Learning how to create a blog is really just a matter of following instructions.
What is needed in order to create a blog?
As I have stated in various blog posts and videos, there’s 2 main avenues a serious affiliate blogger can take.
How to Create a Blog – Decide on the Blogging System
1 – Use a hosted blog service that is embedded within an affiliate marketing educational system where the blog itself is hosted by a company that takes care of the uptime and security, and all you do is blog. This is a monthly fee and usually part of a larger affiliate service where, if you pay the additional monthly affiliate fee on top of the blog service itself, you can earn commissions on the company’s products, which also includes the blog. So, when others buy the same blog package, you can get monthly commissions on everyone’s monthly fee when they renew every month. That’s pretty cool, but between the blog and the affiliate fee, you are usually talking about $30-$53 per month. Of course, if you promote it, and just getting people to YOUR blog is a form of promotion, you can get paid on everyone who joins and uses the system as they learn how to create a blog that same way.
The only real other caveat here, with a third party hosted blog system, is that you can’t install your own WordPress plugins as they are restricted for security reasons. The company providing the WordPress based blog service usually has some approved plugins that they install and allow, or something to equal that functionality, but you can’t just install any one you want. This seems like a curse but it can be a blessing, since malfunctioning plugins can disable your site or even lock you out! I actually belong to two of these systems. One system, Empower Network’s Kalatu blog, which I had for awhile, and Ipblogging used to actually hosted on, (Update- EN went bankrupt and pulled the plug, so I migrated ipblogging to a self hosted WordPress on my giant web hosting account) and my marketing sales funnel system just released a built in blog service, which pairs with the lead capture page creator, email autoresponder, and other services for a complete marketing system. You’ll likely need all of these anyway, so I have to say with that you get everything from A-Z, so you might want to check it out.
That all being said, there is a lot of good to having other people worry about hosting, security, and uptime while you focus on blogging about your business to prospective customers.
2- The self-hosted route, which involves getting a web host service to host the blog, getting a domain name for the blog, and then installing the blog from the web service console. WordPress itself is free. This is all easy stuff. The monthly web hosting fee can be as low as less than $5 per month to about $15-$25 depending on what package you get. You can be an affiliate of the web hosting service and tools, but there is no “blog package” to sell as with option number one above. You can install any plugin you want, but with all of this great power comes the responsibility to learn about the functionality and only install what you need and learn how to operate, since bad plugins can disable your site or lock you out completely!! But, if you get a starter hosting package, this is the cheapest way to get started in affiliate blogging, and many affiliate programs out there are free to join and promote.
That’s pretty much it for creating the blog.
How to Create a Blog – Decide On Your Niche
Okay so this can actually be number one, but if you really want to do this, then it can be second since you are going to create a blog (third party hosted blog service | self hosted WordPress blog) anyway and just need to decide on the interest niche you are going to write it for. Once you decide what blog system you are going to use, then you decide what interest niche that you are going to target it for. This is very important. You do not want to have a blog that writes about every subject under the sun. It must be targeted to a specific niche. If you don’t adhere to this, then search engines like Google won’t know how to classify it and it won’t rank well within the searches that are pertinent to ANY niche, and you won’t ever show in the search engine results and won’t get any of the needed free organic search engine traffic.
How to Create a Blog – Keyword Research for Posts
So, the FIRST step to researching your niche is to get a keyword research tool that you use to learn what people are searching on weekly and monthly. After that, you will still need the tool to research specific keyword phrases for your articles, so this is one of your most needed tools.
WHY do you want to do this?
You want to pull in people who are actively searching for a solution to a problem or looking for a specific type of knowledge, and you offer them what they want. If there are some products or services that they need in order to be successful, then by all means recommend them. If the readers are smart, they’ll use them. Of course, some people will click off your page and keep searching forever and never be successful, but as they say, it takes all types. Just know that there is a group of people out there who WILL take action. Thanks to the vastness of the market, this is still a HUGE number of potential sales.
So far, in less than a thousand words, I have shown you several ways that answer the question of how to create a blog, and also the main way to ensure that your blog will be successful in pulling in free organic web traffic.
How To Create a Blog – Social Network Syndication
The next thing is that as you create posts for your blog, within your niche and researched well enough to make sure that they are classified by the search engines for their chosen keywords, is to share your blog among the various social networks to make sure that you are doing your part to put your material in front of real people. Of course, there is Facebook, but Facebook isn’t the greatest place. Facebook users are incredibly jaded, and many are just plain mean. You want social networks that are made up of motivated people. Instagram is good, but it doesn’t allow links except for in your profile, and only one at that.
I recommend Pinterest and Flipboard, which are great ways to syndicate your information, and the networks classify them well based on the words that you use in the description. The users on these networks are FAR more interactive and appreciative than on Facebook.
With Pinterest, which is the main one I hope that you use, remember the 80/20 rule – to share your material 20% of the time and other people’s material 80% of the time. Don’t be spammy, and try to create Pinterest worthy graphics that are taller than they are wide.
There are people driving insane amounts of free traffic to their blogs via Pinterest, and there are nice things being said about Flipboard too, which takes a virtual magazine approach to syndicating and sharing content within the network.
How to Create a Blog – Conclusion
I have had both types of blogs. I have them with the services in point number one above, and I have self hosted ones described in point number two. I can say that each have their strengths. Just decide what is best for you and go for it. If you are serious about blogging and truly wanted to know how to create a blog so that you can monetize it with affiliate offers, then this is exactly how you go about it. This article that you have just read lays out exactly what you need to create a blog, to ensure that it gets indexed properly, and then gets shared out so that people learn about it and start visiting and sharing it so that it gets more visitors over time.
Now, TAKE ACTION and get to it.
These things don’t build themselves.
YOU have to do it.
What are you waiting for?
Get to those links above, create your accounts, and start blogging!
