Just make sure you read the post until the end, because we have a special bonus gift for you. Hey guys, welcome to the digital marketing mastery course.
And today's post is really exciting and honestly the most important post of this entire course. In the next lesson I gave you an overview on why starting a blog is one of the most important step in your journey to become a good digital marketer.
In my own journey of seven plus years of doing digital marketing, I have never learned the trade just by reading about it or reading a post about it.
What is Digital Marketing
Unless until I practice it, I'm not able to learn the skill. So, even today whenever a new tool comes up or whenever a new technique of doing digital marketing comes up. I always make sure that I do it by hand.
Digital marketing is not something that you can learn just by looking at a theory or reading posts. Unless and until you are implementing the tactics, you won't be able to learn it. Trust me guys, if you really want to become a good digital marketer.
A pro-digital marketer, then starting a blog is the most important step. And not just that, just to spice up the deal we are even giving a Rs3,000 course for free for all the people who will be sending us the hosting receipt.
How to Start a Blog
We will be talking more about it later in the post, how you can do that. So, let's go directly into the post. So, whenever you are building a blog, the first thing that you need to know is the domain name. What is a domain name? A domain name is a blogname.
A domain name is an address where internet users can access your website. Like the case of Facebook. Now, "facebook.com" is the domain name for the company Facebook. Similarly, "google.com" is the domain name for the company, Google.
What is Domain to start a blog
You must know about domain name to start a blog. I know it's very simple, but still I'm explaining it for people who don't know it. Now, there can be multiple extensions of your domain name. The popular ones are ".COM" definitely. Like, "google.COM" , "facebook.COM" , "instagram.COM". ".COM".
Is suited more for the international audience. But when you are targeting specific countries, like if you take the case of India, if you want to target only the Indian audience, then instead for going for ".COM" you can go for ".IN". Like my case, my blogaddress is "anything.IN".
Because my primary audience will be Indian audience that's why I didn't go for a ".COM" but rather went in for a ".IN" domain. Now, after the domain name, to start a blog you need a hosting.
What is Hosting
What is a web hosting? A web hosting is a service that allows organizations and individuals to post a blogor a web page on the internet.
So, just like you have Elmira and covers to store your stuff, similarly your blog also needs a place to store all the files and the folders. A blogis nothing but a directory of files and various folders that are rendered through a server or a particular domain name.
So, whenever you're thinking of starting a blog, you need two things: first is a domain name, and second is a bloghosting. Now, hosting also comes in different varieties so there's a shared web hosting, cloud hosting and then there is dedicated hosting.
So let me explain each of them to you. We shall start with the shared web hosting. Now shared hosting is a type of web hosting that allows multiple websites to share a physical web server and its resources among the hosted websites.
So whenever you are buying a web hosting, you're actually buying the space of the various servers. So there are various companies that sell web hosting. Like SiteGround, GoDaddy, BlueHost, HostGator. So whenever you are buying a hosting.
You are actually buying some space on the server of this company. So these companies have massive servers so you are actually paying a monthly fee for some space on these servers. So when we talk about shared web hosting, you're actually taking a small part of the server.
Because taking the entire server will be really expensive, so shared web hosting is a solution for people to start their blog at a very cheap price by taking a small part of the server. So by introducing this concept of shared hosting, multiple websites can then be in the same server.
Buy a Hosting to start a blog
And also shared hosting is the cheapest option. So to understand this clearly, let's take an example. So let's assume you are looking for a flat and you've seen this flat which is really amazing and it has three rooms.
But your requirement is only for one room. So you don't want to pay for the entire flat, when you only need one room, right? So the solution is that, three people can take one room each, so that each person does not have to pay the entire amount of the flat.
Rather, just one third of the entire rent. So that's how shared web hosting works. A server has multiple websites and they pay a small fee just to have some part of the server usage. And this is what you will be purchasing to start a blog as well because this is the cheapest option.
And also for beginners or people who are starting out with digital marketing or just starting a blog, a shared web hosting is more than enough because you are not driving a huge amount of traffic, because you're just starting out.
cloud hosting
Now the next come the cloud hosting, this is the one I use because my blogis driving approximately 120,000 people per month, and to handle such kind of traffic you need a good server and that is why I am paying a premium for the server and I am also using cloud hosting.
Now cloud hosting services provide hosting on virtual servers which pull their computing resource from extensive underlying networks of physical web servers. Now just like I told you the cloud hosting is used by established websites that are driving a massive traffic.
And because it is costly as well so startup people or people who are just starting up with digital marketing or starting with blogging, they should not consider it. Right now I am paying approximately $120 per month just for my cloud hosting.
Whereas in shared hosting you will only be paying approximately $3 to $4 per month. In cloud hosting your files are hosted in a cloud server. Now dedicated hosting is for the extremely popular websites that are driving millions of people on a monthly basis.
And they need that kind of server resources, so this is when dedicated hosting comes into play. So websites like Facebook.com, Google.com, Instagram.com or even very big popular websites which are driving multi-million people per month.
dedicated hosting to start a blog
They need to go for dedicated hosting. In dedicated hosting instead of sharing the server with multiple websites, you own the entire server. So you own all the resources. And also dedicated hosting is quite complex.
So you'll really not gonna- as a beginner- you cannot manage it. You will need to hire a server person who will be handling the entire server. But dedicated hosting are extremely fast and can handle enormous traffic just because you are not sharing the space with anyone else.
To people who are just starting or individual bloggers, dedicated hosting is not a solution it is more for big businesses. So these are the three types of hosting.
Free hosting to start a blog website
Now let's talk about free hosting. Especially in India, "free" is something that is really preferred. And people think "why pay for hosting when you can everything for free?"
But you have to understand one thing that nothing good is free in this world. Yes, free hosting does exist, but they have their limitations, they have drawbacks and honestly, they are not worth it. If you are starting this digital marketing journey.
Then you have to invest some money in paid hosting. Because as I said, the only way you can learn digital marketing is through practical knowledge and these free web hosting providers they are honestly very shitty, they have limited server resources.
Problem faced on free hosting
They have unstable performances. That means your blog will go blank or will give 404 error even with small traffic. And the worst part is there will be no technical support. Since you are starting out your blogging, sooner or later you will face issues.
You will face problems like, installing WordPress, or some plugin is not working. Then you need someone to talk to. That's where the web hosting company comes into play.
There are support people, you can directly call them or live chat with them and they will solve the issue for you. But with free hosting, nothing like that comes.
But with free hosting there is no technical support. And also in my experiences, I have seen that free hosting scams are going on, where they will offer you free hosting for a month or two, but you won't even realize that after two months or maybe three months or even four months.
Recommend to buy hosting to start a blog website
They'll charge you a huge renewal fee. So personally I would recommend you to stay away from free hosting, and rather just invest a few dollars in a paid hosting plan. Since you are investing your time and energy in learning digital marketing.
And with my seven plus years of digital marketing experience the one recommendation that I can give you is just invest your dollars in this paid hosting plan and this stuff alone will give you a huge push in becoming a very good digital marketer.
So the good thing about paid hostings are that you get unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth with any email account. So with unlimited space and unlimited bandwidth you can drive as many people as possible.
Yes, there's an upper limit of around 10 to 20,000 visitors per day, but if you are just starting out that is more than enough. Also with paid hosting plan there are so many benefits.
Instead of worrying the technicalities in installing WordPress or all, which we will be talking about in the next lesson, there's one click installation. All you have to do is click on a couple of icons, and almost everything will be installed automatically.
And also there's a money-back guarantee if you are not happy with the hosting you can directly call the company and they will refund you your money. And the most important reason for going for a paid blog hosting is the experienced support staff.
Conclusion
So guys, I'll see you in the next lesson, where I'll tell you how to set up your blog like a professional blogger. Hey guys, I hope you understood the simple process of starting a blog from scratch. In the next post, we'll be going into the technical details.
The settings, the configuration, but worry not. It's all simple. And I will be showing you everything on screen. Also, I have a special bonus for you. Since digital marketing is all about practical knowledge, so for all those people who send us their hosting receipt.
We'll be giving you a free course, which we usually sell for Rs3,000. In this free bonus course you'll be getting four amazing posts. Like how to drive enormous traffic to your blog. How to make your blog lightning fast.
And all the tips and strategy that I personally use to make $5 to $10,000 from affiliate marketing. So all you have to do is, send us your hosting receipt and we'll give you the link for our free bonus course.
Also if you have any question, any query, feel free to ask it in our comment section, you can also tweet us as "#seo-stuck" and I'll be answering your queries. I'll see you in the next post.