Are You Just Blogging or Building a Business?

There are lots of people who create blogs just to blog or write their thoughts and publish them online. But there are others who blog with the intent of doing business. I read an article yesterday entitled How to Really Profit from your Blog and it was an eye-opener.

The author, Pat Flynn said as he was talking to a friend, "Nothing is wrong with starting a blog, but what’s the business? How will you make money?" So, if you have a blog and would like to move it up further by turning your blog into a business, you can find really good suggestions from his article.

Many people who like to create a website to give their small business an online presence, actually do it by using a blogging platform such as Blogger or WordPress (self-hosted). It is really easy and anyone without much technical skills can learn and do it quickly.

Creating a site usually just takes as little as 3 simple steps:
1. Buy a domain name. This is the name and address you want your website to have online. If possible, use the name of your business or your intended business niche as your domain name. You can go to GoDaddy, for example, and find out if the name is available and buy it.

2. Get a webhost. This is what you will need to publish your website online 24/7.

• You can use free blogging platforms such as Blogger.com. This is what I do with this blog; I bought a domain name and used it with Blogger. 
• You cannot use the free Wordpress platform because you can't do much business such as advertising with it. But you can get a paid webhost such as Hostgator where you can use the Wordpress platform. This is what I did with the domain name, thegoodhealth.info, I won in an online contest last year. 

3. Connect your domain name to your webhost. This is an important step to be able to access your website online.

• If you're using the free Blogger platform, you can find instructions on how to connect your domain name to the Blogger platform here.  
• If you bought your own webhost account, they will email you details of your account's nameservers. Get this info and change the nameservers info in your domain name account. Wait for some time then you can have your website live online. 

4. Install Wordpress and Configure. If you bought your own webhost, you still have to install Wordpress and configure it before you can start blogging or posting content. It's not that difficult especially with the many tutorials on how to create a website using Wordpress around.

So, are you ready to make a simple website for your business? Why not start by blogging?