How to Start a Blog using Blogger ?

HOW TO BLOG BLOGGER AND MONITOR IT WITH ADSENSE - A COMPLETE GUIDE FROM A TO Z

Want to start a new blog for free and make money, but don't know where to start? You're in the right place !

From setup, through personalization, optimization and monetization, this complete guide will guide you step by step in creating and monetizing your new blog on the Blogger (blogspot) platform. It will allow you to operate and design it in a minimal amount of time.

We'll walk through all the stages of creation to make full use of the Blogger platform, the second most popular blogging platform in the world!

WHY SHOULD YOU START A BLOG?

Blogging is a means of communication that has revolutionized information sharing in our modern society while allowing many bloggers around the world to make their fortune. It is used to post all kinds of content online be it text, images, videos, etc.

Whatever your profession, if you have free time, you can easily choose a niche, start a blog, and earn passive and regular income from it. You can imagine using it to sell products, promote your image, expand your business, or just share your passion.

But beyond the financial aspect, you will have the opportunity to develop your online presence, build your online reputation and hold authority in your niche. This will expose you to new opportunities and experiences that will change your life.

Nowadays, bloggers make their living in different ways, the most common of which are: online advertising, affiliate programs, posting sponsored content or selling products and services, etc.

However, this guide is not intended to give you the keys to making a quick profit or making easy money on the Internet. Generating a regular income from blogging requires on the one hand to develop a long-term strategy and on the other hand to stand out from the competition by publishing original and qualitative content in order to retain your readers.

5 GOOD REASONS TO CHOOSE BLOGGER (BLOGSPOT) FOR THE CREATION OF YOUR FIRST BLOG

Are you attracted to the idea of starting your own blog? You want to finally connect with the world, share your passion, your expertise, extend your influence ... a wise decision! But you hesitate between the many blogging platforms that abound on the web?

This post is the result of many years of experience that I would like to share with you having created several blogs in various blogging platforms. I have known failures and successes. However, some blogs continue to bring added value to readers to this day and provide me with regular income.

In the following, you will find out why I recommend Blogger for building and monetizing your first blog and why is it vastly superior to other competing platforms?

CREATE YOUR BLOG FOR FREE ON BLOGGER WITHOUT THE HASSLE

When you create a blog or a website for the first time, you should first test your idea, familiarize yourself with the publication of online content (articles, images, audio, video) and especially focus on the creation of '' quality content without worrying about the maintenance and security of your blog .

By choosing Blogger, you will no longer have to worry about possible security breaches as well as problems related to the maintenance of your blog and the management of bandwidth, since it will be hosted for free on Google's servers.

Thus, you will benefit from a wide bandwidth and optimal security which will give you time to develop your blog serenely. While if you choose for example a website editor like WordPress.org (CMS), this will require in addition to looking for a web hosting provider, to devote yourself to the security and maintenance of your blog, which does not is not easy for a beginner.

CREATE YOUR INTERNET ADDRESS WITH THE "BLOGSPOT" SUBDOMAIN OR CHOOSE YOUR OWN DOMAIN NAME

The domain name is the identifier of your blog. This is the web address that will allow Internet users to access your blog, for example www.monblog.com . With Blogger, you can choose any name that enchants you as long as it is available. However, your web address will contain the blogspot subdomain like this www.geekyatul.blogspot.com and. This way you are going to have in addition to the name that you are going to choose a blogspot.com subdomain .

Blogger offers you the possibility of having your own domain name without the "blogspot" subdomain. To do this, you can buy it from a domain name host , also called a registrar, and then link it to your blog. So your new custom domain name will look like www.geekyatul.com .

Moreover, Blogger will offer you to acquire your own domain name from Google Domains as soon as you register for a cost of around 12 euros. However, you can shop around and shop among the many registrars on the Internet .

I recommend the Namecheap registrar who offers quality customer service and very competitive prices depending on the extension you choose, for example for a .com domain name you will spend around ₹444 ( $6) /year.

In addition, it also enjoys an excellent reputation among users and often tops the polls on Facebook and Twitter, especially thanks to the importance it places on user experience and the lifetime free of charge of the protection feature. WhoisGuard Privacy Protection.

Pro Tips : Avoid hosting your blog and domain name with the same provider as this will give you more control and flexibility when uploading your blog. In terms of cost, it will be much cheaper to you than if you put your eggs in the same basket.

EASILY CUSTOMIZE THE DESIGN OF YOUR BLOG

By default, Blogger offers you several free themes that come with a modern design as well as basic functionality. If you do not find what you are looking for in the Blogger theme library, there are hundreds of free themes on the web with a professional look and which adapt to all screens (including a consultation on mobile) whatever your use ( portfolio, magazine, personal website, etc.).

They also present many features that allow easy and fast personalization of your blog. You can visit the many sites that offer Blogger themes for free, the most reliable of which are: Gooyaabitemplates , templatemark and Sora Templates

If you have basic knowledge of HTML / CSS, you can improve any theme by modifying the HTML code from the "Theme" menu in Blogger. Even when you are new to it, you can learn easily in a matter of hours with the many Blogger tutorials available on the Internet and YouTube.

On the other hand, if you don't want to get your hands dirty, know that the majority of recent themes that can be downloaded for free, especially on the websites mentioned above, allow you to easily customize your entire blog via the Blogger dashboard without touching the HTML code.

MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR BLOGGER BLOG

If your goal is to make money with your blog by different means (advertising, affiliate programs, selling products and services), with Blogger you can choose your partners freely and without restriction, unlike other platforms like wordpress.com which imposes its advertising program "WordAds" with many restrictive conditions.

This way Blogger allows you to take full control of your blog, choose your partners and your own monetization methods.

EASY MIGRATION AND FAST REFERENCING OF YOUR CONTENT IN THE GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE

Want to go benefit from Google SEO which will allow your articles to be indexed quickly in its search engine.

Transferring your blog to another platform such as Wordpress.org is easy and is done without losing your traffic, provided you have a personalized domain name. To do this, you just have to save the content of your blog by accessing the "Settings" menu and then exporting it to the platform of your choice.

THE LIMITATIONS OF THE BLOGGER PLATFORM

You have the possibility to create a private blog whose access will be reserved only for members (maximum 100 readers)
Create up to 100 blogs with your Google account
Publish as many articles as you want (unlimited)
Invite up to 100 authors. They can add and edit their own articles on your blog.
Adding images or videos is unlimited as long as the height or width of your images or photos does not exceed 2048 pixels, and your videos are no longer than 15 minutes. If you exceed these limits, the occupied space will be deducted from your Google storage space (15 GB).

CREATE YOUR BLOG ON BLOGGER IN 4 STEPS

STEP ONE: LOG INTO YOUR BLOGGER ACCOUNT

Go to the Blogger platform website

On the home page, click on the orange button "create your blog"

On the next page, sign in to your Google account. If you do not yet have a Google account, you must first create it by clicking on the link on the left "Create an account".

This account will allow you to benefit from all Google services and applications such as: an email box, a "Drive" service to store or share your files online, an online calendar, etc.

STEP TWO: CONFIRM YOUR PROFILE

Enter a profile name and press the orange "continue to Blogger" button

STEP FOUR: CREATE A NEW BLOG

Click on the orange button "Create a blog"

In the dialog box that will appear later, complete the following fields:

The " Title " field : this is the name of your blog. You can easily change it later in your blog settings.

Pro Tips : Choose a name that is unique, short, easily memorable, and attractive.

The " Address " field : this is the domain name or the web address of your new blog. Your domain name must contain the blogspot subdomain , like this mydomainname.blogspot.com .

It can contain different combinations of numbers or letters. You can also separate words with hyphens, for example: mydomainname, my-domain-name. As with the title of your blog, you can change this address at any time in the settings menu.

Now choose a theme. You can change it as many times as it will enchant you afterwards.

After these steps, click on the orange button "create a blog". A dialog box will open offering you to choose a custom domain name, click on "no thanks". You can choose a custom domain name later when you want.

Congratulation ! You have successfully created a free blog on Blogger in a few minutes, you can now enter your URL address in the address bar of your Internet browser to check the availability of your blog on the web.

THE BLOGGER INTERFACE: EXPLORE YOUR BLOG DASHBOARD

After creating your blog, the next screen is your blog dashboard. It is from there that you can manage and configure it.

From the dashboard, you can perform the following tasks:

Create, publish, edit or delete an article or a page
Consult your blog statistics, the number of visits and the number of articles viewed
View and respond to comments related to your articles
Set up and manage your AdSense account
Edit the structure of your blog in the Layout section in the menu on the left of the screen. You can change the icon (favicon), upload a custom logo for your blog or add gadgets in the different areas (header, sidebar, footer). Here is a picture of the main parts or components of your blog: change and customize your theme in the template menu

Configure your blog in the settings section: you can change the title or address of your blog, write a description (up to 500 characters), associate your blog with a custom domain name, add authors, delete your blog, etc.

IMPORTANT SETTINGS TO BOOST THE SEO OF YOUR BLOG ON BLOGGER (BLOGSPOT)

Fill in a small description on the main topics that you will cover in your blog. You will find this field in " Settings"> " General " > " Description "

Then go to " Settings"> "Meta Tags"> "Description "

Activate the meta description tags for the search and click on "Description"

Enabling this setting is essential, as it directly influences the ranking of your website and articles for search engines. It is not enabled by default so you must enable it. After its activation you will notice that a new field "Description for research" is added to the parameters of the articles in the edit page of the articles.

Write a description that should contain the main keywords that characterize the general theme of your blog. It will appear in search engine results under your blog title. For example, if we enter the newspaper "the world" in a search engine, we notice that this description appears under the link of the site and contains the central themes treated by the newspaper.

Finally, in the article editing page, you must enter a description for each of your articles. As with the general description of your blog, this description will appear in search engine results under the title of your article.

WRITE AND EDIT THE TEXT OF YOUR ARTICLE USING THE BLOGGER ARTICLE BUILDER

TIPS

I advise you to prepare your raw text beforehand, the hierarchy of your titles and subtitles as well as the multimedia resources to integrate (images, video). You will just have to focus on formatting and incorporating these elements into your article.

If you are using Word or other word processing software to write your articles, do not copy them directly into Blogger, as your text will be polluted with unwanted formatting, which can cause display issues. The solution is very simple, before pasting your text copy it first in a notepad or in Notepad ++, then you can insert it without any problem in the editing page of your article.

Do the same when you copy text from a web page.

NEW ARTICLE EDITING INTERFACE

In your dashboard, click on "Article" in the menu on the left of the screen, then on the circular button "+" at the bottom right of your screen.

In the title field, enter the title of your article.

Paste or write the text of your article as well as the various titles and sub-titles

This is what HTML mode looks like

At this point, the text you added is neutral and unformatted. You can now enrich and highlight it using the toolbar (word processing menu) above the article box.

CLASSIC BLOGGER INTERFACE

In the dashboard, click on article in the menu on the left of the screen, then on "create an article", or simply on the orange button "New article".

BLOGGER INTERFACE TOOLBAR

The Blogger article editor allows you to write an article, edit it, and publish it. You can use the HTML editor if you have knowledge of HTML or the visual editor that looks like a word processor. In this tutorial we will only focus on Blogger's visual editor.

THE TOOLBAR OF THE NEW BLOGGER INTERFACE

Tips : Hover over each option to find out what it is.

The "Write" button is the default mode. This is the visual editor in WYSIWYG (what I see is what I would get), it will allow you to edit and edit your post like in word processing software.

As for the "HTML" button, it opens the HTML box of your article. You can edit and modify your article by inserting elements (tags) in HTML format.

The first arrow allows you to cancel your last transaction

The second arrow allows you to restore what you have just undone

The F icon allows you to change the font

The T icon allows you to increase the size of your

text.

The "Normal" field allows you to choose between the TITLE, subtitle, PARAGRAPH or

NORMAL text tags (paragraph, preformatted level 1 to 6 titles)

B: bold to make your text bold

I: put your text in Italics

U: Underline your text

T: strike through text like this ~~strike through text~~

A: change the color of the selected text

The icon with a pencil allows you to highlight your text .

Associate is used to insert a hypertext link on a word or a phrase to refer the visitor to another article in your blog (internal link) or an external website (external link)

The "Image" icon allows you to insert images

The "Clap" icon allows you to insert videos

Insert an expansion marker: allows you to insert a “read more” or “more info” tag

The "Alignment" icon allows you to align the Text to the left or to the right, to center it and to justify it

Bulleted List

Ordered or numbered list

Citation: allows you to insert a citation block

Tx: this tool will allow you to remove formatting from text. It is very useful when you copy text from another website especially to remove formatting and hyperlinks)

Use all these options to enrich your text: creating a web link, highlighting part of the text, inserting an image, etc.

INSERT IMAGES AND VIDEOS IN BLOGGER

The illustration of your articles with images or videos has significant advantages:

Your article will be livelier, more engaging, and more enjoyable to read.
The visit time of your blog will be extended and visitors will spend more time there.
The integration of multimedia resources constitutes a referencing criterion taken into account by the algorithms of search engines, this will consequently have a favorable influence on the positioning of your articles in the search results.

To find out more, I invite you to read this complete tutorial in which I explain the procedure for inserting images and videos into your articles .

ADJUST THE PARAMETERS OF YOUR ARTICLE FOR OPTIMAL RANKING ON SEARCH ENGINES

Once you have written, illustrated and formatted your article, all you have to do is adjust the settings in the menu on the right of the screen.

LABELS

Labels also called tags or labels in English allow you to store your article in the categories of your blog. Assuming that in your menu you have the following categories:

Home - Fashion - Lifestyle - Good deals

You want your new item to appear in the "Fashion" category of your menu. In this case, all you have to do is create a new label "Fashion" or simply select it from the list if you have created it before in another article.

You can add multiple labels to an article, this helps organize and filter your content. Thus, in our example, we can store our article in the "Fashion" and "Lifestyle" categories or even add a new "Novelty" tag, taking care to separate the different labels with commas.

PUBLICATION DATE

This parameter allows you to define the time and date of publication of your article.

Tip : You can change the date of your old posts to appear in the News Feed again on your home page.

PERMANENT LINK

This is the URL of your article, it is assigned automatically by Blogger and in principle looks like this:

https://votreblog.blogspot.com/2019/12/début-de-votre-titre-article.html

It is very important to configure the permanent link of your article before it is published online to optimize its organic SEO. Therefore, I recommend that you do not keep the assigned permalink by default, as it may contain unnecessary words such as prepositions.

Blogger gives you the option to customize the last and most important part of your link, which should contain the main keywords of your article:

https://your-blog.com/year/month/ start-of-your-article-title .html

To personalize your permalink, choose the main keywords that define your article and separate them with six "-" rather than eight or underscores "_"

Taking for example an article entitled "How to use whey protein to strengthen your bodybuilding". The default permalink will look like this:

https://monblog.blogspot.com/2019/12/How to use-the-whey-protein-pour.html

It would be more interesting in terms of SEO to choose the following permanent link which contains more keywords:

https://monblog.blogspot.com/2019/12/ fitness-bodybuilding-use-whey-protein.html

PLACE

You can use this parameter which allows to indicate a place and a date, in particular if the subject of your article relates to an event having a determined geographical position.

DESCRIPTION OF THE RESEARCH

Enabling this setting is explained in this section . Write a short summary of your article of up to 150 characters that will appear under your article link on the search engine results page. It will give Internet users an idea about the content of your article.

OPTIONS

In the options you can manage the permissions for displaying comments in your article.

When you have finished writing and setting up your article, just click on the orange "Publish" button to have your article available online and indexed by search engines.

MAKE MONEY: CONDITIONS TO BE QUICKLY APPROVED BY GOOGLE ADSENSE

Google AdSense is the most famous advertising network on the web. It saves money by posting advertising on your blog.

Officially, joining the Google AdSense program does not require a traffic threshold. On the other hand, in my humble experience and that of many bloggers on the web, it is better to meet several conditions before applying in order to avoid your application being rejected by Google.

Here are a few :

HAVE SATISFACTORY TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG

To start monetizing your free blog, you need to have a minimum of 300-400 unique visitors per day as well as sufficient and quality content (over 30 articles). It is best to wait until you meet these two criteria before applying to the AdSense program.

ERGONOMICS: IMPROVE THE USER EXPERIENCE AND PERSONALIZE THE DESIGN OF YOUR BLOG

It is essential to have a professional blog with a neat design that will adapt to all types of media (computers and mobile devices). Note that the smartphone is by far the preferred tool for the French to connect on the Web.

Therefore, go for a responsive, clean and easy to use theme. Many quality themes are freely available on several websites. Here are two trusted sites that offer the ability to download Blogger themes for free from the Internet: Gooyaabitemplates or SoraTemplates.com

When it comes to user experience, optimize your blog navigation and think about constantly improving the experience of your readers. This means that you need to organize your blog so that your readers can easily find what they are looking for.

Here are some tips to improve the user experience in your blog:

Design a simple menu with 8 categories at most, name them with short titles using keywords corresponding to the main themes of your blog.
Regarding the choice of colors for your blog, however, one tip is to avoid mixing too many bright shades, because they tire the eyes more quickly.
I suggest you check out the free COLOURlovers site . You can choose from over a million color palettes or compose your own color assortment easily.
Choose your font carefully, including viewing it on the Google Fonts website . It must be suitable for reading on mobile devices (smartphone, tablet). Preferably use a sans serif font and opt for a standard size of at least 14px.
Your blog must contain a logo and a search bar visible on all pages.
Set up a contact form to stay in touch with your readers and collect their impressions or complaints. It will also allow you to obtain inside information about your readers.
You can set up a newsletter that will be sent periodically to your readers directly in their mailbox. This will increase traffic to your blog and above all keep a strong link with your them.

WRITE SUFFICIENT, INFORMATIVE AND QUALITY CONTENT

Compose quality articles that will interest your target, optimize them for search engines and promote them on social networks.

If your main goal is to quickly grow your blog to generate ad revenue. I present to you an example of a practical strategy that you can implement:

Write 20 articles per month, so you will have 100 articles in your blog within five months. That said, you should not neglect the qualitative aspect and the optimization of your productions. Always remember to offer content that has added value for your readers and that it is well optimized for search engines. Thus, you will easily reach the threshold of 500 daily visitors and from that point on you will be able to apply to the AdSense program and start monetizing your blogspot blog.

IN CASE OF FRAUD, YOUR ADSENSE ACCOUNT WILL BE CLOSED WITHOUT NOTICE

The use of dishonest practices (false clicks on advertisements) with the intention of increasing earnings, will lead to the loss of your account with no hope of recovering it. Warning ! Violating the Terms of Service will lead to termination of your account without notice.

AD FORMAT AND DISPLAY SIZE OF GOOGLE ADSENSE ADS

THE DIFFERENT ADSENSE ADVERTISING FORMATS

In-feed ads

This is a non-intrusive advertising format that typically fits into your website's news feed. This format is frequently used in social networks such as Twitter or Facebook.

You have the possibility to personalize the style of the announcements according to the graphic charter of your blog so that it integrates more naturally with your flow of articles.

You can choose from image or video ads.

In-article ads

The advertisement is inserted in your article, between the different paragraphs.

You can choose ads as image or video.

Matched content

This is an ad in the form of personalized content recommendations that may be of interest to a visitor depending on the topic they are viewing on your blog.

ADSENSE AD DISPLAY SIZE

Currently, all Google AdSense ads are responsive, which means that they adapt to all media, regardless of the screen size (computer, tablet and smartphone). Among the most common formats, we can mention:

Mega-banner that measures 728 X 90 pixels.
Classic banner that measures 468px × 60 pixels
Half banner which measures 234 X 60 pixels, mainly used in the sidebar
Small square 125px × 125 pixels
Wide format Skyscraper 120px × 600 pixels
Square banner 300px × 250 pixels
Large rectangle banner 336px × 280 pixels
Mobile 320px × 50 pixels format

LINK ADSENSE TO YOUR BLOGGER BLOG

First step : click on "earnings" in the menu as shown in the image below. You will see an orange button that will invite you to register for the program. If instead of this button you find the message "Your blog is not currently compatible with AdSense", verify that your blog meets the criteria previously mentioned in the Conditions section to be quickly approved by Google AdSense.

Step two : create an AdSense account. Click on the blue button to create an account, then you will need to complete all fields with your full contact details, address and payment details. This information must be completed with care, especially details regarding the terms of payment.

At the end of this step, your newly created AdSense account will be associated with your blog, so you will be able to serve ads and earn money.

Step Three : All of your advertising campaigns will be managed through your AdSense account dashboard. You will be able to choose from several advertising formats (ad unit, banners, etc.), which you will place in the pages or in the articles of your blog.

To integrate them:

Open your dashboard and go to the layout section. Then find the option "add a gadget" as shown in this image

A dialog box will open, select the AdSense gadget and add it to the other gadgets on your blog in the sidebar. Then click on "Save".

Remember to click on "Save Layout" before leaving the Layout section.

Note: other methods exist to add AdSense to your blog, especially when creating your account or by adding a script provided by AdSense in an HTML / JavaScript gadget, or even inside your articles.

OTHER SOURCES OF REMUNERATION FOR YOUR BLOG

AFFILIATION

Affiliate is promoting a product or service of another business on your blog. You will receive a commission on each sale if one of your visitors makes the purchase on the seller's site.

The most well-known affiliate program is Amazon's, " Amazon Partner Program ", followed by Clickbank.

In practice, you can write an article in which you are going to recommend a product or service that you have already tried and enjoyed. Interested readers will buy the product through your affiliate link. Thus, you will receive a remuneration of up to 75% of the sale price depending on the product and the platform.

Affiliation is a great way to supplement your AdSense or other advertising revenue. However, make sure that the products you recommend are suitable for your audience and preferably that you have tried and tested beforehand in order to retain your readers.

WRITE SPONSORED ARTICLES PAID BY BRANDS

If you have high traffic on your blog, apply to specialized platforms such as RocketLinks .

CREATE AND MARKET YOUR OWN PRODUCTS

It is the most profitable way to make money with your blog, especially if you have a community of loyal readers who trust you.

Here are some ideas for products and services:

Create online courses or training that you will market directly in your blog or through specialized platforms like Udemy.com, Teachable.com, etc.
Create and publish an e-book that meets the needs of your readers
Software
Mugs, t-shirts or items that feature printed designs
Handicraft products: Jewelry, accessories, bag ... This activity requires special craftsmanship.
Coaching: this involves offering a consulting or support service based on your experience and your expertise.

I don't promise to make a fortune quickly with this guide. Nevertheless, the latter bundles the best strategies for beginners who want to embark on the blogging adventure free of charge and generate long-term income.

By drawing a clear strategy from the start, after a few months of practice, you will have more experience in creating content that will gradually be optimized for natural referencing and you will gradually assimilate the technical terms used in the blogosphere like SEO, Nofollow Link, RSS Feed, Sitemap , etc.

To have more control over your blog, it helps to learn some basics of HTML and CSS. Only a few hours are enough! This would eventually help you understand the structure of your blog, so you will be able to make functional improvements by inserting gadgets, or even customize the design by adapting the shape of the elements to your desires (layout of the elements). blocks, colors, size, etc.).

DO NOT ABANDON!

You have the feeling that you have been overwhelmed by this flood of advice, and you may be tempted to give up the adventure.

But all this is normal for a beginner, for at least a few months, you will have to go through a phase of experimentation to master all aspects of your blog in Blogger, and you will see that all these tasks that seem tedious to you at first glance will eventually become automatic and easier to apply on a daily basis.

You will also be amply rewarded by your efforts when you receive positive feedback from your readers and especially by generating regular income from your blog.

Thank you for taking the time to read this tutorial. Feel free to share it on social media if you feel it might be useful for other people.

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