SwipeTown Academy

It continues from How To Create A Blog. You can start a blog simply because you feel like it for personal satisfaction. Even if you you don’t care about the number of readers or you can do it with a specific goal. How To Create A Blog (Part II)

How To Create A Blog (Part II)

1. Think carefully about which niche(s) you want to position yourself.

You can start a blog simply because you feel like it for personal satisfaction. Even if you you don’t care about the number of readers or you can do it with a specific goal.

There are many possible objectives. Build a community of readers who are interested in your contents. Boost your professional career. Achieve extra income by monetizing it directly or indirectly. Or even to build a platform that one day will be the main axis of your professional activity.

The first thing you need to do is to clarify your ideas about the theme (or candidate themes) of your blog and analyze the feasibility of your idea. The most basic part of this analysis is to answer these questions:

Is there really an audience interested in the subject matter? Do people search for this? How large is your potential audience? How crowded is the niche? Are you able to differentiate yourself from other bloggers? The profile of that audience? What are their needs? What hurts them the most? How can you alleviate this pain? What is your valuable contribution?

Now you’re wondering how to answer these questions. Well, luckily, there are tools (and free tools) that will help you do it. Here you will find those tools that will help you answer these questions.

One more tip. This information is not an exact science. It is simply information that will help you point in the right direction. It is a very good orientation. However, take it as such and not as a sole and absolute criterion for your decisions.

How To Create A Blog (Part II)

2. Choose a name for the blog and your domain

Choosing your blog name, along with your domain name is another key decision. Getting it right or not will have a profound impact on your blog.

It’s a process that has a lot of “art” and I’ll summarize the most important keys for you.

First of all, keep in mind the following guidelines:

• Although it’s obvious, remember that your blog name and domain name are closely related. If they can’t be identical, at least try to keep the differences as small as possible.
• If you are serious, having your own domain is not optional. The cost is ridiculous (less than $10/year in sites such as Namecheap). On the other hand, it brings very important benefits. It is easier to remember. You will transmit a much more professional image. And, you will be able to have personalized email addresses.
• In the case of opting for a blog with its own hosting, some providers such as our main recommendation, SiteGround, already include a free domain in the price .
• Do not rush to choose these names. Being an important decision as it is, it is advisable to meditate well because once you put everything in motion under that name and some time has passed, it is not easy to change your mind.

One problem you will have is the difficulty of making that decision. Especially if you already have a clear concept. You will feel slowed down and perhaps even a little frustrated.

It doesn’t matter to wait a little.

So, when you start your blog and start actively promoting it, you will not only have a sad post to offer to the people who visit you, but several, something that will be very convenient because such an empty blog does not convey a good image.

The first visits will cost you a lot of effort and, therefore, it is convenient to make a good impression and “amortize” them as best as possible (for example by getting a subscriber to your mailing list).

Strategies for choosing your name

To find that perfect name, there are basically three different approaches:

Personal Name

An example could be mikesmith.com. This approach fits, above all, in blogs where the main objective is to strengthen the author’s personal brand around a professional activity. It is an approach that goes very well with activities where the person is the main protagonist such as consulting services or lecturer activities.

Brand name

This is the case of swipetown.com. Here we have bet more on the brand. first because we were looking for more “branding” of the site, create a brand and not link the site so much to a specific person and, second, because being a group who started this blog, makes incoherent the direct link to a single personal brand.

It does not mean that the blog does not serve to develop the personal brand of any of us, but in that case it does not fit that the name of the site is linked only to one of us.

Niche name:

This is a very “SEO” approach that tries to take advantage of the weight of keywords in a domain. It can be perfectly compatible with a brand. In this case, there would also be a fairly natural brand name. But the normal niche sites are more aggressive domain names, very SEO-oriented and not very suitable as brand names.

As for the type of domain, it is still advisable to get a .com domain, because of its image and because it seems that it is still advantageous at SEO level, although not as much as in the past.

In any case, you should know that SEO issues that go beyond the basic principles (such as the weight of keywords in a domain) are very elusive because these issues are constantly changing as Google updates its algorithm.

If a name is not available in its .com version, it is not recommended to buy it for another domain extension (.net, .org, etc.). And if your website is very focused on a specific geographical area, you can consider using the domain of the corresponding country (.es for Spain, .de for Germany, etc.).

If it is not easy to find a name, the fact that many domain names have already been registered complicates things even more if possible. But luckily, there are tools like DomainsBot to try very fast with many combinations which will help you a lot to locate those names that are still available and serve you.

With the previous guidelines you already have a summary of the keys to choose well your name and domain. I hoe you enjoyed How To Create A Blog (Part II), now:

Continue reading at: How To Create A Blog (Part III)