Guide To Starting Your Own Blog !
Creating your own blog with WP Wordpress may seem a little daunting to those that have not used this blogging software, but I assure you, creating your own blog can be done in less than 5 minutes. Learning to use WP Wordpress & writing the content for your blog is what may take some time. You’ve probably heard a lot of talk about Blogs, you’ve seen a lot of stuff on the Internet relating to Blogs & creating your own blog. In fact many of the sites you have visited on the Internet could have been blog sites and quite possibly you did not even realise.
You see over the last few years Blogs have really taken on a slightly different role to that which was initially intended. Nowadays there are numerous quality blog sites that far out class some of the older style html websites. By using blogging software such as WP Wordpress, it has become relatively easy for anyone to create a very acceptable & profitable website.
So What Exactly Is A Blog..?
Unfortunately this is no longer easily answered, you see when blogs first came into being, they were to all intents & purposes nothing more than a digital personal diary.
A blog (a contraction of the term “weblog“) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art, photographs, videos, music, and audio. Micro-blogging, as in the case of Twitter, is another type of blogging featuring very short posts, typically of 140 characters.
Now add to what is mentioned above, the fact that many blogs these days have been turned into a commercial enterprise & many have also become instructional in nature,(as in the case of this blog site). These modern blog sites can have many loyal followers that number in the thousands & that alone makes them a viable commercial entity. But more on the commercial aspects later.
Which Is It To Be..? Personal Or Commercial
So do you opt for a strictly personal blog or do you test the waters with maybe a slightly commercial offering..? This is probably the most important decision after deciding to create your own blog. The reason for this is quite simply the fact that as a personal blog your are unlikely to care about your position in search engine rankings, or the amount of traffic your blog gets, just as if you had produced a hand written diary, or created a nice family photo album! On the other hand if you were producing a news sheet, a news letter or a small magazine, then obviously your ranking & of course traffic (readership) becomes very important to you.
Descisions On Hosting
Deciding which type of blog you are going to create is also going to help decide what to do about hosting..? You see there are really two options open to you, you can go with free hosting as provided by Wordpress, Google’s Blogger, or any number of other companies that offer free hosting, or you decide to go self hosted. Now I know there are some of you thinking hell if it’s free then I’ll go for that option, but woah! kill the motor dude, let me explain;
Free Hosting
If you intend to create a personal blog, then yes go for the free hosting & welcome it with open arms, for your type of blog it is without doubt the best way to go, although you should read the agreement very carefully, because some of these companies will state that should anything go wrong and they lose your blog through deletion or hacking, then you have no claim against them for the loss of your content.
Self Hosted
This is definately the way to go if your going to attempt any sort of financial gain from your blogging exploits. You have far more control over your web address & branding, your search engine optimization, the security of your blog, the design & layout, in fact just about everything ! You are total control & you decide what adverts are shown, where they are shown & how much advertisers pay for the privelage.
The Costs Involved In Self Hosting
The financial cost of going self hosted is negligable and can usually be quickly recovered from a decent blog eg the setup costs of this blog are;
Domain Name = $7.95 per year
Hosting = $28.00 per year ($7.00 per 1/4)
So my total financial cost to run this blog per year is $35.95, (hardly going to break the bank now is it..? 
). Now weigh up the cost, against the total freedom I have in branding, design & layout, on page SEO, keywords optimization, advert placings etc & I think it is pretty obvious to anyone that for a commercial blog self hosting is definately the best option.
We will deal with the various hosting packages available & also domain name selection in a future article, but for now there should be enough for you to decide which way your going to go when you create your own blog !
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