So you want to be a blogger? The first question you need to ask yourself is, “why do you want to blog”? There are many reasons for wanting to start a blog.
- You thought it would be fun
- Everyone else has a blog
- You can get rich quick
- I have a great hobby and I want to share it with others
- I have unique information or skills that I’m an expert in and I want to share my knowledge with others.
Every one of these and the million other reasons we could come up with are great reasons for starting a blog. Not all of them are correct. So, let’s talk about some of the reasons above, some of the truths, and falsies of blogging. First of all blogging can be fun if you make it fun, but it can also become a chore very quickly. And like most humans when something becomes a chore you are likely to neglect it or just quit all together. So the first lesson is:
Blog about something you love
Paul Stryer, Digital Course Warriors (DCW)
There are lots of people that do have blogs and many are very successful, but not everyone has a blog and not everyone that blogs is successful. Blogging is not a get rich quick scheme, it takes a lot of hard work and consistency to have a successful blog that is ready to be monetized. You will spend most of your first few years in the blogosphere building your fandom and working for free. Only after you have a large and dedicated fan base can you start asking your readers to start ponying up money for subscriptions or products. Unless you get lucky enough to have some content or videos go viral it is not a good idea to start monetizing at first.
If you have a great hobby that you consistently participate in and it is something that you just LOVE doing, then you have the makings of a successful blog. You also have a head start on many bloggers that just pick some subject they don’t 100% care about and just start writing because they want to blog. If you are the keeper of some unique skill or knowledge that is something many people want to know about, again you have a head start on a great subject that will be easy for you to maintain a consistent production of blogs (content).
Where Do I Start?
I’m sure if you have done any research whatsoever on how to start a blog, you know that it can be a very new complex world out there with every site you read giving you a different answer on how to get started you blog. That is where DigitalCourseWarriors.com comes in with our NO BS BLOGGERS RESOURCES. We will give you no nonsense information in a clear and easy way on how to start your blog. So, let’s get started; here are the steps on how to get started.
Make A Plan and Work The Plan: Before you do anything you need to sit down with pen and paper and make a plan of what you want to do. Put that plan up on your wall and look at it everyday. If you have to deviate from the plan make sure it is a good reason for making the change. If not get back to the plan. If it is a good change correct the plan and keep on working the plan. Your plan may consist of what your topic is, who your audience is, the titles of some of your first blogs, and how many times a month or week you are going to blog. Be realistic about how many time a week or month you are going to post a blog. Don’t say once a day when once a month is all you can do, you are doomed before you start. Ideal for most beginners is once a week. Just put a recurring event in your calendar, for example, every Monday night at 8pm. This way you have a reminder and once you are in the habit of the same time every week it will be easy to maintain.
- Come up with your main theme for your blog. What are you going to write about? Again make it something you LOVE.
- Research who your target audience is and make a detailed list of these people and where to find those people on-line and off line.
- Come up with a name for your site (hint: find a domain name that is not taken and buy it, that will be your site name). BTW you will learn how to search and buy a domain in the “Basic Blog Builder” course.
- On paper or in Word on your computer write your first three blogs. Research and write your first three blogs. They don’t have to be perfect and they don’t have to be the final product. But it is a good idea to write some before you go out of your way and spend some money and build your site to see if you really want to write a blog. Once you start you really want to try and put out one blog per week minimum.
- Have a few of your friends or people that are into your chosen blog subject read your three blogs and give you some feedback. See if they think it is something they would like to read. See if they think others in that same realm would also like to read that type of information. This is like market research. BTW even after you start blogging you will make changes to what you write based on feed back from your readers.
- Take the Bloggers WorkSpace course called “The Basic Blog Builder”. This is a hands-on, step-by-step, in-person and or on-line course that will walk you through all the steps, to all the information above, and to all the technical steps in setting up your site and getting started.
See, I told you it is not all fun and games. Some of this sounds like hard work, but once you start writing you will get great joy from seeing your fandom grow and responding to your fans comments. If you keep going you will reap the benefits of blogging in a financial return.
Want to read more about becoming a blogger, check out this blog called “Why Blog“.