How to Create a Free Blog on Blogger

Knowing how to create a free blog on Blogger is useful to many people who use the Internet: Creating a free blog on Blogger is useful to beginner bloggers, or people who want to promote themselves or their businesses online without having to pay a web designer to design their site for them, or get a domain registered or pay for hosting. Creating a free blog on Blogger is also useful to people who already have websites or blogs but who want to save money when getting another site that can prove useful in advertising their existing sites.

Knowing how to create a free blog on Blogger is also useful for people who just want a free online place that is almost like their very own site to display their writing efforts or photos and then share the link to their blog with their family and friends.

Many people even start out with a free Blogger blog only to display their writing, thoughts and ideas, or photos, and then they start realising that they can make money with their free Blogger too – and so an adventure in Internet marketing or blogging or making money online begins.

Whatever your reasons for wanting to create a free blog on Blogger are,
this is how to do it:

1 )
If you don’t yet know what a free Blogger blog looks like, they’re the type of blogs that have website addresses ending in blogspot.com and you can choose from quite a few different templates and customization settings to make your blog look more unique – here are two of my Blogger blogs: makemoneyuseinternet.blogspot.com and teresaschultz.blogspot.com

2 )
Click here to Set up a free blog with Blogger
You will see that you need to sign in with your Google account (if you have a gmail email account, you already have a Google account), so if you do not yet have a Google account, just click the area top right that says “sign up for a new Google account” (it’s free), then, once you have a Google account, go back to the “set up a free blog with Blogger”, and sign into your Google account, and then follow the few short simple steps you need to do when signing up for a Blogger blog account, and then you will be in the dashboard of your new free blog!

3 )
have two tabs open on your computer screen – one for the dashboard you are working in, and one where you are viewing your blog just the same as anybody visiting it would view it – every time you have made a change in your dashboard, click the tab that shows you your blog too, and refresh the page to see if you are happy with the change you have just made.

If you get confused at any stage, and lose where you want to be, just type in the address of your blog eg one of mine would be http://teresaschultz.blogspot.com into the browser bar at the top of your computer screen, then click go or the arrow to go there (to view your blog), and sign into your blog dashboard by clicking the “sign in” at the top right of the screen (if you are already signed into your Google account it will take you to a page that gets you to your blog dashboard, or you can sign into your Google account right there before going to the page that you can access your blog dashboard from)

4 )
If you are not happy with the default template that the blog comes with, start making a new one – in your dashboard beneath where it says “posting” “comments” “settings” etc, you will see “page elements” “edit HTML” and “Template Designer” – click the “Template Designer” and then play around with all the templates and settings until you have the look you desire – it can be exciting spending ages in the template designer area trying to get the look you want, but do not worry if you are not quite 100% happy with it, as you can always come back at a later stage and change it for another look – once happy, click “apply to blog” in the top right corner of your screen.

5 )
Next, do your settings – click the “settings” tab and then work through the different sections of “basic” “publishing” “formatting” etc etc, until you are happy with all your settings – always click “save” when making any changes in your Blogger blog dashboard.

6 )
Go to the “Design” tab to add some gadgets to the sidebar or top area or bottom area of your Blogger blog – this part is fun, so enjoy it and experiment with the different gadgets you would like your viewers to see on your blog – simply click “add a gadget” in the area you wish to put one, then choose from the different gadgets available.

7 )
Click “posting” in your dashboard and give your first post a title, write your content, fill in a few labels, separating each word or phrase with a comma (usually words or phrases that you have repeated at least twice in the content of your post) and click “publish post” and pat yourself on the back – well done!

8 )
Do not panic – enjoy your Blogger blog, knowing that any mistakes you make you can just fix or edit, and you can also move your gadgets around to positions you’d rather see them in – or delete some even and replace them with other gadgets

9 )
Have fun, experiment with the look of your blog, move or change gadgets, get used to using your Blogger blog, write lots of posts, market your blog so that lots of people can visit it, and later consider monetizing your blog with Amazon ads or Adsense ads – or even just by advertising any services you offer or products you sell, or linking to other sites you have, so that you can make a bit of extra income from your free Blogger blog.

PS: if you would rather have your own unique domain name, in other words one that simply ends in .co.za or .com instead of ending in .blogspot.com like so many other blogs, then you need to get a domain registered and you need to get hosting for your blog
- but there is still a free way to get a nice blog onto that domain and host server instead of paying a website designer to design a site for you – or if you find it is too much of a hassle to get the blog loaded yourself, we could do it for you for just R120 – find out more about both the free way and the R120 way here

© copyright Teresa Schultz 2011