How to Become a Blogger Today

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Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

I don’t want to get too technical so I’ll just keep things basic. I’m sure as a new writer or business owner, you can appreciate not getting overwhelmed.

With any business, becoming overwhelmed is a threat to what you’re doing.

When I first considered starting a real website, I actually found a course to guide me through it step-by-step. It only costed to me $17 and gave me all the information that I needed.

There’re many free and paid courses that you can take that will guide you through as well.

THESE ARE MY TOP THREE PICKS

THE BLOG MILLIONAIRE – Brandon Gaille

I haven’t taken Brandon’s course yet, but I listen to his podcasts regularly and learn by what he teaches people for free. By far, he succeeds his competitors with his stats and data analysis on everything pertaining to how to start a blog.

I am impressed with Brandon’s expertise and experience, and although he gives most of the information away for free through his podcasts and Youtube channel, I’m sure his course would be extraordinary because he is.

He is not only a successful blogger, but he has a moving story behind his success.

He was diagnosed with a brain tumor and almost died. Then, while battling the desease, mustered up the strength to support his pregnant wife who was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.

Having a mother who had a brain tumor, I know some of what he must have gone through. I can’t imagine the combination of pain, dealing with poor health at the same time as your pregnant wife, and then adding to the chaos with a baby on the way. It gives me chills just thinking about it.

I don’t want to spoil the surprise ending so I’ll let you check out his About Me link below, but anyone who goes through that has to be a man of faith. I found out later that he became a Christian through all of this, which made my heart sing because I am also a Christian.

My faith in Jesus Christ has also brought me through many hard times in my life.

I don’t know about you, but I think that is extraordinary. Anyone that can do that, and become a successful blogger, going on to teach others, is #1 in my book.

His course is costly, and I hope to be able to afford it one day. Until then, I will continue to listen to his free podcasts as often as I can.

In the mean time, check out his amazing story here.

INCOME SCHOOL – Jim Harmer & Ricky Kessler

These guys are two of my favorite people. Though I’ve never met them in person, they are in my livingroom on a regular basis.

I watch their Youtube channel faithfully and learn so much about blogging. They are reputable, genuine, and help a lot of people, mostly for free.

They have a blogging course called Project 24. I have never taken the course because it’s a bit too costly for me right now, but I’d love to be a Project 24 member one day in the near future.

The premise behind Project 24 is to help you make a full-time blogging income in 24 months. They help you from beginning to end.

I value their expertise, time, and energy, they put into helping others achieve their blogging goals, and highly recommend Income School to you.

Check them out on Youtube here.

THE DEADBEAT SUPER AFFILIATE – Dan Brock

I actually took this course and LOVED it!

Dan is not everyone’s piece of cake because some don’t know if he’s legit. I’m hear to tell you that he is. He’s not just legit, but he is very professional even though he sports a checkered housecoat in all his videos.

I love Dan. He helped me get started. I bought his course for only $17, even though I was apprehensive.

I wanted to start a website, and his simple course helped me to do that. If you want something affordable that just gives you the basics, I’d highly recommend Dan Brock.

He’s taken the brunt of people’s jokes over the years for his laid-back way of blogging, but he is definitely a competitor and deserves the same respect as every other guru out there.

If it hadn’t been for Dan Brock, I never would have had the courage to start my very first website, Crunchy Menopause.

He made me believe I could do it. Sometimes, when you’re starting out, rather than investing a ton of money when you don’t know if blogging is your thing yet, you might want to buy a cheap course. Or take one for free.

The Deadbeat Super Affiliate has many other courses you can take so check his Youtube channel out here.

I just wanted to point out that all the Youtube gurus basically say the same thing about blogging. I don’t just like to listen to one person. I like to check them all out and then cross reference what they say.

I suggest you do the same.

LEARNING FROM THE COURSE

Dan Brock’s course taught me that in order to start a website you must first get a domain name. In order to get at domain name, you must sign up for a hosting company.

I did not know this, and it kind of turned me off. I wondered why I had to spend a monthly fee just to start a website when I could it for free on Wix.

But what I didn’t understand was that even though I had a free website on Wix, I did not have my own domain name. That domain name tells Google that you are trustworthy and have authoritative content.

If Google doesn’t trust your website, they will not send traffic to you. Google is the biggest search engine in the world, and you want them on your side so that people can find your business, or the books that you write.

We talk about writing topics here on storytellerkat.com so I thought it was only fitting to incorporate that into my experience buying a domain name and starting a website.

I wanted to start an author blog or website that represented my work. I also wanted to write about author related issues, and sell my own books.

So, I chose a hosting account. Yes, I had to buy a monthly subscription, and go to the domain section to buy one first. We Will go over the different hosting companies later on in this article.

But first, I just wanted to go over general information about what a hosting company is.

A hosting company is a service provider that helps your website get on the Internet.

They help your website go on a special computer called servers and store your information there. They require you to have a specific address on the web in order to do this. That’s called your domain name.

So, in layman’s terms, it’s like having a house on a block. If you want a house on a specific block in your neighborhood, you need to have an address.

You can just say, “It’s that blue one over there.” You have to be specific if you want to be considered part of the city. Of course, you have to pay for your house, so naturally you would file for a building permit and be given an address.

Houses within a city are like computers within the Internet. They are all connected to each other just like in a neighborhood, and if you want to be part of the neighborhood, you’d better be professional enough to have a real dwelling, and not just a makeshift tent.

And within that house you have belongings. Just like a website does. Within that website you have content. That content takes up space within the house, within the website, and that’s because you own your own address to keep it there.

That’s all we’re talking about here. It isn’t really that complicated if you think of it that way.

So, who are these hosting companies and how do we find them?

BUYING VS CREATING YOUR OWN DOMAIN NAME

The difference between buying and creating your own domain name depends on what you want to do with it.

You can purchase old domain names people have discarded for a fee. The purpose of buying those particular domain names is to get a boost of website traffic.

Instead of starting something from scratch, you will have an aged domain name associating with the website that already has traffic.

Aged websites are more valuable and can bring larger amounts of traffic than a baby website with a new domain name can.

The premise behind it is that an aged domain will have backlinks already. Backlinks give authority to your website and don’t take as much time to get traffic.

That’s important if you want to monetize your website and make a living from it right away. If you can buy a domain that is five years old for example, with plenty of backlinks already, all you have to do is write your content and start making money.

Of course, you will have to monetize it somehow. You can use adds or affiliate programs, info products, or sell your own books.

BLOGGING IS THE SAME AS A WEBSITE

Once you’ve decided to start a website, the fun begins.

I have four websites, and each time I started a new one it felt like birthing a baby. They are all my children because I’ve nurtured them right from the beginning.

I signed up to a hosting service called HostGator, and it guided me through the process of buying my own domain name which is required when starting a self-hosted website on WordPress.

Self-hosting just means that you own it. In other words, it’s not a free platform like Wix, Blogger, or Weebly. You don’t own those sites.

They are free to set up but you don’t own the content. They also don’t perform well in Google searches, and you won’t acquire domain authority.

After a few failures with free website builders, I realized that I needed to be more professional and get a real website. That meant I had to pay for it.

I took a course on building a website, signed up to HostGator (a Hosting service) and bought my own domain dot com domain name.

That is the proper way to do it if you are serious about creating a website that will be found on Google. It will gain domain authority. It will get back links. You will own your own content and be able to make a living from it.

HostGator brought me through the process of choosing my own dot com domain name and then connected me to WordPress so I could get started building a professional website.

WHAT IS WORDPRESS

WordPress is the content management system used to get blogs and websites on the Internet.

It’s basically a platform that writers can use to write articles and blogs for their websites.

WordPress has to be installed on a web server through a web hosting company and is used to create the websites we see on the Internet.

In other words, WordPress it like a notebook. That notebook is blank until you fill it with your own words. Once you fill it with your own words, people can read it.

WordPress is a notebook for the Internet where people write their content to be f ound by the masses.

You can manipulate WordPress in any way, by changing themes, adding plug-ins, and even your own code if you are tech savvy.

WHAT COMPANIES SELL DOMAINS?

In order to buy a domain name, you must first sign-up to a web hosting service. There are many to choose from, and they’re all pretty close to the same.

Some people say one particular hosting service is better than an other, but don’t believe it. Most of those people are just trying to get commissions for selling through affiliate programs.

I know many who are signed up to the Bluehosts affiliate program and only endorse their product. They will tell you Bluehost is better than other companies because it’s cheaper and has better customer service.

But all they are really after is the commission they get from selling the product.

It’s good to get an unbiased opinion, but bear in mind you can be an affiliate for any web hosting company. That’s why I say they’re all the same. Pick one and just go with it.

The course that I took directed me to HostGator.com. I didn’t even know any other web hosting company existed at the time, that’s how naïve I was.

But it just so happened that HostGator actually was a reputable web hosting service. I have always had good customer service with this company and I will continue to stick with them in the future.

I find them to be very professional and easy to use.

In fact, later on down the road I found out that both Bluehost and HostGator are owned by Endurance International Group. The same company. So, what the heck!

I really wish people would stop comparing hosting services. There is not one that is more superior than the other. Get over it!

I am very pleased with HostGator, and others are very pleased with Bluehost. Some people I know are pleased with GoDaddy, another good web hosting service.

There are so many web hosting services, and they all do the same thing. They will allow you to buy a domain name through them, set up websites through WordPress, and manage things like SSL certificates, bandwidth, security, and dedicated servers if that’s what you want to pay for.

As I said before, all you have to do is pick one. It’s quite easy.

Below is a list of the different web hosting companies out there that you can choose from. The leading contenders are HostGator (a veteran), and Bluehost, its baby brother.

Really, HostGator is just one month older than Bluehost anyway, so age is irrelevant. But don’t be fooled, even the lesser-known younger web hosting services are just as good.

I’ve managed to find about 30 reputable hosting services on the internet, and they all vary in cost.

WEB HOSTING PROVIDERS

WEBMASTER TOOLS

There are many webmaster tools that you can use in WordPress.

Plugins – There are several pieces of software that can be added to WordPress with just a click of a button. Anything from menu builders to decreasing the size of a photo can be done with a plugin.

Themes – You can change themes as you wish on WordPress. Depending on what type of website you want, there are many different kinds of things that you can choose from. You can use a newspaper theme. You can have a simple theme. You can use a current year theme. It all depends on the user. Many themes are free, but you can also pay for themes if you want.

SEO – Search engine optimization is available to all webmasters. It come in the form of plugins. You can install a plugin that analyzes Google’s search engine and keeps track of how each post is doing on your website. This is an absolute must in order to understand how your website is functioning and what you need to do to maintain proper SEO.

Security – There are several plugins that you can use to ensure your website is as secure as it possibly can be. Without a proper security system in place on your website, cyber-attacks are possible. There’ll always be someone who wants to hack your site and steal your information and content.

Back Ups – Backups are necessary when creating a website. If you don’t have a good backup system in place, you may lose your entire website and all its content. You can get backup plugins both free and paid. Whichever version you decide to use, always make sure that you backup your website on a regular basis, not just internally, but externally to a cloud or service that will keep it safe.

Blocks – Every WordPress website has writing software. After all, you need to write the content that goes up on the website that you created. It is similar to Microsoft Word or Google Docs, and can be formatted into blocks for editing purposes. These blogs allow you to create content and segments by adding photos, videos, or plain text.

WHAT DOES SEO STAND FOR?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. What that means in layman’s terms is it’s the process we use to get traffic to a website.

Whenever people search a term on the Internet, that search is powered by certain engines, delivering the results.

There are various search engines on the Internet. Some are less known than others, but the major leading search engines are Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Google, being the leading contender.

Other lesser-known search engines are Amazon, and YouTube.

Think of it this way, when you want to know something, you type it into Google. Google then searches websites to find your answer. That process of searching is called SEO.

I never understood SEO until I started my website. Even then, as a beginner blogger, I didn’t realize the impact that search engines had on the content that I was writing.

I wanted Google to send traffic to my website, but I didn’t just want traffic, I wanted people who are genuinely interested in what I have to write about.

Search engines use algorithms to calculate how to direct the right traffic to your specific website. For the most part, those algorithms are a mystery. Many bloggers have tried to crack the code for years.

It’s near impossible to figure out algorithms. For one thing, they keep changing. Google specifically changes the algorithm on a regular basis.

WHAT IS KEYWORD RESEARCH?

When I started writing books, I have no idea what keyword research was. I wish I would have at that time, because I would have been able to bring more traffic to my writing.

There are some books that I never would have written simply because nobody was interested in that specific topic.

Take for example, Amazon. When I find a keyword that has a high volume of searches, I know people are interested in that topic and I can then write a book on it.

If I want to write a book about home sewing for example, I will search Amazon for how many times people search it in a month. If it’s got a high search volume like 10,000 a month, I will probably write the book.

If it has a low search volume of 50 a month, I know people are not very interested in that and I probably wouldn’t write the book.

I now use this specific SEO practice with my blogs as well as books I write. You can use SEO practices with nonfiction but also with fiction writing.

Fiction writing is a little trickier for search engine optimization, but words are powerful no matter where you use them. If you want to write a book about mermaids for example, search how often the word is searched in a month.

If it searched a lot, it’s a great idea for a fiction novel. If it’s not, then consider a different phrase, or word that defines what you’re writing that does have a high search volume.

I find keyword research to be one of the greatest things that can catapult you’re writing to the next level. It’s fascinating that by simply using the correct word in your title, your book will do better than those with a poor SEO title.

Learning SEO is challenging for a beginner. People can go to school and get degrees on the subject, or they can learn on their own. It depends what you want to do with it, and how much of an expert you want to be in this area.

Not all bloggers need to be experts in search engine optimization. Not all writers need to understand every aspect of SEO.

As far as I’m concerned, a writer just needs to understand that there is a process that brings people to your website, or book, or YouTube channel, and consider how that impacts what you do.

BEST SEO PLUGINS AND RESEARCH TOOLS

If you have a website on WordPress you will want to install an SEO plugin. I use the All in One SEO plugin for some of my sites, and for others I use the Yoast SEO plugin.

I don’t see a difference.

There is an ongoing debate about which SEO plugin is the best. Personally, I think they both do a good job, and there are no major differences.

I think it’s mostly about personal preference, because both plugins are amazing. As long as you have a plugin for search engine optimization, that’s all that matters.

You can also track SEO through Google analytics. All you have to do is set that up on your site, and away you go. You’ll be able to see how well a certain article is doing, and figure out if you need to change keywords to get better results.

I can go into more detail as to what specific analytic program to use on your website, but generally it’s just a matter of personal preference there as well. As long as you have a way to track your SEO, that’s all that matters.

As for keyword research, there are several tools that you can use to make this process easier. You can either purchase software or use some of the free software out there.

I started using free software called Keywords Everywhere, but when it was no longer free, I started using something else.

Personally, I don’t want to have to pay for every kind of SEO tool just to write. I find there’s enough expenses as a writer and content creator, that I don’t need to spend all my hard-earned money on things I can find for free.

There are many free keyword tools at your disposal. I use Google trends and Ubersuggest. I am grateful to those people who put out free tools, because if it were not for them, most writers and bloggers would simply give up.

I know I would, because making a living as a writer doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years to start making an income from content creation and book sales. Forking out money for subscriptions to this and that would simply be a hardship to most struggling writers.

If you do want to purchase a quality research tool, SEMrush is one of the best paid tools. However, there are many others. Below is a list of suggestions:

BEST FREE KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS

BEST PAID KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOLS

CONCLUSION

How to become a blogger depends on a lot of different things. It depends on what you want to accomplish. It depends on whether or not you want to monetize your blog or use it just for a hobby.

Blogging is not defined property in my opinion. When people think of blogging, they think of somebody using the internet as a diary. It’s not that.

It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. Blogging can mean you are writing about a certain niche. It can mean an article. It can mean a website.

Identify what exactly you are trying to accomplish when you start your website. Do you want it to be a diary? Do you want to carve out authority for a certain niche?

More importantly, do you want to make money from your writing?

If you want to make money from your writing no matter whether you call it a blog, website, or content creation, keep this article in mind.

Use proper SEO. Do your keyword research. Buy a domain name, preferably a dot com. Sign up to a good web hosting company, and connect it with WordPress.

Once you do that, and you learn the tools of the trade, you will be successful no matter what your main objective is.

Happy writing!

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