When I was starting this blog, I had many questions in mind. I came to know about blogging just 6 months ago and I am gonna tell you here, what I got to know in these 6 months.
I will explain these faqs here:
What is a blog? Is it different from a website? How? Can I blog? How can I blog? Can one earn through blogging? Is there money needed?
If you surf the web frequently, you must have heard the terms like blog and blogging. If not, don’t worry. I am gonna take you through the basics of blogging and tell you each and every terms related to it.
What is a blog?
So let’s start with the definition – The necessary evil.
A regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style. – Wikipedia
Informally? Means just like a diary? Yeah. Seems interesting? Because it is.
So, till now you may have already guessed about this particular post. Yeah, this is a blog post. In fact pixelenix.com itself is a blog.
Is it different from a website?
Well… Technically saying, creating a blog is almost the same procedure as creating a website. You have to buy a domain and hosting for both of them (I will mention these terms below). You have to create both of them either by using coding (if you are an expert) or by using easy-to-use CMS (content management system) which are getting more popular now a days.
So, the difference lies between their nature and content consistency. A website is more towards the static side. They are for those who wants to show their products or services to the world. The content of a website can remain the same for a long time.
The blog, on the other hand is dynamic in nature. The contents or better say posts are updated regularly and are arranged in a reverse chronological order of date. Blogs are for writers, for a community and for those who have stories to tell.
However many companies having a website also uses a blog these days as they are much more Audience engaging.
Can I blog?
Skills needed for blogging:
If you wanna blog then you should have
1. Knowledge of using keyboard, mouse, and a web browser
2. A language skill
Obviously, you have both of them! So Congo, You can blog.
Its exactly like giving a speech or writing an article, but instead for the physical audience, you write for the internet audience, for those who really wants to read your stuff, for a more narrow but faithful audience, and most importantly for yourself.
How can I blog?
The first thing coming to your mind here is definitely, whether it is free or not.
Well its both. You can blog for free if blogging is just a hobby for you or you do blogging because your mates do the same. There are many free blogging platform such as blogger.com and WordPress.com where you can create a blog and start blogging. It will hardly take 15 minutes for the whole procedure. You have to find a domain name such as “yourname.blogspot.com” or “yourname.wordpress.com” (Yeah. With that ugly long suffix) absolutely for free.
After that you have to choose a free theme from their theme collection and you good to go.
But if you serious towards blogging and takes it as something more than just a hobby, you should choose the paid way.
Before explaining the paid way, let me clear you these terms:
1. Domain – It is the name or address of your website which one can enter to go to your website. It consists of a www prefix followed by the name you choose ( your name or your company name etc) and ends with the domain extension such as .com, .net or .org. The domain pixelenix.com is brought from Godaddy India.
2. Hosting – Domain is just the address and hosting is your house. Hosting means to provide online space by a server for a domain. The domain is to be linked with the server where your website data is stored. This space is what you pay for in name of hosting. Some of the hosting providers in India are bluehost.in, hostagator India and hostingraja. My favorite is Hostgator India. The hosting for this blog is itself brought from Hostagator India.
You have to buy a domain and hosting for your blog and then install a blogging software such as WordPress, joomla or drupal and start making your blog. Instead of a “yourname.wordpress.com”, a paid domain allows you to have a domain like ” yourname.com”. Huh, Clean. A personal hosting makes your website much faster to load than those free ones, and allow many awesome fearures such as emails, sub domains, and cloud backups.
Can One Earn Through Blogging?
Ok…now you have a blog. You have spent some real money in it, writing some serious stuffs and getting decent traffic. Now if you earn some money from it, it would be awesome. Money is probably not the only thing in your mind while you blog but its indeed a strong factor.
There are many pro-bloggers who make out a living from there blogs. They are working full time on their blog, earns some nice money and lives a comfortable life. Wow….isn’t it amazing? You can earn from what you love.
Income report of Amit Agarwal, probably the most successful Indian blogger, shows that his monthly income form his blog labnol.org is approx…..wait for it…..INR 30,00,000.
So the main source of income for a blog are the advertisements, which you definitely have seen while surfing the internet. You give some space of your blog to the advertisers and they will display ads there. If someone sees those ads or click on it, you get paid.
But the key here is the traffic. The more eyeballs you get, the more you earn. Also, earning through a blog is not a one night process. It takes time. You need to write quality contents on your blog consistently to build an audience.
What is the expense?
If you have prepared to go for a blog, to spent some $$$, and start the action, let me do some brief calculations for your budget.
Domain : You can get a .com extension domain for INR 199 from Godaddy India for your first year with some features like 100 free emails.
Hosting: This costs more than the domain part. For one year, you can get a single domain unlimited space hosting from Hostgator India for approx INR 3800 if you use this 30% off coupon code: ONLINESHARED30
Sum Up
As in India, you can run a self-hosted blog in under INR 4000 for your first year.
My tips:
Just do it.
If you wanna start a blog, just go for it right now. The early you start, less will be the competition.
Consider spending money
“Let my blog become popular, then I will spend money on it.”
If you have this thinking, change it right now. You CANT make your free blog popular that easily.
Its OK if you can’t spend all your money in the blogging stuff. But going for premium is always a nice idea.
Choose WordPress
WordPress is the most popular and featured CMS in the market. Its plugins feature gives you much more power that any other CMS do. I highly recommend WordPress if you are a newbie.
That’s all for now guys. Keep following me for more updates.
Comment below any queries and i will try to solve it. If you like the post, feel free to share and like it.
