By Neil Savin

If you have ever considered starting a blog, but you thought that it would be expensive to do, or you would need a lot of technical knowledge to do it, think again, because starting a new personal blog requires virtually no technical knowledge and it will cost you very little, if anything at all.

You can blog for pleasure, blog to air your views, or blog to sell products. Blogs can also be a very effective and easy way to promote as small business or to drive more traffic to a business website. Whatever your reason for wanting start a blog, the steps that are needed to set up a blog are the same. Here are the basic steps you will need to follow to set up a blog.

Choose your blogging platform

The first decision that you will need to make is which of the various blogging platforms you will choose for your blog. There is a quite a large range of different platforms that you could use, but it is important that you choose a platform that is easy to use, still being developed and supported, and one that can provide you with the flexibility to tailor your blog and add in extra functionality when you are ready. One of the most popular blogging platforms in the world is WordPress. It is easy to use and you can set up a blog with WordPress free of charge.

Choose a theme for your blog

Once you have selected your blogging platform, you will then need to select a theme for your blog, which is what defines the basic layout of your blog and the colour scheme. If you have chosen WordPress as your blogging platform, you can choose from a huge range of free themes and you can then, if you wish, tailor a theme by changing things such as the colours and the fonts, or by modifying the layout. One important consideration when choosing a theme is to make sure that is "responsive", which means that it will be compatible with mobile devices as well as PCs and laptops.

Register your domain

You will then need to choose and register a domain. This is relatively inexpensive to do and it can be done through a variety of big domain registration websites. Domain registration is an annual fee that will usually cost less than $10 per year. Try to think of a name that will distinguish your blog from similar sites, one that will be memorable, and one that will describe what your blog is about.

Purchase web hosting

The next step will be to select a hosting supplier to host your blog. The choice of hosting provider is an important one, because it can affect the speed that your blog will operate and it can affect the visibility of your blog in search engine results. There will be a fee for hosting your blog and it will usually be a lot higher than the domain registration fee. However, if you are looking for cost effective hosting for your personal blog, you can choose any of these best free web hosting services that have been recommended by users.

Start writing your blog posts

Once you have got those steps out of the way you start writing your blog posts. The best way to start is to plan your blog posts in advance. Start by thinking about what you are trying to achieve, the tone that you want to create for your blog and how often you can write posts. The best way to generate a readership and gain attention for a blog is to write good quality content while staying within a fairly narrow niche and posting new content regularly.

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Article Source: Starting a New Personal Blog - Follow These Important Steps