How to Start Your Own (Intrepid) Blog

Hello, intrepid readers and future intrepid(er) writers! Have you been chomping at the bit, itching to share those oh-so-meaningful, insightful and clever thoughts of yours on that new-fangled thing people call the internets? Have you navigated over texts from last night, or chuckled over some hipster puppies and thought hey, I too, can do this?

Want to become a blogger?

Well you are in luck, our similarly sarcastically-minded brethren. Because here, in this little box of less than 300 words, we’re going to tell you how you can do so. And then get super famous.

So, part one: an idea. What do you want to write about? Every good blogger needs an idea. Maybe you have all sorts of crazy mismatching socks, and you want to take pictures of said socks with little cartoon thought bubbles of your socks’ thoughts written in! Awesome! Or maybe you have a neighbor who likes to have sex — really, really loud sex — and you want to complain about that a lot! Kinda creepy ... but also great! Or perhaps you just want to chat about your day-to-day life. Go for it! As long as you have some sort of theme, you are on the right track. (And I’d say, the more randomly obscure, while still broadly marketable, the better. Voila: Hipster Puppies.)

Once you’ve got your idea down, it’s time for the title. This is super important. Many have tried and then failed, all based on a boring blog title. Remember “This is My Blog It’s Super Cool”? No, you don’t. Because it never existed. Choose something pithy, snappy and amusing. Or super angsty, if you’re blogging on LiveJournal or are still a 15-year-old emo boy. (Don’t do that.)

Got your title? Good. Now you need some technical prowess, some cashola or a Tumblr Account.

You have a number of quality options if you want to get started with a blog.  The fastest way is probably to go to tumbler.com and sign up, and you're on your way!  If you’re stuck within the Google universe, you might want to check out blogger.com, which allows you to easily integrate AdSense (read: $$) to your blog.  If you like open-source goodness, you can sidle on over to wordpress.com and sign up for a free blog there. 

Thus far, we’ve detailed options that even your grandmother could set up. If you want to take more ownership of your scribblings on the net, you need to buy your own domain name (like www.[insertwittywebaddresshere].com), buy hosting and then install blogging software to it. Domain names and hosting can be bought at godaddy.com and bluehost.com, respectively, though there are a myriad of other sites out there.  Once you have bought your domain name and space for hosting, you need to direct to  GoDaddy to your nameservers on BlueHost. Google to find detailed instructions — it’s really just copying and pasting between forms.  Go to your website in your favorite browser, and it should start right up!

So now your blog is rolling! Think you’re done? Guess again! (Dratz!) Now you have to market that bidness. How to do so? Well, our advice is to gather some super juicy gossip on an existing blog and then blackmail them until they agree to blog roll you or hire you on as a guest blogger. For instance: Julie had some super juicy gossip on one James Elkins. And, voila: Blogger on cornellsun.com.

P.S. — You actually have to write things.