I’ve been a blogger for four years, and the more people that find out I’m a blogger (especially friends and family) the more questions I get. They want to know if what I write is true (of course it is!), when I find time to blog (you can always find time to blog, but not to exercise), and most frequently, how do I run my own website.

I learned a lot by trail and error, other generous bloggers offering up their knowledge, and web hosting tutorials. It took the entire four years to get to where I am now (don’t be impressed, there is a lot I don’t know), and I wish I would have dipped a toe in before I jumped in head first. One thing I didn’t realize is that finding a reliable host (a company to store your site data and make it live on the internet) is one of the biggest decisions a blogger makes, and unless due diligence has been completed, a new blogger could easily be stuck with a bad host.

My suggestion to new bloggers that want to own their own domain is to read all the web hosting, web development, and web site management articles to test the waters before they sink time and money into their site. Blogging is a lot less frustrating when you have an idea of how things work and don’t go in blind like I did.

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