There is nothing to starting your own blog. Anyone, even a seven year old, can start a blog. As long as you can read and write a certain language, not neccasary English, you can have a blog because blogging is universal. Even your dog can start a blog if it can read and write.
How Many Blogs Are There In This World In 2012
Though no one has the exact figures, as blogs are created as fast as they are abandoned, NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, showed sme interesting figures.
“by the end of 2011, NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, tracked over 181 million blogs around the world, up from 36 million only five years earlier in 2006.
Overall, 6.7 million people publish blogs on blogging websites, and another 12 million write blogs using their social networks.”
It is also interesting to know who they are and how they treat their blogs.
- Women make up the majority of bloggers, and half of bloggers are aged 18-34
- Bloggers are well-educated: 7 out of 10 bloggers have gone to college, a majority of whom are graduates
- About 1 in 3 bloggers are Moms, and 52 percent of bloggers are parents with kids under 18 years-old in their household
- Bloggers are active across social media: they’re twice as likely to post/comment on consumer-generated video sites like YouTube, and nearly three times more likely to post in Message Boards/Forums within the last month
What Is The Most Popular Blogging Platform
In the Blogosphere, (A abstract term coined to decribe the world that Bloggers play and live in), the 2 main platforms for anyone who wants to join in the fun are Blogger And WordPress. Most bloggers starts their lives in the Blogosphere as a Blogspot Blogger or a WordPress blogger.
There are of course many other smaller platfoms, but by far, these 2 are the big daddies.
Blogger or Blogspot so as not to confuse you, is owned by Google, the biggest Search Engine in the World. It is preferred by many beginners as it is a free platform and very user friendly. However, as it is a Google product, there are certain limitations and of course, users are at the mercy of Google.
Horror stories have been repeatedly told of Blogger Blogs been unceremonously suspended or taken down by Google for no apparent reason. When that happens, there isn’t really much you can do except to beg for mercy to have your blog re-instated. Sometimes you succeed and sometimes, your laments will go unoticed. It will be especially painful for those who has spend much time and effort in their blogs only to see it wipe away like a pile of dust from the Blogosphere.
The other choice is WordPress.
How Many WordPress Blogs Are There In The Internet
Accoding to unconfirmed figures, the world now has 71.2 (71,291,570) million WordPress Sites and in WordPress.com alone, over 357 million people view more than 2.5 billion pages each month. WordPress.com users produce about 500,000 new posts and 400,000 new comments on an average day.
WordPress comes with 2 flavors. Both are free to use, but one is totally free in the sense that your blog will be hosted by WordPress.com and your blog will be the sub-domain of WordPress.com. Much like Blogger blogs which are sub-domain of Blogspot.com. You do not have to pay anything to have your blog go online.
In reality, you do not own the blog if you are blogging with Blogspot.com or WordPress.com. They are the legal owners and since it is such, there is no guarantee that they will not take it back. They can and sometimes they will. You cannot argue your case because legally, you do not own it.
The other flaovor lets you use the WordPress Script which you can download for free from Wordress.org, but you have to buy and pay for 2 things. One is the Domain Name for your blog and the other is the server to host your domain name or your blog. In return for the money you spend, you get the freedom of really owning your blog. No one can suspend you and no one can take away the blog from you.
This is my preferred platform and this is what this blog will be all about.
Why Should You Start Your Own WordPress Blog
Many have said that with the advance of Web 2.0, blogging is dead. Facebook is where all the action is. Well, not so. Blogging is not dead. It has simply evolved into something more sophisticated. In a recent interview, renowned Serial entrepreneur and publisher, Jason Calacanis said
“The concept of journalism is going away,” “It is not enough to be a writer. You need to be a writer and an expert.”
The blog itself is not going away. People will continue to have a voice and low barrier to put that voice on the Web. Yet, that doesn’t mean that anybody will be paying attention.”
“People and their blogs will continue,” Calacanis said. “But, I think that experts will inherit the space.”
If that sounds cryptic to you, it means if you start a blog now and wants to go far with your blog, wants to be a super successful blogger, you better be an expert in what you are blogging about.
Though true, that does not apply to you and certainly that does not apply to me.
What I am going to show you here is how to start a blog, a WordPress Blog, and have some fun doing it. We are not nuclear scientists and we do not need to be one to start a blog. We want to blog about about our mother and our dogs and maybe along the way, we might even be able to make something from our very own WordPress Blog.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. Whether you can complete the journey depends on your perseverance, stamina and your patience, but when you take that first step, you will not be a lone traveller. You do the walking. I’ll be your walking stick.
Let your journey begin here –