How To Create A Free Blog On the BlogSpot

Having a blog is a great thing, because you can share anything you like, and if you are wise you can also earn a decent income from your blog. (Read: My AdSense Earnings for Five Years).

Here at ShoutMeLoud I have written about many blogging platforms that you can use to create a blog for yourself.  One of my favorite methods for creating a blog is to use your own domain and hosting, while creating your blog via WordPress.

We have talked a lot about self-hosted WordPress blogs in previous posts, and there is no doubt that this presents a better blogging platform when compared to free blogging platforms like BlogSpot.com and WordPress.com. However, many newbies who want to start blogging don’t want to make an initial investment of funds to create a blog, and this is reasonable.

There are many blogging platforms which offer users the ability to create free blogs. If you are looking for free blog creation, my suggestion would be to start blogging from WordPress.com or BlogSpot.com.  Once you have some blogging experience, you can advance and become more professional with your self-hosted WordPress blog.

BlogSpot allows you to create a free blog, but it does have some limitations.  However, as I mentioned above, for a beginner it is a good way to learn to create a blog and to begin the blogging process.

This post is dedicated to the “beginners” who are new to blogging but would like to get started, and who desire an easy way to learn the process involved.

Before I begin the complete tutorial, there are a couple of things you should know:

First, BlogSpot is a blogging platform by Google.  It offers you an opportunity to start a blog, though all your images will be hosted by Picasa which is also part of Google.  BlogSpot, then, is a Google-centric blogging platform.

Second, if the goal of your blog is to make money and to have a blog that is professional in appearance, I would recommend that you create your blog using WordPress. It’s easy, and with the help of our exclusive free WordPress guide, you can create your blog in the next 60 minutes.

Step-by-step Guide to Creating a Free Blog on BlogSpot:

To create your free blog site, head over to BlogSpot.com and login using your Google account. If you don’t have a Google (gmail) account, create one for free.

For the first time user, you will see an option to use the identity from your Google Plus profile, or you can use your limited BlogSpot profile. I would recommend using your Google Plus profile.

Once you are logged in, click on the new blog or click on this link to directly go to create a free blog.

Name your blog:

The first thing you need to do is add a name and select your domain name. I suggest you read how to select a domain name for additional information.

Avoid using your name as the domain name, and instead use some generic domain name that you can brand later with your custom domain.

You can select the blog template here (you can change it anytime), and click on “create the blog”.

Now your blog is created, but you are not done yet. There are few settings that you need to set on your newly created BlogSpot blog to make it easy to use.

Now you are on the BlogSpot dashboard where you will see your blog’s backend.  From here you can go to “settings” and make changes to improve your blog’s visibility.  Here is a screenshot of what you should be seeing:

From here you can click on “Posts” > “New post” and start writing your first blog post! Before you write your first post, however, I would recommend that you go to “Pages” and create few pages such as the “About” page which should be about you and what your blog is about. You can read my earlier guide on why you need an “About” page for your blog.

Most importantly, you should change your blog’s template as the default one is generic and boring in my opinion. Here I have compiled a list of free BlogSpot templates that you can download and install on your blog. Alternatively, you can go to “Settings”> “Template” and from there make changes such as the addition of your logo to the header of your BlogSpot blog, or the addition or removal of various other features noted.

Once you have a few blog posts up and running, you can go to “Settings” > “Earnings” and enable AdSense for your blog. This way you can also earn money from your free BlogSpot blog. Do read my earlier guide on how to sign up for an AdSense account.

So your blog is almost ready, and you can start writing posts. There are few more things you can do, and I cover these in the video tutorial below.