I am always amazed but not really surprised at how many people want to start their own blog. How to start blogging is at the forefront of thousands of people’s minds. What you need to know is that many start but fail. Why do they fail? Because they didn’t have the three things you need to make a success out of blogging.
A Great Website, Education and Support.
Many people start to build their website on infirm ground, only to discover all that their work is lost in the blink of an eye, or that their website is just not getting seen ( poor SEO ) or worse their website is so limited in its abilities to grow that it will take thousands of pounds to get it up to speed.
Do not just jump into Blogging without knowing that the website you are building it on is safe and can grow with you.
Do not just start Blogging without knowing where you will learn all that you need to know. You can start with little knowledge or none in my case, but you need to have access to an online education system which allows you to earn as you learn.
Do not start Blogging without some level of support. No man is an island as the saying goes. Nothing is more true when working online. Even seasoned Bloggers or online marketers need support.
Let’s look at the three things you need to succeed and where best to find them.
A Great Website
There are many components to having a great website but the first is a having a great hosting platform. Things to consider are cost, platform stability, capabilities, safety and support.
I host my websites and blogs at Wealthy Affiliate, possibly not one you have heard of but is better, cheaper and more inclusive than any I have used before.
Here are a list of things that they offer me for a mere $49 a month. About £37 at the time of writing. I want to let you know I started for FREE and still got the majority of these before I decided I was spending any money with them.
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SiteSpeed
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SiteProtect, Increased Spam Protection
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SiteHealth, Website Analysis
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SiteComments
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SiteFeedback
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Free SSL certificates (Website Encryption)
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24/7 Managed Monitoring
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24/7 Automated monitoring
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24/7/365 Site Support
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WHOIS Privacy Protection 24/7 Support
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Next Year Guarantee Pricing
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Domain Security
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Unlimited Email Accounts
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Advanced DNS Management
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Instant Set-up.
With the domain platform at Wealthy Affiliate, you have access to all the features you would expect, other domain registrars to charge for. AND THEY DO, BIG TIME.
If you want more information on any of the above go to my recent post which goes into more detail by clicking here.
Education
You can start blogging with little or no knowledge but as you start, you will become frustrated at your inability to make your blog look and perform like others you have seen and admired. You can find answers all over the web to your questions but they will often be conflicting with what others say to do. You will likely spend hours searching, going from one site to another. You will try a few things and some will work and others not.
You will be tempted to buy into other people’s courses or programs that promise you all of the answers. Some will be good and give you some of the answers. Others will be a total waste of your good money.
This will be the school of hard knocks way of learning and you will spend years getting your Blog up and running effectively. That is, if you make it that far. If you remember, I said at the start, most people who start a Blog fail. They fail because they do not have a clear way forward and have no support. They also often run out of money before they can make their blog profitable.
A great education needs to have structure. It needs to enable you to start right from the beginning and follow the course through to its conclusion. It should enable you to build your Blog step by step in the right way.
Wealthy Affiliate Training
At Wealthy Affiliate there are two different programmes, you can follow. Most of us do both. The certification course has five levels and each course has 10 modules. This is for people who want to build a blog around their own niche subject. You get help in deciding on a niche if you don’t have one.
The Affiliate Bootcamp is aimed at those wanting to focus on building a blog or website around Affiliate Marketing. This has seven levels and each course has 10 modules.
That’s 110 separate courses that takes you step by step through building your blog and monetising it. This doesn’t even include all of the live trainings which can be watched at anytime and the 1000’s of trainings by experienced members on a host of different subject matters.
One of my favourite features is their integrated Keyword Search tool. If you want more information on this you can take a read of my post ” What is a Keyword Search Tool?” By clicking on the link.
You can actually join as a member for FREE, no credit card required and do the first two levels of each training camp before you decide if it is helpful to you. It is often referred to as the Wealthy Affiliate University and who wouldn’t want that kind of Education?
Support
If you go it alone it will be quite lonely. There are few Bloggers out there who will help you. You, after all will be their competition. But it doesn’t need to be that way.
There is a whole community of people just like you who work within a true “pay it forward” community. The more help and interaction you give, the more you get back. Now obviously right at the start you may have little to give other than words of encouragement, but as you progress through the training and leverage the knowledge of others, you will soon become competent and even an expert in some areas. It will be your turn to offer some support and guidance. You can create trainings that you will be rewarded for and the more you help others, the more they will help you.
There is one big rule in the community though, No Spamming. Do not join Wealthy Affiliate as a way of dumping your offerings and running. It won’t work. This means that we can all be confident, that advice given is true and not for the profit of others.
Most people find this kind of community within a business world to be quite alien and even unbelievable. I was one of those people too, once upon a time.
After spending so much time going it alone and being scammed so many times, I was obviously uber cautious when I came across Wealthy Affiliate. I signed up for free and no credit card asked for. All good. I was asked to create a profile. Still uber cautious I created my profile name Memory Lane UK ( I wasn’t giving them my real name .. lol ) wrote a brief description and uploaded a random picture. It’s a shame I was so cautious to be honest, because there are still people who message me saying Hi Memory or thank you Memory. That will teach me for being so cautious. My actual name is Karen in case you are interested and you can see my actual photo there now.
If you think this may be something that could help you then I urge you to give it a go. It’s FREE anyway and all it will cost you is some time. I know it will be time worth spent if you follow the certification and learn whilst building your first free website or Blog. Two if you really want. The worst that could happen is that you will have learnt some stuff you probably didn’t even know you needed to learn and have got your Blog up and running.