I guess this is one of the most common question which comes into the mind of any person who visits any blog, or reads something interesting on internet that how to start blogging?

Many people think about this as they get inspired from some blog and thought how can I also become a blogger and start blogging?

Although it is not that difficult, but for a person who don’t have used internet widely (except using Google and Gmail, or doing some chat) it really looks a bit tough.

Let me guide you all through this blog post so that you too can also become a blogger and start blogging.

 How to Start a Blog?

Well, those who think what the point in starting a blog is or do blogging should first read this blog post of mine on top 10 reasons to start blogging.

As I already defined the reasons why you should prefer blogging in that blog, I also mentioned that to start a blog is actually free. There are many websites which provide the options of starting a blog for free; WordPress, Blogger (the product of Google), Tumblr, etc. are a few good examples of the same.

Although as far as my own opinion is concerned, I am a hard core supporter of the thinking that you should not use free blogs. As far as getting experience is concerned, there is no harm in doing so. You can learn the if and buts associated with managing a blog through the free blogs, but seriously if you need to establish yourself as a blogger then you should always go ahead with your own domain name.

Although you can use your domain name with blogspot blogs, and for this you need not to pay anything else the domain cost, but then I always prefer the WordPress platform, and so I always suggest having a self hosted WordPress blog for yourself.

Let me guide you all how you can do so.

 How to Start Blogging?

Here are the steps:

 Selecting Topics

Selecting topics is actually known as selecting niche. Well those who are not aware of the term niche, then let me explain you all in this way, niche is like a category for which you want to write your blogs.

It is like you are an expert in latest gadgets, and love sharing your new devices and information about them to your friends, so you can think about starting a blog on latest gadgets. Thus Technology becomes the niche of your blog. Similarly you can consider that you can start blogging on health topics. Or you can also think that I will write some poetry and will share them on my blog.

Well, obviously you should know what your strong field is, and this way you can decide about the topics for your blog.

Let me tell you about my own journey as a blogger. Well, I was actually good for nothing, and hence I thought I will start a blog on news related stuffs, especially from India, and hence I started my professional blogging through this domain name inewsindia.com

Once I started I shared around more than hundreds of news (which were majorly from India only) related blogs. But within a few years I analyzed that I am becoming good into self help and self improvement blogs and some other topics like SEO which is my own industry, and blogging in which I was slowly-slowly becoming an expert.

My own experience with time was guiding me to write blog posts on blogging.

And hence I revamped my website completely and now it has only those topics on which I feel comfortable enough to write and share something.

Thus the very first step of starting a blog or blogging is the selection of topics. You can also plan the same on papers that what topics will feature into your blog. If you want to start a blog on health, then let’s first prepare twenty health related topics on which you will start writing.

 Purchase a Domain Name

Next step of starting a blog is to purchase a domain name. Let me tell you once again that you can have the options of starting a free blog as well, but since I said that I won’t suggest anyone to start a free blog, and hence I am discussing about these steps. Although, if you go by free blog, you just need to select a sub-domain name, or URL, which will become a domain name of your blog, something like:

YourSiteName.blogspot.com
YourSiteName.wordpress.com
YourSiteName.tumblr.com

To be very frank if you want people should take your blog seriously then you should go with your own domain name only.

Decide a short, crispy and memorable domain name. Preferable extension should be .com

To know more about different extensions of a domain name you can also read this blog post of mine: how to get a WordPress blog.

To purchase the domain name you can use this form:

Let me tell you that it will cost you something from $0.99 to $20 and more as well. But a standard .com domain name can be found for around $10 only. You can also use some GoDaddy Coupons to get some discount.

 Purchase Web Hosting

Once you have your own domain name, the next step is to either set up your existing blogspot blog into it or you need a web hosting to host your own blog.

As far as web hosting is concerned, you can purchase it from any web hosting provider, only thing which you need if you want to get a WordPress blog is that it must have the PHP.

As far as my suggestion is concerned, I will always suggest Hostgator for web hosting purposes, although some people prefer BlueHost as well, but my second preference will be Godaddy. Here are the links to purchase them:

If you don’t want to invest this cost to web hosting, you can also use blogspot blogs with your own domain name only. For this you just need to create a blog on Blogger, and then follow these steps to know about how to move blogspot blog to your own domain name.

Let me tell you that hosting a website will cost you something like $2 to $20 or more per month basis.

 Install WordPress

Once you have your domain name and web hosting ready, the next step of establishing a blog is to install the WordPress software which you can download from wordpress.org site.

Let me tell you that it is completely free.

The steps are really self-defined over there, but yes I will also write another blog post on how to install the WordPress.

Simply saying these three steps were enough to establish your own blog. Although you should never hesitate in asking any help if you face any problem in doing so. I am always there to help you all. You can either post your concerns as comment over here, or you can also mail them to my mail id inews@inewsindia.com and you can also tweet them to me. Start following me at my twitter handle: http://twitter.com/vatsalok I usually follow those who follow me.

You can also read this blog post of mine on step by step guide on how to build a better blog.