How to Start a Blog in Less than 10 Minutes…

MY BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO CREATING YOUR OWN BLOG

People are changing their lives daily with blogging, whether it be through personal stories, building resources for others or using a blog to generate some extra money on the side. Not only have I experienced the power of blogging first hand, but I’ve also helped thousands of others discover the same. Now it’s your turn!

My name is Zac Johnson and I’ve been a professional blogger since 2007, and it’s completely changed my life and business for the better. I created this website to be a complete step-by-step guide on how to create a professional blog of your own, while also getting it 100% live TODAY!

Best of all, I will NEVER personally ask for a single dollar from you. Blogging is what you put into it, and in this guide I will provide you with all of the powerful resources and tools I used to get to where I am today.

BLOGGING.ORG HAS BEEN FEATURED IN

WHAT WILL YOU DISCOVER IN THIS GUIDE

How to Start a Blog the Right Way
The Main Benefits to Having a Blog
The Negatives of Having a “Free” Blog

Ready to get started with your own blog? Jump ahead to the next step.

Why You Simply Must Have a Blog!

Every day I get asked by hundreds of people what blogging is and if they should have a blog of their own. I figured out the best way to answer this common question, and made a short explainer video to show you why.

Whether you want to create a website about your favorite pet, hobbies, a struggle you are going through in life or even wanting to try and make a few dollars online, it’s all possible through the use of a blog.

In the following sections, I’m going to break down all of the important things you need to know about blogging before getting started — such as choosing the right niche for your site, why you should stay away from free blog hosting services and much more.

Also be sure to use the step-by-step guide located on the right side menu area of the page as well. It will guide you through all the steps carefully.

Why You Should Only Use this Blogging Guide

When it comes to starting a blog of your own, it’s best to learn from an expert who knows what they are talking about — both in teaching and through their profession. In addition to being a world renown blogger and having been featured on ABC, FOX News and many other publications, I’m already great friends with many of the top bloggers in the world as well. In short, I know how to create a successful blog!

To find success with blogging, it really comes down to a few fine points. Follow this simple guide step-by-step and you may see the same success!

Setting your blog up the right way from day one
Create a blog that provides value and helps your audience
Have a mentor or guidebook to help you along the way

Now I have some good news… and even better news!

The good news is that you’ve found your way to this very site.

The better news is that I provide all of those benefits to you at no cost! In this “how to create a blog” tutorial and step-by-step guide, I walk you through everything you need to know about starting a successful blog, and best of all, I won’t even charge you a single penny!

How is that possible you ask? Simple… I’m made quite a successful career and living off my blog success and now I want to share my story, resources and benefits to you as well.

Through the use of my partnerships and sponsors over the years, I can now provide you with guidance on all of the same resources and tools I use to create and run my sites, and not have to personally charge you.

With all of that said, please enjoy my complete guide to blogging. Follow it step-by-step and do no hesitate to contact me with any questions!

How to Start a Blog in 3 Simple Steps

Step 1: Decide What Type of Blog You Want to Create

Before even starting your blog, you should first think about what you are going to have as the main focus for your site. In short, what you are going to be writing about and what people should expect to find as your site. Many bloggers start with something they are passionate about. This way you will already have a good amount of knowledge about the content you will create on your blog and it will be fun for you at the same time.

Once you come up with a great blog idea, then the fun really begins!

When I started my first blog, I focused it around myself and my interest in online marketing in business. Since the site was about something I was interested in, it was easy and fun for me to create new content and spend time working on the site.

While many people are blogging for fun, a decent amount of people are using their blogs for business and to bring awareness to their existing brands or web sites.

If you are already an expert in a specific topic or niche, starting a blog is a great way to grow your authority and establish yourself as an expert online.

To make it easy for you… your web site can be about whatever you like, and the good news is you can always start a new one if you decide to change your mind or focus!

If you’d like to get more ideas on different types of blogs on the internet today, simply click on the “Explore different blogging ideas” box below to show more content.

Explore new blogging ideas

READY? CLICK HERE TO SETUP YOUR BLOG

Step 2: Choosing the right blogging platform for you?

When I first started creating web sites back in the 90s, it was quite a task! I would have to design my site in one program, upload it to the internet in another and then connect it all together. Now thanks to the power of WordPress, it’s easy for anyone to get started with a blog of their own in just minutes.

WordPress has been downloaded over 100 million times and is the software of choice by millions of bloggers and many of the top blogs in the world today, such as TED, NBA Sports, CNN and TechCrunch. Best of all… it’s free to use!

I personally love WordPress and I would never create another site or blog without it.

Here are just a few of the many reasons why so many people love and use WordPress.

Fully customizable with 1000s of themes and plugins to choose from
Completely free to use, easy to install and little to no training required
Google loves WordPress blogs because of their clean structure
The ability to easily comment and share your blog posts with others

Now it’s time to consider your hosting options…

Free Services vs. Premium Hosted Blogs

While WordPress is free to use, it doesn’t mean that you should be running to their site to setup an account and start blogging. Instead you first need to understand the difference between free blogs and premium web hosted blogs.

I’ve created an easy to follow PROs and CONs chart for you below.

PREMIUM HOSTED BLOGS

You get to pick a unique domain name (www.name.com)
You have complete control over the blog, it’s content and how it looks
No unwanted spammy advertising to take away from the content on your site
You can make money with your blog by selling or promoting online services
If you ever wanted to sell your blog for profit, you can sell it to anyone

FREE HOSTED BLOGS

Hosted on wordpress.com with a long address that is hard to remember
Whoever is hosting your free blog can shut it down at any time for any reason
Some free site hosting services require you to show ads on your site which distracts readers
Free blog hosting services usually don’t allow users to make money off their blogs
Whoever is hosting your site owns the content and can do what they like with it

Whenever I am asked how I would personally create a blog of my own…
I ALWAYS tell people to get their own domain name and premium hosting. There is simply no better way to setup your first blog than to do is the right way and not regret it later.

Now that we’ve covered the Pros and Cons of free and premium hosted blogs, I’m sure you are wondering what the costs are to simply get started.

Good news… it’s actually pretty cheap!

Every great blog will need it’s own domain name (the site url or address people use to get to your site), which costs roughly $10 per year.

Looks like someone is excited to start working on their new blog!

In addition to the domain name registration cost, you will also need to get your own web hosting, which is only around $3-$7 per month.

Over the course of a year you are looking at roughly $40 to have your own fully functional domain name and blog that you can 100% call your own!

What’s even better is that anyone can get started with a blog of their own today and not have to worry about if they lose interest or focus in their blog.

Many premium blog hosting services will offer a full refund within 60-90 days of setting up their account!

Through this blog tutorial, hundreds of people setup their own blog each month and I continually get emails from site visitors who are now up and running with their own blog.

NancyBlogger

I cannot thank Blogging.org enough for the great resources and mentoring they have provided to take my blog to a higher level. There are countless benefits of having an experienced, fully engaged blogging mentor like Zac Johnson to help you with the process of setting up a successful blog.

READY? CLICK HERE TO SETUP YOUR BLOG

Step 3: Picking a Great Domain Name for Your Blog

Quite possibly the number 1 reason why every blogger should go with their own premium hosted WordPress blog, is that you get your own domain name.

Your domain name is the address of your blog and it’s the first and last thing your site visitors are going to remember. Wouldn’t it be much better to say “You can visit my blog at YourName.com” vs. “Visit my blog at http://wordpress.com/post/24/about-me“?

Exactly, no one would ever remember that address or even want to visit a site like that.

When it comes time to pick a domain name for your blog, you are going to want to pick something that’s easy to remember and spell, while also giving people a good idea of what your blog is about.

Here are some points to consider when picking a domain name.

Don’t go crazy trying to find the perfect domain. Pick something good and go with it!

Keep it short and simple
Stay away from numbers and dashes
Pick a name that easy to spell and memorable
Don’t use any copyright or trademarked names
Use keywords that are relevant to your topic
Stick with a .com, .net or .org domain extention
If it’s available, always try to register YourName.com

It’s also important to note that millions of domain names are already registered, so you might have to get a bit creative with your name.

As mentioned in the bullet points above… always checks to see if your personal name is available as a .com, .net or .org, as you would want to own it before someone else does.

MeredithBlogger

Blogging.org is a great resource for anyone who is a new or aspiring blogger. I feel like I have my own personal mentor. It has been just what I needed to take my dream to my reality.

Where to Register Your Domain Name and Hosting

Domain names and web hosting are two completely separate things, but they can usually be ordered together at the same time. If you don’t already own any domain names, this is probably the easiest solution for you as well.

Over the past 8 years I’ve had the pleasure of working with many different web hosting services… only to leave them time and time again. After trying hosting companies like MediaTemple, BlueHost and others, I can confidently say that I have found a web hosting service that continues to be reliable, affordable and allows me to scale in size.

The nice thing about mycurrent blog host is that they are one of the largest web site and blog hosting solutions in the world today. Something that can’t be said about many of the other “low cost” web hosts out there.

Did someone say “one-click WordPress installation”… count me in!

In comparison to other hosting services, my current web host is top notch and very competitive on their pricing. Other great features are their 24/7 email and phone support along with the ability to talk to someone from their support team through online chat at any time.

For all of the new bloggers out there, my preferred web hosting service offers a one-click installation process that quickly installs WordPress on your domain name and server, eliminating the extra headaches of downloading software and messing around with install files.

I have my own web host of choice, but you are free to use any web hosting service you like. The good news is that this create a blog tutorial guide applies to nearly all of the different hosting companies out there today. Should you decide to go with another hosting company, make sure they offer one-click WordPress installation, unlimited storage and bandwidth along with the option to setup as many sites as you like.

No matter what hosting solution you end up going with, you will still have to install WordPress to create your blog. Here are your two options.

Easy one-click WordPress installation
(available through my web host, A Small Orange)
Manual Installation
(downloading WordPress install files and uploading through FTP)

Clearly one of these two installation options is much easier than the other. When I created my first blog several years ago, I had to do it manually because the one-click installation option wasn’t available yet. Now I just use the one-click install every time.

No matter whether you prefer a simple one click installation for WordPress, or downloading and installing it manually, I’m going to show you how to do each below.

How to Setup a WordPress Blog Using My Recommended Web Host

(fast and super easy for anyone to setup in a few minutes)

Click here to setup your blog with WordPress in one-click

How to setup a WordPress blog manually using any web host.

How to setup a WordPress blog manually using any web host.

Click here to learn how to manually install wordpress with software and ftp

After installing WordPress, you can then focus on the actual content of your blog.

READY? CLICK HERE TO SETUP YOUR BLOG

How to Create a Blog with Purpose

Writing your first blog post, choosing a new theme and getting new visitors to read your blog

Now it’s time to start having some fun! There is nothing more excited than finally getting to work on your blog once it’s live. Best of all, it’s your blog… so you get to write about whatever you want!

Before you start writing about what you ate last night for dinner or saw on your way to work… you should first think about where you want your blog to be a few months down the road from now.

In short, your blog is one in a few hundred million — so if you want to it be read by lots of people and stand out from the crowd, you are going to need to create content that provides value and has purpose.

Click here to learn how to write your first blog post and change your theme in WordPress

Congratulations!
You made it to the end of the article, you must really want to get your blog started!

Now the only thing left to do is to put everything we just talked about into action. Click the link below to get started.

Click Here to Start Your Blog

In an intriguing find, scientists associated with NASA’s Dawn spacecraft have discovered a mysterious disappearance of a significant number of large craters on dwarf planet Ceres, indicating something has happened to it.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft arrived to orbit Ceres in March 2015 and mission scientists expected to find a heavily-cratered body generally resembling the protoplanet Vesta – Dawn’s previous port of call.

Instead, as the spacecraft drew near to Ceres, a somewhat different picture began to emerge: Something has happened to Ceres to remove its biggest impact basins.

Now, a team of Dawn scientists led by Simone Marchi from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado suggest that Ceres has experienced significant geological evolution, possibly erasing the large basins.

“We concluded that a significant population of large craters on Ceres has been obliterated beyond recognition over geological time scales, which is likely the result of Ceres’ peculiar composition and internal evolution,” Marchi explained in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.

According to David Williams from Arizona State University, “When we first starting looking at Ceres images, we noticed that there weren’t any really large impact basins on the surface.”

None are larger than 285 km across.

This presents a mystery, he says, because Ceres must have been struck by large asteroids many times over its 4.5-billion-year history.

“Even Vesta, only about half of Ceres’ size, has two big basins at its south pole. But at Ceres, all we saw was the Kerwan Basin, just 285 km in diameter,” Williams added. “That was a big red flag that something had happened to Ceres.”

The team’s simulations of collisions with Ceres predicted that it should have 10 to 15 craters larger than 400 km in diameter, and at least 40 craters larger than 100 km wide.

In reality, however, Dawn found that Ceres has only 16 craters larger than 100 km, and none larger than the 285-km Kerwan Basin.

So what removed Ceres’ large craters and basins?

“If Ceres were highly rocky, we’d expect impact craters of all sizes to be preserved. Remote sensing from Earth, however, told us even before Dawn arrived that the crust of Ceres holds a significant fraction of ice in some form,” Williams explained.

If Ceres’ crust contained a large proportion of ice — especially if mixed with salts — that would weaken the crust and let the topography of a large basin relax and become smoother, perhaps even disappear.

In addition, said Williams, Ceres must have generated some internal heat from the decay of radioactive elements after it formed.

This too could also have helped soften or erase large-scale topographic features.

NASA plans for Dawn to continue orbiting Ceres as the dwarf planet makes its closest approach to the Sun in April 2018. Scientists want to see if the increasing solar warmth triggers any activity or produces detectable changes in Ceres’ surface.

Thursday, July 28, 2016