Six Blogging Tips for Beginners

Thinking about creating your own blog or website? Then you are not alone. Each day, hundreds of blogs are added to the fold across the globe. The internet revolution has, without doubt, allowed people to express themselves in ways that, not so long ago, would have appeared magical. The amount of content that is created every minute is staggering; over 211 million messages, twits, videos and other content. Consider that over 3 million blog posts are published on a daily basis, and you will understand how large the World Wide Web is. So, how is a beginner blogger to make a dent in this vast an arena?  We, at Network Bees, have created these blogging tips to get beginners bloggers off to a flying start.

Cost

This is one area on which, surprisingly enough, most bloggers balk. The surprising thing about this is the fact that it costs so little to start blogging. In fact, you can get your own website up and running in a matter of minutes at virtually no cost. As an example, if you go to Joomla.com or WordPress.com, you can create a website for free by following a few simple steps.  Check out our article on how to start blogging on the two sites for free to get more information.

However, you do have to think about cost, should you desire to have a site that goes beyond the basics of creativity. Most of the free website creation platforms that are out there have a couple of limitations, which is why serious bloggers often choose to create self hosted sites.

Some of the costs that are associated with the owning of a blog include the cost of a domain name and the cost of having your site hosted by companies such as InterServer, Bluehost, DreamHost and HostGator.

How Much Will it Cost to Create a Blog?

As mentioned above, you can create a blog or website for free. However, those who are looking for something that is more serious can expect to pay from as little as $3 per month, on average, on the lowest priced web hosting packages. We should mention that web hosting costs vary, depending on whether you wish to purchase a single month package, or one that runs for anything from 3 to 36 months.

Most companies offer a free domain as part of these packages. However, on average, domain registration costs around $12 per year, for new registrations and renewals. There also other costs that are associated with launching your site, including the cost of having your site secured against the malware that lurks across the internet.

Time

Another important consideration, as you set out to create your own site, is time. This is one of those important blogging tips that people often, unfortunately, disregard. Depending on how often you wish to create content for your site, blogging can be rather time consuming.

You should therefore, seriously consider the issue of time when setting out to create your blog. While you can probably get away with having a one article website, this wont pan out if you wish to seriously challenge your chosen market’s leaders in terms of visibility.

At Network Bees, we have a team of dedicated professional writers who are constantly looking to create world class technology related articles on your behalf. Other bloggers have grown to such an extent that they have become million dollar entities. It all depends on how much, in terms of time, you are willing to dedicate to your venture.

Blogging is a time intensive undertaking, and you should seriously think about this before setting out. The sad part is that the World Wide Web is littered with millions of blogs whose owners have long since abandoned them. This after the realization that it takes a lot of time to keep the ventures going. In fact, up to 95% of the blogs that are floating out there have been abandoned by their owners.

Choosing a Web Host

Before launching your blog or website, you also need to carefully choose your web host. While there are thousands of web hosting services providers out there, not all of them are created equally.

There are a number of considerations that you need to take into account when choosing a home for your site. These include speed, reliability, cost, uptime, features and many more issues.

Blogging Tips: What are your Goals?

What is it that you wish to achieve with your blog or website? Not surprisingly, there are a number of reasons why people create their own sites. These include, but are not limited to the desire to be heard, some vague idea about blog monetization, brand promotion, the desire to reach out to a wider audience on the internet and much more.

In any case, your goals should be the major drivers for your blog. We have already mentioned that a lot of people suffer from serious burnouts after posting only a few articles. A major failing in this regard is that they do not have the requisite motivation. 

In any case, lay out your goals right at the beginning and let these be your goalposts. Perhaps, there are questions and desires that, you believe, need to be answered and you think that you are the person who is most qualified to answer them.

Don’t Bite More than You can Chew

There is always the temptation to do more. However, this sets you up for failure, in that you will hardly be able to do justice to every issue. As an example, this blog can be described as a general knowledge site. It was designed with the specific aim of giving useful information to beginner bloggers.

However, instead of focusing on every topic in the world, we have narrowed down our focus to the thing that most interests us; technology. While, it can be argued, this is still a very wide topic, it is something that we can tackle without breaking a sweat, which brings us to the next of our blogging tips for beginners.

Blog About Things that Most Interest You

As mentioned earlier on, blogging is a time intensive undertaking. Even having a static website demands a certain amount of hands on action. The one thing that you should never do is start a blog about something that is of little interest to you. You do not want the whole thing to become a chore, simply because you wish to make a few dollars here and there.

If you do so, you are likely to run into a brick wall. Find a topic that you are comfortable with, and start blogging. If you are creating a website for you company or brand, you probably do not have the same amount of freedom when it comes to content creation. However, find an angle that is of interest to you and you will find that it will become easier for you to capture the imagination of your target audience.

Content

The issue of content is another of the things that you need to think about before creating your blog. From where are you going to source your content and what will it be about?

You can, of course, create your own content, as we do at Network Bees. However, it is clear that not all of us are gifted with the ability to spin out one article after the other.

Fortunately, there are thousands of places that you can use to outsource content creation on the internet. Two well known examples are “Upwork” and “Freelancer.” In this case, all that you need to do is hire someone, and you will, in no time, have articles (of varying quality) at your disposal. You can read our article on Freelancing for more information.

Always have high quality content

And here is another of our useful blogging tips: whatever the source of your content is, you need to make sure that it is of a very high quality before posting it onto the internet. Publishing low quality content sets you up for failure in a number of ways; Search Engines use content quality when assigning rank to a web page, and people are not likely to trust you if the content on your site is of a poor quality.