Starting a blog and becoming a blogger has become a desirable goal for many people. It’s quite understandable, being a blogger you can really devote yourself to your passions: writing and the topic you want to blog about. And also if you do it right, being a blogger can provide you with a nice and steady passive income. But once you decide on starting your blog, the question remains: how to become a blogger?
Becoming a blogger seems more like a technical challenge for most people at first, but it isn’t. If you’re looking for a technical solution to start your blog, read my article on How to start a blog in 20 minutes.
I can absolutely understand this though, as when I started my first blog back in 2011, the biggest challenge for me was to set up a working website for my blog. But even back in those days we had extremely powerful and easy to use blogging platforms – more on that later -, and today you can start your own blog with literally a few clicks.
So when it comes to the question “how to become a blogger”, I find it’s not the technical issues that matter, but something completely different.
How To Become A Blogger: The Real Challenge
If you want to become a blogger, though this might sound as a platitude, it is really a mental decision. In most cases the hardest part of blogging is to overcome the mental challenges to be successful.
The most important questions to answer when becoming a blogger are not technical but mental. These questions are in most cases the following>:
- Are you really enthusiastic about the topic so that you can keep on blogging even after setbacks and having written your first few posts?
- Are you prepared to publish at least one article every week in the future?
- Do you see yourself as an expert in your topic, even if you have no degree in that area or only a small experience?
- Can you defend you opinion and your place as a blogger even against negative comments? More importantly, can you stand negative comments so that you don’t give up all that’s written above?
You should have a definite YES to all of these questions to become a blogger. If there is any doubt in the first two (enthusiasm and publishing 1 article per week), I recommend not to start blogging. It won’t work in this case.
If you have any doubt regarding the latter two (being an expert and defending your opinion), don’t worry. Just start blogging and keep on publishing, time will help you achieve those. I just recommend you keep on posting at least one article every week.
Which Platform To Use As A Blogger
Deciding on which blogging platform to use might be decisive for the future success of your blog. Yes, this is a technical question, but if you accept my advice, you don’t necessary vote for the easiest solution.
There are a few blogging platforms that are completely free and extremely easy to set up, like Tumblr or Blogger. The only drawback of these platforms is that they are much more difficult to monetize later when you start building a large following.
Also some social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram are extremely trendy these days to build a blog. Although some people have been proven to achieve great success on these platforms, there is no general solution to build a successful blog there. And the two biggest drawbacks are: 1. Social media platforms are not yours – your blog can be shut down anytime without prior notice; 2. There is no way to utilize the leverage of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for these blogs, which I think is the biggest friend of bloggers when it comes to generate free and steady traffic of readers.
According to my experience, the best technical solution for starting a blog is the self hosted WordPress solution. Yes, this will set you back about $10 every month, but you can enjoy all the benefits of your blog without any drawbacks.
- You can set up your WordPress blog with just a few clicks. Step by step instructions on how to start your WordPress blog here.
- You have 100% control over your blog, you can set it up and fine-tune it the way you like, no restrictions that you find in any other platforms.
- No restrictions on how you monetize your blog. Believe me, this can become a very important argument after a while.
- The content is yours. No one can shut down your blog, or discontinue the service.
- WordPress is the best “Google-friendly” platform today. This is the kind of traffic that can generate you thousands or more visitors for free, and passively. That is, you work once writing your articles, and Google as a search engine provides you with visitors every single day.
And when writing a WordPress blog, you can still enjoy all the benefits of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or even Pinterest and Twitter. Simply create a Facebook business page, an Instagram or Pinterest business account and a Twitter account, and start publishing links to your blog content on those platforms.
Are You Blogging For Money Or For Passion?
Yes, becoming a blogger can provide you with a steady income. And what’s even better, this income is mostly passive. Everyone’s dream, right?
But not so fast! You need to know the other side of the coin. Becoming a successful blogger requires hard work, a lot of endurance and a lot of time. If you’ve never blogged before, chances are that even if you’re learning how to blog from someone already successful, you’ll need at least one year and a lot of disappointments until you start making money.
And even if one of your goals is to make money – which in my opinion is perfectly fine -, you need to have passion towards the topic you’re blogging about.
Here are the main reasons why you should only start blogging with passion:
- For self-motivation reasons, like persistence. When you have to write and publish one article every week (or even more often), you need some reason why keep up even if nobody’s reading your blog in the first couple of weeks or months.
- Visitors “feel” it. Have you ever had that feeling reading a website, the it’s just shallow? Somebody might have had written it for money? I’m sure you want to avoid your readers to have the same feeling about your blog.
- Interestingly for SEO reasons. Google has become very meticulous lately. It has exceptional algorithms to detect if a specific article and a website (blog) is appealing to the public or it’s only that shallow thing (e.g. with the help of social media signals and other methods). So again, with passion you can give life to your blog, and this will in deed help you get better results in search engines.
Ready To Become A Blogger?
If you have any questons about being a blogger, don’t hesitate to ask me down in the comments section. And if you feel yourself ready to become a blogger, go on and read my article How to start a blog in 20 minutes so you can start blogging today!