Back in 2012 I decided I wanted to create a blog. I don’t believe at the time I thought too much about the goal of my blog other than I wanted my own little corner of the web that I would own and could talk about whatever I wanted and share it anytime I wanted. As a Journalism major in college I loved writing and always kept a physical journal. Even when I was in grammar school I had a diary and would right in it every single night before bed to talk to myself and recap my day, how I was feeling, my school crushes and just life in general. I never gave up my love for writing or reporting, but I didn’t actually become a journalist or work for a newspaper or magazine. While I do work in marketing and use my writing and creativity for my role today, I missed having a place that was truly mine to write and share. Hence where the idea of my blog came from.
My blog is my passion project. I spend so much time thinking about what I want to write, taking photos, editing and re-editing posts and content – because I truly enjoy this. When I created my blog I did it for me and maybe to help some other women out there feel like they could relate to someone. I wanted to share my battles and struggles, my strengths and triumphs, products I love, places I’ve been, products I’ve hated and experiences I have had. It truly is my online diary and I’ve met and connected with so many amazing people from around the world through this vehicle. Blogging was never meant to be a revenue stream, though over time it surely have allowed me to put a few dollars aside but nothing that I could quite my job for. I get a lot of questions about how I started blogging, how to set up a blog, who did my site – so I wanted to come up with a list of tips for those of you out there considering starting up your own space in the web like I did.
My Top Tips for Starting a Blog
Pick your passion – a blog is an outward extensions of what you love, or at least I think it should be. What gets you going in the morning, what makes you smile, what expertise do you have to share with the world? Pick a niche that is something you really, truly enjoy sharing and doing with others. I love health, fitness, beauty, cooking so naturally my blog became all about that. I wouldn’t really classify myself as a beauty blogger though, because while I love makeup, skin care and hair I don’t post tutorials on makeup looks or how to wing my eyeliner…so I’m not a beauty blogger, I know/live/love fitness and health so I weave some other things in but I know that my audience comes here for a specific reason so I focus all of my energy on that. Plus, I live and breathe my healthy lifestyle daily so it’s organic, naturally and not a chore for me to share on my blog about this category. Think about what you want your blog to focus on, stick to that and make it amazing!
Think about a name – having a great name for your blog is important. It might take some time to pick one and sometimes just when you think you have the perfect name, you go and check online and see that it is taken (hate that!). The best thing to do is make a list of words that you think either represent you, your content, your passions. Pick out nouns and verbs and adjectives. For example look at my list below, what I do is create list of words and then pair them together until something sticks. For my name it came up organically in a conversation with a friend of mine I was meeting for dinner, we posted a photo on instagram of our food and cocktails and tagged it with “just having some #jerseygirltalk with ___” and it stuck. My blog name represents the conversation you would have with your best girlfriend and it made perfect sense to me!
Check your domain name – once you pick a name, which is a big step, you have to go and check if it is taken or available. I use BlueHost for my hosting and domain purchases so you can go there and click on Products and then Domains on the drop down. Once there you can type in the name (without .com) and see if the domain is available for purchase. If it is free you can snag it for around $15 or less but if it’s taken you will get this error. Then you have the fun job of testing and trying again and again until you find one that is available. It might take some time, but there will eventually be one you can purchase. I also purchased a few other versions of my URL like a .net or a .us just so that I could redirect all traffic to my main site and not allow anyone else to buy mine.
Buy a hosting plan – so now you have your domain name, but you need to host your .com somewhere. If you bought your domain through BlueHost which I recommend, you can buy your hosting through them too which makes it easy since they are both on the same server. The also offer WordPress hosting for around $13 a month and my site is built off WordPress. I love WordPress! Some people use WordPress and others might use Blogger, but WP works best for me and allows me a ton more customization and ability to choose and update great themes and even customize your own.
WordPress.org vs WordPress.com – so there are two version and they are very different yet similar. WordPress is the backend that sets up the framework for your blog. It has modules, widgets the publishing pieces etc. It’s the “Skeleton” of your blog or the backbone. When I first start to blog I had myself setup on WordPress.com which is super easy to do, installation is fast, it comes with free hosting but as you get more and more into blogging you will need to upgrade and update to WordPress.org. I have WordPress.org now and it allows me to own the ability to change my code, add plugins, make changes to the back end, put ads on my site and host it on any server I’d like. It gives me more freedom and is more professional. I made that switch about a year into my blogging. I have to say I taught myself a ton about coding, back end and technology during this time. I still don’t know how I set this thing all up on my own, lol.
Your look & feel/Design – it’s important when you get your blog finally up and running to pick a palette of colors, fonts and a “look & feel” for your site. Is it whimsical? Girly? Pretty? Simple? Clean? All of these things will be important when you start to think about design and themes for your blog. Once you’re on WordPress.org you can choose various themes to get you started and it’s as simple and choosing one, activating it and pushing it live. You can make some basic changes to it in the customization area, but if you just want to get up and running there is a wide variety of free themes to choose from. You can also choose to purchase a theme from a site like ThemeForest (click here) which is what I use to buy new themes that offer a lot more options than the free ones. I have changed my theme a lot but not in the last year or two. Once I found something that worked for me I decided to keep it. I make edits here or there but ultimately I don’t mess with my code or design too much.
Create a logo – for a long time I didn’t have a logo and now that I have one I realize just how important it is! To do my logo I used a very simple service called Fiiver.com – I hired someone for $15 to make my logo and it is the one I still use today! I worked with the designer to give them words that described my style, a list of colors I wanted and we went back and forth a few times until I really loved it. I wanted text/words but also an icon and the result is amazing. I have since changed the text on the top banner of my blog, but everywhere use the below logo exists. If you have a friend who is a graphic designer you an ask them to make one for you too. You will realize over time how important it is to have a logo.
Put your logo on all of your images – it wasn’t until I started to really start cranking out original content on my blog did I realize how important this step was. On all of my images I watermark them (most of the time) with my logo in the bottom right corner. This is critical when you make content that can get picked up or shared around the web. When someone sees your logo it can bring that traffic back to your site to learn more or see more. It’s just like a photographer who puts their logo or name on their images, they want to ensure they remain the author and receive credit for the images. As you can see below, my stamp is on my images in a small way but not intrusive. I do this while processing my photography through Adobe Lightroom
Invest in your equipment – I am a photographer in my spare time so having a quality camera was already part of my repertoire, however I also learned I needed certain things I didn’t have. Now I am not here to say you need to go out and spend $5k on camera and software stuff, but I will say that as I got more and more into blogging the quality of my images become more important to me. Right now I have the following equipment that I use for my blog:
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Lenses: 35 mm Canon L Lens 2.8
Software for editing: Final Cut Pro
Lighting: Diva Ring Light 
I love shooting with Canon and love these 3 lenses. The lower the F stop the more blur in the background like the below which allows the focus to be on the person in front and not on the background. For this set up I used a Canon 60D
Create a blog workflow – I can’t tell you how important this is and how much time this now saves me, even though one blog posts takes a ton of time if you want it to look great, having a process is key! You can either make a list or over time it will come as second nature, but blogging have a TON of steps! What I do now is use a check list from start to finish on how I want to execute a post. This is my blog workflow to ensure I hit all of these steps to get the most traffic to my blog, engagement and great content.
I hope this has been helpful for you future bloggers out there! I will be sure to add to this list and update it periodically as I think of more advice and tips. Overall, your blog should be something you ENJOY doing, not a chore and not a job you don’t like. I am sure many people are able to blog full time and make a career of it, it is still not that for me and so I always look at it as “if I want to post I will, if I don’t have something to meaningfully contribute I don’t and wait to be inspired”. xo
Make sure to connect with me for more tips, workouts & advice:
Twitter – @missads1981
Instagram – @missads1981
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/user/missads1981
Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/jerseygirltalk/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/jerseygirltalk
Vine – https://vine.co/MissADS1981
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