How Much Does it Cost to Create a Blog

This post is for all those newbies who are planning to start a blog. If you want to create a blog, you can even do it for free. There are few good blogging platforms like www.blogger.com,  www.wordpress.com and www.typepad.com. You can choose any of them to create a blog for free.

However, there is a downside to using a free blogging platform. If you want to just test your blogging and writing skills then these are great. But if you want to be a serious blogger and also make money blogging, then it’s not recommended to use a free blogging platform.

The problem with free blogging platforms is that they don’t allow you much customization. You won’t even get your own domain name.

Instead, they will give you a subdomain name that doesn’t look professional. It will be difficult to build credibility with a blog name such as yourblogxyz.blogger.com as compared to www.yourblogxyz.com. These days, some of the free blogging platforms allow you to purchase a domain name and link it with your free blog. But the limitations in customization of blog still exists.

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Get a Self Hosted WordPress Blogs

So the best option to create a blog is self hosted blog powered by WordPress.org software. This is what most of the big bloggers prefer. For that, you need a web host, a domain name ‘linked’ to your web hosting account, WordPress.org software, cool looking theme of your choice and few plugins to add some functionality. You will be up and running within a couple of hours.

How Much Do I have to Pay to Start a Blog?

Following is the amount that these services are charging their customers at the time of writing this post. Check out the links as well so that you can validate the same and get to know if anything has changed.

Cost of Web Hosting

Bluehost – Usually they charge USD $7.99 USD per month but currently they are running a promotional campaign and offering web hosting USD $3.95 per month. You have to pay for three year fees at the time of sign up. So that’s around USD $142.2 for 3 years. Cheap and best! Check BlueHost banner on right sidebar for even more discounts!

Hostgator – Hostgator charges $5.56 per month for their web hosting service. For 1 year, you have to pay $66.72. If you sign up for 3 years, they will charge you at $3.96 per month ie $142.56 for 3 years.

My choice:- I use Bluehost for several years and don’t feel the need to change it.

Cost of Domain Name

A .com domain name will cost you between $10-$12 per year. However, when you sign up with Bluehost, you get a free domain name. Till the time you keep renewing your web host account, you don’t have to pay separately for the domain name.

Just in case, you want to register your domain name separately ie not with your web host, in that case, GoDaddy is the best domain name registrar.

My choice:- I have registered domain name with Bluehost as well as few with Godaddy.

Cost of Blogging Software

WordPress.org provides the best and completely free blogging software. Yes, you don’t have to pay for anything. If you get a web hosting account with Bluehost or Hostgator, you can install WordPress with a couple of clicks.

Cost of WordPress Theme

There are plenty of free themes available on Internet. You just have to search it on your favourite search engine. Though there are few premium themes as well.

Thesis – Thesis is a premium theme. It costs you $87 and has several features. I will keep the details for another day and publish a separate article on that.

Genesis Framework – If you can spend around $80, Genesis framework + child theme is a great option. They look beautiful and are well coded.

My choice:- I am a proud Genesis user!

Cost of Plugins

There are plenty of free plugins and you can get going with those free ones. Even I am not using any premium plugin till date. This is the list of plugins that you would need to install on your WordPress blog.

(Free/Paid) Blog Setup Service

Either you can set up blog on your own (if you are DIY kind of person) or You can hire an expert to set up the blog properly for you, so that you can focus on content and other things.

We offer a free WordPress installation service for our readers (no tricks here). Click here to find out more about Free WordPress Installation service.

You can also check our services if you are looking for more. Click here to find out more about WordPress services that we offer.

Summary
To sum up, here are the following costs involved:

Domain Name ~ $10/year
Hosting ~ $60 per year
Premium Theme (Optional) ~ $25 to $80 (One time)

Affiliate Disclosure: In this article, there are few links to affiliates in which we may receive an affiliate referral payment if you make a purchase using our link. However, the affiliate products are at no additional cost to you. These are the products our team uses, believes in and stand behind. We appreciate and thank you for your support!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Recommended WordPress Plugins

There are tons and tons of plugins available for WordPress. You can check all available plugins in the WordPress plugin directory. You can also search for the plugins from WordPress admin panel. However, the fact that there are so many plugins, it creates so much of confusion: which one to pick and which one to skip!

In this article, we will cover the bare essential plugins that you need to start off. Some of the advanced plugins will be discussed as we move forward in our series of WordPress tutorial.

Best WordPress Plugins

Akismet: This plugin saves you from spam comments. It comes pre-installed with WordPress. However, you need to activate, get API key and then configure it with that key. You can get a key from this link.

All-in-One SEO: This plugin is one of the most downloaded plugins in the history of WordPress. It helps you to improve your search engine rankings by allowing you to enter meta description and titles to individual page/post.

Contact Form 7: This plugin allows you to place contact form on your blog so that visitors can send you email. This one is most downloaded free plugin for contact form.

Google XML Sitemap: This plugin generates an XML sitemap that helps the search engines to better index your blog. You just have to configure it once and forget it. Every time you create a new post or page, a new entry in sitemap will be created automatically. It will also notify the major search engines that the sitemap has been updated.

WP-DBManager: This plugin helps you to take backup of your database. You can configure it to take automated backups and email it to your email id. You can also take adhoc backup of your database.

YARP: Stands for Yet Another Related Posts plugin. It helps you to add links to related posts at the end of each post so that users can further read the contextually related posts.

How to Install a WordPress Theme

If you have already selected a WordPress theme, read this article to install the theme on your blog. Installing the theme is very easy task. You would require a FTP client for this. I use filezilla which is a simple and very handy tool. You can download it from this link{insert link}. Here I assume that you already have downloaded a theme that you want to install and it is compressed in zip file format.

1. Unzip the file

Suppose you downloaded the theme and placed it on C: drive of your PC. It will be like C:\mytheme.zip. Now unzip the file. You would get all content of the theme in C:\mytheme folder.

2. Upload the Theme files

Connect the FTP client (filezilla) using the username and password given by your web host. Left window will display local files & folders while the right window will show the remote directories and files. Locate the WordPress installation of your blog on the web host. Navigate to /wp-content/themes path. You have to put your wordPress theme in this location. From left window, click on the theme folder and drag & drop it to the right window (ie in /wp-content/themes directory). Once the transfer is completed, you can disconnect filezilla.

3. Activate the Theme

Once you have uploaded the theme, all you need to do is activate it. Logon to your wordpress blog using the admin credentials. Navigate to Dashboard -> Appearance -> Themes. You will see the new uploaded theme and a link to activate it. Click the link and you are done.

How to Choose a WordPress Theme?

Have you just installed WordPress and wondering which WordPress theme you should select? This article will guide you how to select the right theme for your WordPress blog. At the end of this article, we will also list down our recommended themes.

I am sure you realize that how important it is to choose the correct theme for your WordPress Blog. Not only it makes the first impression on your blog’s visitors, it is also important from the SEO perspective. A theme that is difficult to navigate and not well organized will drive away your visitors. And the search engines will not be happy with a poorly coded theme.

Simpler is Better

Some of the themes look very fancy and attractive but they contain a lot of complexity. Obviously with more features, the complexity level increases. Our suggestion is to go for a simple theme that loads faster. You need to be sure that the theme is properly coded and the correct coding standards are followed. If you are someone who requires a lot of functionalities, custom theme may be a good option for you.

The Theme Should be Related to Your Industry

Depending on your niche, you may want to choose the relevant theme. For example, if your blog is about Fashion, why would you install a WordPress theme that was designed for Webdesigning company? You can search on Google for the relevant themes, for example, search for “Fashion WordPress Themes”.

Maximum Browser Compatibility

If the theme you are using is displayed properly on your computer, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be displayed same on other computers. While choosing a WordPress theme, ensure that it is compatible with all of the modern web browsers. If the theme you have chosen has specified cross browser compatibility and that it is w3 valid, then you are good to go. However, it is still good to test after installing the theme.

Using FREE Themes

There are tons of free themes available. However, some of them require backlinks and attribution. Do not ignore these terms and conditions. Make sure that your free theme doesn’t require too much of backlinks. If they do, just change your theme – there are plenty of free themes available. Said that, there are commercial themes available (as in below list) that don’t require any backlinks or attribution.

Recommended WordPress Themes

  • Thesis Theme
  • Genesis by Studiopress
  • iThemes
  • Standard Theme
  • Woo Themes

Install WordPress on Your Web Host

Installing WordPress is a simple task, but before doing that, you would need to sign up with a web host. In this article, I will show you how to sign up with a Web Host (and get a free domain name). After that, I will show you a video for installing WordPress.

I would recommend BlueHost for hosting your blog/website. All my blogs (including StartWordPressBlog.com) are hosted on it and I am really happy with their service. They have always been very reliable since I started creating websites and blogs. I also had great experience with their 24×7 live chat – whenever I had any queries.

Disclaimer: If you sign up with Bluehost using my affiliate link, I will earn a commission. Obviously there are several other web hosting companies. Years back when I started blogging, I did extensive research and chose bluehost. Since then, I have been hosting my blogs and websites with them. If you do make a purchase using my affiliate link, thanks so much for your support!

How to Signup for Web Host

Step 1
As a new blogger, all you need is a shared hosting plan. Go to BlueHost by clicking the link. Click on the signup button, as shown in screenshot1.

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Step 2
As shown in screenshot2, you will see a screen where you need to specify a domain name. Under the box “I Need a Domain Name”, enter the domain name that you would like to register (it’s free with hosting account). Here you need to enter a domain name that is not already registered by anyone else. Click Next once you are done.

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web_host_signup_wordpress2

Step 3
In next screen, as shown in screenshot 3 and 4, you will be required to enter Account Information and Billing Information. Choose account plan as per your liking. To start off, you are good with a 1 year plan. You may not need any other feature such as Site Backup, Domain whois privacy, Site lock security etc. Once you are done with entering the information, click Next button.

Screenshot3
web_host_signup_wordpress3

Screenshot4
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Once these steps are completed, you will receive a confirmation email and login information.

How to Install WordPress on Your WebHost

Watch this video to Install WordPress on your bluehost account (Video by WordPress.tv)

Pick a Domain Name for Your Blog

Choosing a good domain name is very important step for long term success of your blog. In this article, we will discuss what points you should consider, how to register a domain name and finally some tools that you can use.

Domain_name_registration Before you choose a domain name for your blog, you should understand the difference between domain and subdomain. A domain name is something like www.yourdomainname.com while a subdomain name is like yourdomain.theirdomain.com. For example www.startwordpressblog.com Vs startwordpressblog.blogspot.com. You can get a subdomain for free if you host a blog on free platforms such as blogger, wordpress.com, typepad etc. However, having your own domain name will make your blog look more professional and increase the credibility of your blog, as compared to a free-subdomain name. Above all, your  domain is something you can truely call “your own”, which is not the case for a free subdomain. Additionally, there won’t be any restrictions for your self hosted blog with your own domain.

Points to Consider While Choosing a Domain Name

While choosing the domain name, keep your blog topic in mind. (Read How to Choose a Topic for Your Blog.)

Your Domain Name Should be:

  • Simple
  • Brandable
  • Easy to remember
  • As short as possible
  • Easy to spell

Use Keywords in Your Blog’s Domain Name

Ideally you should include the relevant keywords in your domain. It will sound relevant to your business or the topic you blog about. The blog visitors will understand the benefits easily.

Apart from that, having keyword in the domain name helps boost your search engine rankings. It will help you get more traffic through the search engines. So you better think of the keywords relevant to your blog topic and choose use them in the domain name.

Avoid Hyphens and numerics

Using hyphens in the domain name creates confusion and makes it difficult to remember. Similalry, having numerics in the domain name is also not recommended. So you better avoid hyphens as well as numbers while choosing domain name for your blog.

TLD or Domain Extension

TLD stands for top level domain (.com, .net, .org etc). No doubt .com is most popular and oldest TLD. It is easy for people to remember and taken as default. However, you can look beyond that. For example, you can use country specific TLD (such as .co.uk, .co.in etc) if your blog’s audience is from that particular country only. Similarly organizations can use .org extension.

How to Register Your Domain Name

Check for the domain name availability on GoDaddy. Registering a domain name usually costs you roughly around $10-$12 per year. But hold on before you register your first domain name. You will get 1 domain name for free when you register for the web hosting account in next tutorial. If you want to register additional domain names, you can do that on GoDaddy (They are the world’s largest domain registrar). Just log on to GoDaddy Website and they will guide you through 3 simple steps.

Tools to Find Domain Names

There are plenty of tools available online for brainstorming and generating ideas for domain name. I have compiled a list which I use and found really usefull.

      NameBoy – It asks you for a primary and a secondry keyword. Based on different combinations, it will come up with a list of available domain names.
      NameStation – Apart from the domain generator tool, I like their contests. Sometimes you get cool domain names from those contests.

Disclaimer: If you register your domain with Godaddy using my affiliate link, I will earn a commission. The reason I recommend them is they are world’s number 1 domain registrar and my first preference too. If you do make a purchase using my affiliate link, thanks so much for your support!
Image Credit: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How to Choose a Topic for your Blog

If you are planning to start a blog, choosing the topic for your blog is the very first step. Once you come up with a topic, you would be building your blog and writing articles about that chosen topic and topics related to that. Hence, to become successful in your blogging career, it is very important to choose a good topic for your blog.

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Choose a Topic about Which You are Passionate

Usually the blog should be updated frequently. You would be required to publish fresh content on regular basis for your readers. Hence, you should ideally choose a topic you are passionate about. If that is not the case, very quickly you will find that you’re feeling bored.

There are thousands of blogs that are updated daily and some more successful ones are often updated several times in a day. However, if you can manage to update your blog at least two to three times a week, it would be great. If you want to keep going with your blog and stay motivated, choose a blog topic of your own interest.

Choose a Blog Topic That You Would Enjoy Researching

If you enjoy researching the topic you are writing about, you will never run out of contents. If you are able to provide fresh and updated content to your audience, no one can stop your blog’s popularity. If you are enjoying doing the research on your choose blog topic, you would very well be aware of the advancements and latest updates in that area. This will enable you to provide most relevant updates to your readers.

Choose a Blog Topic That You Would Like Discussing with Others

A blog in not meant for one way conversation. It requires a two way conversation between the blogger and the readers. Readers will leave some comments after reading posts on your blog. And you as the blogger need to respond to that comment. Off course not everyone will agree with your views and you should obviously be able to manage and regulate the debate in a healthy way.

Topic about which You are Not Overly Sensitive

The last point is being careful that you don’t choose such topic about which are very sensitive and won’t be able to handle disagreements. As your blog becomes more successful, more and more people will come to read it. Many of them will express their views that will be different than what you feel. You need handle their opinions and possible personal attacks.

Image Source: jaylopez

 

Why Choose WordPress for Blogging?

Are you still confused how to start a blog? Looking for a blogging platform? WordPress is most preffered and most used blogging platform. Read on to know the features of wordpress.

WordPress is User Friendly

The best feature of WordPress is that its extremely user friendly. It is easy to install and easy to manage. Once you get it installed properly and configured, you don’t need any technical and programming knowledge to manage the contents. You can add content at any point of time very easily.

SEO Optimized

The architecture of WordPress is such that it is best optimized for Search engines. You have just to make few small changes and search engines will love the WordPress website or blog. WordPress lets your website or blog to follow the web standards, and clean code optimization and other techniques to help you rank in search results.

WordPress Saves Time and Effort

There are so many inbuilt features, a wordPress blog or website saves a lot of effort and time in maintenance, adding and managing the content. Usually it takes some time only for configuration of wordpress, the designing /development /customization of theme. If you want to focus on just blogging, you can outsource the WordPress installation service and other configuration/customization stuff.

WordPress templates

The tempate system gives you a lot of control in terms of design changes and SEO aspects of your wordpress website. A wordpress installation comes with a default template. You can either customize that or get really great templates which are not only visually appealing but also optimized well. Genesis and Thesis are not just wordpress templates but also robust frameworks adding lots of functionalities. As a user, you can play with the framework to make many types of changes to your wordpress website without doing any coding.

Pages and Posts

In WordPress, there are two basic types of content: pages and posts. Create a pages if you wish to hold the information longer time period. You may wish to overwrite the earlier content to modify the page. On the other hand, Posts are used to write content which is dynamic and may change with time. Usually you dont bother to modify the content of a post. Instead, you can add a new post with more fresh contents and the earlier one gets archived.
Even if you require a website for your small business, you should use wordpress and add both type of contents, ie static information on Pages and news and updates on posts. Unlike earlier wordpress versions, you can set one of the static pages as your homepage. If you are creating a non-blog website, obviously there would be more number of pages with very few or no posts at all.

Multiple Administrators

WordPress sports a simple system for managing roles and permissions effectively. If you wish to appoint few people to manage the website and add/modify the content, you can create them as users and grant them permissions depending on the requirements.

WordPress Feeds

Feeds in wordpress are generated whenever you publish a new content and by using any of the freely available services, you can convert the feed into emails to automatically deliver them to your website’s subscriber. You just have to publish the content and everything will be done automatically.

Friendly Admin Interface

For you as the owner of the website, administration is one of the biggest difficulties in maintenance. If you go for an HTML based static website and you don’t know HTML, you will always be dependent on the developer even for very small changes! In wordpress, the adminstration interface is really easy. With a little training, you can easily manage and write content. Even lots of configuration can also be done by yourself with the user-frienly administration interface.

Summary

WordPress gives you an interactive website that is also easier for the search engines to explore. It also gives better infrastructure for web publishing. WordPress is completely free open source software with a really huge community support that makes it easy to add lots of cool functionalities in the form of plugins, themes and other third party tools. It is completely suitable for simple websites and small business. But in order to get it working for complex websites, you would require a skilled wordpress developer. It is not difficult to get a blog installation package at affordable price!

Points to Consider Before Starting a Blog

Before you plan to start a blog and dive into the blogosphere, with ultimate aim of blogging day-in and day-out, I would ask you this question:

Do you really want to start a blog? Check out these key points before you start a blog.

Its not really difficult to start a blog and blogging ain’t difficult either. But there is one question
you should ask yourself:

Why do you want to create a blog?

There could be different reasons why people blog but in many cases, people do it just for the sake of online presence. However, this should not always be the case. Blogs are not just the only kind of website you need.

Check out following points to know whether you really need a blog or not:

  1. Do you love writing? Well if the answer to this question is no, you better think of something other than a blog.
  2. What is your topic of interest or what do you want to communicate to your audience?
  3. Do you have time to dedicate to your blog? Your Blog expects good amount of time from you so that you can write regularly.
  4. Can you work hard? Blogging isn’t that simple these days with so much of crowd in the blogosphere. Apart from publishing articles, you need to focus on other aspects of the blog and SEO is one of the most important aspects.
  5. Do you think you are disciplined enough?
  6. Do you have consistency? You would need to regularly update your blog, reply the comments and emails, network with other bloggers etc.
  7. Do you have technical knowledge? Irrespective of what topic you choose, you will need some technical knowledge to start your blog, to configure it and also for the maintenance of your blog. If you don’t have this knowledge and time to do all this, you can outsource this work and focus on your core business ie blogging!

Think about those points and when you are ready, just dive into the world of blogging! Good luck.

Why Create a Blog?

A weblog – commonly known as blog is an online website in which you make regular entries in the form of posts. Individuals as well as corporates maintain blogs to provide updates as well as to make new customers on the Internet.

You can use a blog as a tool to communicate with the world. Below we will discuss the top reasons why you should start blogging – if you haven’t started yet!

Top 4 Reasons Why You Should Start Blogging

Here are top 4 reasons to create a blog.

why create a blog

A Blog is Easy to Start

As compared to a website, a blog is way easier to start. You don’t have to consider complex designs and many other different stuff as you do for a website.

You just need a simple design for your blog which can be accomplished by getting a good theme/template suitable for your business. You can either choose a free blogging platform like WordPress.com, Blogger.com or you can go for a self hosted WordPress blog.

If you choose to go for self hosted blog and don’t know how to install WordPress, you can opt for a Free WordPress Installation Service.

Easy Content Publishing

Publishing content or post on your blog is really easy. If you know how to type in a Word document, you can easily write blog posts.

It’s really that easy. It would be great if you add some relevant pictures and links to other resources.

Since your blog is an online platform to communicate wih the world, it is crucial that you create content on a regular basis. If you are regular, people will come back often, otherwise they will just forget your blog.

Easy Traffic Generation

As compared to a static website, traffic generation is easier for a blog. Search engines love fresh content and this is positive point for blogs.

Since you keep adding fresh content regularly, traffic through search engines will automatically start. You can offer your readers subscription and social media links so that they can keep track of your updates.

Subscription can be either in the form of email or feed. On the other hand, social media such as Facebook, Twitter and several others are there to help you get traffic.

Product Promotion

If you have a product to sell or a service to offer, a blog is perfect tool to get customers online. You blog about your products, it’s benefits, and other tutorials, news, tips & tricks in your niche. This will help you reach your audience and promote your products.

As you would have realized by now that blogging is a powerful platform for communication in internet marketing arena. More and more people have started blogging because of the power and simplicity. If you don’t want to invest in a self hosted blog, you can start a free blog on Blogger.com or WordPress.com – both of which are perfect for newbies.