Hello guys,
Its been a while I havent updated the blog, Had couple of hours on my hand today, so today I am gonna talk about How to create a decent blog. I will try to cover as much as possible. Lets start with the Domain Name
Domain Name
A blog without a good domain is in vain, You should always try to go for keyword rich domains. For example if you blog is about Blogging, Include blogging word in your domain name also. If you are starting off with blogging, You can go on with subdomains from wordpress.com or blogspot.com but it does look odd to have long subdomains. Its always better to buy a Good Domain name.
I register all my domains from Namecheap, GoDaddy is also good but I prefer Namecheap much more. You can get a domain on Namecheap for $8.44 by using coupon codes (FIRSTSNOW)
Web Hosting
After domain its time to get Web Hosting, Hostgator is one of the best web host around these days, I have my own servers and I run all my websites on my owner servers, so if you are in interested in Free WebHosting you are most welcome to contact me anytime, I would be more than glad to host your website. You may even try hostgator, Its just $0.01 for first month if you use coupon code: wordpress.
Setting up blog
Well, there are tons of blog scripts available but wordpress is one of the best! and I would recommend you also to go with WordPress! You can download wordpress from wordpress.org or If you are hosted with Hostgator or me, You can login got your cPanel then click on Fantastico and with a click of mouse you can install wordpress.
Customizing your blog
After you are done setting up your blog, now its time to install some good themes and plugins. If you can afford to get a unique theme it would be great but if you cant then you can go for free themes, There are whole lot of websites which provide free themes for wordpress. One of best I know is wpthemedesigner.com.
After you are done with theme, its now turn for the plugins.. I will list here the ones I am using:
All in One SEO Pack – Its a great plugin which helps you setup your meta tags, meta description, keywords and a lot more things.
Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin you will find on almost every blog, It helps you to generate a sitemap for your blog and then you can submit it to Google, Yahoo and other search engines.
Top Commentators Widget – This plugin helps you to get more visitors as well as comments on your blog, It gives sitewide backlink to top commentator of your blog.
Subscribe Remind – This plugin displayes a short line on each post of yours “Subscribe to my RSS feed” it can help you increasing your RSS subscribers.
Buy Me A Beer – You can ask people to donate on your blog if they find information on your blog every good using plugin.
After plugins its turn to setup your Permalinks,
To setup your Permalinks follow these steps
1. Login to your WordPress account.
2. Navigate to the dashboard.
3. Options > Permalinks.
4. Check the “Custom” structure
5. Insert – /%postname%/
Monetization
Google Adsense, Adbrite and TextLinkads are best options if you want to earn from your blog, Place your ads nicely, blend them into your blog and you can start earning al lot depending on your niche. If you update your blog daily with nice information you will get good amount of traffic and if you get good amount of traafic you can get nice earnings from your blog too.
Promoting Your Blog
You can find forums having having relevant niche of your blog and put a link to your blog in signature(If the forum rules allows it) Be active on the forum and post there regularly.
Using social bookmarking websites may also help you getting lots of traffic, like digg and stumbleupon. Digg each post you make on your blog and you can get good amount of traffic with it 
I am running out of time, for more tips related to promoting you blog and how to get more traffic you can read my blog
Thats all I have on How to create a decent blog right now, will be back with more stuff soon 
Rishabh Sood
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