Do you know what is the best thing about the free market? Yup, you’ve guessed it right – the competition. To have a lot and sometimes better competitors makes you strive to succeed more than anything else. Simultaneously, you can learn from the ones that are better than you are. Thus, becoming better yourself. The free market made us better than we ever thought we could be. It does the same to every company in every industry.
Whether we are talking about building a business or blog, making effort in marketing, or flirting, the same simple rule goes to pretty much everything in life – being better means being valuable. To put it in other words – to be able to give people what they need, when they need it.
Following this belief of ours, we’ve strived to become more valuable to you – the people who trust in us. But maybe it’s time for you to share your story, beliefs, and knowledge with the world. Maybe it is time for you to start your first blog, to create your own tribe and lead them.
Guess what! You can start your first blog by simply following these 5 steps.
Step 1: Decide What You Will Blog About
First things first. You have to decide what it is that you want to share with the world. By taking this step you will make the process even simpler than you probably imagined. Having an idea of what you will talk about will not only indicate the topics you will cover. By clarifying the purpose of the blog, you will be able to discover who are the people you’ll talk to, where to find them, and how to speak to them.
As you know, the vocabulary that is acceptable to one audience, will not work with another.
Also, if at any point you decide that you want to monetize your blog, you’ll find the products that you can sell or recommend to your audience far easier if you get to know your audience.
By not skipping this step, you can create a brand around your blog. Having a logo, a slogan and an overall appearance that goes with everything you do and create is building trust in you, and your enterprise. Thus, with time and effort, you will become a reliable source of information, knowledge, or entertainment.
We would highly recommend you not overlook this step.
Find out what you are interested in and good at. You’ll not only become better in it but will help others to do that as well.
What could be more satisfying than that?
Step 2: Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider
Choosing a reliable partner is crucial in every walk of life. This is true whether we are talking about friends, spouses,s or business partners.
When building a blog, having a reliable hosting provider is a must!
Together with all of its advantages, the free market presents a wide range of possible solutions. That could be confusing. In fact, most often than not, it is confusing. Especially if you are not fully aware of the specifics of an industry.
So, what you should look for when choosing a hosting?
- Proposal: Try the AtSpace’s Free Hosting Sevice
First and foremost, check if the hosting provider is trustworthy. This you can find out mostly, but not only, through the number of people that are using that service. Note that the fact you’ve never heard of a brand doesn’t make it unreliable. The opposite is also true – the fact you know about a brand doesn’t make it trustworthy. Find out when the brand is existing and how many people are using its services.
More often than not this information could be enough order to make a decision. But also don’t forget to examine the conditions you agree with. What is the company offering, and is it worth the price?
‘But hey, I thought we are discussing how to create a blog for free, what price?’ – you might ask. Well, everything has a price. Not that it is impossible to migrate a WordPress website (or any other for that matter), but do you really have to put yourself in this situation? Instead, you could just choose wisely your hosting provider.
Not that there are no other companies that offer free hosting services. Just the opposite, there are way too many.
We are proud to share that we are here for you since 2003. And since then more than 5 million people have put their trust in us. A fact that we are grateful for!
Maybe it is time for you to take advantage of the opportunity to get a hosting service for free.
Step 3: Choose a Blogging Platform
A really wide range of opportunities, once again. You can go with WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Joomla, etc.
But how to make the decision and how important is it?
When starting your first blog, there are a number of things you should consider. Namely:
- How hard is it to create the website?
- How hard is it to customize the website once you’ve created it?
- What kind of additional features does the platform offer?
- Is the admin panel easy to work with?
- Is it hard(if even possible) to change the site’s purpose?
Those are, I believe, the most important questions you have to find the answers to, before jumping to any hasty conclusions.
WordPress, for instance, is a bit harder to set up than Tumblr. On the other hand, it is way easier to customize, has a lot more additional features both on the front and the back end of the site, and last, but not least building a site with WordPress gives you the opportunity to change its purpose if you want to.
Joomla is also a popular choice but I believe that WordPress is way easier to use. That, of course, is a personal opinion and if you disagree with it, you are free to use Joomla(or any other CMS for that matter). Whichever platform you choose you’ll always be able to use our free hosting service.
But if you choose to go with WordPress, you can learn how to use it through our WordPress Tutorials.
Step 4: Design Your Blog the Way You Want
If you choose a highly customizable blogging platform you’ll be able to design the layout of your site the way you want. Although most CMSs are offering various template options and with the right knowledge base, you’ll be able to customize them, some are easier to adjust than others.
When designing the site, keep your audience in mind. They are the ones that will use it. They are the one that has to be able to easily understand what the site is about, and where they can find what they are looking for.
If you are just starting it is not advisable to compare yourself with the biggest websites out there. You can, of course, learn from them, but don’t get discouraged if you are not getting the same results or you are not able to create exactly the same design.
Still, go out there and learn from the best in your industry (even if it is just blogging), because what the best are doing is obviously working.
However, when it comes to design what works for one, may not work for another. So, even if you are using a template and guidelines from the best out there, try to personalize everything you do. If you don’t do this, there will be nothing to will separate you from the crowd, so why should anyone read your website, instead of someone else’s?
The key to successful website design is to choose a style and apply it to the following crucial elements:
- Main color palette
- Typography
- General page layout
- Image style (whether they are vectors, illustrations, or photos)
- Content layout
- Size of the incorporated elements (icons, images, titles)
Step 5: Start Blogging
You’ve come so far! Yet, this is just the beginning. Now that you’ve created your first blog, without paying a dime, it is time for you to take advantage of that opportunity. Go out there and share your story, build a community, and make the world a bit better.
Don’t hesitate. Start blogging now!