step of naming your blog is to come up with a topic first. Now, for most of you, you already have an inkling of what you want to write your blog about. But for those who still have no idea, here are three simple, general topics you can choose from.

  • A Personal Blog – A personal blog is exactly as it’s named. Here, you blog about everything that goes on your daily life, such as work, relationships, family and all that jazz. Although this might sound appealing to most aspiring bloggers, the truth is this category is the hardest when it comes to gaining an audience.
  • Hobbies And Activities –  Now this one is the most common blog types out there. A hobbies and activities blog allows you to write about your passion, but still gain an audience among the people that share the same passion as you do. Cooking, automotive, skateboarding, anything goes here. Even the most obscure and niche of passions has it place here, as long as there are readers.
  • Tips And Tutorial Blogs – When I say tips and tutorial blogs, most people automatically think of how-to guides or step by step blogs on hard skills such as woodworking, painting, web designing, and all that. Although those blogs are considered tips and tutorials as well, it’s important not to discount tips and tutorial blogs to just that. A blog about your experiences and tips on being a stay at home wife is just as relevant and valid as the hard skills blogs.

Now that you know the topic you’re writing about, let’s start thinking of a name for your blog. The most important thing to remember when naming a blog is that the name has to be as descriptive and memorable as possible.

Try and make sure your audience can tell what your blog is about just by looking at the domain name of your blog.

For example, if your blog is about cars and the automotive industry, try putting in words that are associated with the topic. You don’t have to box yourself in to words like ‘automotive’ or ‘cars, try out phrases and words like ‘four wheels’. ‘horsepower’, or even ‘vroom’. Try and be as creative as possible.

After settling on a name for your blog, it’s time for you to pick a domain extension for your blog. The most desirable domain extension is of course .com, but there are other choices such as .org and .net if .com is taken.

If you found a name that you want but is already taken, don’t worry! Here’s what you can do.

  • Try Different Domain Extensions – As mentioned earlier, you can try out different domain extensions if the domain name you want is taken.
  • Add Small Words – Try adding small words like ‘a’, ‘the’, and ‘an’ into your domain name. For example, if the domain name ‘zekethomasblog.com’ is taken, try out ‘thezekethomasblog.com’
  • Use Dashes – This one is simple. Just put in dashes, like ‘zeke-thomas-blog.com’.

Step 2 : Getting Your Blog Running

In the pursuit of creating a blog, you’ve picked out a topic for your blog, you’ve picked out a domain name for your blog, so what’s the next step?

Well, it’s time to get your blog running of course. But it’s not as simple as it sounds.  In order to get your blog online, there are two things that you need, Blog Host and Blog Software.

A Blog host’s job is to store every files and information regarding your blog, and then to send it whenever anyone tries to go on your blog. Simply speaking, without a good hosting site your blog will be inaccessible.

Meanwhile, a blog software is the software that makes making your blog easy. You don’t want to create a new website from scratch right? With a blog software you don’t have to worry about all that. A good blog software comes with pre-loaded themes that are fully customizable, an easy posting system, and many more features.

So how do you choose a good blog host and a blog software? Well for a blog software, usually people go for WordPress. WordPress is arguably the best blog software in the world right now.

But what about a blog host? Well, for that, there are a lot of choices. In fact, if you’re adamant about not spending any money on your blog, WordPress offers their own free hosting as well. But there are limitations, such as ads and server limitations. Which is why I implore you to go to Best Hosting for your every hosting needs.

Step 3 : Customizing Your Blog

For you to customize your blog, there are actually two choices you can make; you can either hire a professional web developer/web designer or you can customize your blog on your own.

Of course, hiring your own web developer/designer will be costly, so check out our article on how to choose a great web designer.

Due to the cost of hiring a web developer/designer, we always recommend first time blog creators to give customizing their own blog a try first, before they consider the professionals.

Now remember when we recommended WordPress for your blog software? If you did, then Step 3 will be a breeze for you.

Here’s a step by step guide on customizing your blog on WordPress.

1) Designing Your Blog

There are two sections to every website, the front end and the back end. The front end is the section you get to every time you type your blog’s url in your browser. The back end is only accessible if you have the administrative permissions for a website. In order to design your blog, you need to access your blog’s back end.

If you’re using WordPress, then accessing your blog’s back end is easy enough. All you have to do is type in http://www.”yourblog”.com/wp-admin in the address box, and you’ll be brought to this page.

Now all you have to do is submit the login details you signed up with, and voila, you’re at your blog’s back end. Your blog’s back end is where you can make any changes you want to your blog.  In short, here’s where the magic happens.

2) Choosing Your Blog’s Design

Now that you’re in your blog’s back end, it’s time to start altering the appearance of your blog.  How do you this? With WordPress, there is a very easy of changing the design of your blog, thanks to a little something called ‘themes’.

At a glance, one can be forgiven for mistaking ‘themes’ as simple blog layouts, but it is so much more. In WordPress, ‘themes’ function to give your website a specific design. Your menu layouts, your tabs, the colours of your website, your fonts, and so much more are affected by your themes.

So how do you choose a theme? Easy.

Just look at the left tab on your blog’s back end, and you will see an option called “Appearance”. Click on that.

Now you can see that your blog already comes preloaded with several themes. But there’s no problem if you don’t like your theme, you can easily change or add in other themes to your blog.

You can also search and filter among the thousands of themes for the ones that fit perfectly for you, using the theme search screen.

But is that the extent of designing your blog on WordPress? Just simply adding and removing themes? Of course not. With WordPress, you also have the option to create your own menu, add in plugins, change your urls, and many many more.

It’s just that for a beginner, we recommend you to start with changing your theme first, and slowly learn and explore how to do in depth designing.

Step 4 : Creating Blog Posts

Now your blog’s design is exactly how you want it to be, it’s time for us to learn how to write and publish posts on your blog.

If you look at the tab on the left of your blog’s back end, you can see a button called ‘posts’.

Now here is where you can do everything regarding your posts. You might see that there is already a post there, but that is just a dummy post WordPress provides you with. You can proceed with deleting it.

If you’re looking to create a new post, then just press the “add new” button.

Just like any other writing software, the text box also comes with many essential features, such as bold, italics, strikethrough, hyperlink, and more.

You can also add pictures and other media to your blog using the “add media” button.

Once you’ve finished written your content, all you have to do is press the “publish” button on the right, and your post is live.

Step 5 : Finding Your Readers

Now that your blog is live, your content is live, should you just be resting on your laurels? Of course not! Although often overlooked, finding your audience is an essential part of creating a blog.

So how do you promote your blog? Simple, by following these simple steps.

1) Social media promotion

If you’re a newbie blogger, social media might be the best promotion medium for you. How do you do this? First, just post your blog or your content on your social media. Then ask your friends to check it out and share it to their friends. Of course realistically, you can’t expect your blog to gain a massive following just by cycles of reading and sharing. But for a new blog, social media is as good a way to start as any.

2) E-mail Marketing

Some of you might not know what is e-mail marketing. In fact, some of you might have never heard of e-mail marketing before. But I’m telling you, E-mail marketing is one of the best promotional tactic for your blog. Unlike other promotional tactics, e-mail marketing focuses on keeping your readers coming back. 

This can be done in a multitude of ways, but the most popular one is by getting the e-mail addresses of visitors to your blog (with permission of course). Then using these addresses you got, you can create your own e-mail marketing list.

All you have to do is create send them periodic e-mails with links to your newer posts, promotions, and anything you desire. If done right, this will help you retain your readers.

3) Guest Posting

True to it’s name, guest posting is the act of writing guest posts on other blogs to help you gain readers. Usually this is done by guest posting on popular blogs, so that the readers of that blog will be interested in going to your blog.

But in order to utilize guest posting as a promotional medium for your blog, there is one thing you need to do first. And that is, build a good rapport with other bloggers.

Although this might sound daunting, it is actually quite easy. The Malaysian blogosphere is friendlier than people realize, and most of the bigger blogs will be happy to have you write guest posts for them. After all, they will be getting free content for their blog as well, so it’s a win-win situation for both of you.

So just get in contact with other bloggers, build a good working relationship with them, and offer to write a guest post. Once you do that, watch the readers start to trickle in your blog.

4) Commenting On Other Blogs

If you still believe that getting a guest spot on other blogs is difficult, how about you start by commenting on other blogs first?

Leaving comments that link to your blog on other popular blogs can get you new readers, but it’s not something to be done willy-nilly.

You have to be professional about it. You don’t want to seem like a scam website, and most blogs will delete suspicious comments anyway.  Try to put a time gap in between your comments, and keep it professional. Try writing something like this;

“Great article! I also wrote at length on this topic, so come and check out my post so you can tell me what you think as well!”

5) Regular Posts And Updates

If most of the other steps on this list focuses on getting new readers, this one focuses on keeping the readers you already have engaged.

And in order to do that you have to ensure that your blog is updated regularly and frequently.

This is because there is no bigger turn off for blog readers than a blog that takes its time between posts and updates.

So if you want your readers to always come back for more, make sure your blog is always updated frequently with new and quality content.

6) Online Forums

This one works the best if you’re writing on a specific niche. First, just lurk the internet for an online forum that caters to your niche. Then, just promote your blog on the forums. You can do this in a multitude of ways. Just bring up your blog in a discussion or a topic that is prevalent in your niche.

But just like Commenting On Other Blogs, you have to be professional on this. Remember not to be too spammy, or people will start looking at your blog as a scam.

Step 6 : Monetizing Your Blog

If you have followed this guide to a T, you’ll find that monetizing your blog is actually one of the easier things to do here.

There are a lot of ways you can monetize your blog, such as affiliate marketing, Google Adsense, writing paid reviews, and many more.

If your content is good enough and you have a wide reader base, you don’t have to worry about monetizing your blog, it will come in naturally.

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