Hi Guys, As a new member to the Digital Point Community, I thought would use my expertise on Blogging to provide a guide to starting a new weblog for your business, or maybe your professional niche. Maybe, this blog is to help others, or to just discuss your favorite topic, so heres a guide to getting it setup. 1. Get a Domain Name - Sure, wordpress.org and blogspot.com domains have sometimes been known to get good rankings, however its well known that the most professional and recognized blogs usually use the '.com' domain name. Find one that is relevant to the topic you are going to be blogging about, because it's usually good to have some keyterms about your topic in the domain name, to get the best rankings on Google Search. If you're looking for somewhere to buy a domain name etc, you can try Name.com and GoDaddy.com which are both well-known Registrars. They usually have the best prices. 2. Get Web Hosting - One of the biggest parts of setting up your blog is to find the proper hosting. I recently got hacked on a few of my sites through a server, which is why I can honestly tell you that it is best to check out every host before buying. What you want is something that's easy to use, with good support, and very little down-time, because you want your blog to always be up. 3. Getting Your Software Set - The best Blogging Platform that people know-of is Wordpress which you can download from Wordpress.org, it's easy to expand, and really easy to use. You can change Templates and Plugins with ease. Just download the wordpress files, upload, make a db, and follow the easy installation instructions. 4. Blogging - Look around your software and see if theres anything that should be changed (ie Permalinks etc) or maybe add a custom template that you find online. (for wordpress, try thesis and the ultimate blogging theme). Now you can get to posting on your blog, make sure you add some categories for your topics, so people know what you're talking about in what section. Blog about the topic, and read forums/blogs about the topic, so you know what people want to here. 5. Some promotion tips - Join forums in that niche, and post post post. Add a link in your signature to the blog, so that people who read your advice etc might visit your blog because they see the kind of advice you have to provide. Make sure you leave your URL in the URL line when you comment on Blog's in a related niche, so again people who see your expertise can check out your website. You should also social bookmark your posts, and submit your blog to directories in related niches. Good Luck!
Starting a professional blog is an excellent way for you to make extra cash on the side, and it honestly does not need much of an investment. Using the Internet as your workplace always provides you with flexibility where you can pick your own working hours for being successful. Internet marketing actually means, promoting the products and services available for sale, so that the users buy it from home.
Heya ControlTower, Awesome guide, couldn't resist adding my 2cents: 2b - When looking at webhosting the guide is you get what you pay for... if you pay with peanuts you will get monkies. For anyone that is serious spend the time (and a little bit of money) getting a decent webhost, generally if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. 2c - Back up... no matter what your webhost says, keep your own backups... too often I have seen this one go pear shaped. 4b -When you are writing your posts one key thing that started getting me more traffic (so it is good to start early) is try to think of what keywords you might search for if you were wanting to find the content of your article... use those keywords to your advantage both in the Title of the post and the body of the content as well. Just thought those ones might help too Stuart
I started one recently (well it is a combination of my personal blog and professional blog) and I think the following point is something that people (including me) might not take seriously enough: I would like to emphasize, how important is it to actually plan permalink and category structure, which are somewhat related to each other, if you want to use SEO friendly urls (Urls, which contains both the category name of the post and the title of the post). I did not make any plans regarding permalinks or categories and it has given me some extra work, when I noticed that I should modify the category structure. So, It is always a good idea to do at least a rough sketch about the category structure, and create it by using the tools provided by the chosen CMS. This might help to save your from an extra hassle later on.
All blogs are professional if they are started with an intention of making money. They become professional in one way or the other.