If you’ve ever thought of creating a blog before, do it now!
Ideally yesterday, last week, last month or even a couple of years ago was the best time to start. But now is way better than never. A blog can offer you a lot of value if you’re willing to put in the effort:
- Somewhere to share your thoughts and feelings on things
- A place to promote and build a brand/business, whether you have one yet or not
- Being able to create a side income
- A project to develop a handful of skills (that are useful in this modern age)
Keep reading for my best tip on how to start writing your first blog post.
Why I started a blog in 2020.
Starting a blog in 2020 to many sounds quite late. Surely I’d go for a YouTube channel, or do short videos on TikTok or maybe even just have an Instagram story instead. But blogs still hold an important place in the world and can still be an incredible thing to have. I’ve started my blog for many reasons, but the thing that sold it for me was that it would be risk free!
There was absolutely no reason to start a blog, so I did it. I took the first step towards creating something truly incredible and I really hope it goes well. Well, I know it will!
Creating this blog forces me to articulate my thoughts on things and gives me a space to share some of the knowledge I’ve been accumulating on seemingly random things.
It forces me to practise what I preach and document new things I learn. It’s a place to actively inspire me to seek out new knowledge, skills, habits and people to become better.
That’s the whole idea behind Learned Men, to become better. Period.
Are blogs still active in 2020? Blogs vs. Vlogs (YouTube)
While blogs were more viable a few years back and YouTube quickly took over in popularity, many people still search the web looking for useful, practical and valuable content.
You just need to be more mindful of how people will find your content.
Blog posts don’t go viral by themselves on Google. They tend to take SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) skills and promotion from other social platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest and even Facebook Groups. However, a well made and promoted blog can still get hundreds of thousands of views, make hundreds of thousands of £’s and $’s per year or even month!
Why blog posts are better than YouTube videos
Readers like blog posts because they can skim through the content, to what they care about most. If they like what they read, they’re more likely to continue reading the post and other content that you create.
In my opinion, a blog can offer a lot more value than a YouTube video. Not only are blog posts skimmable, but they can offer in depth explanations on things, have easy links to other content and resources, include images and info-graphics and have YouTube videos embedded into the post itself.
Blog posts are:
- Skimmable
- Can offer in-depth explanations things
- Include images and infographics
- Embed YouTube videos into the blog post itself.
How to start a blog? (With little to no money)
There is no reason why you shouldn’t start a blog.
A blog or website is valuable to anyone. Whether you’re an author, a teacher, an actor, an engineer whatever
There is benefit to having a blog. It could act as your business card and display knowledge that you have. It could allow you to record your skills and accomplishments. It lets your grow and build your audience and let them know a bit more about you.
“I have no money to start a blog”
A blog can be started with little to no money. There are many websites and services that can get your started with a blog for no cost. Listed below I’ll take you through a few of the most popular options to get you started!
Blogging for free with Medium
Medium can be a way to start writing content for free and becoming a publisher on there, if people subscribe to Medium because of your blog posts then you can earn money from Medium.
Once you’ve wrote a blog post once, it could earn you money forever.
If you later decide that you want to create your own blog then you can reference your own website in Medium and direct the viewers to your own site to read about the content there. This could be a free method to get started into blogging. The only downside with Medium is there are over 30,000 writers, so your content better be good!
The free version of WordPress
While WordPress is completely free if you have your own hosting and domain, this is wordpress.org. There is also wordpress.com, this is WordPress’ own hosting, domain and CMS service.
Basically, this allows you to just use WordPress without having to have:
- An account with a domain registration company
- An account with a hosting company
- An account with a CMS(Content Management System) company (WordPress etc.)
However, one free service that WordPress offer is that you can get a free subdomain for your blog.
This would mean that your URL for your blog would be yourblog.wordpress.com rather than yourblog.com.
Getting a good deal with a hosting company
Most hosting sites will offer package deals where if you purchase their hosting for a year, you’ll get your domain for free that year. If you look around you can get deals as low as £1/$1.50 for an entire year of hosting, and a free domain for a year.
I know because I did this.
This lets you have a blog for an entire year, and if it isn’t working for you, then you can cancel and not have to pay a penny more! Plus, if you stick at the blog for the entire year, with some effort you would have definitely made that money back and lots more!
So really, creating a blog is risk free. The potential ROI (Return On Investment) is insane when a £1/$1.50 investment could bring in an income of thousands per month, if monetized properly.
A few more benefits to blogging
A blog can allow you to hone your writing skills. If you need to write for your job, for your education or if you ever want to publish papers or a book. Writing everyday, through blogging, can be a great way towards moving to those golden 10,000 hours (as mentioned by Malcom Gladwell on how long it takes to achieve mastery. Read more about this here )
Conclusion
So what are you waiting for? You can start today towards creating a website that will help you develop skills, refine your thoughts and arguments, make you money and allow you to collaborate and network with others.
Leave a comment below if you’d like to read more about my journey creating a blog!
