Creating a blog couldn’t be easier and yet more complicated in 2020.
There are so many different things to think about, and yet so many different platforms you can use to streamline the process.
Understandably you’ll already have an idea of what you want to write about, I, unfortunately, can’t help you with that, but what I can do is show you how you can set up a killer blog that will drive readers to your website.
We’ll take you through what you’ll need to get started, our five steps to setting your blog up, the best blogging platforms to use, how to get your blog discovered, and the do’s and don’ts of blogging.
But first, we need to establish what type of blog you want to set up.

What type of blog?

Firstly you’ll want to have a goal in mind. What are you aiming to achieve through your blog?
Do you want to pull in more users to your sales pages by writing about your brand, to increase its publicity?
Do you want to build a blog that promotes brands and products from other companies?
Or do you just want to set up a blog documenting your travels around the world?
In order to pick the right software for you, you’ll want to have a grasp before you start of how big this blog is going to be, whether you’re going to monetize it, and what type of blog it’s going to become.
For example, if you’re planning on building an affiliate blogging programme, where you promote other brand’s products and call readers to action to but the products, you’ll be writing a lot of content and will benefit from having a more comprehensive blogging system with lots of plugins to promote sales.
But if you’re looking to just set up a personal, or a personal brand blog talking about yourself and your brand, you may not perhaps need as many comprehensive features as you would if you were building an affiliate blog.
You may also want to build an online portfolio of your work, which could require an entirely different piece of blogging kit, as opposed to the traditional blog that hosts articles and journals.

What you’ll need to get started.

There are 3 key things you’ll need to get up and running.

1. A blogging platform.

After you’ve identified the type of blog you want to set up, plus whether you’re going to make money from it, you’ll then need to pick a blogging platform tailored to your needs. Many people chose to operate on WordPress as it is one of the most comprehensive blogging systems going, but they forget platforms like Wix and Squarespace that are great for both helping you save and make money and are great options for those who are less tech-savvy and are new to the blogging game. Plus if you’re blogging for business, you might want to think about using LinkedIn for your business blog.
We’ll go into more detail on what blogging platforms are best for your needs shortly, but make sure to keep in mind your objectives and technical experience when choosing the right platform for you.

1. A hosting platform.

Every website needs a web host to store their website’s information on the internet. A web host is an online service provider that will store your website’s information on one of its online servers. This will put your blog out there to the world. The best web hosts will perform a variety of functions for you, for example, Wix is an all-in-one package that will host your website for you, allow you to register a domain name, and has easy to use website design tools to help you start your blog.
Web hosting can be expensive though so make sure you pick the best value for money host that can cater to the amount of traffic you have running through your website. Check out our post on the 11 best hosting providers. [Insert blog link here]

1. A domain name.

I’m sure by now you already know what sort of blog you want to set up, whether that’s a travel, blog, a blog accompanying your online store, or perhaps an affiliate marketing product review blog. You’ll have a niche and an idea and now all you need is a name. Every website online has what’s called a domain name. It’s included in the website address at the top of your search bar, for example, our domain name is www.digitalsupermarket.com.
You’ll need to register a domain name after you purchase a hosting plan, to enable customers to find your site quickly and easily. One good tip is to find a hosting platform like Bluehost or GoDaddy that will provide you with a free domain name when you register for one of their web hosting plans as domain registration can be fairly pricey. Pick a great domain name that is easy for customers to read and type into Google so they can find it easier online.
TOP TIP: To increase your blog’s search engine ranking, and to help more people find you on Google, try to pick a domain name that has either a .com or .co.uk ending. These domains often rank a lot higher in Google searches than .org’s, .net’s, and .info’s, and for that reason can be slightly more expensive, yet can help boost your site’s reach and credibility.

The Best Blogging Platforms For You.

There are a wealth of platforms out there catering to all your blogging or online portfolio needs. We have listed some of the main ones below shedding some light on what needs they service and why they might be a great option for you.

WordPress - The best software to give you full customisation.

WordPress is perhaps one of the most renowned blogging platforms in the world, running approximately 35% of the internet. It’s favoured highly by professional bloggers because it gives you total freedom to do whatever you want with your blog. WordPress can help you build your blog using one if its search engine optimised themes, you can customise using its drag and drop website builder tool to create a stunning blog.
What’s more, is you’ll be able to use its professional blogging service to post your content online and take advantage of the hundreds of third party app plugins, you can integrate into your blog, to improve automation, add new features, and drive traffic to your site. The only downside of WordPress is that it can be quite technical and can take some time getting used to, but once you’ve got the hang of things, you’ll have great control over everything on your webpage.
Pros:
Cons:

• Full customisation
• Domain name registration
• Fully scalable
• Tons of third-party plugins and apps
• Technical and can take some getting used to
• Not the best if you’re not tech-savvy or are just starting out.

Wix - Best for monetizing your site.

Wix is probably the most streamlined and easiest blog providers. It’s so simple and easy to use, it’s therefore great for anyone just starting out in the blogging world. You can customise one of its stunning templates with Wix’s drag and drop editor, and then upload blog posts to your site by slotting in pictures, gifs, social media buttons, sidebars, and other widgets that will help your blog stand out.
One of the coolest features about Wix is its marketplace integration, where you can install a whole variety of third-party applications to your blog to provide your users with greater features and usability. Wix is the perfect all-in-one blogging solution to help you easily build a platform to amplify your business to the world, helping you to make more money, but it can also save you a lot of money as it’s cost-efficient plans roll up, web hosting, blog posting, and domain registration all into one product!
Check out our Wix review and our comparison of Wix and Squarespace for a deep dive into Wix’s main blogging features. [Insert link here]
Pros:
Cons:

• Streamlined and easy to use blogging software
• Includes as a package, web building tools, domain registration, and web hosting
• Tons of third-party plugins and apps on the Wix marketplace
• Great platform to help make money and save money on its reasonably priced subscription plans
• Don’t get the same full control as you see with WordPress
• Locked into using Wix’s templates.

Squarespace - Best for creating visually stunning blogs.

Squarespace is very similar to Wix, in that it is an all-in-one web building and blogging platform that can help you build a blog you can monetize efficiently. It sets itself aside though through its better design and customisation features, making it one of the best platforms on the marketing if you’re looking to design a visually aesthetic blog. I’d recommend using this platform if you are a business operating in some sort of design, arts, or culinary industry.
Although it offers minimal template options, Squarespace’s templates are works of art and offer you great customization when building your blog. Plus Squarespace offers a great blogging tool that lets you schedule posts and customize your blog to suit more mobile audiences.
Pros:
Cons:

• Streamlined and easy to use blogging software
• Can build a visually stunning blog on Squarespace with its streamlined tools
• Excellent blogging features
• All-in-one web host, domain registrar, and web builder
• Can’t add third-party applications on Squarespace

LinkedIn - Best for blogging businesses.

Aside from setting up a blog on your own site, corporate entities can use LinkedIn to enhance and amplify their presence online. LinkedIn has more than 575 million users, most of whom are professionals and members of corporate conglomerates, and you can use this social platform to target some of the most influential people in the world.
If you’re blogging about business this is the perfect platform to use a pre-existing community of people to enhance your social standing. You’ll then be able to build connections and followers on your profile who can easily share your blog on their platform through a couple of simple clicks.
Pros:
Cons:

• Utilise LinkedIn’s pre-existing community of business people to amplify your brand
• Target corporate directors and influential people directly through LinkedIn
• Check out what people are looking at on LinkedIn and tailor your content to that market
• Again you are confined within what LinkedIn’s platform will let you do, it’s not your site and you don’t have full customisation

Instagram - Best for the Artists.

Instagram is one of the biggest blogging sites in the world and without realising it, we are all technically bloggers in some way with our Instagram accounts, right? Ultimately for professional use, it is great for building a portfolio that has some form of visual or graphic eye-catching media around it. Instagram lets you post videos, photos, boomerangs, even write a blog in the photo’s caption if you wanted to!
Best of all, Instagram is free, and you can use its business software to link up your online store, to drag users away from your profile, using its product tagging features, and land them in your online checkouts. Our top tip for using Instagram is to post regularly and keep on the theme of your blog. Don’t go off-piste as you’re followers will catch on quickly and unfollow you. And with 1 billion people using the platform each day, it is a great way to gain people’s attention and build your brand’s presence online.
Pros:
Cons:

• Best for the creatives.
• Totally free and easy to use interface.
• Access to a pre-existing community of people.
• Online selling capabilities.
• Again you are confined within what Instagram’s platform will let you do, it’s not your site and you don’t have full customisation

The Do’s And Don’ts Of Blogging

Here are a couple of top tips to bear in mind when building your blog to help you create an awesome, lead driven platform.

The Don’ts

Don’t use complicated language too soon.

With that in mind, do include language that your target audience will understand. But remember they are still here to learn, so don’t drop people in at the deep end right away by using complex jargon off the bat. Define terms and spell it out in layman’s terms for people at the outset, and as the post goes on, then introduce more complex writing. Introducing technical jargon at the start of your posts is an instant turn off for most readers.

Don’t waffle - Keep it succinct.

People want to get to the punchline now. 43% of people admit to skimming through blogs to get to the information they need, meaning to get your blogging site converting leads, you need to engage the reader early on and offer information succinctly throughout your post.
Plus don’t make your blog too long. Depending on what you’re writing, a lot of people will see large volumes of text and will switch off immediately. There is no set limit for what a good and bad amount of text is, that’s something you’ll have to figure out per your industry, but from my experience, the shorter, the better.

Don’t make headlines too long.

Also ensure that your headline is not more than 60 characters long. If it gets too long it won’t rank well in search engines and people just won’t want to read it. Check out this headline analysis tool which will analyse the effectiveness of your proposed headlines.

Don’t plagiarise or use credited images.

Copying other people’s work is lazy and can land you in a lot of hot water in extreme cases if you breach a copyright regulation. But it’s also just unfair on the person who has worked hard or been creative to write that work. The same goes for images, people need to make a living from the content and photos they’re taking so don’t steal that off them.

The Do’s

Do write killer headlines.

People are like goldfish. You only have about 3 seconds to get their attention. That’s why it is important to write catchy, funny, and enticing headlines to draw your reader in. One good way to do it is to use the “How To” and “10 Best” strategies. These sorts of titles telling people ‘How to set up a blog’ or ‘the ten best web hosting platforms’ are search engine optimised, lead winning titles that rank highly in Google searches. Try them out and see!

Do post regularly.

The key to creating a great blog that builds leads is posting regularly. Although it is not the best idea to post regularly. Ideally, you want to post 3-4 times a week to get the best influx of traffic to your site. You’ll also want to check out when’s best to post for your target audience, for example, if you’re in the FOREX market, you’ll want to post your blogs perhaps at 8 AM, before the markets open when city workers are on their staring at their phones on their morning commuter trains to the city.

Do share on social media.

Share your content far and wide on your social platforms. Everyone is on social media these days and its outreach is simply phenomenal. That’s why you should always share your posts to your social channels to get greater traffic on your website, and include share buttons all-around your blog to invite your readers to share your articles too!

Do use SEO keywords to drive more traffic.

In a nutshell, SEO keywords are the phrases people put into search engines when they are looking for information on a certain subject. They are how you get found on your website. Depending on what you are writing about, there is always a set of keywords relating to that topic that you can implement, to help you show up higher in people’s google searches. For example, people might regularly search in google, ‘what is the best compost for growing sunflowers?’ When you come to writing about growing sunflowers in your blog, you might want to use these words or incorporate this question into your blog somewhere, to help you rank higher on Google.

Do use call’s to action to take your readers to the next step.

If you don’t challenge your reader at the end of your blog to follow you on Instagram, or check out your sales pages, you’ll never get the leads or sales you are looking for. With that in mind, build compelling calls to action at the end of each of your posts, to pull readers into taking the next step. Check out our post on landing pages to see a couple of cool ways on how to implement calls to action on your site [insert link here].

Do identify a target audience.

People will often tell you to write as though you were in the shoes of the person you’re looking to bring to your website, but it’s true! Identify what type of people you’re writing to, for instance, if you’re writing a business blog about FOREX trading, you’ll write with potential traders in mind who have one eye on the stock market and the other on your blog. Or if you’re a wedding florist, you’ll set your portfolio up to target those people looking to get married in the next year.

Leads, Sales, Results.

Blogging is one of the most influential marketing strategies in the world and the best bloggers can reap some awesome rewards for producing some truly awesome content.
It is fairly straightforward to get started and we advise if you’re a small business, or someone with minimal blogging experience, to try out Wix or Squarespace first before you jump into using more technical platforms like WordPress. Once you’re up and running remember our top tips on what to do and what to avoid when writing your blog. Plus don’t forget to think about optimising and adding useful applications to your site to help you build and grow your content. Check out these 39 awesome blogging tools you can use to drive greater traffic to your site!
Found this article useful? Make sure you share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter and let us know in the comments if you have any other useful blogging tips.

There are over 3400 iOS & Mac apps on sale for Black Friday & Cyber Monday and I looked at them all. Here are the best:
Updated with new apps for Cyber Monday. Updates in bold

Games

• Rules!, delightfully fun puzzle/challenge game, great for all ages; now $0.99! (orig $2.99)
  
• Lords Of Waterdeep, one of my favorite iOS games; fantastic port & super fun; now $2.99! (orig $6.99)
  
• Kingdom Rush Origins, super fun tower defense game; now $0.99! (orig $2.99)
  
• Kingdom Rush Frontiers, great tower defense game; now $0.99! (orig $2.99)
  
• Thomas Was Alone, Best of App Store 2013 award-winning mystery/puzzle game; now $1.99! (orig $4.99)
  
• Disney Karaoke: Frozen, because you have kids; now $3.99! (orig $7.99)
  
• Lara Croft Go, strategy adventure game w/ a female heroine!; now $2.99! (orig $4.99)
  
• Agricola, quality game of skill & planning; now $2.99! (orig $6.99)
  
• Blokus, port of the super fun family strategy game; now $0.99! (orig $1.99
  

Productivity & Utilities

• Due, highly recommended reminders & timers app; now $2.99! (orig $4.99)
  
• Notability, an Apple Editor's Choice note-taking & drawing app; now $3.99! (orig $5.99). Notability for Mac also on sale.
  
• aTimelogger 2, track your personal & project time use; now $0.99! (orig $2.99)
  
• Opener, clever app that opens links w/in apps via extension; now $0.99! (orig $1.99)
  
• Pixelmator for iOS, HIGHLY recommended universal graphics editor; huge sale, now $1.99! (orig $4.99)
  
• Fantastical 2 for iPhone, HIGHLY recommended calendar w/ natural language; now $2.99! (orig $4.99)
  
• Fotograf, a great photo editor with stunning filters; now free! (orig $1.99)
  
• Clips, clipboard manager, Pro upgrade on sale; now $0.99! (orig $1.99)
  
• Dispatch Email, email integrated w/ dozens of apps, HIGHLY recommend; now $2.99! (orig $6.99)
  
• iWriter, minimalist text editor with TextExpander support; now $0.99! (orig $2.99)
  
• 2Do for iOS, powerful to-do app; big sale, now $7.99! (orig $14.99). 2Do for Mac also on sale.
  
• AppHop, terrific App Store analysis tool for bloggers & developers; now $0.99! (orig $3.99)
  
• Linky, terrific app for sharing links to multiple social media; now $1.99! (orig $3.99)
  
• Screens VNC Remote Access for iOS, great remote access solution; now $9.99! (orig $19.99). Screens VNC Remote Access for Mac also on sale.
  
• Stocks Pro, real time stock/FOREX tracker; now $10.99! (orig $14.99)
  
• Templates For Pages, over 2000 templates for Pages documents; now $12.99! (orig $24.99)
  
• Deliveries, highly recommended, best package tracker app there is; now $2.99! (orig $4.99). Deliveries for Mac also on sale.
  
• Graphic for iPhone, vector illustrator & graphics editor; now $0.99! (orig $2.99)
  
• iThoughts, mind mapping tool; now $5.99! (orig $11.99)
  
• Longscreen,, recommended app for merging & joining screenshots; now $0.99! (orig $2.99)
  
• Paprika Recipe Manager for iPhone, digitize & manage recipes, plan meals & generate shopping lists automatically; now $2.99! (orig $4.99). Mac and iPad versions also on sale.
  
• PDFPen 2, the gold standard for PDF mobile management; now $10.99! (orig $19.99)
  
• aNote Screenshot, clever action extension to markup screenshots; now free! (orig $2.99)
  
• Just Press Record, audio recorder for Apple Watch, iPhone, & iPad; now $1.99! (orig $2.99)
  

Resources & Education

• The Elements by Theodore Gray, interactive app of the periodic elements; now $2.99! (orig $13.99)
  
• Where To?, find local points of interest with ease; now $0.99! (orig $2.99)
  
• Weather Line, the weather app Gruber uses; now $1.99! (orig $3.99)
  
• Geekbench 3 by Primate Labs, now free! (orig $0.99)
  
• Essential Anatomy 5, powerful tool for seeing the body; now $14.99! (orig $24.99)
  
• iTranslate Voice, transcribes & translates your spoken words; now $2.99! (orig $6.99)
  
• Life Application Study Bible, ; now $4.99! (orig $29.99)
  

And that's it! The best app deals of the more 3000 apps on sale for Black Friday & Cyber Monday! Enjoy getting some fantastic apps at great prices! (If you find a sale no longer offered, please let me know and I'll update the post)
Note: These were originally tweeted out via my Twitter, @MarkDMill where I tweet out the best app deals each day.
Edit: removed Mac & iPad links as I missed that in the rules. Sorry it's no longer 49 apps, but you can see the complete list on my website if you want. Edit: added more apps