So, you have this wild idea of blogging. You have seen all those catch-words about people having their own voices, being able to express themselves freely (even more than before, be it chaste or not).

So you think you can do it too? Or you think you have something to share with people around you to make things better in this world. In the process, you want to mint some money too?

Well, if that is what you want, I believe I can help. I had started blogging in the true sense only an year back when I really started off All Pumped Up! I did do some odd blogging on my blog on Blogger or O3 from Indiatimes.

At that time, I really didn’t know where to start from and with what? Frankly, back then I didn’t have the kind of money that would get me started like what I have achieved today!

Anyway, let’s put a check list together to see what we need to get off to blogging.

Now, the first thing that you need to decide before starting to blog is, “Are you into it for the long term or just wanna join the bandwagon just for the heck of it?”

If you are just in it for the heck of it, then I guess you can go in for a free blogging solution kinda thing.

So we have three choices for you at this point, 1) Go for free blogging or 2) Go for premium hosted blogging or 3) Go for your very own blogging site.

Let us examine this one by one:

STEP 1: WHICH BLOG TYPE IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

• Free blogging: It is by far one of the easiest ways to become a blogger. You do happen to have a lot of choices now. Always go for the more popular one. Remember if you choose an established brand from the thousands out there, you are guaranteed a good exposure for your opinion. If you go for some host that is low on traffic, you may not get the exposure you are planning for. Even if you write as good as it gets. I recommend going in for Blogger or WordPress. They are the place you can start with right away.
• Premium blogging: Those of you who do have some handy cash can give TypePad a try. This method is for users who want professional quality blogging but don’t know a thing about working with blogs except clicking some buttons. (Recommended for rich novices!)
• Your own blog site: Ok, this is for those who are the advanced users/experts/technology geeks who just want to be blogging and would rather die than be blogging on some other site. It is for these hi-hi people (which includes me) that can afford to pay a little extra cash every month (other than the taxes to the government) and have the required technical skills to pull it all off.

So, let us see now. You have been told of the many pathways to choose from.

STEP 2: HOW TO GO ABOUT THE CHOSEN PATH?

Based upon what choice you made back in step 1, you can do the following.

• Free blogging: There’s nothing much to do here except to head over to the blogging site of your choice and register with them. As with getting yourself a free email, you will be required to provide your information at the site and then you have to choose a name for your account which is most likely to be the name of your blog. So, take special care while choosing your blog’s name. Try to choose a name that is good, interesting and unique. There. That’ all the setting up you need here. After finishing with the sign up just head over to the blog dashboard/admin page and start writing your very first post!
• Premium blogging: This is no different than the procedure required for free blogging. Except for one difference. This one requires you to part with some of your cash in exchange for premium services. Not much of a helper I guess
• Your own blog site: When you have decided to get your own blog site, try to search for a place where you can get a good bargain on the hosting and the domain as one special package at a good rate. You can try GoDaddy or Network Solutions for starters. If you find the bundled package cheap enough and a good bargain, go for it. If you find only the domain name pricing good, just purchase your domain.After you have yourself a shiny new domain name (remember to be creative while choosing your domain), you can search for a hosting company to put your site online (if you haven’t already done so).Remember to do your research before making a move to any of the hosting companies around cyberspace. Do NOT get fooled by the flashy offers and shiny stickers. Remember many of the features on offer by the hosting company are what you may never need. Stick to the basics and be sure that the chosen host has the features required by the blogging software that you will be using.In my case, I opted for WordPress as I found it to be quite easy to install and set up and configure. Plus it is based on technologies that are free/open source. This is an important factor as it reduces the costs associated with running a website no matter how big or small it may be.Give me open source technologies over proprietary properties (like those from Microsoft) any day. As long as they don’t burn a hole in my pocket, I’m okay with them.Remember to choose a proper blogging software (I recommend that you use WordPress since it is very simple to setup and use in about half-an-hour).**I would be assuming from here that you have chosen to use WordPress and therefore would be giving WordPress specific instructions to you.**Okay, so now you have chosen to install WordPress. Good. Go to their site and download the latest stable version they have to offer and upload the files to your domain. Now the location of your blog is important (e.g., http://www.sitename.com/blog/ or on the root > http://www.sitename.com/). If you plan to use your domain only for your blog, then just upload the WordPress files to the root of your site (which would be the public_html directory on most hosts).

  There that’s it. After you have uploaded all the wordpress files, read their installation instructions which are provided with the bundle. Now you are setup for blogging. That’s it. In the next topic, I’ll explain how to enhance your blogging experience using plugins that are available for WordPress.

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