How to start a blog and make money on the side Part II

How to start a blog and make money? That’s one of the common questions we heard right now especially for those who are planning to start a blog.

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On this series of how to start a blog and make money articles, I will do my best to share valuable information that could help you start your own blog and make money on the side.

This is the Part II of my series on how to start a blog and make money. You can read back the how to start a blog and make money on the side Part I here.

If you have decided what topic what you’re going to blog as I shared on Part I of this series, you’re ready to go to the next step. Today, I’m going to share with you how to start and build your own simple blog.

Choosing the best topic is very important especially if you want to make money on blogging. Your passion is also important to keep you going in the long run. I hope you chose the best topic possible.

How to set up a blog from the scratch.

After choosing the topic, you can now start setting up or building your blog. In building or setting up your blog you need the following:

• Domain Name
• Hosting

Domain name is basically the name of your blog/website. It is the address where your readers need to know in order to visit or see your blog online on the internet. For example, www.thinkpesos.com for this blog of mine.

You can purchase your domain name at GoDaddy with discounts here.

Hosting in a layman’s term is an online storage where you’re going to save your files and documents of your blog. All your future articles will also be stored on your hosting account. This is where your domain name (www.yourblog.com) mentioned above will reside.

Where and how to get a domain name and hosting account for your blog?

A. FREE DOMAIN AND HOSTING

You can get a domain name and hosting account for your blog without NO costs. Yes for FREE! There are several blogging platforms that you can use to start a blog. Here are the 2 famous FREE blogging platform you can use.

Blogger.com
WordPress.com

The two blogging platform mentioned above are the most famous FREE blogging platform available today. You can start a blog and make money by using them although there are some consequences. And here are the 2 major consequences of using FREE blogging platform.

1. Extension on your domain name

If you use these 2 FREE blogging platform mentioned above, your domain name will have an extension which may look like not so professional.

If I use blogger.com on this blog my domain name will be www.thinkpesos.blogspot.com or if I use wordpress.com it will be www.thinkpesos.wordpress.com. See? there’s a big difference using my own domain as www.thinkpesos.com. If you’re really serious about blogging, it is advisable to get your own domain.

If you’re a beginner and just starting, using these 2 platforms is a good start. You can experiment and learn a lot from these 2 FREE platform. You can then transfer or migrate to your own domain and hosting account in the future.

There’s also an option to use or connect your own domain while using these FREE blogging platform. I will have that share in the future.

2. Limited control

If you’re going to host your blog on these FREE platform, you’ll have a limited control over everything. You cannot customize your blog the way you really want because you have limited control to the configurations and functionality.

Customization is really important if you want to have a professional blog. It’s not yours anyway, why they will give you control?

Those are the two main reasons why most of the professional bloggers opted to purchase or pay their own domain and hosting account. If you want to use them, it is up to you. It depends on your blogging goals and preference.

B. PAID DOMAIN AND HOSTING

Now, if you are really serious and committed to start a blog and make money, using a professional domain name and your own hosting account is advisable. You may spend some of your money but you can have that back in the future.

Think of it as an investment that will pay you returns in the long run.

You can purchase your domain and hosting account online. There are many domain registrars including here in the Philippines that sells the domain and hosting account.

On this blog, I’m using godaddy.com as my hosting and domain provider. You can use it too and avail discount by clicking here.

I purchased my hosting account in GoDaddy and it has a FREE domain included. It’s around P2,000++ and that’s good for a year. You can have multiple blogs or domain on this single hosting account so I think it’s worth the price. Check it out here to avail discounts.

There are other domain and hosting registrar online like Hostgator, Bluehost and others but since I’m using GoDaddy that’s what I’m suggesting to you. So far, I have not experienced any issue on my GoDaddy account.

After purchasing a hosting account and a domain, you can now install the platform use want to use for blogging. WordPress is the famous platform used by many bloggers today.

You can use other platforms too like Joomla or you can hire someone to build your blog manually. Using WordPress is basically the ideal way to start and setup your blog.

Using your own domain and hosting will eliminate the 2 major issues mentioned above using FREE domain and hosting account. You’ll have FULL control to your blog and a professional name for it.

You can customize all the way you want by using what you paid for. It will be worthy in the long run, I assure you.

On the next article, I will share step by step tutorials on how to setup and create a blog on the platforms mentioned above (FREE and PAID). This will be for now. Please come back for the next article.

Read the Part III here.