How to create a decent blog
Posted on November 14th, 2008 by Rishabh Sood under Blogging, Earn Online, SEO Tricks/TipsHello 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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November 15th, 2008 at 5:45 am
thanks for this basic and important information..
I am always getting good info here…
November 16th, 2008 at 7:12 am
I am trying to learn as much as I can about SEO. I see that your blog will make another great resource.
November 16th, 2008 at 7:57 am
very insightful
thanks for a great article
November 16th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Excellent beginner tips.
A little hard to believe that subscribe-remind is charging for a “premium” version with all the plugins available.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Sometimes it is hard to find a gfood domain name since so many are take. Try Fresh drop where you can pick up domain names that are expiring and even some with some good links to help with PR.
November 17th, 2008 at 1:37 am
Particiapting in the blog community is a great step that you need to use in order to have a good blog.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Great post. All of these are very important things you should do for a successful blog. But perhaps the most important is the consistency.
Cheers!
M.D. aka Kia Soul
November 18th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Exceptional Tips !
Thats right its not so easy to find a good domian name as you stated someone has already used it.
November 18th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
When thinking up a domain name I often try merging 2 keywords, like nyc+london=nylon
November 18th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
You have covered A2Z of running website. thank you
November 18th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
These all really great tips – and thank you very much for the GoDaddy coupon code!
November 19th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Buy me a Beer is cool, btw add the gravatar plugin in ur website, ur comments dont have avatars already
November 19th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Are you going to setup plugin Buy Me A Beer?
On my blog i have plugin Donation bar – list of urls who donated me more… Is it the same?
Admin, please delete my first post and ckear this sentense. Thanx.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:32 am
thanks great tips, I’m still building a good blog
November 20th, 2008 at 6:33 am
nice info i am trying to built good blog and traffic
November 20th, 2008 at 6:34 am
its nice to read this article. thanks
November 20th, 2008 at 6:36 am
thanks its helpful tips
November 30th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Good pointers. Do people actually donate to those?
January 30th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Hostgator is a quality host.
Their uptime is great (did not experience any major downtime before). Support is effective (Problems resolved in a few email)
Certainly will recommend to anyone who is looking for web hosting.
June 9th, 2009 at 4:42 am
I need this information. I will keep it in order to use it whenever I have a chance to do it by myself.
July 5th, 2009 at 3:53 am
I have a Blogger blog but I’m going to start a WordPress blog on health topics soon. Your suggestions will come in handy at that time specially the All-in-one-SEO pack for WordPress.
December 10th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Good informative article for creating decent blog. Article will help me and other become more great resource for make blog.
December 11th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Good information on this post. Taking good points for blog create and doing blog promotion.
February 15th, 2010 at 6:14 am
Its really useful to those who wants to create blog. Keep on giving such useful tips.