If you’ve been thinking about blogging but haven’t made the leap yet, what are you waiting for? The perfect idea? More knowledge? Or worst of all, more time?
Stop waiting. Every blogger out there would like more of the things listed above, but in the real world, you’ll wait forever.
You’re better off just starting. Practice makes perfect, and blogs are very fluid. If you start with a mediocre idea, you’ll clarify it over time (and believe it or not, writing will help that process immensely). You’ll learn what you need to know as you go. And though you may never have more time, blogging doesn’t actually take that long once you get going.
Hopefully I’ve convinced you. If so, you may be wondering what the next step is and how you can take it. That’s what I’m really talking about today.
The very first thing you need to do is set up a blog. There are several options available to help you do this. I’m going to cover each one briefly.
Get a WordPress blog set up
This is a service that Blogging Expertise offers, and I’m mentioning it at the top of the list for the same reason we offer the service: in my opinion, it’s the very best solution for people who want to start blogging regularly. It’s easy to use and gives you long-term flexibility if you ever want to move your blog, change its look, or add extra features.
The flip side is that it actually costs money, as opposed to some of the free options. If you’re a business or want to use your blog to promote your business, it’s absolutely worth it. However, if you just want to start dabbling in personal blogging, you may prefer one of the next couple options.
Sign up for a free WordPress.com blog
This is the best combination of fast and free. You just go to WordPress.com and sign up, and you can be blogging in minutes. If you go this route, I recommend buying your own domain name (it’s only about $10 per year) and attaching it to your blog; if you decide later that you want to upgrade to the full version of WordPress, this will be a big help.
Because it’s free, you are fairly limited on the extras. You can choose from some very nice premade blog designs, but you can’t use a custom design. You can use the extra features like plugins and widgets that are built in, but you can’t install other ones. Any time and effort you put into your blog will bring people to it, but if you ever want to move your blog, it’s harder to keep that traffic (at least in the short term). All that said, if you want free, WordPress.com is my favorite choice.
TypePad
TypePad isn’t free (it ranges from about $5-15 per month), but many people really like how it works. It has many of the same drawbacks as a free WordPress.com blog, and is somewhat more limited in functionality, which is why WordPress.com is higher on this list. However, at the $15/month plan, you can use some of the extra features like custom design (you still have to create it or pay someone to, but at least you can). TypePad has a free 30-day trial if you want to test it out.
Blogger
I’m including Blogger mostly because it’s been around so long that many people think it’s the best way to start. I disagree, simply because WordPress.com offers better features for the same price (free). You can do some useful things with Blogger if you want to put time and possibly money into it (use a custom design, publish to your own domain name on your own host), but generally, you’d be better off starting with WordPress.com and then moving to the full version of WordPress when you want more control.
Have questions?
That’s normal! Leave a comment below and ask your questions. I’ll answer in the comments and hopefully it will be helpful to everyone.
I agree with your view of Blogger. I’m really disappointed with it and I wish I took some more time in planning which blogging application to use before I committed to one. Blogger is not very flexible and the template designs are less than desirable.
I’m several months in to my blogs and I’m curious if you know of a way to export my posts, comments and labels to a new application like WordPress.
Hi, Justin–
It’s been a few months since I’ve done it, but I think WordPress actually makes it pretty straightforward. When I’ve done it, it was pretty much just a matter of going to Manage > Import in WordPress and entering in the appropriate Blogger info.
My only uncertainty is the “new Blogger” factor… all of the migrations I’ve done with Blogger were “old Blogger”. The main differences I know of are the use of labels, so I’m not sure how those will move over.
However, I’m doing a migration next week, so I’ll know pretty shortly how painful it is or isn’t. I’ll post an update at that point.
I, too, would stay away from Blogger. Use TypePad is a good option. I find WordPress to be even better.
First, though, define why you’re blogging. If it’s for your business, you may have different needs than if you want a personal blog. Identify you needs first and then look for the best solution based on your needs and budget.
An update for Justin (and anyone else who’s interested): transferring a blog from Blogger to WordPress is made pretty straightforward by this import plugin.
Basically, you get the Blogger blog set up (just a few settings changes, and only then if you didn’t already have it set up that particular way) and install and activate the WordPress plugin. Then you set a few options in WordPress and go through the posts in batches. The plugin pulls in the posts, the comments, and the labels as categories. It’s very streamlined.
The only difficulty is redirecting the old Blogger posts to the new WordPress posts. I’ve handled that in the past by modifying the Blogger template to redirect each post to a search on WordPress for the title. This seems to work reasonably well and is what I’m planning on for the current migration.
“You’re better off just starting. Practice makes perfect, and blogs are very fluid. If you start with a mediocre idea, you’ll clarify it over time (and believe it or not, writing will help that process immensely). You’ll learn what you need to know as you go. And though you may never have more time, blogging doesn’t actually take that long once you get going.”
In your para above you forgot to mention how addictive it can become! I used to wonder why anyone would want more than two blogs (1 business, 1 personal). Now that I have a total of 10 and contribute to several others I keep finding more topics I’d love to get started on! And then it’s a case of spreading my time to make sure I’m contributing to all fairly regularly
Good point, Kathie! In my case, I’m more addicted to starting blogs than anything, and sometimes have trouble keeping up with everything. I’m WAY impressed that you keep up with 10!
Gee thanks. I don’t contribute every day or every week to them all. There are 4 I contribute to several times a month and then the others will be less than that. Although I might have a month when I’ve got lots to say! And then most of the blogs all get stuff posted to them
I find this post of yours relevent
You know what I used to think like that “Wait more , gain more knowledge…” but you asked the right question, “What are you waiting for?”
Just a short while ago I had none, and now I can’t wait to set up other blogs…that shows how addictive it is. But you’re right about blogging being a lot of work.
BTW, what do you think, is it better to have a %category%/%postname% permalink, or a dated version cos I see some budding blogs reverting to dated versions when previously they were using a category/postname format.
Hi, DarrenW—I personally prefer the undated version, but that’s because it makes for shorter URLs and easier sharing (less likely that URLs in an email will be broken between lines; easier to tell someone over the phone). I’m honestly not sure whether it makes a difference to search engines or any other relevant parties.
So why do I have dates in my URLs? Just because I forgot to change my permalink structure when I started this blog, and then got a lot of traffic to a couple of posts. I didn’t want to change then, and haven’t take the time to really look into the redirect plugins that (I know) are available now.