10 Things to do Before Making a Blog
January 16, 2010 by uttoransen
Filed under Blogging Tips
Its great that you planned to start blogging, but before you begin you should know a few things which will play a major role in making your blogging career successful or result in a failure. Planning is very important and so is to have a successful start. You sure don’t want to start something, which will stop to interest you later. Here are 10 such things that will help you make a better blog from the first day.
- Know your interest – Yes, it’s important to analyze your interests. The first step is to know the topics that interest you. That can be tech, health, alternative medicine, green movement, news, web2.0 stuff, Internet and blogging fundas or any other thing. So just go through the options and once you select your topic, sit back, take a pen and a notebook and write down atleast 10 articles on that topic. These 10 articles will make it clear for you, that you want to write on that topic or not and you can write on that topic or not (big difference between ‘want’ and ‘can’). Remember, you need to write atleast 3+ good quality articles daily on that particular niche once your blog gets live, so if you are already facing problems to write your initial articles, you should better find a different niche. This small little tip will help you become a better niche blogger.
- Make a budget – This will be a decision that will shape up your blog. You want it all free, go to wordpress.com or blogger.com and get a free blog. Highly un-recommended. That’s why it’s good to setup a yearly budget for your blog. Registering your own domain will cost you $10 a year and a hosting account on godaddy or hostgator type of hosting service will cost you $5 to $10 a month. This might sound a little big if you are a school student or a collage student with no part time work and no good parent that pays pocket money, or if you are unemployed man with 5 kids to feed. But rest assured that 90% of bloggers do earn back the hosting fees in a year or two, and its also a fact that in a years time you will not only have earned enough money to buy a domain but also you will curse yourself that why you have not started out with a domain in the first place.
- Know your purpose – Not everyone wants to blog for money, may be you just want to blog for fun or you want to make a news blog or a company blog to update your clients with the latest happenings from your company or use it for product launch. So many possibilities, thus its important to figure our why you want to blog. If you are just for the money, make sure you are not on a very competitive niche or a general niche and your selected niche has high paying advertisers.
- Plan your time – You have to go to school, take tuitions and then extra classes and exams, work over time in your office, go out with kids, girlfriend and wife, go to a restaurant for business meeting or possibly go abroad for business tours. Where is the time? When will you blog? It’s not easy to give a dedicated time to your blog; yes your blog needs time. You need to post, upgrade it sometimes, research and stay updated, reply and read posts. Read and comment on other blogs and so on. Decide your blogging time, else you will have a neglected blog.
- Personal blog plans – if you are planning to setup a personal blog then its important to first know that, “how much personal is – too personal”. Ask your friends and family member and take their permission before posting articles about them or their photos etc. Also, please note that personal blogs, if it’s only personal then it might not make you a lot of money, unless you are a celebrity.
- Health problems – Desktops are a reason for back pain and laptops are a reason of neck pain and apparently I have both. Yes, blogging all day long has serious health problems. If you are serious about your health and especially if you are having some health problems like Spondylitis or other backbone problems, then you must rethink about your blogging career a bit more.
- Ups and downs – Blogging life has serious ups and downs and many of those are not even under your control. Their will be times when you won’t have anything to post, or your traffic might go down without you doing anything wrong, or its even possible for your blog to get penalized on search engines etc. so brace yourself for the up and down roller coaster of blogging life before you jump on it.
- Register and reserve names – names on popular social sites are like real estate, they just go away if you are lazy. So go out and register your blogs name on those popular social sites. Make sure to build a good profile on most big social bookmarking websites like digg, stumbleupon, propeller, mixx etc.
- Network with other bloggers in your niche – Twitter, facebook etc. are good ways to network with fellow bloggers; you can start commenting on their blogs right away.
- Extras – So, hopefully you got 10 articles ready, and have a very good, sweet, simple and short, brandable domain name which matches your niche. Its time to setup your blog. Choose the blogging script as wordpress; seriously there is nothing better. Once you have setup wordpress its time to customize it and keep blogging as much as you can.
Blogging is not instant rich formula but if you are persistent, you can easily start earning enough to atleast pay your bills. Once you have a blog, its time to read about things to do after making a blog.
I pretty much totally agree with this.
Planning is most important and niche which you blog is also as imp as planning..
hi Rajesh Kanuri,
welcome to tech nascent dot com and thanks for your comments,
Yes every single blog can pay atleast its own fees. Planning then execution is important.
Yep, surely, i don’t think it really costs a fortune to buy a self hosted blog, just a domain and a hosting… anyone can afford it
I think planning is the most essential part of blogging. If you do plan things before doing them it will definitely help you to do things in a better way
.-= Loveish´s last blog ..5 Ways To Get More Comments On Your Blog =-.
hi Loveish,
welcome to tech nascent and thanks for your comments,
i always like to have a plan first before i jump into action, always helps a lot
My problem is time, I can not spent alot of time for my own blog
time is always against us bloggers… but we still have to keep going
All of them are important but motivation is much more important to keep you blogging
.-= Tinh´s last blog ..Sharp Thesis Theme Skin with 8 New Color Schemes =-.
I would like to add one thing about Domain.
Always add more years to your domain. Don’t buy a domain only for 1 year, because google hate these type of domains.
Yep, i have covered that tip here – 10 Tips on How to Gain Search Engine Trust
Maybe I should add, this is just my opinion, you need to do keyword research if you want to earn money from your blog. I usually require 1 week to do research to find good keywords.
Marikxon Manurung
.-= Marikxon Manurung´s last blog ..Portable Tub Spa =-.
You are right on that, i have already linked my niche blogging article, keyword research is very important and so is selecting a niche. Am planning to write another article on it soon
yeah…sounds great, keep going dude… I like your blog. I think I’ll visit your blog a lot.
you are always welcome
Well said,
In my point of view, choosing the right subject is the key, you should have sufficient knowledge to blog based on the selected subject. Then choose the right platform for blogging (No questions its wordpress), and keep this in mind that, you will not get traffic easily.
.-= Anish K.S´s last blog ..Facebook and McAfee Partner to Make the Internet More Secure =-.
Yes, the niche selection is the most important part, that’s why i linked my niche marketing tips article to it. A good start is all that a blogger needs
You’re missing a very important point: Keyword Research
You want to rank well in the search engine instead of just being another one of those social bloggers who make $0 all-year round.
.-= Kai Lo´s last blog ..Advanced Link Building With Blog Comments =-.
no dude i have not missed it, have you read the article i linked in the very first point, it explains exactly what you are talking about.
also, you are very right in point out that the real money is in the niche, i told this many times myself. However, it will be quite wrong to say that social blogging doesnot makes anything, they do make some money, else they would be doing something else by now
Sorry, I didn’t check out the first link in the post.
I’m not saying all social bloggers don’t make money, but I’m saying majority of them. Most of these people I’m talking about are in the MMO niche. They tell people how to make money when they are not even making money themselves.
-Kai
Twitter @lomak1985
i agree with you up to some extent, i mean, i too make money from my network and services and this social mmo blog (technascent) is absolutely un-monatised, so those bloggers that are running a social blog alone is making peanuts at max… though there are ways to monatise such blogs, but i do not approve most of those methods myself
Yes, I’ve seen plenty of blogs that make false claims of earnings. Like “Hey, I am making $50,000 a month following this one program, you need to sign up fast!” Can’t wait till FTC really cracks down on these people hard.
-Kai Lo
Twitter @lomak1985
Proper planning, registering your domain name in advance and choosing the niche that fits best to your personality… are the few top things that I would consider while starting a new blog!
.-= TechChunks´s last blog ..Amazing Video of Airplane Laser Hitting a Truck! =-.
right, planning in advance is the key, i always suggest a detailed niche research before you get into blogging, that helps big time
Have to agree with the post and some of the comments. Planning.. execution.. research indeed are part of blogging.
But, for me, the funda which works the best is DO IT NOW.. JUST DO IT. Slowly, after few posts you will come to know how to really work it out things..
Nice writeup!
.-= Bangaloreloka´s last blog ..Writing Articles Quickly. Lot of Articles – Super tips! MUST READ. =-.
Yep, the real things one can only understand when he goes on blogging, experience is the best teacher, however a good plan always goes the long way
These tips can still work well even after one starts blogging.
Great to improve ourselves and blogging experiences as well. Constantly knowing who you are and where you’re heading at is important. Keep up the good work.
@wchingya
Social/Blogging Tracker
.-= Ching Ya´s last blog ..How Blog Review Can Help to Improve Blog Traffic =-.
Yep, very true, i personally keep tracking my progress, and those lists helps me always to keep checking the current status.
Knowing your liking and Making your budget are the most important things…Also, you must have an alternative plan at hand if you plan to leave blogging in the middle of your career.
.-= Tech-Freak Stuff´s last blog ..How to Make your Blog/Website more User-Friendly? =-.
i wonder how many people have alternative plans while they do off line jobs, i would prefer to perhaps keep some money in bank’s fixed accounts and get a life insurance, that will do better future safety
Good ones Uttoran, Must read for all those who are going to start a blog.BTW, is anyone here using Dedicated hosting?
.-= Ramkumar´s last blog ..how to download from rapidshare without premium account =-.
no, am not using dedicated hosting, but planning to go for a vpn soon
yup those are really essential .. nice writeup
.-= Jaspal´s last blog ..SaveDelete has come under 1 lac in alexa ranking =-.
thanks,
excellent Tips thanks you
Nice post mate! most of us didn’t follow these things before starting our blogs…! thats why i faced many problems with my blog!
.-= Pubudu Kodikara´s last blog ..Want to Completely Uninstall a Program Without Leaving Junk? =-.
yep, i know, been following you since the time of your earth blogs
but good that you are on the right track now,
cheers,
Thanks for clearing this up. You’ve posted some really useful information.
That’s so true and every blogger no matter what platform should for sure read this post before honing onto blogging world……
.-= shoaib hussain´s last blog ..Windows 7 Tip-Make System Restore Image =-.
hi shoaib hussain,
welcome to tech nascent and thanks for your comments
Well written dude
, but i would have enjoyed it more than others if there were some images in it 
.-= Sunil Jain´s last blog ..100+ Best Free Premium WordPress Themes of Jan 2010 =-.
glad you liked it, will try to add images from the next time
ya. thanks… dude.. it helps me a lot ..
so true..will keep in mind..
… and niche which you blog …
Man , nice joke
.-= Maniak´s last blog ..b_4342_3 =-.
hi maniak,
yep, i linked to another article on the first point that explains more about niche blogging,
and which part is a joke? please explain more,
cheers,
Niche marketing is a good way to promote products and earn money online because there are few competitors yet..”,
i love to see new product launches because i am addicted to shopping both online and offline.~:*
Domain age doesnt matter from seo perspectives….i dont agree with this at all..
you are right, matt cutts recently told that domain age is a non issue for seo, but then again his answer was not a straight “no” it was rather diplomatic… so comes down to what you believe… besides we don’t know what yahoo or microsoft bing thinks about domain age…
i am looking for an in-depth tutorial about lead generation, can anyone post links ?;`:
Hi, I pretty much agree with every thing you wrote. But about Extras? are 10 extra posts enough? Shouldn’t we have more?
hi Umair,
thanks for your comment and welcome to tech nascent,
10 extra posts will let you know about how good you can write on that topic, surely its good to keep as much as possible so that you never run out of content ideas
actually, lead generation takes some to time to build up. you just got to be patient…;
I fully agree with making a battle plan before starting, this way everything will be organized and mistakes could be avoided.