Monday, November 18, 2013

Who is a Blogger and What is Blogging? – A complete Guide



Who is a Blogger and What is Blogging? – A complete Guide

BY: Hamid Roshaan

Blogginggame.com 

Who is a Blogger and What is Blogging? This is the first question every person asks who is new to Blogging World. This post is worth exploring for those people who are new to Blogging world and doesn’t know what it really means. Let me explain you what actually blogging is.
Actually Blogging is a very Creative thing to do. It’s totally different and awesome thing which makes you feel better. Many people do it as a Passion and many others do Blogging to make money from their blogs. Lets go In Details, Blogging is a Term Derived from word “Blog“.

What is a Blog?

A Blog is an abbreviated word used for term “Weblog“, This is a word used to describe different type of Websites and Portals which share information on specific topics or wider categories. It usually includes Features like Blog Posts, Videos, Comments, Links to other websites, Widgets, etc.

What is Blogging?

Each and every skill you need to run and manage a Blog is called blogging. Blogging includes Skills Like Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Writing, Editing and Publishing Posts, Designing and Maintaining the Design of your Website, etc.
You need to learn every skill to be a Blogger like You should be a good writer to write lot of Unique and Quality content for your website. You should be a good Search Engine Optimizer to Optimize your blog according to rules and regulations set by Search engines.
You Need to be a Social Media Marketer and Optimizer to influence your websites or blogs with social media Power which is very strong these days. It is true that you can hire Experts or freelancers for each job but you will need a lot of money for doing that, so rely on yourself and learn each and every skill slowly so that you could become a Good Blogger.

On what Topic Blogs are Made?

Blogs can be created on any topic in which you are expert. Let’s suppose you are expert in coffee-making you should start a Coffee blog. Or if you are expert in Search Engine Optimization you should start an SEO blog where you will share tips for better Search Engine Optimization to help people to do Better SEO of their websites or Blogs.
Blogs are often made on topics like Political News and Political Topics, Sports, Web design, Blogging Tips, Technology Gadgets, etc. I’ll recommend you to make a Blog on topic you are expert in.

Is Investment needed to Make a Blog?

Whenever you start a new Business you need to invest some money, Same case here that you need to invest money if you want to start a Blog for making money from it, Bou if you want to start a blog just for fun and enjoyment you can do it free by using WordPress.com or Blogger.com (I Will Explain this later).

Things Needed for a Blog:

You will need two things for making a Blog and these are:
  • Domain Name
  • Web Hosting

Domain Name:

Domain name is a name people use to reach your website or Blog just like www.Blogginggame.com is a Domain name and you reach Blogging game by entering that URL in your browser’s Web Address Bar.
You can register a Domain name by going to any Domain name registrar’s website and choosing a domain name and yes you if that name is already registered you have to choose another one.
After registering a Domain name you have to change its DNS settings according to your Web Host Server’s DNS setting, after DNS setting will take effect you will be able to work on your website.

Web Hosting:

What is Hosting
You need a Computer or you can say that server to store all of your website’s data so that people could see it. You will store your all data in some Web hosting company’s server.
There are many Popular and reliable Web Hosting companies But we recommend Bluehost for your website because We found it most reliable company for website hosting services.
You have to Buy a Hosting account with good package from Blue Host and Check out its Name servers and redirect your domain name to those Nameservers from Domain name Provider’s CPanel.
it takes almost 24-48 Hours for DNS settings to take effect and you will be able to install any CMS (we are going to explain this later) and Start working on your Blog.

What is CMS?

CMS Stands for Content Management System. Websites are made up of HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and many other Web Programming languages.Typically working you have to code each and every web page which takes too long. CMS Helps you to create, Edit, Publish, and manage your all website’s web pages in very organized, Clean and easy way.
Content Management systems are themselves made up of different Programming languages like PHP, CSS, HTML, XML, Javascript, etc. There are many Content Management systems out there but We recommend WordPress (I am going to explain this later) Which is mostly used CMS in the world.

What is “WordPress”?

As I explained above CMS are themselves coded and developed using different programming languages. WordPress is a Content Management System which is based on PHP and MySQL. Moreover it is World’s most popular CMS for Blogging Platforms and Business Websites.

What are WordPress.com and Blogger.com?

WordPress.com:

WordPress.com is a free of cost Blogging service for people who want to Blog without spending single penny, it uses WordPress CMS for management. If you want to Start a Free blog you should Choose WordPress.com for that, Let me explain you further.
WordPress.com provides free subdomain to its users, Subdomain is something like this “www.Subdomain.wordpress.com”, In the place of subdomain you can choose any name you want if it is not already taken, For Example: if I want a free blog I will choose something like “www.DesiredName.Wordpress.com”.
You can make a number of Free Blogs with your wordpress.com account, you just have to sign up to wordpress.com for starting a free of cost blog.
If you want to host your your blog with WordPress.com with custom Domain name like “Yourname.com“, you can do that but you’ll have to pay little bit more than you will pay any other hosting provider and Domain name registrar.

Blogger.com:

Just like WordPress.com, Blogger.com is a Free of cost Blogging platform for people to who want to start a free blog. The main difference between Blogger.com and WordPress.com is that Blogger.com is Owned by Google itself and it is based on HTML, CSS, javascript and XML unlike WordPress.com which is Based on PHP and MySQL
You have to sign in to your Blogger.com account using Gmail or Google account and you can use it just like WordPress.com service. You can create up to 100 free blogs per account and yes you can also use custom domain name with blogger.com and the hosting and protection provided by Blogger.com will be free of cost.
Must Read: [Self Hosted] WordPress or Blogger? Which One is Best

Making Money with a Blog:

There are Thousands of ways to make money with a Blog, I am going to Present some of them here, I’ll explain others in my later post:

Contextual Advertising:

Contextual advertising is a way of advertising which is used to target ads to specific keywords. Going deeper, Actually these ads are picked up by an automated system after identifying the keywords on web page. Google Adsense and many others use this method of Advertising.

Direct Advertising:

You can also Sell your Blog’s space to Advertisers Directly, for doing this you should display a banner having “Advertise Here” text in it so that Advertiser should contact you and pay you to display his ad on your blog.
The Price of Advertising depends upon the Advertisement size, traffic and niche of your blog or website. Some people really earn too much using direct advertising like Problogger.

Text Links Advertising:

There are many other networks who allow to show their advertisements in Text Links, You just have to signup to those networks and Paste the snippet code to your blog’s HTML area.
These Link Ads work in the way that they are controlled by a system which recognizes the keywords in the text and places a link in that keyword, Whenever user hovers his cursor on that keyword that advertisement pops out and when ever user clicks it Publisher or Blogger gets Money.
There are many Text Link Advertising Companies, I have tested Text Link Ads and Infolinks But this way of advertising is not so much good.

Last Words:

Hope you got Answers of Each Question in your mind about Blogging, In case we have not Answered and Question about which you are curious, Feel free to ask In Comments section.
As we are working to Make this Blog a Better place for our readers, Keep visiting and Keep patience We will post each and every topic Which comes Within Blogging

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