Once you have your blog up and running and while you are promoting your blog you may want to take a look at utilizing some or all of the MYSQL databases that are provided by your web host. At GoodNewsDomains (where I get my blog hosted) I got 25 MYSQL databases included when I signed up. It takes 1 MYSQL for a blog. What that means is that there are 24 more possibilities for future blogs at no additional cost. You are already paying for them. So in continuing to answer the How to Create a Blog question lets utilize another MYSQL and start another blog.

Starting a Blog for Free

For this blog I did a little keyword research. If you want some information on how to do your own keyword research read my article called Keywords, Keywords, Keywords. I am going to use the keywords “What is Blogging” for this blog. It gets searched for quite a bit and while there is some pretty good competition for the keywords I feel like I can get this blog up and over time get some traffic to it. This site has some Google Adsense potential because the keyword “What is Blogging” could bring some people who are new to blogging to the site. They are a lot more likely to actually click on the ads when they see something that interests them. People who are already blogging don’t usually click on the ads. Let’s get this party started. Log in to your hosting account and on the control panel click on Open

At the Hosting page press Settings

Press Domain Management

You are not adding a domain - you will be adding a sub domain. Press the Add button next to where you see Sub Domain

In the space that has now shown up under Sub Domain type in the name of the site you want to start. I will type in “What is Blogging”

Leave the path alone and press Save. You will see that the host is processing the information and then you will get a screen saying Pending Setup

It can take a few minutes or more for the set up to be completed. Go ahead and log out of the hosting control manager for now. Once the sub domain is set up I will install WordPress and I will then have a site located at http://whatisblogging.mynewbieblog.com. While that URL is not one that people can easily remember or type in the idea is that I want them to find it by keyword searching and therefore the URL is not that important. If it become a problem later on I will by a domain name that matches the site and I will point it at that site. A domain name if I really need one will cost 10 dollars a year. I don’t think I will need one because I will try and drive traffic to the site through keywords. This site has the potential to be up and running with no additional cost to me. All the cost is absorbed in my main site - My Newbie Blog.

Let’s Install WordPress

You have probably installed WordPress on your main site already but let’s walk through the process with our new sub-domain. Go back to your hosting account manager. At the Settings-Database page you should see that your new sub domain is now set-up and that the path has also been established.

You want to look at the top of the page for the Value Applications button

Press Value applications. If WordPress isn’t showing on the front page press show all application and scroll down until you find WordPress.

Press on the WordPress logo

Press Install Now. The manager will take a few seconds to process. It will then ask you which domain you want to use. You may only have one but if you have more pick the one that is the main one for your site. In my case I will choose MyNewbieBlog.com even though I will actually be installing WordPress into a sub domain

You can see that at this moment I still have 24 MYSQL available. After this installation I will have 23. Choose your domain and press Continue

Enter in your new directory name. I entered WhatIsBlogging and then enter in and verify a password (write it down). Press Next. At this screen you need to make sure you install WordPress into the sub domain and not the root directory. Select your recently created sub domain I chose whatisblogging

Press Next

Enter in your admin name, password, email address and give your blog a title. Make sure you write down whatever admin name and password you use. As far as your Blog Title you can always change that later.

Press Finish.

It will now take up to an hour for WordPress to be installed. You will be notified by email when it is finished. Sometimes it only takes a couple of minutes. Congratulations, you now have a fully functional blog site and it won’t cost you a thing. Here is what What is Blogging looks like as I finish the article.

When you finish reading the article go to the What is Blogging? blog and check out what the blog looks like now.

Another important answer to the “How to Create a Blog” question is writing and marketing articles. When you market your articles properly you can get some good links to your blog. There are many directories where you can submit your articles. Here are a few examples:

Article City (articlecity.com)
Article Dashboard (articledashboard.com)
Article Directory (article-directory.net)
Ezine Articles (ezinearticles.com)
Go Articles (goarticles.com)
Idea Marketers (ideamarketers.com)
Internet Home Business Articles (internethomebusinessarticles.com)
Search Warp (searchwarp.com)

These sites are a good way to get your articles out into the world. The drawback is that it takes a lot of time to go through the process of submitting your articles. A faster way to accomplish the same thing is to use Article Marketer. This service will submit your articles for you. They offer a free service which has a partial distribution or you can pay a fee to take advantage of their full service. I pay for the full service because I feel like I can spend my time more wisely doing other things with the blog than hand submitting my articles to numerous directories.

Using Article Marketers

Go to the Article Marketers website.

Take some time to read about the services the site offers and then go ahead and press Open Your Account. This option works if you are signing up for either the free service or one of the paid services.

You will need to enter some basic information.

You then need to decide which of the services you want to use.

Once you have entered in all your information hit Next and you have an Article Marketers account.

Login to the site with the User Name and Password you just set up. Now you can enter a article for submission to the directories. One word of advice; if you have already posted the article on your own site you should rewrite it before you submit it to the directories. Keep the main ideas but change the title and the headers, etc.

You are going to type in the title of your article and then paste in the text of the article. The author boxes are where you get to add the text top get your link back. There are two author boxes, one that is a text box where you can enter the URL of your blog. The other box allows you to enter in your blog site URL and the URL of your post into the box.

The HTML that I enter looks like this:

Stephen Lawes teaches people how to <a href=”http://mynewbieblog.com”>create a blog</a>. He shows them <ahref=”http://mynewbieblog.com/create-a-blog-you-can-be-proud-of/”>how to create a blog</a>, and how to begin to make money from it.

You then need to choose what categories to submit your articles.

Enter in any special requests you have about when to submit the article and then click on the agreements and type in the spam code and hit Next.

The Review Process

Once your article is submitted it first gets reviewed by a computer (since Article Marketers wants to send you article to as many possible directories there are some pretty specific guidelines they follow). If there are any issues that need to be resolved it will point them out to you. Fix any problems and save your update.

The article is then reviewed by actual people. If they find problems you will have to fix them as well. Don’t get discouraged if you have to make numerous changes, it is making your article acceptable to the largest number of directories. The more sites that publish your article the more good back links you receive. Keep on writing and learning how to create a blog!!!

I will never forget the moment. Having struggled through getting a domain name and web hosting, wrestling to get WordPress installed and finally, there it was….my first blog! I sat staring at the strangely blue WordPress Kubric theme with the tagline saying “Just another WordPress weblog” and that haunting post blaring “Hello Word”! This for me was the quintessential newbie (noob) moment. The moment of extreme newbieness. What now????? How do I start a blog? How do I create a blog? Help!

I scanned the page. “Welcome to WordPress”. That was nice. “This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!” What? Start blogging? How do I edit it? How do I delete it? Start blogging where? I continued to scan the page. What in the world is Meta? A blogroll? What have I gotten myself into? It was all questions and no answers and that for me defines what it feels like to be a newbie (noob). Maybe you have been blogging for so long that you can’t relate, but I bet a lot of you can. I still get those newbie moments sometimes. Those unexplainable moments when something that has always worked before suddenly doesn’t work.

Blogging Advice for Newbies

What did I do? I just started to plug away at it one step at a time. As I did I kept notes and took screen shots and turned the journey into My Newbie Blog (noob). I wrote an article called Create a Blog You Can be Proud Of (The Who, What, Why, Where, When and How of Starting a Blog) which details step by step the process of getting to that first newbie moment I described in the beginning of the story. Then I wrote articles about permalinks and categories, installing WordPress Themes, installing WordPress Plugins, writing in WordPress, Adsense, Keyword Searches, Monetizing, Site Stats, and more. These articles can function as a sort of WordPress tutorial as you attempt to answer that newbie question “How to Create a Blog“.