How to create your own blog

Oftentimes when I send a link to my blog to someone, they reply with, "Wow, this is cool, I wish I had a blog."

Whether you're into sports, politics, music, or just want a place (outside of social media) to post hi-resolution pictures with as much descriptive text as you want, a blog is always an option.

Many times, you may want to document something you've just done, like a trip to the beach, or a vacation to the Great Wall of China. A blog is the perfect way to keep a record of your thoughts, and also a great place to cheaply promote your business.

The winning combination is this:
http://www.blogger.com/
http://www.porkbun.com/

First you sign up with Blogger to create a blog, then sign up with Porkbun to register a domain name. Blogger is a 100% Free service and your information is hosted by Google. A domain on Porkbun for 1 year will run you about $4.50.

You can sign up for a Blogger blog with your Google (i.e. G-mail) account. Not all of your sensitive Google-based info is explicitly linked to your blogger blog, although some defining characteristic will carry over, for instance, your profile picture.

When you find a Porkbun domain that's satisfactory, you will then assign the domain to your blogger blog fairly easily. The total setup time is about 15 minutes. Here's a tutorial on how to do it: https://kb.porkbun.com/article/101-how-to-connect-your-domain-to-blogger.

There are a few more steps that are fairly straightforward from the blogger side of things, basically enabling the custom domain, and also enabling www redirects, both are buttons you have to find and press (i.e. activate) within your blogger control panel to activate the functionality. It's pretty easy. There isn't a big wait time either, it's pretty much instantaneous.

Because blogger is a free service, this really is a money-saver. Your blogger blog could even be formatted to be a professional forward-facing website with a PayPal "Buy Now" button. By finding the correct theme, you can have your blogger blog show different pages for different aspects of your business or personality.

If you are wondering if you should start a blog, I'd definitely recommend checking out blogger.com. I've enjoyed the experience of having somewhere to post my thoughts on a variety of different topics without being constrained by text-length limitations, or certain social-media-based etiquettes, etc. The blogger interface allows you to express yourself without feeling any pressure to conform to a certain post format. Good luck! - Mike