Finally, part three of this series on blogging and we’re ready to start our blog.  In part one we looked at what a blog is, why they are so popular, and why they are a great way to start an online business.  Yesterday in part two we discussed what to blog about, and we looked at some methods for researching niches.  Today we are ready to set up our blog and make our first posts.

Free or self hosted blog?

There are a number of decisions to make when starting a new blog, but the biggest and most important is whether to go for a free blog from a provider such as Blogger or Wordpress.com or whether to get your own domain and hosting account, and install your own blog.

Since we’re looking at our blog as a business tool, my opinion is that you should always host your own blog.  You can get a domain name and hosting account from GoDaddy so cheaply these days that the few dollars you’ll save by going the free route is hardly worth it.  With your own hosted account you’re in complete control and can do exactly what you want with the blog, monetise it properly, and give a professional image.

What blogging platform?

My preferred blogging platform is Wordpress.  The reasons for that are that it’s free, very powerful, easy to use, is well supported with plugins, and can also be used as a CMS system.  So to get started you need to do three things:

1. Choose a domain name
2. Register your domain and purchase hosting
3. Download and install Wordpress

Choosing a domain name is a matter of brainstorming and using a few helper tools to find something suitable.  You can watch a video I created for my 1 Day Webmaster course here which will help you find and choose a suitable domain.

Hosting is very cheap now and there are plenty of companies and plans to choose from.  The one I recommend is GoDaddy.  If you just want hosting for this one blog their economy plan will be fine, but if you’re planning on building more sites in the future you’ll save money by getting a reseller account.

Wordpress can be downloaded for free from wordpress.org – and then you’re good to go!

Here’s a video I created a while ago that will take you through the entire process of setting up your Wordpress blog step by step.  Once you’ve gone through this video tutorial you’ll have your own blog up and running, ready to start building content and driving traffic.

Now your blog is up and running, the next part of this series will discuss methods for getting inspiration on what to blog about, and starting to build up your content.