Reading on Pinterest

Recently I saw a pin on Pinterest: a young woman was convincing others to become a blogger.

The usual story: she was very poor, had an unpleasant job, went to a school she didn’t like, was on food stamps. Then she was looking for different jobs online and somehow started blogging without knowing much about it. That is why she wanted to share her experience with other people - to make our (new bloggers) lives easier.

She was giving away a list of things ‘to do’ to become a blogger and offered a discount on hosting.

I read it and got a flashback.

A few years ago, I read a few similar posts and decided I needed this type of blog (a blog on the free WordPress platform). They said, “Oh, your blog will look professional, beautiful and attractive. You will start making money”.

The thing is, I created my first blog on Google's free platform. After about 6 months I decided I needed something better, something that all those successful bloggers were recommending.

I started a blog on WordPress. WordPress itself is free, but I had to buy hosting and a domain name. Hosting is a place on the Internet where your blog lives (like an apartment). The domain name is the address where that apartment is located.

WordPress gives you more freedom in modifying the look of your blog and posts.

And its domain name can look fancier or maybe simpler/easier to remember. For example, on WordPress it may look like bluebird.com, and on Google it might look like bluebird.blogspot.com

Honestly, the first year of blogging was not that expensive. But starting from the second year, the prices went up. It didn't stop me though.

I liked everything about blogging: the process of writing, creating a post, editing photos and links, and of course, responses from readers.

I published for …4 years(?)… wrote about 300 posts, made nothing, just some unnecessary expenses and experience. As soon as I stopped paying for hosting, I lost all my posts.

A sad lesson. But it’s life.

Looking back, I should have purchased the domain name from Google to fix that blogspot.com part.

Now I know that.

Now, I'm taking my time, thinking of the right name for the blog. Eventually, I will buy one. The most important thing now is to write and publish periodically.

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