If you would have told me 5 years ago that I would have a blog, I never would have believed you. I never would have imagined that my life would take this direction and I would be comfortable sharing my life publicly on the internet like this. I had heard about people who had made tons of money because of blogging, but they were high school and college kids. I was too old (in my late 20’s) to know how to start a blog. So when I got started with Internet Marketing, I put off starting a blog much longer than I should have. Hopefully you won’t make the same mistake that I did.

Why is it important to have a blog?

Creating a blog is the easiest way to share your knowledge, skills, and personality so that you can connect with, and begin establishing a relationship with, other people who have similar goals and interests.

There are a few reasons why you might want to start a blog.
1. You are already involved with a network marketing business and you want to maximize your time, energy, and money
2. You are interested in starting a network marketing or home-based business and you want to get started using the latest marketing techniques to maximize your time, energy, and money.
3. You are interested in affiliate marketing, which means getting paid to help drive traffic to other people’s websites or products.
4. You want to connect with other people with common interests/hobbies

Now I’m not talking about the kind of blog where you write about what you had for breakfast and how you feel about the contestants on American Idol. Not that there is anything wrong with those blogs, but that is not what you want to do to brand yourself for Online Marketing and Social Media.

So what do you need to start a blog?

Let me start by telling you that I highly recommend that you use a WordPress.ORG blog. If you are serious about using your blog to create an internet presence then this is the best type of blog. WordPress.ORG is a self-hosted blog. There is also a WordPress.COM blog that is free to set up. With WordPress.COM or Blogger.com (another free blogging service) you are hosting your blog (and all of your content) on their server. If they decide they don’t like your content, they can remove it.

Another advantage to a self-hosted blog is that you get to use your own domain and you can possible get paid for the traffic that you get on your blog. If you use a WordPress.COM blog your domain would be www.yourblog.wordpress.com and WordPress.COM will get all of the credit for the traffic you get on your blog. So if you are hoping to monetize your blog, you want to get a WordPress.ORG blog.

1. A domain
The first thing that you want to do is pick your domain name. This is your website, for example the domain name for this blog is www.melissawrightjourney.com. I usually use GoDaddy.com for purchasing domains. There are many places that you can purchase domains from, and it doesn’t really matter where you get it, so use any company you are familiar with.

If you are creating a blog for internet marketing you want to get a domain name that incorporates your name. You are branding YOU not your business or product. If you are creating a blog just to connect with people that share your interests or hobbies, it is ok to use a domain that is related to your topic, but if you are working to establish yourself in your industry/business you want this domain be centered on your name.

The best case is if you can just get yourname.com. If you have a common name like I do, here are some suggestions for domain name…

meetmelissawright
createwithmelissawright
melissawrightblog
melissawrightonline
learnwithmelissawright

Be creative, but don’t stress too much.

Stay away from the .net, .biz, and other extensions. You will lose leads to the .com websites if they have already been taken.

2. A Hosting Account
The next step is to set up a hosting account.

When you set up your hosting account, you are basically renting space on someone’s server to store your website and all of your content. Setting up your hosting account does start to get a little more technical, and I am not going to get too much into the technical details in this post. One good thing is that most hosting companies have really great support if you are feeling overwhelmed.

For hosting I use HostGator, but just like purchasing domains, there are a lot of great options out there. If you go to www.wordpress.org they recommend several hosting companies. Do some research and pick the company that you feel most comfortable with.

If you have any questions about Host Gator, I will do my best to answer them.

I will continue the How to Start a Blog series, so look for more soon. I plan to share everything I have been learning about how to get start a blog and how to get a huge following using Social Media tools. If you have any questions about what I have covered so far let me know.

If you have your Domain and your Hosting Account set up.  Go to How to Start a Blog (Part 2).