How to Start a Blog with Blogger in 2020

Blogging is in trend these days and every second person is doing it in one way or other.  Like trough a web-based blog or any social media platform. There are many ways to become a blogger. You can be a food blogger, a fashion blogger, a writer etc. If you are new to Blogging, I would recommend you to start for free with zero investment. It is not for the guarantee that if you are starting a blog you will stay stick to it for long.

For some people blogging is just a way to express their thoughts, it’s like their own space. They don’t care about making money out of it. For some, it’s like a new experience and just want to explore a new skill. The majority is of those who want to earn from blogging and make it a way of their livelihood.

Well, you are one belonging to any of these categories I would repeat start from zero investment. Many platforms allow you to use their domain and run your blog for free. Blogger also known as BlogSpot is one of those free platforms which allows you to create a free blog and earn through it.  Although there are many restrictions too. But for a startup, it doesn’t matter a lot.

If you already know what is a blog and reasons you should start blogging then you can skip the following section and jump directly to the steps.

What is a blog?

For a minute just forget all the typical definitions you read in google search or on any other website. The first term to know is a blog post- it is a piece of writing present online that represents one’s thoughts. Thoughts can be an opinion or some information about that particular person or anything. The webpage organizing all these blog posts is called a Blog.

You can also call a blog post as an article. So, an article normally contains text, pictures, videos and animated GIFs etc.  An ideal blog post is not too long that it makes the reader bore or not too short that it lacks information (My blog posts are usually quite long :p ).

Last but not least, the person who write blog posts, managers the blog is called a blogger. A blogger can be a single person or a small group of peoples.

Why you should start blogging?

There are hundreds of answers to WHY but here I want to share is why you should create a blog and start blogging from my personal experience.

1. Blogging is the way through which you can share your thoughts, your opinions, your suggestions like it’s all under YOUR control. You can write what you want, what you think. Share your feelings in a fantastic new way.
2. Blogging is a way to share information with others. Become a teacher is not the only way if you want to share what you know or spread awareness, you can become a blogger too 😉.
3. The more you write, the more you do research and you stay up to date.
4. Blogging is also a way to share your own stories. This makes you explore yourself and teachers you how to express. (This part is my favourite)
5. You can start blogging with less or zero investment.
6. Oh, most importantly, you can make money through it.

These are the reasons I derived from my experience. You can also share if you have something in your minds.

Okay, let’s move to the steps.

NOTE: Sorry for blur images, it is due to size problem but you will understand the process.

Create Account

Creating a blog with Blogger just takes 5 minutes but the journey to that 5 minutes takes time.

The first step is to open your browser and search for Blogger

Blogger

Click on the 1^st link appear on your screen. You will be directed to the Blogger’s website and a new window will appear.

Blogger is a platform by Google so you can create your blog using your Gmail account. Click create your blog or sign-in options to move further.

Login using your Gmail Account. And you are done. Now the system will direct you to a new screen where you will create your blog.

     1. Create a Blog

1. Here you will write your blog title. The title is basically the name of your blog. Your identity! so it should be unique.
2. The address bar shows the URL of your blog. URL is the link to access your blog or website.
3. Theme decides how your blog will look like.
4. Finally hit the Create Blog button.

These all steps seem simple but this is one of the most important steps. Your blog name and URL are something important. Yeah, you can change them later but isn’t it better to complete your work today instead of leaving it for tomorrow.

To make this process easy you should first think about your niche. Niche is something like the building block of your blog. It is the field you are writing in. All blog articles revolve around your niche. For example, your niche is Technology so all your blog articles will be related to technology. This is also called a single niche blog. Same as You can have a multi-niche blog to where you can work on multiple topics at a time like technology, lifestyle, news etc.

I would also recommend you to go through How to Choose your Blog Niche to get an idea of how professionals work. But if you have one you can continue to the next step.

      

  2. Understanding the interface

Blogger Dashboard

This is the area you will see every day from now and work on. It works as an admin panel for your blog. On the right side, there is a menu from which you can control your blog functionality. And on the right side is your dashboard from post option where your all post will display.

With this view blog button, you can view your blog frontend. From this side menu choose Settings option > Language and formatting and select the English Language. This is the best option as you are targeting the whole world.

Very next is Search preferences option. For now, all you need to do is write an attractive meta description for your blog, which explains the purpose of your blog. It should be less than 150 characters.

Everything else is perfect by default.

  3. Creating a post

Now it’s time to create your 1^st post. Again, from the right menu choose Post option or from the post area select new post button.

So, on this MSWord like interface, you will write every article.

1. This is the post title bar; you will write the title of your article. The title should not be too small nor too long. Try to keep it of 5 to 7 words. The title should also contain your main keywords.
2. This is a formatting bar to customize your text.
3. This Publish button is used when you complete your article and want to publish it on your blog. Never ever publish your single article again and again. Publishing, again and again, means you are starting from zero again.
4. Save button is used to save your progress as a draft. You can save your article 100 times, ever after editing a single line. It will not affect anything.
5. Preview Button will allow you to view the appearance of your article on your blog.

Next is a Formatting bar. It's not exactly like MS Word. There are basic options available here.

• Undo your changes.
• Redo your changes.
• Change the Font.
• Change the font size.
• Change text style into a heading, subheading, minor heading or normal

• Text style to bold.
• Text style to Italic.
• Text style to underline.
• Text to strikethrough.
• Change text color.
• Highlight the text.
• Add/ remove the link in the text.
• Insert photo.
• Insert Video.
• Add emoji or special character.
• Add jump break.
• Set text alignment.
• Add a numbered list.
• Add bullets.
• Quote your text.
• Remove formatting.

Now come to the Post settings.

• Labels are tags used to define the category of your post. User can search your post using those labels.
• Schedule your post. There are two options

1.       Automatic- post at the same time.

2.       Set date and time- Used to schedule post. The time and date can be any in future but can’t more than the age of blog in past.

• Permalink is the URL of your post. There are also two options.

1.    Automatic permalink- it is system generated by using your post title.

2.  Custom permalink- it is designed by the user

• Location is used if you want to give location is your blog or writing for or about a specific location.
• A search description is some content from your article which displays on a google search under your article title. Just like a meta description for the blog.
• In the options tab, you gonna see three more options. 

1.       To allow or don’t allow user comments is your personal choice.

2.       Choose the compose mode of your blog.

3.       Choose how you want a line break, with HTML code <br> or by pressing Enter key.

   4.  Customize your Blog

Now post a few articles and customize your theme. You can also download any free Blogger theme from Google and insert it into your blog. Just go to Themes in the left menu use Backup/ Restore option

Click Choose file button. One thing here, when you download a free theme, extract it into a folder and here you will upload its .XML (dot XML) extension file. Then click Upload.

To add widgets, use the Layout option is your left menu. All the sections are divided. You can set widgets according to your need. Blogger provides many free widgets; you can use them or download your own from google and insert them in your blog.

Here you are done with setting your blog. Explore more settings and options yourself and make it look different and unique. Hope you get a clear understanding to take a start and wish you luck for future J

Oh last but not least don’t forget to make pages for your blog. Check out the Pages option in the left menu.

1. About us page
2. Contact us page.
3. Terms and conditions.
4. Privacy Policy.

These four are basic pages and each blog should have.