This post may be one that you will simply skim through as you have already installed yourself a blog and might already be running one, but for the rest of you that have not, this post will be (and should be) quite helpful for you in choosing a good blogging platform to run your blog.

Before jumping into a debate about whether Wordpress is better than Blogger or vica-versa, it is important to think about and decide an answer to two things.

1. What is my blog going to be about? In my case, (I will be using my blog as an example a lot) Askllora’s goal is to target web developers, designers, and guru’s and blog about tips, tricks, business, what works with clients, and so forth. In order to be successful with your blog you need to have a concise goal in mind. Not deciding on a goal and sticking to it will make this 30 day course pointless for you because:
   

   1. You won’t be consistent with your blogging. You’ll burn out very quickly, just like a match, and you will lose the efforts that you may have tried to build up.
   2. You will try to cover every blogging niche out on the internet. Trust me folks, this will not work.

   So choose a goal for your blog and choose a target audience to appeal to. Do you want to appeal to teens? women? men? children? businessmen? car owners? photographers? gamers? …The list goes on and on.

2. How serious am I about blogging? Some of you may want to blog for fun, while others for some sort of financial gain. It is important to choose, how long do I want to do this crazy blogging idea? Do I want to blog long-term? Maybe only for a little bit? Or occasionally? Each of these factors are important on deciding what kind of blogging platform to choose and how to run it.

DOWN TO BUSINESS…

By now you should have thoughts about what you’re going to blog about, how your blog will grow, and how you’ll be earning a 5 digit income from blogging, but hey, in order to make that happen, let’s get back to reality and learn a bit more.

Breaking it down even further, I’ll make it simple for you what kind of blogging platform to choose:

If you want to blog for a hobby with little or no financial investment, then my suggestion would be to choose either Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, or TypePad as a choice. From my experience, these three are the easiest in setting up and getting started blogging. TypePad, is not free, and runs about $15 a month, however, their platform is simple to setup and use. It also allows for advanced blog customization in which you can hardcode your blog into almost anything. The negative part about these hosting platforms is that you just don’t get as much customization and less control as you would if you hosted the blog yourself. That being said, these platforms are still very popular for beginning and less serious bloggers.

If you want to blog for money, a serious goal, or another professional cause, then I will suggest using a platform such as Wordpress (from Wordpress.org) or MoveableType. In this 30 day course, we will focus strictly on Wordpress because a) it is a more popular, customizable, friendly and better platform in my opinion, and b) I use it.

As you may have seen this coming, setting up your own blogging software requires some skills, effort, and of course, money.

In order to host your blog, you need to purchase some hosting. Hosting is very inexpensive these days, and for only $9.99/month you can get a decent host that will keep you running as long as you pay. I would personally recommend DreamHost (email me for a promo code) because I use it for this blog and they also offer One-Click Installs meaning you only need to click once to have your blog installed (how cool is that!). Some may disagree and prefer another host, but everyone has a different experience with web host’s hence different opinions.

Most should already know that you will also need a domain name, and these are $6-7 per year of registration.

TIP: See Choosing an Effective Domain Name For Your Site or Blog

Dreamhost offers one free domain each year you stay with them, so that’s another benefit of using them. I will not go into details on how to register a domain because I am assuming most of you are knowledgeable enough to know how to do this already, but if you’re not, email me and I will gladly help you.

All in all, the costs of running your own blogging software are about $120 per year (plus/minus $10) regardless of which hosting company you choose. The cost of running your blog comes out to $10 a month, and is not a big cost considering the fact that by the end of this month, you should at least be making that much money if you stay with our fantastic 30 day free blogging course!

I believe that’s enough for now as I have written enough already, so if you haven’t subscribed, please do so!

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