Whether you are interested in making money online, keeping friends and family up to date or just broadcasting yourself to the world all you need to do is set up your own blog. A blog, or web-log, is basically just a website where you can post your own content, usually for free.
You can set up a blog at Blogger.com for free, and you can even have as many blogs as you want. Anyway, Blogger does most of the work for you in setting up the blog. All you need to do is add the content and arrange the website to your liking.
So lets get started setting up our blog with Blogger. First of all you will have to visit Blogger.com to get started. As I mentioned before, this is a completely free service and is provided by Google. You can have as many free blogs, about as many different topics as you like.
On the front page at Blogger you will want to click on the big arrow that says "Create Your Blog Now". Now you will be taken through the process of creating your username, password and display name(the name as "posted by" at the end of each blog post). Last you will put in your email address (which has to be real) and check the box that says you agree to their Terms of Service.
Click continue to move on to the next page. On this page you will name your blog and select a blog address(URL). If your goal is to make money with your site you should try to pick a keyword rich URL and keep it as short as possible. Only problem here is that everyone else already has a blog, and someone has the blog address you wanted to use. Since you can't have the same address as someone else you may have to get creative. Next up is the hardest part. Word verification. All you need to do is to copy the almost(or sometimes completely) illegible word into a text box. Sounds easy, but wait till you see the font.
Once you get past the hard part you can move on to the fun part. Step 3 is choosing a template. This is where you get to look through the different templates Google offers and choose the one that suits you the best. You can use your own templates, or download them online, but that is more complicated and for another conversation. Once you have chosen your template click continue to move on to the next page and start posting to your blog.
When placing posts to your blog make sure to use a separate program to write your posts first. The reason is that it is much easier to write in a full sized window than in that little text box. You can then copy and paste the document into the text box on Blogger. I like to write in Notepad because it gives you simple .txt files with no coding. If you want(or know how) you can even add in simple html codes like links and pictures. Once you paste your post into Blogger and do a quick spell check you can click the "Post Now" button and viola. You have your own Blogger blog.
Finally you should play around with the settings and layout features under your blogger dashboard to become familiar with them. The settings may need to be changed to reflect your correct time zone and some little things like that. The layout section on the other hand is where you can set up and rearrange the layout of the web page itself. It is very user friendly and offers many options like adding pictures and video to you blog. Play around with it until you get your page just how you want it. Note: if you are looking to make money online this is the section where you can add your adsense. Since Google runs Blogger they have integrated the feature directly into the software making it simple to apply.
Lets face it, blogging is the wave of the future. Whether it be for business or personal use blogging is already the method of choice for millions to "get the word out" about anything and everything they are interested in. Are you ready to join the blogger revolution?
