Web Hosting and WordPress powers websites worldwide. Making it possible for you to run your website with the support of your chosen web hosting company. There are many web-hosting companies to select from. It can be overwhelming deciding on which one to use.
SiteGround is a web hosting company gaining popularity. They’ve been around since 2004. They have affordable options and features to help you get started in building your blog.
For those of you seeking affiliate opportunities check out SiteGround Affiliate to join their partner program. Affilate earnings help generate passive income streams. Before you jump into monetizing your blog it’s a good idea to take the time to grow in blogging first.
Growing your blog takes time. That said if you are serious about starting a blog that grows itself someday – you’ll want to connect with your readers and other bloggers in your niche.
Gain social proof through building relationships online. SiteGround provides 24/7 support and the overall reviews I’ve seen suggest they have quite a helpful team. All focused on providing all you need to keep you and your site happily on the web at affordable price ranges.
How to Easily Install WordPress on SiteGround
Meet Greg Narayan – a successful blogger and the founder of Dear Blogger. He is also a WordPress web designer, coder and teacher of all things WordPress on YouTube. Greg helps bloggers and business owners to start, create, and launch blogs that work.
In this tutorial Greg helps you to easily install WordPress at SiteGround. He’ll walk you through from sign up to Install in less than 10 minutes. If you do sign up with SiteGround don’t forget to plug in Greg’s discount code (discount67) for big savings on starting your web-hosting with SiteGround.
We weren’t meant to blog alone and great blogging is all about community.
Are you new to blogging or exploring the idea of starting a blog? Do you already have a blog but are left wondering why it isn’t growing? Many new bloggers give up before their breakthrough happens. Why? They simply give up on their blog too soon! There are some important things new bloggers need to know before diving into starting a blog. In this post, I share 8 beginner blogger help tips.
1. Know why you blog and write about your topic.
Knowing the answer to your why is a crucial first step. If you don’t know this you’ll feel lost and confused. How do you decide what topic areas you’d be good at writing about? Try asking yourself these questions and write down your answers;
What are your beliefs? They form your worldview.
What are some subjects you could write about and never get tired of talking about?
What are your interests?
How has your life experiences positively impacted who you are today?
Is there a problem you could solve for your reader?
Why did you start your blog? or Why do you want to start a blog?
What are you good at?
What are things people always ask you to help them with?
A great way to dig deeper is to write out your own list of questions. Answer them in a quiet space where you can think and listen to your inner self. Need to discover more about finding your calling and knowing the answer to your why? Jeff Goins, the bestselling author of The Art of Work digs deeper into this topic with Andy Traub in the following podcast; The Seven Stages of Finding Your Calling
2. Avoid starting a blog with the expectation
of earning money right away.
I’m often asked by people considering starting a blog if they can earn a living blogging. It’s true you can earn a living as a blogger. Having said that your blog in and of itself will not generate much of an income. Especially right away. It is very important to not give up your job too soon. Bestselling author and founder of the Tribe Writers course Jeff Goins refers to this as building a bridge rather than taking a leap.
3. Keep your goals realistic and reachable.
Everything has a beginning. We can’t expect to achieve blogging growth and success right away. There are steps we must take to get there.
Start with simple beginnings. If we focus on too many things starting out it can become overwhelming.
Give your blog time to grow. Blogs don’t become successful overnight.
Just start and enjoy the process. Blogging shouldn’t be a stressful endeavor.
Write more than you design your site. You can build on it over time.
Work smarter not harder.
[bctt tweet=”Give your blog time to grow. Blogs take time, focus and consistency.” username=”https://twitter.com/CoriWriterBWP”]
4. Commit to a blogging routine.
Creating a blog posting routine is definitely an important part of building trust with your readers. They like consistency even more than frequency. Daily blog posting is a tough pace to maintain. Beginning with a bi-monthly posting schedule or once weekly is great!
5. Know that you’re not alone.
All of us need support no matter what we are doing. From friends, family, and colleagues. There are many bloggers and writers you can connect with. Where do you find them? In communities. Facebook groups and other online places.
6. Learn from other bloggers.
Every successful blogger started out just like you. None of these bloggers and writers began knowing what they do now. Their success took them time to accomplish. Find a mentor/guide that you can learn from. Having a blog mentor is so beneficial to your growth as a blogger.
7. Start building an email list.
Building an email list of subscribers is the best way to do this. You can sign up for Mail Chimp free up to 2,500 subscribers. Providing a great starting place for those seeking to keep costs low.
These 3 are my personal favorites for paid Email Marketing Providers;
Constant Contact and Aweber both have phone support which is great for those needing to learn how to use these services effectively.
Without an email list to communicate often with your readers you’ll lose them. Establishing an email list so you can gain subscribers creates an audience of loyal fans. Give away something for free such as an eBook or email course. Your readers need a reason to subscribe. Everyone loves getting something for free!
8. Be patient and persistent.
You’ll need to be patient and persistent in the process of building and growing your blog. Most things in life don’t develop into anything great fast! Everything worthwhile takes commitment and work. All things have a beginning. Starting, creating, and launching a blog is no different. If you direct your efforts in the right places the desired results will eventually come.
Conclusion
You will learn the tools of the blogging trade by starting and growing your blog over time. Discover the answer to your why. Focus on your message. Speak to that person through your writing. Build an email list. Find other successful bloggers and learn from them. Read their blog regularly knowing they started out just like you.
Join the conversation. I’d love to hear from you!
1. What is the one area about being a blogger you currently struggle with or have in the past?
2. If you’re new to blogging what would you like to learn next?
3. Why not suggest some topic areas you’d like to see more posts about here?
This is a guest post written byGreg Narayan. He is a blogger, teacher, and web designer.
To make a successful blog with a large number of visitors from scratch is a very difficult thing to do. Sometimes I wonder, “why should XYZ blog gain a huge following?” Is it by chance or by the successful nature of the author? Both? The truth is most blogs dofailbut there are certain things we can do – emulating successful blogs before us – – to have an advantage out here.
This is a guest post by Ryan Biddulph. He shares smart blogging tips at Blogging From Paradise.
Help people for free
Be generous.
This is the most simple way to grow a slow blogging business.
Bloggers often say business is slow and then….sit there. This always seemed strange to me. Blogging business is slow because you are stingy. Blogging business grows if you are generous. Helping people for free increases both your skills and exposure. Skilled bloggers with massive exposure make coin.
Why Being Generous Grows Business
OK; let’s dissect my day today.
I woke up, meditated, grabbed a coffee and water and published a post on my blog. Generosity. I helped people for free. Zero expectations. I trust in the process.
I emailed my list, shared on social media and my exposure increased that much more. Within 10 minutes I nabbed 29 email opens. I have not actively built my list in years. Nor do I have a big list. But being generous aligns you with success, plain and simple.
After publishing my blog post I wrote and published a guest post on Blogging Tips Dot Com. Guess what? I increased my exposure and skills by publishing the guest post freely and generously. Zero expectations. I have fun helping people. I trust in the process.
People will buy my eBooks and/or course by finding me through the blog post and guest post. I have been generous for years, helping people for free through guest posting, publishing posts on my blog and by promoting other bloggers and commenting genuinely on blogs,
I appear to be everywhere. Appearing to be everywhere grows your blogging business because people see you all over, trust you, buy your stuff and hire you.
Plant Seeds for a Blogging Forest
Imagine planting seeds to grow a blogging forest. If you plant 5 seeds you get 5 trees. If you plant 40,000 seeds you get 40,000 trees. You get the picture.
Of course, trees take time to grow. But instead of planting 1 seed, waiting around for it to grow, you plant another, and another, until you have planted 100 seeds. Phew! That is enough for today. Tomorrow you plant 50 seeds. Plant 200 seeds the following day and you have the beginnings of a forest. We’re talking 250 seeds planted for trees.
Eventually, if you water the seeds and ensure each seed gets ample sun based on your planting location, slowly and steadily, each seed will grow into huge, impressive, green, lush trees, forming an impenetrable forest.
Being generous blogging-wise is like planting content seeds for a content forest that readers see far and wide. Write and publish one guest post today. Write and publish one post for your blog. 2 content seeds planted today. Good. Both will grow into something impressive – over time – but you do not become successful by planting 2 content seeds. Nope. Generously planting forests helps you be everywhere, growing your business quickly.
Being generous blogging-wise is like planting content seeds for a content forest that readers see far and wide.
Plant 5 content seeds today. Publish a podcast. Broadcast live on Facebook. Today, the video content seed gets 55 views. Tomorrow, you notice 59 views. 365 days down the road, the video content seed gets 434 views. Talk about a seriously big content tree. But now imagine all the content seeds you placed over the past 3 months, every single day. Envision 300 pieces of content – 3 pieces/seeds you plant daily – individually nabbing 1, 5 or 100 views daily.
Do you see what I am talking about?
Thousands and thousands of views mean a huge army of interested folks viewing your blog, your eBooks, your courses, your services, and your advertising opportunities. People will begin buying and hiring. Your blogging business grows.
If you are going to have a self-hosted blog then you’ll need to secure a domain name. In this post, I provide 4 simple steps to help you discover a domain name appropriate for your message and topic.
1. Decide what your blog will be about.
This is really your first step. Choosing a domain name is going to be much more difficult if you don’t know what you’ll be writing about. Know who your target audience is going to be. You can use your name or variances of it. Using your name provides you some freedoms. One of them being… If your topics change you will still have a working domain name.
When writing about a narrow niche topic such as vegetarian cooking … using your name wouldn’t be the best choice.
2. Keep it short.
The ideal domain name is 2 short words. This is not usually possible anymore unless you use your first and last name. Having said that, you may still face the challenge many others before you have with your name being unavailable. The reality is it’s tough to secure a 2-word domain name but not entirely impossible. If you have succeeded at finding a two-word domain name you’re in luck! Such domains are like gold these days!
A combination of three words can work well if you can’t secure on with two. As a wise teacher once suggested to me … enjoy the process. Have fun with it. This is your beginning!
3. You can alternatively select your domain name and craft a working title from it.
This is exactly what I did. My chosen domain name address is a shortened version of my first name blended with the writer (coriwriter.com). Blogging With Purpose being a title which extends from my domain name.
Let’s say you want to blog about cooking.
The best vegetarian cooking recipes from around the world. If the title you want is “The Best Vegetarian Cooking Recipes From Around The World” what you have then is a long title. Within this title is a great domain name, title, and tagline. Taglines provide your readers with a brief snippet of what your site is about.
How can you make this title work in with your domain name, title and tagline description?
You could shorten it to create a domain name out of this long title. Example: Vegetarian Cooking with a tagline The Best Vegetarian Cooking Recipes From Around The World.
It is more than likely that ‘vegetarian cooking’ is unavailable.
You can personalize it with your first name in front of it.
Example: Title: Cori’s Vegetarian Cooking Tagline: The best vegetarian cooking recipes from around the world. Domain Name: corisvegetariancooking.com
[bctt tweet=”Domain names and websites are internet real estate. – Marc Ostrofsky -” via=”no”]
4. What do you choose? .com, .org, or .net?
There are many endings to choose from but we aren’t going to go into all of them in this post. I’ve narrowed it down to the most popular three. These are the most commonly used top-level end to your domain name URL. All originally created with a unique individual purpose of their own. .com, .net, .org explained
.comIt was intended for the purpose of a profit-making commercial type use. .net This one was usually used for network related type domains .orgSites using .org were typically used by those that had a non-profit organization. Many non-profit organizations use the .org ending.
In current day most people do not focus so much on the differences between these endings to our URLs. Using .com is still the most popular choice for most blogs.
