5 Key Questions To Answer When Starting Your Own Blog

Blogs are everywhere these days and they cover a wide variety of topics. I saw a blog the other day about making your baby a “green” baby. Your options are endless.

There are a lot of questions one might have when it comes to blogging and there won’t be one place to find all the answers, but what I’m going to provide are 5 key questions you need to answer when starting a your own blog:

Fun or money?

What is your main goal in starting your own blog? Are you just wanting a place where you can rant on whatever topic your heart desires or are you looking to start a blog to highlight a small side project/hobby you have and want to start making money with it. The answer to this question will help determine most of the other questions to follow and it sets the tone for how you will run your blog.

What’s your brand?

Now you need a name. It needs to be catchy but not kitschy. Come up with some ideas, write them down, and repeat them often out loud and see which ones seem to have the best staying power.

It will be important to check and see if anyone else out there is already using that name for their blog or another website. This could become especially difficult if money is involved. You want a name that people will remember and know what your blog is about just by hearing it.

What do I write about?

This is most likely answered by question number one. Doing a blog for your random rants or just for fun affords you to write about anything you want to without any repercussions. Creating a blog for money doesn’t offer these same comforts.

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You may have an idea for a money-earning blog on a topic where there are already hundreds or even thousands of similar blogs that are already established. What can you bring to the table this is fun, exciting, and new? This is key to surviving as a professional blogger.

What site should I use?

There are dozens of sites out there to use for your blog. All of these sites offer varying degrees of publishing tools, help, and ways to enhance visual effects of your blog. Many of these top sites are free but, as with anything free, there is fine print.

Be sure to do your homework on all of the available sites for blog publishing. You would hate to spend all of your time setting up with one site just to switch to another after a few months.

How often should I post?

The last question is very subjective. In all honesty there is no magic answer and, again, it depends on if you are doing a blog for fun or money. You could post a couple times a week or less when doing a blog for your own personal gain. Doing a blog for money requires much more of a commitment; you have to find a good balance of quantity and quality.

You want to post often but you want to make sure you are making posts that are on topic and relevant. Readers will stick around for awhile as long as you keep giving good information and giving it often. Slipping up even just a week without explanation may cause readers to find another site and it will be hard to get them back.

Ultimately, if you using a free site to publish your blog, starting one and not seeing it through only causes you to lose your time and effort. Everything will be determined by how much time and effort you are willing to put into your blog and how much you want it to succeed.

  Tom Jones

About the Guest Author:

Tom Jones contributed this guest post for make-a-web-site.com – see here for more information on their create a website tips. Tom is a freelance writer for blogs such as problogger.com and www.webhostinghub.com