How to Start a Blog in 19 Minutes or Less
By Leo Babauta
Creating a blog is an amazing opportunity to promote your ideas, get noticed, and even earn a living. When I first started Zen Habits I had no idea that blogging would totally change my life within just two years.
But there’s a catch: starting a blog can be daunting.
Maybe you’ve been intimidated by all the technology or confusing options out there. Maybe you’ve tried but it didn’t work. Or maybe you haven’t figured out yet how to get your blog off the ground. Perhaps you’ve already got a blog – but it’s just limping along.
I know how it feels. I started out 36 months ago as newbie who had no clue about blogging and was totally unknown. Because I have a family of six kids to feed and needed the income from my day job, I started blogging part-time, in my precious few spare hours. Hardly anyone came to my blog at the beginning – which was frustrating. I think my mom and my wife were my only subscribers at first. But luckily I set up blog up in such a way that it has been able to grow to over 150,000 subscribers.
I want to show you five simple ways to create a blog in 19 minutes or less. If you follow my step-by-step guide, you can get a blog up and running with ease. The blog you create in that short time won’t have all the features of a full-blown blog that you can develop professionally. But each of the simple blogging systems I describe will help you to get a good feel for blogging. Think of it as building a blog with trainer wheels.
First we’ll look at 3 micro-blogging platforms: Twitter, Facebook, and Posterous. Then we’ll take a look at two blogging platforms in their own right: Blogger and Wordpress.com.
How to start blogging
More and more people want to start a blog. But creating a blog and learning how to blog can be daunting. I want to show you how you can get going in 19 minutes or less. Of course, if you’re serious about becoming a blogger and want create a blog with a future, you’ll need a more sophisticated, self-hosted blog. You can learn how to do that in our next A-List Blogging Bootcamp, Blogging 101: How to Create a Blog that Rocks. However, the options below are a great way to get going and explore a blogging .
1. Twitter.com
Twitter is now well known throughout the world and has become an essential tool for bloggers, marketers, business owners, and celebrities to get their brand known and talked about. Twitter is for short messages of only 140 characters.
Signing up is extremely easy. Go to www.twitter.com and click on ‘Sign Up Now’ you will see a page like this:
You will be asked to enter your details on this page. I suggest you use your real name and start branding yourself or your company, right from the start.
To start following likeminded people you can go to the search bar and type in a phrase about a hobby or interest. Once you’ve done this you will see a list of conversations on that topic, and you can then join in straight away or sit back a few hours and watch how it’s done.
Some keys terms used in Twitter:
- RT – Retweet – If you liked someone’s tweet and think it is worth sharing you would retweet using the RT button
- # – the hash tag is used to distinguish common search terms.
- List – This is when you can add people to a list you have created.
- Search – Search your favourite topics
- Direct Message – Message someone in private.
- Trending Topics – The most talked about subject over the last few days.
2. Facebook.com
Facebook is a little more tricky to get your head around but it’s one of the biggest social media sites in the world and is definitely worth exploring it and setting up an account.
Go to www.Facebook.com and you will be asked to set up your account on a page like this:
Fill in all the details as required.
Once you have signed up, facebook will check your email addresses and look for people you might already know and suggest you become friends with them. befriend everyone you want to and then click ’skip this step’
Next you can upload your photo for your profile picture and voila – you have set up your facebook account.
Once you’re done and have found all your friends and everyone else you know, even the toilet cleaner from your old school, you can then start posting some interesting stuff to your facebook profile.
‘The wall’ is the main posting area in Facebook and looks like this:
Once you become friends with someone you can send them links, photos, videos and virtual gifts via their wall and they can do the same with you.
The way you can use Facebook as a micro-blog is to post regular updates.
3. Posterous.com
Posterous is relative newcomer to the scene but has managed to climb high in the rankings due to its ease of use. Posterous lets you post anything to your Posterous blog using email, which means you can post from anywhere and post very quickly.
You can send an email to your posterous blog with images, videos, and audio in it and posterous will optimize it for your blog. If you post 100 images, it will make a gallery, if you post a video it will optimize it and put it on your blog.
You don’t even have to visit their website to sign up. All you do is send your post to: post@posterous.com and it will set up an account for you. Send it like an normal email and you will get an instant reply with a domain name like www.username.posterous.com. You’ll also get a link to your first post.
You then claim the site by clicking on the link in the email.
Once you claim your site you be able to change the domain name and set a password for it. You’ll then be able to manage all aspects of it using a dashboard like this:
The great thing about posterous is that you can link it to your other blogging accounts such as Facebook, twitter, Blogger, Wordpress, FriendFeed and YouTube. So in effect if you had a great video to share and you had Posterous set up to all your other accounts, you could send an email to Posterous with a video clip and it would post it to all the other accounts you have set up.
3. Blogger.com
This is another very easy blog to setup, and an extremely popular choice.
You’ll first need to create a Google account to set up a blog at Blogger.com . If you already have a Google account that ’s great. Just fill in the details and you can get started creating a blog. If not, you will see this page:
Click on ‘CREATE A BLOG’ and you will come to a screen like this:
Fill in your details in the form and then click on ‘Continue’. You will then come to a page like this:
Think of a blog title, which will let readers know what your blog is about and good for the search engines.
Now think of the blog url will be: it is already partly filled with username.blogspot.com so using the example above I would put signed1stbooks and click on ‘Check Availability’. I now know it is available and then click on ‘Continue.’
The next screen will show you a few design templates to use:
Click on the one you like the most just now, you can always change this later, and click ‘Continue’
And that’s it. You’ve created your first Blogger blog.
I initially based Zen Habits on Blogger.com. But it wasn’t the best software, especially when Zen Habits started to grow and I became more experienced. I soon wanted to customize the design, and put different things in the sidebar. But Blogger is kind of clunky. I didn’t know that at first.
I would start on WordPress, if I had to start over again. Because WordPress is so much better. It’s more customizable and there are lots of free themes with great designs out there.
There are actually two different Wordpress systems, a free hosted version at Wordpress.com, and a more professional version for self-hosted blogs at Wordpress.org.In both cases the software is free, as Wordpress is an Open Source project. Below you’ll find how easy it is to get going on Wordpress.com. A lot of what you learn when creating a free-hosted blog on Wordpress.com will be useful for when you’re ready to create a more professional, self-hosted blog with Wordpress.org.
5. Wordpress.com
This is possibly one of the easiest blogs to get started with and it only takes minutes to set up.
The first thing you will need to do is go to www.wordpress.com where you will be greeted with a page like this:
Click on the ‘Sign Up Now’ tab at the top right hand corner and you will see a page like this:
The most important part here is the username.
Fill in the rest of the form and choose a password.
Click the ‘Next’ button.
You will then come to a page like this:
This will give you the details of what your blog URL is going to be.
The blog title is the name you want to give to your blog and can be different from the username you chose.
Click on ’signup’ and that’s you. You will get an email asking you to confirm that you are the owner of the blog and to click on a confirmation link.
Conclusion
The blog platforms I mentioned above are great for getting you started. But they each have drawbacks and restrictions that will prevent you from creating a more professional blog that has a real future. If you want to create a blog that can give you an income and make you an authority, you’ll need a blog that has no restrictions and can grow big. You’ll need to learn how to create a self-hosted blog. It isn’t difficult, if you know how to do it.
In my next post, I’ll share with you 7 Crucial Tips on How to Build a Blog with a Future. These tips are crucial because how you set up your blog at the beginning can determine whether it fizzles out, or whether it grows huge.
What I offered you in this post and in the next ones may be all you need. However, if you want to learn step-by-step how to create a blog that can change your life, for our next A-List Blogging Bootcamp from 13-17, called Blogging 101: How to Create a Blog that Rocks. It’s aimed at new bloggers and those who would like to learn step-by-step how to create a successful blog. You can participate from anywhere as the Bootcamp is virtual.
If you look at the sidebar, you can check out the enthusiastic feedback we got from participants of our first A-List Blogging Bootcamp. We all had a blast – and got amazing results.
We’re working hard to get everything ready for you – it’s all happening behind the scenes. The doors are still closed and you can’t enrol yet, but we’re hoping to have everything ready for you by 8 February. We’ll let you know when the doors finally open.
The last Bootcamp was an amazing journey for all of us. We all had a blast, and our students got some amazing results.
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"Loved it! Inspiring, Motivating and Interactive. I would love to do another boot camp!"
"Since the Bootcamp I've seen an increase in subscriber count at Serene Journey of nearly 200%. That's 906 new subscribers in just 3 months! And Leo and I launched our new blog called Zen Family Habits which now has over 3000 subscribers.
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“In just 8 weeks after having been on the awesome bootcamp of Leo and Mary, I've been able to increase my subscriber rate by a whopping 1,700%."
"Not only was my blog transformed, but the community here has left me with a group of friends that will do everything they can to help each other get better."
"Joining the bootcamp without a blog proved to be a smart move. I was brimming with inspiration throughout the course and had no more excuses for not blogging so I got it up and running soon after. The content of the course more than exceeded my expectations. But the ongoing guidance from Leo and Mary and the camaraderie and support from the other bootcampers are the icing on the cake."
"The A-List Blogging Bootcamp has given me some great ideas for creating more powerful content and promoting it in a way that doesn't lose site of the most important aspect of blogging - the reader. Leo's grounded and conscientious perspective makes him an excellent mentor for anyone committed to creating a successful blog"
"As a fairly new blogger I would recommend the A List Bootcamp if you are serious about making your voice heard in a crowded marketplace. The Bootcamp provided a wealth of information about how to attract more readers to your blog. I implemented Leo's advice on placing powerful images on my blog posts and literally the next day I started receiving enthusiastic emails."