If you’re thinking about starting your own blog, you might be wondering what the best place to start a blog might be. You can start your own personal blog on any one of the many blogging platforms out there, including your own website or even WordPress if you have experience with it, but that comes with plenty of other considerations and requirements that you might not want to deal with if this is your first time starting your own online business.
Here’s a quick guide to help you find the best place to start a blog based on what kind of blog business you want to run.
How do I Choose the Topic?
The best place to start is by defining your niche, or your focus area. For example, if you’re very interested in photography but are also a foodie, you might want to start up a food photography review site.
Your niche will help refine your audience’s interests and allow you to narrow down exactly what it is that they need from you. Once you’ve found an interesting niche, let’s talk about choosing what type of website platform would be best for your needs.
What’s my Platform (Blogging Platform)?
One thing you’ll definitely want to do is decide what your blogging platform is. This is not to be confused with your blogging niche, which is something else entirely (you can read about that here).
The best blogging platforms typically have one of three major characteristics: they’re extremely user-friendly and easy-to-use, they offer powerful analytics features that can help you understand your audience and grow in popularity, or they allow you full control over your design and style.
Some great options include WordPress, Tumblr, and Squarespace; each has its pros and cons but all are good places for beginners to start building their sites. You can find more information on these platforms by visiting their respective websites or using Google to search for best blogging platform. I personally use WordPress and love it!
Why Should you Choose WordPress?
WordPress has been around since 2003, making it one of the oldest publishing platforms online. That’s why, when you search best place to start a blog, WordPress often ranks near or at #1. With more than 60 million websites using WordPress, including notable publications like CNN and Time Magazine, it’s easy to see why so many people recommend starting your first website with WordPress.
The platform is completely free and offers everything you need to get started as well as room for growth as your site grows. In addition, there are loads of features that make designing easier than ever before. You can even create a mobile-friendly version of your site without any coding knowledge required! If you’re looking for somewhere to start blogging, look no further than WordPress. com.
It’s easy to use, reliable, secure and has everything you need to get started today. To learn more about how you can build your own WordPress site in minutes (for free).
How Much Does it Cost?
It costs practically nothing to start blogging. The biggest expense you’ll incur is buying a domain name, but if you register your name as an available URL with most hosts, it will cost you just $10. Once you have your domain and hosting set up, all that’s left is time (and maybe some graphic design help). You can also host your site for free on services like Tumblr or Wix—but know that advertising revenue from these platforms won’t be quite as lucrative. Bottom line: From start to finish, it will probably take about 10 hours of work and $100-$200 to get yourself online.
What should I Write About?
Before you can start blogging, you’ll need to know what your niche is. Your niche is essentially just an area of focus or expertise that you’re going to base your content around. For example, if I were starting a new food and drink blog, my niche would be recipes and my target audience would be people who enjoy cooking and/or eating. So, figuring out your niche will help shape everything from what content you publish (e.g., recipes) to what kind of marketing approaches you take (e.g., guest posting on relevant sites).
This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to pick something narrow like recipes, though—you can cover broader topics like health or personal finance if it suits your personality and skill set better.
Who Will Help me Promote my Blog?
It’s likely that your website will eventually attract plenty of visitors, but you might have trouble getting those people there in the first place. For example, if you’re writing about weight loss, it’s very unlikely that people are going to stumble upon your site and find themselves dying to lose weight. If you want your site to do well, enlist help from others.
You can hire a search engine optimization (SEO) expert or simply ask trusted friends and family members for suggestions on who you should reach out to. It’s also important not to neglect social media sites like Facebook and Twitter; both are useful tools that could go a long way toward boosting traffic. Remember, though, that even once you’ve gotten people to visit your site regularly, they still need good reasons to stick around.
That means providing them with content they’ll enjoy reading or watching—and being careful not to overwhelm them with too much information at once. The best blogs are always updated frequently and provide readers with new content on a regular basis. So don’t be afraid to update often!
Conclusion
Having covered pretty much every aspect of writing and blogging in detail, we thought it only fitting to conclude with some easy steps you can take right now that will set you up for future success. First, ask yourself why you want to start a blog. Do it because you have something unique or valuable to share; don’t do it because someone else thinks you should (in fact, doing things just because someone else tells you is one surefire way of making sure your new venture never reaches its full potential).
Next, make sure your platform is as user-friendly as possible—not everyone is as tech-savvy as we are!