Blogging Advice For A Rookie Blogger

I'm not a seasoned blogging veteran by no means and will not claim to be an expert either. I have been blogging close to a year and still love it as much as the day I started, if not, more! I have learned a ton about what is going on through trial and error. When I found out what a blog was and fell in love I had no real computer skills and have had to learn everything myself . That is one of the biggest reasons I started this site, I want to gear it towards the people like me who are wanting to learn about the Blogosphere. The first thing people need to know is that it takes a big commitment in time and patience to learn if you want to earn money from your blog.  I almost forgot about determination. There will be times when you get discouraged and wonder what the hell am I doing this for and feel like quitting. You must continue and fight through it. It has happened to me a couple times. Make a plan for your blog before you start and list what goals you want to achieve. Do you plan on making money from your blog? What is your blog going to be about? I would suggest either Blogger.com or Wordpress.com to start with because they seem to be the most popular and they are free. Both are fairly easy to use and you will have your first blog up in no time and can get going. I wish I would have started like that. You are not allowed to run ads on Wordpress.com, but you are able to do it on a self hosted Wordpress.org blog. In that case you will need to register a domain name, it is the name of your site. The cost is around $10 per year. After that you will need a host for your blog and that is around $5, but could be more depending on what your trying to accomplish. Some places online will let you register your domain and host it as well. After sitting down and figuring out how much time I have spent on learning as much as I can about all the different aspects of what goes into making a successful site I have come to the conclusion that Site Build it is the best deal going and it's not even close in my opinion. I want to let you know that I am an affiliate of Site Build It and I want to make that perfectly clear. I did not find out about them before I got going and I will be moving my other site, Beltwayboysports.com over to them. Don't just take my word for it, go and look at them for yourself and then decide what will be best for you. Even if you don't use them, you can become an affiliate and they offer a ton of free information about building websites and blogs all for free. The material they provide you is topnotch and very helpful.

What Blogging Platform Will You Use?

After you decide that you are going to give blogging a try, there is one more very important decision you must make. What blogging platform are you going to use? There is a bunch of them to choose from. You have Wordpress.com and .org, I will explain the difference between the two later in this post. Google has Blogger and to be perfectly honest with you, those are the only ones that I have personally used. I like all three of them and each has their pros and cons. They are pretty easy and straight forward when it comes to using them. I started out with a Wordpress.org site. It's Beltwayboysports.com you should check it out sometime. This blog that you are reading is a Blogger site that I got from Google.

Now onto the differences of the Wordpress.com and .org. The differences are .com is free and wordpress will host the site for you, but you don't own the site and can't put ads up if you decide to monetize your blog. I have heard of people losing their blogs because of some type of rules infraction and lost all of their content. Now with a .org blog you control the whole show. You will need to pay for hosting and pick out a domain name like I did with Beltwayboysports.com. I should have went the free route to begin. I knew absolutely nothing and had to figure it out on my own. It really is best to get a handle on how everything works before striking out on your own. It will save you a bunch of headaches, trust me!

Hosting is not all that expensive to get. DO YOUR HOMEWORK when you are searching for a place to host your site. I would recommend my host, but I'm not totally satisfied with their service. I did not do enough homework before I selected them. So I learned a very valuable lesson. I was just so excited to get going and let my guard down for a second and wham. My suggestion is to go and research all the different platforms. Only you will know which one fits your needs. Everyone is going to talk about whatever one they are comfortable working with!

Here is another good resource site that is packed with a ton of great information to help you out as you start your journey into the blogging world. http://2createawebsite.com

Welcome To Basics 2 Blogging

I'm making this site for people who are new to blogging or are thinking of becoming a blogger. I'm no expert and will never claim to be, but I have learned enough to be able to help others who are just starting out. I knew nothing of how a blog worked or anything about the blogosphere when I started out. Where do you go to get information and who can you trust? Should I use Wordpress or Blogger? How do I get people to my site? Can I really make money doing this? How? Those are just some of the questions that I had at the beginning of my journey into blogging. I am glad that I found blogging, I love it and wish I would have started alot sooner than I did! I was one of those people who did tons and tons of planning, trying to make sure of this and that and making no progress. That is something you want to avoid if possible. You must also figure out what you want to get out of blogging. Is this going to be a hobby in your spare time or are you going to try and make some money? That is something each person needs to figure out on their own.