Want to Blog? Here’s My Best Advice.

I remember when Jessica emailed me to ask how to get started blogging. I was so excited! I thought, “This is so cool! Someone I know wants to blog!”

Which leads me to my first piece of advice.

Your family and friends will think that you’re nuts. You’ll be staying up late or getting up early to write your blog posts. Kids will be sick. Your website will crash. You’ll need grit, but you absolutely can do this! Decide now to do it and don’t give up.

There are two roads to blogging.

So let’s say you’ve just bought your first domain. How does that become a blog? You have two roads here. One is to use a totally free platform like Blogger or WordPress.com. The other choice is to use WordPress.org and pay for hosting.

I bet you’re wondering why everyone doesn’t choose the totally free option. It’s a control issue. The only way you can have complete control of your website is to invest in hosting. Free blogging platforms limit how your blog looks and how it functions. That may not be important to you as a beginner, but I guarantee it will matter to you within a very short time. And then you’ll be stuck. You won’t be able to “move” your blog from free to paid. You’ll have to start all over.

You can get hosting very affordably. Give up a couple of coffees and you’ve paid for your hosting. There are a ton of different hosting companies to choose from.

Jessica is using a managed host right now, called Cloudways.

But you can start out using other hosting services, that are great for starting out. A2, and Siteground are just a couple that have been recommended.

Time to Get Techie

Before you start fretting, let me tell you that I taught myself the techie parts when I was in my fifties. I was a care-giver for a family member and working full time. If this grandmother can do it, you can, too!

Here’s my secret: YouTube. Anytime I get stuck I search on YouTube for a how-to video. You’ll need to wade through some videos that aren’t so great. Look for videos that have a high number of views and for videos that aren’t more than a year old. Save the urls to your favorite videos so that you can find them again.

2 Techie Steps

1. Connect Your Domain to Your Hosting
2. Safely Install WordPress

Your hosting company will have how-to videos about changing your name servers. That’s how you connect your domain to your hosting.

Safely installing WordPress is a much bigger deal. There are buttons on your hosting for you to just click a button and Poof! WordPress is installed. Not good. The instant installations leave holes for hacker robots to attack your blog. Most people don’t know that.

So if you aren’t ready to tackle this and learn how by reading/watching tutorials online, maybe see if there’s someone out there that can help you!

My “Why”

I do this because I have a heartfelt mission to help women learn how to make money online. I’m not talking millions of dollars. I’m talking about helping women make just a bit of money to ease the stress on monthly budgets.

Some of you will take it much bigger. Some of you will crash and burn. I’ve crashed and burned three times. Now my blogging has turned into a full-time business and I have a virtual assistant and a graphic artist working with me. I’m an employer!

Dream big. Start now. Don’t quit.