Looking to start your own blog?

Before you can start writing you have to handle all the technical stuff. Touch all your bases by:

1.)    Securing your domain name – If you’re going to have a blog, go all the way! Don’t settle for cooking.blogspot.com or atmymomshouse.wordpress.com While those names are fine for a personal hobby, if you want to build a brand you need to buy your domain name.

• Things can get tricky here if you can’t find the domain name you want.
• Always buy a dot com url. No one remembers the others, unless you’re a major national organization.

You can buy a domain name from places like GoDaddy, Namecheap, and Name.com

For your personal blog you can use Blogger or WordPress

The rest of this article only applies if you purchased a domain name.

2.)    Getting a Web Host – You got your name. Now you need someone to host your website.  There are tons of companies willing to host your website for a monthly fee and they’re relatively cheap.

• With hosting, they give you a certain number of bandwidth and disk space. Some places may also give you an email address associated with your website.
• Try to get your hosting from the same place that you bought your domain name from. You might be able to get a deal and it will be easy to deal with one company vs. two companies.

3.)    Picking a template for your website or design your own. Once again there is no shortage of templates for websites for the non-tech savvy person.

• There are paid and free templates. The paid ones don’t mean that they are better designed but allow more flexibility for customization.