Outlining Your Blog: 8 Things to do Before Choosing a URL

Before Reading, check out and bookmark our Blogging 101 homepage so you can follow our series on creating a successful blog from the ground up. If you missed our first, read our intro to blogging series overview first.

When the time finally comes when you’ve decided the blogging world is calling your name, you’ll likely head straight to WordPress, make an account, and have your first blog post up in 7 minutes flat. But you’ll have already made a fatal error; you didn’t HAVE A PLAN.

I’d be willing to bet 97% of bloggers write their first post without ever thinking of where they want their blog in a months time, much less in a matter of years. How do I know this with such confidence? I was the exact same way when I started The Conservative Journal back in 2008. I created this blog on a whim after becoming very disgruntled by a political move that was made at that time (I’m keeping politics out of this series. These posts are for ALL potential bloggers, so they are going to be completely politics free) and had absolutely no idea what to do by the second day. By making yourself a clear with pen and paper (yeah, that stuff still exists somewhere), you’ll start out blogging with a leg-up on all of the people who didn’t. How should you plan, you may be asking?

Choose your niche. You’d expect this one to be an understood, but you’d be surprised at the number of blogs that startup without a single central subject matter. The blogging elite, of which I am not a member, will tell you to pick something very specific, but here’s the problem: if you get too specific, you run out of material extremely quickly. In actuality, you can pick something as broad as politics or something as narrow as the politics in your hometown. As long as you know that it’ll take longer to break out in a broad niche and don’t expect to be the most read blog on the web with a small one, you’ll be fine. Just MAKE SURE you are interested in the subject matter.
Research, research, research. Check out blogging resources all over the internet for tips and tricks on being a successful blogger before you dive right in with a lead blindfold on. A great resource that I’ve used heavily over the course of my 3 years is ProBlogger. I strongly recommend signing up for their e-mail list and digging through their archives to find valuable factoids. Another great site is DailyBlogTips; basically the same idea as ProBlogger, just a different perspective. Bookmark ‘em, follow ‘em, Like ‘em; they’ll be invaluable to you in the future. And you can take that to the bank and cash the check.
Write out your MASTER PLAN. This doesn’t have to be evil or diabolical, nor does the end result have to be world domination. As your blog grows and your faced with tougher blogging dilemmas, having a plan to look at and say “will this decision get me closer to my ideal picture for this blog” will be an extremely useful tool. That’s not to say that the original master plan is the end-all route for your blog, but it will serve as a pretty reliable compass when you’re on choppy waters (cliche, I know). More on the contents of your Master Plan (book mark the Blogging 101 page and follow us on Twitter to get updates on this series before everyone else!)
Set goals. Nothing is more satisfying than meeting a personal checkpoint while on the highway of blogging. Choose these goals wisely and don’t make them unreasonable. For example, don’t make your goal to make a 7-digit salary in your first year blogging. That’s pretty much impossible. Try smaller things like posting every day of the month, reaching a certain amount of daily views, or having a certain number of subscribers. It’s much easier to keep going with your fledgling blog if you have a few small victories along the way.
Make rounds in your virtual neighborhood. Once you’ve picked your niche, find bloggers who write about a similar subject matter. Bookmark these blogs. Comment on the articles in the blogs. If you’re feeling really bold, and bloggers should always be bold, contact the authors of these blogs and let them know you’re about to start a blog. Naturally, some bloggers may not respond, but you’d be surprised about how friendly even some of the most established bloggers can be. I’ve helped new bloggers get their blogs going in the past and I’d be happy to do it again (hint hint).
WRITE. This may sound like a waste of time, but I don’t really care. Before you start your blog, spend a week in pretend world writing articles as you would for the blog you want to create. If you’re feeling writer’s fatigue by week’s end, you may want to reconsider the whole blog thing. Hint: Write timeless articles so that you can use them once you finally start that blog. You’ll come out of the gate with a whole week’s worth of great material!
Decide how you’ll host your blog. This decision is one of the most important you’ll make on your blogging journey. You may think you’re satisfied with a free blog host like WordPress or Blogger, but you don’t know what the future may hold. At the same time, you may think you’ll be invested in your blog for years and buy a pricey hosting plan before realizing after a month that you need to go back to flipping burgers. My recommendation to anyone starting a blog is this: Start out with WordPress.com for hosting, but buy a premium domain (one without .wordpress.com at the end) and invest in WordPress Domain Mapping. That way, if you decide to quit before you really get into blogging, you won’t be too far in the red; alternatively, those in it for the long haul will have the benefit of being on the same domain throughout their blog’s growth. That’s something I strongly wish I would have done back in 2008. Combined that’ll cost you only around $25 so it’s a great deal and much cheaper than buying a hosting plan.

There you have it, 8 things to do before choosing a URL. If you make sure you’ve done all of these things, we can promise that you’ll have the smoothest possible first month for a new blogger. Be sure to bookmark our Blogging 101 so you can track the whole blog development series right here at The Conservative Journal!

Next Up: Developing Your Blog’s Master Plan: MWAHAHAHA

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Thanks for reading!

Rick