Step 1 to Blogging

What is a Blog?
"A blog (a contraction of the term "weblog")[1] is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog." Definition from Wikipedia

Why should you blog?

• To Replace your income;
• To Add to your income; or
• Just for fun.

The first step to living the blog life is to set up a weblog (blog), there are many choices when it comes to free blogs for you to get you started in the world of blogging. Such as blogger.com, wordpress.com and tumblr.com. I would recommend that you have a look at each of the blogs to see which one you think would best suit your requirements.

I started with Blogger as it is run by Google which makes it easy to combine it with other Google products, using the same account, such as Google ad words and Google analytics which tracks your website statistics, such as hits per day and page views which it displays in an easy to view format.

Hosted vs Self-Hosted Blog Platform
There is no need for me to re-invent the wheel on this one as I found a great post on "The Personal Assistant" Blog. Click Here to view the post.

For those starting out in the world of blogging I would suggest you read everything that you can find about blogs and blogging this will give you a good understanding of what your getting yourself into and what you will need to know to get on your way. One of the most helpful books that I found is "Blogging for Dummies" (Bellow) it will give you a great rundown on what a blog is and how to set up the various types of blogs.