Tips for Setting Up a Niche Blog

Setting up a blog can be fantastic, and it is essential if you want to have a successful business today. Before you can start making money from your blog, you need to make sure that the site looks great, is running well, and has some great content. However, for those who have never set up and run a blog before, and who do not truly understand what a niche is and why they need one, it can be confusing and somewhat intimidating. The goal of this article is to help demystify the process of getting a blog up and running and finding and choosing a niche where you can be a success.

Choosing Your Niche

Are still trying to determine what field you want to cover with your blog and the type of business you want to start? If you are not sure what is going to be right for you in terms of the field and niche, take a step back and think about some of the different types of things that you enjoy and that you know quite a bit about already. Mine your hobbies to determine whether one of those fields might work well for you as a niche.

For example, you might like fishing. Even though there are countless sites and blogs dedicated to fishing out there already, you can work to create a niche blog within this topic. Consider focusing on a certain type of fishing, or a certain location. Narrow your niche, make sure that there are still plenty of people in the niche to make it viable for a blog to succeed, and then move forward. Follow those basic steps no matter what the niche might be. Whether it is fishing, roleplaying games, sports, fitness, dieting, or any other niche that appeals to you.

Ultimately, you want to find a niche that you like and that you know about, or that you are willing to learn about.

Choosing the Domain Name

Once you have determined the niche that you want to follow and create your blog around, it is time to think about the name of your blog and site. If you are serious about your blog and business, you will want to purchase a domain name, and you want to make sure that it is the right type of domain name for the blog.

This simply means that you want a domain name that works well for your niche and that is the same as your business, ideally. It should be easy to spell and it should be short enough that people can enter it quickly. You will likely want to come up with several domain names and then check to see which ones are still available. No matter how creative you are, you will find that there are others out there who have probably come up with the same name and registered the domain already.

Once you find a name that you like and that has not been taken, you will want to register it to keep it safe, even if it will still be a few weeks or months before you get your blog started. In addition, always try to choose a .com domain when you can. This is still the most common extension, and it is the one that most people are going to think of and enter when they are looking for your site.

Choosing a Platform

The platform that you choose is also quite important. One of the most popular website and blogging platforms used today is WordPress, as it offers up some great features and tools, it is simple to use, and the themes make it easy to get the site up and running in literally minutes.

However, there are other blogging platforms out there as well, and you might want to consider some of those. Some of the other options that are out there include Ghost, Joomla, Medium, Squarespace, Weebly, Blogger, and Wix. There are pros and cons to each.

Choosing a Host

In addition to choosing the platform, you also need to find a company that can host the blog. You will find that many of the platforms available will also have a hosting service that you can use.

When you are choosing a host, you will want to look at how much bandwidth you are offered, whether they can help register the domain, how much diskspace you have, and how much the service is going to cost. Some of the popular webhosts that are available today include Bluehost, HostGator, Domain.com, SiteBuilder.com, and Sitey to name a few.

Designing the Blog

When you have your platform, host, and domain name, the next step is to start designing your site. If you are like most people, you do not have any experience when it comes to coding and getting your site looking great and like an actual website. Fortunately, most of the platforms today make getting your site in order relatively easy. WordPress, for example, has thousands of themes – free and paid – from which you can choose that will give your site the look and feel that you want in a matter of seconds. There are, of course, other site builders out there that can help, as well.

Creating the Content

Finally, you have to start creating all of the content for your site. This is the fun part, but it is also the one that tends to take up the most time and be the most nerve-wracking. Take your time to create quality content for your blog, make sure that the content serves those who are in your field’s niche, and be sure that you continue to bring fresh content to the site regularly.

Follow the simple tips here and you will find that getting your blog set up is not nearly as hard as you might have imagined. Now is the perfect time to start thinking about your niche, so you can get your blog going sooner rather than later. What are you going to be blogging about?