Have you Start Blogging yet?

Have you Start Blogging yet?

By: Manycoloured Manley Nowaseb

For SmartPost™ Daily

What is Blogging?

Blogging is a term taken from weblog-ging, which is similar to running a weblog or blog in short. Blogging is a form of online being, more like your online voice or the place where you can share what is on your mind with your blog viewers.

There are billions of people who serve the web daily, while many of them do so to transact online businesses; commonly using websites, many view different weblogs or blogs for short -as I said above - in search for interesting people, tips and for the fun of reading.

The difference between blogs and websites is that while website are a more formal and are kind of a stiff presence online, blogs are more viewer friendly and flexible commonly allowing viewers to share their comments under every post.

The reason why I said websites are fixed and weblogs flexible is because, while most websites would have contents remain on it unchanged for longer periods, blogs must be updated as frequently as daily or in some cases more than once in a day.

Blogs are more -if not exactly- like posting on your social media platforms like your Facebook, twitter or LinkedIn and should be fun, which I thing is the point.

Now that you have an idea, let’s see what’s next?

 

Why Start Blogging?

Let me ask you this question? Are you the kind of person which cannot pass a day without posting a few interesting stuff to your cycle of fans? If your answer is yes and if you have never thought of starting your blog, I guess after reading this, you should definitely take time starting one.

Yes blogging is for people with lively online presence, people that has something to tell every day. If you have a few ideas, some how to do tips and how you made it through experiences up your sleeve, than blogging could be just the thing for you.

If you are a newcomer freelance writer, I recommend you have a blog as well, especially during your amateur stage where you feel most paying gigs do not want to publish your work. Yes post those rejected articles on your own blog and you may learn along the way  where you can do better while you have your viewers see your perspective through the different writings you post.

So why blogging? Because you have a loud voice and you have internet access and you want to share a fantastic post every day, yet you are looking to take your online presence and your loud voice to the next level.  

Where do I start?

The online world has set up almost anything you may need, for anything you may think of doing online and so there are thousands of free to subscribe to, blog hosting platforms you can choose from.

For this blog I am currently using the free service of Blogger | Blogspot.com and there is also the Wordpress.com I am using for my personal blogging and at this stage those are the best I have used so far and can recommend, I hope my viewers will share some other alternatives under this post.

So what’s it like to start? This guy’s (blog hosting sites) require a simple signup process, short and simple, similar to those of Gmail or Hotmail email accounts. They will prompt you to buy your own domain name (e.g. www.yourname.com) or to use the free one which goes like; www.yourname.bloghostname.com.  

After registering your blog, you will be presented with some beautiful templates to use on your blog and everything else is so easily set out in your dashboard (the place where you set up your blog activity – such as composing and posting your stories).

The next step is that you keep on doing what you were doing on your social media platform or writing life if you are a writer and post almost daily as your page viewers will be triggered if there is actual activity on your blog daily,  – remember, as I said above blogs should be fun, interactive and active with daily post.

How will I be noticed & what about my fans on Social Media?

If you have been active already on other social media platforms don’t be worried because you can still share everything on your blog with your fans.

Your blog can automatically integrate sharing tools such as the example right- which allow you to share on Facebook, twitter, Google plus, LinkedIn etc... There is again a lot of such service provider platforms out there, yet I will recommend only what I am using and know are best to my experience and trust that my readers can share others under this post as it will be helpful.

On my part I am using and will recommend ShareThis which have beautiful share tools icons such as the above, including once that allow your readers to like and follow you.

                                                                                                                                         

Is it costly to run a blog?

Yes and No. Yes it may be costly if you simply use your blog to dish out post without considering using it as a business platform and as an income generating source for yourself.

However if you say to yourself I want to have my blog take me to the next level, you could engage it into some of the thousands of online available blog monetizing solutions and please don’t worry we will get to that.

But in figures let us see what it actually costs running a blog: In my case, it cost me just US$82 per month to have unlimited internet running . Meaning once I made that payment I can download and upload for thirty days without limits of megabytes etc…

That amount could be high or low in other countries because I am in Namibia, using Telecom Namibia - TN mobile unlimited bundle service.

Possible phone calls, marketing, electricity and blog related cost will run up to US$88 for me because I want to do better, but most of them are not a must, so I will conclude that running a blog on average could be a little over or a little less than US$250 depending on where you are, yet I urge you to start a monetized blog to get returns on your investments.

In fact: I am running three blogs with the above budget and will be starting two more blogs in March and I believe my budget will be the same yet my monetized blogs will give me back more all the time and I trust that could be a motivation for you! 

How do I get returns on investment?

Blogs can be highly income generating if you take time to learn many different ways available online. I sometimes get blown away if I read some blogger that actually monetize their blogs so well and are making over US$15,000 per month.

For this writing I will not overwhelm you with the list that may go over a thousand ways to monetize your blog, however I will concentrate on the simple monetize solution which is using Ad Sense on your blog which is considered the leading and first start solution of monetizing blogs by most starter bloggers.

While the Google AdSense is the must have dream for many newcomer bloggers there are some great alternatives and I will share at least one here-under after explaining Google AdSense.

Google AdSense is an initiative that you can sign up your blog to and this guys will actually place some beautiful adverts on your blog and pay you about US$4 for each set of thousand viewers to your blog and about US$10 for every click on the adverts itself and that is basically blog monetizing and how you can get returns on your investment.

While Google AdSense would take just as a week and as long as six months before accepting some AdSense sign ups, there are alternative such as my recommendation – RevenueHits, same service as Google AdSense with a faster approval, beautiful adverts as well and can pay as frequent as every two weeks and as little as US$40 of your generated AdSense income.

Technical support?

There are lots of technical support for any reason out there and there is almost noting that will be unanswered online. Like I said, there are some blogs simply set up to give advice and how to tips with any problem that you may encounter yet I doubt there are any such crucial issues you will encounter.

Apart from looking around for help I am sure any programs you may sign up to, are all equipped with integrated technical support solutions within them so there will be no way that you will have your blog stranded by technical issues so relax and start blogging today!

Anything else?

Definitely! Once you start, you have to see your blog as a business you are running or rather as your image that you want to keep tune up, which will motivate you to learn around to do better.

Learn around for some useful tools, plugin and relevant resources to better your blog. Remember the more you upload stuff to your blog you will in the future need to use some plugins to faster the loading of your blog to avoid frustrating you viewers.

Also on frustrating your viewers, avoid subscribing to AdSense that may have adverts that disturb the peaceful browsing of your readers. Adverts that keep popping up or adverts with explicit content may deter your viewers, remember the motive of the blog is to please your readers.

Well that would be it from me, have fun staring your blog this weekend, enjoy this beautiful Friday and have a fantastic weekend and please share this if you can!