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Blog Lesson 3 - How to Start Blogging for Free

In the last lesson we covered why people blog, and more importantly why you might like to start a blog, now it’s time to get down to the practical side, how to start a blog.

Starting a Blog for Free

There aren’t many hobbies you can pursue absolutely free, however, blogging you can. You can create your own blog for free here. Simply follow the step by step instructions and you could be publishing your first post inside half an hour.

I used blogger for around 3-4 months when I first began blogging. I found it very easy to use and it was a great way to build up my basic skills before progressing onto my own domain name. You might be wondering why anyone would bother buying their own domain name and building their blog from scratch, but, as with most things in life you get what you pay for, using blogger is free and therefore there are some downsides.

Here are a few downsides to consider when using blogger;

  • You don’t own your blog, blogger do, and therefore they can shut you down at any time.
  • You are limited when it comes to design and layout, which won’t matter at the beginning, but once you’ve been blogging for a while you may yearn for more control over the design elements and layout of your blog.
  • You are unlikely to get as many visitors, or you will have to work harder to get them. This is due to search engine traffic and the kind of domain name you will have, which will be something like www.kerrysblog.blogspot.com or www.newmum.blogspot.com, but I’ll go into that in more detail later.

    • For now though, if you just want to see if you enjoy blogging, blogger is fine.

    If you do start a blog at blogger feel free to leave a comment with your new blog name and I’ll be sure to come and check it out and be the first to comment :)

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    This entry was written by Erica and posted on August 27, 2007 at 1:37 am and filed under Blog Lessons. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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    5 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

    1. Blogger is a definite step up from Livejournal.com :P

      I like that it is so easy to get started. I have spent many years being an avid fan of other peoples blogs but have never felt that I ahve had anything worth blogging about. I am about to become a parent for the first time and this that this huge change in my life will be something I would like to write about and keep a record of, and I hope to interact with other parents at various stages of parent hood for support and advice etc through blogging.

      1. Lovemushroom on July 6th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    2. Hi Lulu, my advice would be to stick with blogger until you’ve mastered the basics, when you find yourself wanting more, then consider changing, the most important thing is to enjoy it - stay tuned for lots more tips on adding photos etc….

      2. Erica on September 6th, 2007 at 3:46 am

    3. Thanks for the advice - I have used blogger for a few months now and quite like it - given I’m writing a blog about family life and have no time to write, let alone work out how to add photos or change to a better software, I’m not sure what to do next…

      3. lulucambpell11 on September 6th, 2007 at 3:08 am

    4. Thanks Piers, I was hoping very much that other members would jump in and extend these basic posts I’m writing. Great point that it’s not a case of starting over when you buy your own domain name too, thanks.

      4. Erica on September 5th, 2007 at 1:27 am

    5. There are some other free blogging platforms out there if blogger doesn’t grab you. Wordpress is another popular one, for instance.

      If you try out a free one, get into it, and decide you want to host your own, you can switch reasonably easily. Most blogging software allows you to import posts from previous platforms. So if you’ve written a few posts on Wordpress, say, and then decided to switch to Movable Type, you can export from WP and import to your new platform pretty easily.

      I tried several out before I started, and then plumped for the one that I liked the feel of most.

      5. Piers on September 4th, 2007 at 10:40 am

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