Photo courtesy of Michael

Want to learn how to start a blog but now sure where or how? Blogging is a lucrative source of income for some and blogs are hands-down the easiest to set up and maintain. Imagine a life where you are compensated for writing on stuff that interests you, whenever you want, wherever you are.

The mere flexibilityof blogging makes it simple for you to just kick back, relax and go on a holiday if you feel like it.

In this article, we’re going to go over  how to start a blog of our own at no cost! Curious? Read on!

First, we need to get a blog. There are several different options – host a blog on your own domain or get a free blog. For starters, let’s discuss the free blogs. You can obtain a free blog at www.blogger.com or the newer (and more effective) www.wordpress.com. If you have a pulse, you must have heard of WordPress. WordPress is a free blog engine that is robust and boundlessly expandable.

Blogger.com is really owned by Google, so it will be discovered on Google’s search engine faster and you’ll be indexed faster. WordPress.com, however, is a comparatively newer option so I have no comparison on the speed of getting indexed by search engines. Nonetheless, WordPress is significantly more superior in the sense that it has more advanced features such as trackbacks and indisputably more customizable. With wordpress you’ll be able to change any and everything concerning your blog; giving you to opportunity to effectively make money with a blog. I mean, ultimately, that’s what it boils down to more about this later).

So, the first step to start a blog is to go to WordPress or Blogger.com. Then, acquaint yourself by putting up your first post on your blog and messing around around with the options and templates.{Yes, I’m partial to WordPress:}

**Note: Don’t spend too much time with the techie stuff. Just pick a topic that interest you and get something up.

Here are a few basic “blog-related” words to assist you along the way:

1)    Permalink – Permalink stands for permanent link, which is a URL (uniform resource locator) that leads to an individual post that you make in your blog.
2)    Trackback – When you post about someone else’s blog post elsewhere, your post will show up in their “trackback” section. This feature, however, is not available with a Blogger.com account.
3)    Pinging – Blogging appears to be paired with pinging just about every time either one is brought up nowadays. Pinging is actually the action where a certain aggregator is notified whenever your web log  or blog is updated, so that the aggregator may show the freshest post of your blog on their website. This is also a useful method to pulling in traffic, which we shall discuss later.

For now, I’ll  leave you to trying out your new blog and the features that come included with it. In the near future, we’ll discuss the many ways we can gain profit from a blog, as well as tips on how to publish posts that keep visitors glued to your blog and keep coming back for more!

Please feel free to ask questions about how to start a blog.