Personal development is a multi-billion dollar industry. Many bloggers have been able to capitalize on this market by creating a blog, building up traffic, and then monetizing that blog.
If you are finding it difficult to set up your personal development blog, the following information will be beneficial. The first step is determining what you’re going to blog about.
Find Your Niche
Personal development is a broad topic that includes health, diet, happiness, spirituality, mind power, and a whole host of other topics. Many personal development bloggers have a strong desire to help their fellow man. Their intentions are good. They start blogging about what they are interested in, but because they do not identify their niche, they quickly find that they are blogging just for fun. No one is reading what they are writing.
Many personal development blogs end up becoming online cheerleaders. They post motivational quotes, trying to lift other people’s spirits or get them to see things in a different light. The headlines they use are generic, and the content is mediocre. How can this translate into a successful business? It cannot.
Remember, individuals looking for personal development help are likely not motivated and have difficulty committing to things. Unless your blog is tailored to meet a specific need, it is likely that most people will not search for what you have on your blog. If they do visit your blog, the vagueness of it may make it difficult for them to find what they are looking for. Most people are unaware of your blog. It’s your job to make them aware of it.
When people search Google for help with a specific problem, they want a specific result. If your general personal development blog is not offering specific solutions to meet the needs of potential readers, they won’t find you. You will find yourself needing to read your own blog posts as a way of getting yourself out of the dumps.
The take away:
- Come up with a concept that deals with concrete problems and provides specific answers.
- Offer content that offers solutions your readers can walk away with. Your readers need more than a surface discussion that doesn’t touch anything real.
- Use post headlines that accurately describe the information found within your blog.
Find the Right Hosting for Your Blog
Before selecting the right hosting platform for your blog, you should know what makes a good hosting service.
- Security: Website security is a must. You do not want your site to get hacked. Even if you just have a handful of followers, you don’t want their information stolen. So figure out what kind of security features your web host offers.
- Reliability: People are turning to you in their hour of need. You want them to be able to find your site up and running. You want a hosting company that is reliable and keeps downtimes to a minimum.
- Email: You want a professional email address that has the same domain as your URL. Find a hosting provider that gives you the opportunity to add on an email as well.
- Cost: Most shared hosting accounts are affordable. You can usually find one for under $20 a month.
Types of Hosting Available
There are a number of types of web hosting. For our purposes, we are going to focus on three:
- Dedicated – One server for your entire website
- VPS – Servers divided into smaller virtual servers
- Shared- Multiple sites will share the same server
A great way to understand what each type of hosting means is to think of them like real estate. A dedicated server is like owning your own house. You control everything inside of it, and it is totally customizable by you. A VPS server is like a condo. There are multiple units in the same building, but you completely control your unit. Finally, shared hosting is like an apartment building. You do not own it, you share the space with other tenants, and you do not control anything.
Shared Hosting
This is where you want to start, especially if cost is an issue. Shared hosting means that your website is on the same server as hundreds, or even thousands, of other websites. This is why it is so affordable. Some services offer shared hosting for as little as three dollars a month.
You will want to look at the site speed, security issues, and email deliverability. This will affect your SEO rankings and could expose you to security issues you want to stay away from. There are a number of benefits of using shared hosting. For example, most have a one-click WordPress install. Most have good support and an easy to manage back end, which are perfect for those who are new to hosting.
Dedicated Hosting
With dedicated hosting, you have the entire server to yourself. It is fast, but it is expensive. You have the ability to customize the software. At times, you can also customize the hardware on the server. If you are starting out writing a new blog, this service is not for you.
VPS – Virtual Private Server Hosting
With VPS, you have a mini server inside a server. You don’t have the whole server to yourself, but there is a section of the server that is solely dedicated to what happens on your site. This means that a lot of the downsides associated with shared servers, such as slower traffic, don’t always affect those with a VPS. A VPS is going to be more expensive than a shared server, but the price is not outrageous. For first-time bloggers, this is probably overkill.
Why Free Hosting Is Not Right for You
Free hosting is perfect for people who do not know any better. With free hosting, you have little to no flexibility, and it is difficult to run a blog or business from your site. If you want to create a site that you never plan on updating and have no control over, then free is right for you.
Many bloggers find to their horror that when they use a free service and post a lot of awesome content, one day all of their content is gone because they accidentally posted something that was not in harmony with the terms of service of the hosting company they were using. In a matter of seconds, their entire business goes down the drain. If you want to make a success of your personal development blog, we recommend staying away from free hosting.
Other Things to Consider
You’ve identified your niche and you’ve selected the type of hosting you will use, what’s next? There are research guides I recommend you use to help you better understand web host-related information.
Here are a few things to consider:
- What platform should you use to build your blog? Most new bloggers use WordPress. It’s easy to set up, easy to maintain, and gets you blogging right out of the gate.
- How many sites do you have? If you’re reading this, the likely answer is zero. However, if you are planning to create a number of sites in the future, you need to know if you are going to be adding these to the same hosting account.
- Will you have lots of data? If so, you need to think about what hosting situations or what hosting provider offers the most storage.
As a personal development blogger, you have to be energetic and a go-getter. People are looking to you as someone who is confident and who can give them direction. They want a leader. Your blog must show that you are that leader. You can do this by selecting the right platform for your blog, selecting reliable hosting, and creating specific content that addresses a particular need and provides concrete solutions for your readers.
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