Yesterday I celebrated my 6 months of running Studenomics, so today it would only be appropriate if I showed you guys how I started this blog and how you could start your own personal finance blog. I often receive posts/emails that are very interesting and thought provoking from readers that surprisingly don’t run their own personal finance blog. In 3 easy steps I will show you guys how to start your own personal finance blog and hopefully some of you will try it out.
Step 1: Decide on a blog name
There are pretty much two ways you could go when deciding on your blog name. You could decide on a name that would best represent your brand/a brand name. This is exactly what I did, I thought of a name for a LONG time until I came up with a blog name that I felt would catch on. A second option is to make your blog name full of keywords. For example, I could have made the name of this blog “Student Personal Finance” or “College Personal Finance” but honestly I do not care because I find those names to be completely boring. I chose to go with a blog name that would be catchy and would summarize the theme of my blog without any keywords.
There really is no magic answer when it comes to thinking of a blog name. The goal is to think of blog name that would attract your target audience and something that you would be proud of. I would not be proud of my blog name if it was “StudentPersonalFinanceInformation.com” but some people don’t care and they only focus on the search engine benefits.
Step 2: Decide where/how you will host your blog
You could get a free blog through Blogger.com or many other free blog hosting services. The only problem is that it kills your credibility when you have a sub domain and most of the free services don’t allow you to put ads on your site. Hence you will never earn a penny off your site nor will it be taken seriously. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule but I personally think it is beneficial to get your own domain. Since I only focus on providing high quality advice that does not involve saving every penny I urge all of you to get your own domain when you start a blog.
There are many low cost options for registering your domain, such as GoDaddy or BlueHost or DreamHost. Please keep in mind that registering a domain and hosting a domain are not the same thing. I registered and hosted my domain through BlueHost but some will not have positive things to say about the company. I honestly have had no issues with them in the last 6 months so I have no problem recommending them to all of you.
Registering a domain is really cheap and usually about $10 a year. Hosting on the other hand can be a bit more expensive. when I signed up with BlueHost I agreed to pay about $7 a month and it came with a free domain registration. Some may say $7 a month is a big deal but honestly after a while you will easily start earning more than $7 a month. If you don’t plan on monetizing your site/placing any ads on it then it’s still worth it because for only $7 you have your very own domain name, your very own personal finance blog, and you can share your information with the whole online community.
Before you setup WordPress for your domain there is one final step
cPanel>Domain Manager this will in turn show you your domain that you have just registered. Click on the unassaigned domain name and…
Assign Domain>Click on “Add On”>Then choose a directory for your blog
What this does is it setups your domain so you could manage it through BlueHost and so you can create your directory where you can upload all of your plugins and files. This also allows you to use some of the services provided by BlueHost, such as creating your own email address on your domain and much more.
Step 3: Setup WordPress for your domain to turn into a blog
This is where a lot of people (including myself) get frustrated and fed up with the whole process.
cPanel>Scroll to Software/Services>Click on Fantastico De Luxe>Click on New Installation>Select your new domain under “Install on Domain”>Select a user name and password>click “Instal WordPress”
I know I summarized a whole process into a couple of words but believe me it is just that simple. If you click all of the correct buttons in that exact order you will setup WordPress, thus setting up your domain to be a blog!
Any time you want to edit your blog you go to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin and type in your user name/password. If you are still interested in this whole personal finance blog thing then let the writing begin!
You don’t necessarily have to use the above information to start a personal finance blog but chances are you will want to if you read Studenomics and enjoy regularly sharing your thoughts on personal finance.
Please note that 100% credit for this article must be given to Dough Roller. It is his article on how to start a blog that helped me all the way through this process that was very new to me. Please feel free to contact me if you ever have any questions.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Congrats on the 6 month anniversary!
HostGator has been good to me.
Don’t skimp on hosting if you want success.
People don’t wait for 10-20 second load times (GoDaddy was killing me).
With regards to hosting your blog, I personally lose respect for a blogger when they use google to host their blog, and when they have a subdomain.
I mean if you want things done right, then do it right the first time.
Also, another advantage of growing your blog with self hosted blogs is commenting and being able to notify commentators of replies. Google doesn’t have that and it gets annoying trying to keep a relationship with your readers.
I really liked your post.
Nice post. I was wondering do you use any online personal finance tools like Mint.com? I might have missed it if it was in an earlier post.