We’ve all heard of the promises of starting a blog. Fame, money, and a freedom, these are only a glimpse of what’s involved. You need passion for a topic and something you can speak on in-depth. The next step is to have a platform to place your work on. You’re in luck: the internet is accessible by everyone in the world.
However, starting a blog is as much a computer science as it is one of writing.
Start considering the ideas you have and how they connect to your chosen audience. The solid foundation of a good idea brings you to the potentials of WordPress. You might get confused by the difference between “.com” and “.org,” but both sites offer you the basics to get into the blogging sphere this very moment.
With the rapid transformation of our society, there’s no better way to change your life than with a remote business opportunity. WordPress is the place to get started for it.
– Generating Traffic
Great, you have an idea. WordPress offers you the basic features to start blogging that idea today, but you should know. Posting and publishing are only one side of the spectrum for professional bloggers. Outreach is the backbone of a good idea. People need to know about those good ideas you have. This is often the confusing part.
Having an idea and actually sharing it are two different concepts. Think of the freedom and lifestyle you can afford if you just had an automated business online. People need to be involved with that business first. It happens that both the .org and .com variations of WordPress are compatible with outreach.
The energy invested into creating content is the same energy required for generating traffic. The good news is that WordPress can help. This is important to consider when making your choice later on. A good idea means nothing if no one ever finds it. …
– Creating an Online Business
Millions of people are in a race to create an online business. The reality exists. It’s real enough to require your complete focus and dedication. There are no shortcuts. WordPress makes your business idea possible by providing paid and unpaid services. Where you currently stand in your business dictates what you choose.
Think about the basics first and what functions you need for a full blog. These parts and pieces include a publishing platform. Both WordPress sites provide this without complication. Being able to see the other side of the spectrum, which is HTML and a live, web-browser view, allows you to get started with the basic knowledge.
You need the ability to upload and display multi-media also. You must organize content by category and tags. Dividing your site into home, contact, about, blog and product pages is essential. The group of needs you have, from editing your concepts to optimizing them with basic SEO, are found with the source-code of WordPress.
– Making Money Online
Let’s get down to why it’s important to know how WordPress works. Starting an online business is about generating income, however, making money online requires a few connections to the outside world for a complete integration. Your work is only effective through adaptability, advertising and back-linking.
You still decide on how your money is spent in attempt to generate more of it, but WordPress.com and WordPress.org differ in how they monetize and how they use hosting services. The only ads you can display on the free, .com site are WordPress ads for the web services they offer. You cannot use your ads or any other.
Being able to monetize doesn’t mean you need to use paid services, but you’re limited in how revenue is generated if using free hosting. Here’s a better look:
WordPress.com: The Free Option
Essentially, WordPress.com is a free platform. The software is an open-source, which means anyone can access it. The free access to this product does come with a few limitations depending on how you host your site. Since the .com platform can be free, WordPress uses its ads as well as its own name within your domain-URL.
WordPress.org and Paid Services
WordPress.org and the paid options of the .com site give you control over ads and your domain. This freedom is paid for separately, but you’re earning the right to be your brand and your brand alone. You have to find your own hosting services and to install online security when using the .org integration.
What is WordPress.com?
The .com in WordPress.com stands for company. This is a free, open-source software the world has access to. WordPress is an open-source platform because of the source-code’s expansion, which allows those who write in HTML to manipulate their own websites based on a provided foundation.
Working directly in HTML means you don’t need outside developers or software to run your site with. It means you can write the snippets and codes yourself, so paying for access to prewritten HTML may waste your time. The WordPress.com site was initially offered free as a way of building the brand to where it is today.
WordPress is the leading blogging platform in the world. More people have it than any other source-code for website development and blogging. The advantage here is the cloud of support you get once you join the community. Across the world, people are experienced with the site’s code and collaborate effectively for this reason.
Let’s cover more about how unpaid services work and how it fits your business model as you grow. Knowledge and experience play a role, but you might be encouraged to learn new things by “starting off from scratch.” The free service gives you all the tools you need for an outstanding site, but you’ve got to know how it’s used.
– A Beginner’s Step
The WordPress.com site is ideal for beginners. It’s a way for you to start planning a future blog. The power of this platform is in the basics when you opt in for free services. These basics include the tools you need to get your message out there. The site is adapted to mobile, which means that you can build your site through an App.
You decide if you edit your work through a desktop computer, through a web browser or with a mobile device when you’re on the go. The .com site helps you to start uploading content and have it loaded into search engines and browsers today.
– Why it’s a Good Idea with or Without an Idea
Paid services require you to have a solid idea before you invest money into it. Speculation is the driving force of the online market, but you don’t have to make financial contracts if you haven’t tested your idea. It’s best to work with your ideas if they haven’t proven themselves. Testing is what the free, .com site allows you to do.
A good idea may strike a chord, but it’s better if you developed it a little or put it into action to know how effective it is. There are hidden factors to great ideas that aren’t always clear from the onset. These factors are things you have to incorporate into your work, and you’ll need to put that concept into play before knowing.
The .com site gives you the tools to work an idea without being financially invested. This is crucial for small businesses that are just getting their start into the online market. The formula behind every ideas has to be discovered before you can complete that idea, and WordPress.com is an option for you.
All-in-One Service
The .com site is an all inclusive package, which means that it quickly upgrades and integrates with more services as you need them. You don’t have to jump into a full package. What you start off with are the necessities. Some features can’t be accessed, but the same agency will supply you with them later on.
You can have confidence in building your site on the free, .com site without having to start over or transfer your data to a different provider. If things go as you plan with your blog, then the next step is only a button away. You’ll be upgrading your site with the service-providers you’re already using to test your ideas.
The World’s Leading Platform
Even as a free option, WordPress.com stands as the world’s leading website builder. Investing your time into developing an idea, to see how well content adapts and how much SEO competition you’re facing, will occur with technology that leads the digital world. The advanced functions of SEO, titles and tags are built-in.
Choosing the .com site from the start positions you to access world-class technology but as a way of testing your ideas and learning about how blogging actually works.
Improving Your HTML
Being an open-source software means that HTML writers can access their own sites and alter it based on their experience. You can develop that experience if your future business is within web development. The HTML language allows web browsers to render content in a form that we read and see as images and video displays.
The details of your site’s design, even when you’re using a template, can be altered to the minute detail with HTML. You can only do that by accessing the site’s tools. The various spacings, fonts, placements and graphics we find on modern websites are a result of this language. Having more control of HTML is key.
The knowledge allows you to stand out and to create stunning websites for you or your clients. There’s a cloud of competition within the online sphere, and every skill you have that others don’t pushes you out from among the noise. WordPress.com is a place to learn HTML. The site offers both a visual and HTML editor tool to boot.
The visual editor gives you content that can be altered without writing HTML. The HTML editor gives you access to the site’s HTML that can be rewritten, edited with more functions and revised for greater clarity. Both the HTML and visual editors are synced to a live “website view” that shows you how your work looks on a webpage.
– The Tools to get Started
Here are the tools you get from the start:
- No Cost: The first thing to note about the .com site is that you can start a free account. You won’t be billed later or forced to upgrade at any time. For as long as you need to experiment, test and build upon your idea, you can without being hassled to pay.
- Your Copyrights: The copyrights of your content is extremely important. Many sites require you to hold your content on their platforms for at least a year before you regain your copyrights back. WordPress.com will instead grant you the rights to your content indefinitely. You can publish it and then take it down to another site as you please.
- Provided Analytics: Analytics are important to staying up on your page views and traffic. This analytic platform is built-in, so there are some limitations. These basics allow you to monitor traffic on the ideas you have. This can be useful when verifying how engaged people are.
- No Ads: You cannot run ads but will instead have to settle with the self-promotion of WordPress.com that automatically runs on your site. This includes the URL you’re provided with when using a free option. Your domain name will include .wordpress/ within the URL.
- Only Some SEO Tools: The SEO tools provided enable tags, titles, and subheads as the fundamentals. Some say this isn’t enough, but it is. You have to know how to embed your keywords into your title and subheads. Search engines are now extracting these for search engine result pages (SERPs).
- 3GB Cap on File Saving: Your files are handled by the site, so you don’t need your own data storage. However, the storage you’re provided with is limited and capped. You’re not provided with any more than 3GB in storage until you upgrade to a paying plan.
- Default Plugins: Default plugins are the options you get with a free plan. The benefit or lack thereof is dependent on your experience. Writing your own HTML means that you won’t need to rely heavily on plugins. Hyper text markup language gives you the option of altering your site to work with snippets that others have to pay for. This flexibility makes WordPress.com a learning tool for HTML.
- No Hosting Necessary: The .com option is likely the fastest way to get a blog up and running. There are no hosting requirements or fees associated with it. Simply start an account, and you have every necessary tool to publish live.
– Aiming for a Larger World Connection
A simple way to look at the .com WordPress is as the foundation for a larger website. Building a website takes time and development. If you’ve created a site in a day and believe that you’re ready to take on the world, think again. There are unseen factors to every idea that need to be worked on, and you are sure to run into them.
The first blog you create will teach you a lot, and it helps to start with the basics as to not get carried away. You may have the option of working with developers who can shortcut your process to avoid the mistakes. A free start to WordPress is still a great choice for those looking to learn it all and to build their concept step-by-step.
– Privacy and Real-Time Viewing
Part of the learning process and the work you do to test your content is possible with privacy and real-time viewing. These options allow you to markup your content as you would in a live setting but without the page being published for the public to see. Doing so allows you to see how the page renders and to perfect it at your discretion.
The “website view” option also shows you how your site looks as viewed through a live web browser. These two are very helpful if you need a free service that allows you to build structure and then play around with it until you’ve found the right touch.
Pros & Cons
The ultimate pro to using the .com site is that it provides paid upgrades that continue working on the same server and platform. Being able to begin with a free account means that you can develop your understanding of blogging before you go live with a URL that the world will recognize you by.
This flexibility gives you the option to go at your own pace, discover the reality of blogging and to find the message that will stick with your audience.
The downside to the free services of the .com WordPress site are the limitations your account has. You can manage monetization but with many dead-ends to your work. The plugins are basic, and the vast features of WordPress won’t be available to you.
What is WordPress.org?
Here’s where you find the same fundamental services but with more tools and plugins as a basic package. The .org site is solely the open-source code. This means that an integration with it allows you to use the open-source code for enhancing your website.
Though you gain unlimited potential, you need to find hosting services, encryptions and storage for your site. All of the basic features, which could be your limitations, that come with the .com site are taken away. An immediate jump into the .org gives you the potential to access all of the tools that were ever created for WordPress.
In essence, what you get is a package that upgrades you to all of the bells-and-whistles that you can find with the paid plans from WordPress.com. The difference is that the hosting has to be provided by someone else.
– Paying for Web-Time
You don’t pay WordPress directly when using the source-code for your website. What you pay for are the neat plugins that catch your eye and the hosting service you partner with. The extension made possible with WordPress allows the entire design of your website to work off the WordPress model. This mainly deals with plugins.
Not all Plugins have to be paid for, but the system that allows these plugins to work require the WordPress code. You will have to buy your own domain, do the research, and ensure that your data is protected once your site is up and running.
– Adjustable Templates
The first thing to see, when entering your dashboard, are the templates. Website templates help webmasters to shortcut much of their work by providing design features that fit a specific theme. A theme can be best described as an objective. Webmasters who only want to create content for their blog can use blog templates.
You may want to run an online store. Templates designed for this objective use layouts that display products, integrate with third party services and even maximize on affiliate marketing for your business. Likely the best thing about templates is that the work has been done, but you can still add and take away functions as you need.
The HTML and drag-and-drop commands you have access to through a free, .com site are also available with a hosting and storage package of your own. The tools allow you to take your design features further because of collaboration. The work developers have already done can then be tweaked and honed for your site.
– Working with HTML
Writing in HTML doesn’t require a complete knowledge. WordPress, however, is ideal for the HTML writer no matter which package or site they work on. This platform, through leading the world in website development, gained its stance by working as a hub for HTML writers. Some of the site’s services make it easy for this.
You don’t have to write HTML once you integrate with the .org site. However, just a little knowledge of how it works allows you to use the dashboard with greater control. Building a website is always a thing in progress. Even when you’ve written your code in perfect order, something on the browser’s end may not render.
For this reason, seasoned professionals have to test what they write and then verify it for any necessary changes. The .org tool gives you the option of learning HTML and even avoiding the use of plugins if you can write the code for your site from scratch.
– Built with a Little Inspiration
Creativity is key to finding a design that will make you stand out. Right from the start, the .org package ensures that you begin with more inspiration than a blank page. You don’t have to write one letter of code. The many already-done-for-you designs means that you can just upload a site template as if you’ve spent years working on it.
This is important because you may find inspiration necessary if blogging or developing is a new venture. The complete package allows you to surf an endless database of page layouts, graphic designs and business templates. These are ideas and graphics that you can take only pieces of or the entire concepts as displayed.
Tools to get Started
Here’s a look at the initial tools for WordPress.org:
- Endless Themes and Support: To get started with, WordPress.org provides an endless stream of themes. What’s more important about this option is the support. App, template and plugin-developers give their clients direct access to support as needed. This includes common troubleshooting issues and direct contact to the developer. You can speak to them when special issues arise or if you’re looking for help in truly customizing content for your site.
- Self-Hosted: The self-hosting option can be an advantage or disadvantage. The advantage is that you decide on the hosting service most suitable for your budget and business idea. These plans can be as low as a few dollars a month to a few hundred. The freedom allows you to adjust accordingly and to build your blog in a slow-and-steady manner. The downside could be the extra work involved in contacting a hosting provider and setting up your own domain.
- Fundamentally Free: When you have hosting and storage setup, the source-code for WordPress is essentially free. You don’t pay to integrate with the technology, and you’ll have access to all of the bells-and-whistles from the start.
- Premium Plugins: Many website developers choose WordPress for its plugins. Just name it, and there’s an agency or professional that has written the HTML code to make it happen. You decide on what you need first, or you can browse the endless selection of applications. This might inspire you and enable things you didn’t think were possible.
- Full Access: Right from the start, you get full access to all of the promises made by WordPress. This includes your own advertising and the customization of your site.
- Security by Your Host: Be sure to consider that storage and hosting are not the same. It’s your responsibility to find security for your website. The measures you can take are for membership data, administrator rights and for enabling your site to place cookies within the web-browsers of your visitors.
- General Support: The support you get from plugin and template developers comes from a large community of professional developers. What you don’t know or can’t do on your own can be searched with the help of these people. There’s a situation you’ll face that has already been answered by this large community.
- Complete SEO Packages: No web developer can overlook the importance of SEO. Unlike the free, limited package at WordPress.com, the .org installation allows you to work with all of the possible tools for SEO. This not only includes title tags and subheadings. You’ll get the chance to write meta descriptions and to set a default title tag for all of your pages. Analytics are also part of the possibilities where you can follow the performance of your readers and the performance of your SEO within search engines.
- Monetization at Your Discretion: The rights for monetization are all within your hands as you integrate your site with WordPress.org. There are no middlemen, and there are no limitations.
– For Those Without the Foreknowledge Take into consideration how much knowledge you currently have on web development. Getting access to the complete package is often ideal when you have little time for development and little experience to achieve it.
– Plugins, and why They Matter
Plugins matter because they do all of the work. Even if you write code for the look you want, you can use what’s already done to scale that work. The predesigned features can also be taken apart at your discretion. You can copy and paste different snippets to build your own complete picture.
The Dynamic:
Plugins turn your site from a basic platform to something that can do anything from take payments, automate emails and sign people up into a membership program.
Name it, and It does It
The search console for plugins is easy to use and accessed directly from your dashboard. You don’t have to wait to discover the latest, new app. You can simply make searches based on what you need and when.
Pros & Cons
The immediate advantage to WordPress.org are the shortcuts. Collaboration is powerful no matter what level of experience you have. A potential downside to these benefits is hosting. Integration is key to making a webmaster’s work simple, so condensing the work is something to consider.
When you have to contact one agency for service and then another for service, your workload increases. Unlike the .com package, which uses the entire WordPress infrastructure, you’ll need to build your site’s hosting and security on your own.
A Bit on Blogging for Effect
Monetizing a website and building a large crowd requires a few steps you can’t overlook. Let’s take a quick look at them here:
#1. The Big Idea
You need an idea. Consider spending a lot of time developing that idea before you feel comfortable sharing it on the web. You need an idea that can sell a product or service if your objective is to make money from an online business.
#2. Publishing and SEO
Blogging, when done successfully, is a high paced content cycle. The fact is, you need new content, and it must be well written. Steadily publishing your work improves your skills and gives you an upper-hand on SEO.
#3. Building Something First
There’s a lot you can do to develop your site away from the public’s view. You have the choice of making pages public or not at the very moment you publish them. Try building your entire site, piece-by-piece, before making it entirely live. This lets you adjust what you didn’t expect and to learn more about the needs of your idea.
#4. Building an Audience
Blogging is only effective when people read your content. Just be sure to invest the same amount of time you did into your idea, the content and SEO as you do for building your following. Don’t be surprised if your favorite blogger is doing more outreach than anything else. …
#5. Upgrading Your Marketing for Full Effect
In full, there are no limitations with WordPress. For this reason, it helps to start off small, and then gradually build your site with more advanced features. Knowing the very small details of your blog will be necessary the more you expand it and the more data it stores.
Closing. …
Starting a blog is exciting! You become a publisher the moment of your first published content. Entering the world of blogging is an opportunity to create a stream of income. You need to make the right choices for this to happen. Begin with your idea, and then develop it based on your budget and experience.
The rest of the pieces fall into place as WordPress offers you a wide entry point. Getting your message out to the world has never been this easy. The copyrights to your work is always in your hands with WordPress, and you won’t miss any new technology as it hits the market. Stay true to your idea, and don’t be afraid to adjust.
There’s a great deal to learn in the playful art of blogging.
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