Step by step procedure & costs for starting blog with custom domain

Blogging is best source of income from internet if done properly. As you have not mentioned which CMS you are choosing for blogging. I will consider both Wordpress and Blogger.

Blogger is a product by Google and hosted by Google itself. It gives you free blogspot sub domain with unlimited bandwidth, whereas in terms of disk space, you will use of your Google Account.
Steps to create a Blogger Blog
1. Go to www.blogger.com
2. Sign in with your Google Account and create a Blogger profile.
3. Search for 'New Blog' button at the top left corner of blogger homepage.
4. Click on it, you will be asked about Title, Domain and Template of your blog. Choose them as per you taste.
5. Your blogger blog is finally up for free of cost. Now you can start adding themes, your social networking plugins and most important publishing posts.

If you don't want to work with blogger's sub-domain then it gives your ability to add 3rd party domain to your blog.
Steps to add a custom domain to Blogger Blog
1. Open you blog dashboard.
2. Click on Setting menu and choose Basic from its sub-menu.
3. You will see your current URL written as domain their. Just below it you will get an option to add custom domain. Click on it.
4. You will be asked about your custom domain and fill it.
5. For verification you will be asked to add name servers to your DNS. If you are capable to do those setting then proceed otherwise I highly recommend you to stop and ask your free technical support to do same for you.

DNS changes will take around 24 hours. So, Please be patient and work with your content till it happens.

Total cost - Rs. 0 (Rs. 600/year if opting for custom domain)

If you are serious about blogging then I would prefer you to go for Wordpress because it gives you real power of working as founder of that blog or website. You will need to invest in hosting and domain if you want to get a fully functional wordpress blog.
Steps to create a wordpress blog
1. Buy hosting and domain (better if both are bought from same vendor)
2. Go to your cPanel through credentials and IP address provided to you.
3. Login into your cPanel and scroll to the bottom. You will find script installer or Softaculous (Best program to install any CMS, it comes with most of the web hostings).
4. Open any one of above and install wordpress through them.
5. You will be asked some question such as Title of your blog, where to install, etc. Fill them according to you. If you are having issue then try to get expert's help of ping me I will definitely help you.
6. Finally after whole process you will be provided a login link embedded in your blog's URL.
7. Navigate to login page and fill your credentials. After doing all these you will be welcomed to dashboard of your website.
8. After that your journey of blogging will start. Add themes, plugins, content, etc. to enhance experience of your readers.

Please do not go for any free hosting because nothing is free, your hard work will be wasted if you rely on them.

Total Cost :- Rs. 2700 (for Bigrock Single Domain Yearly hosting) + Rs. 600/yr (for .com domain, you can get other domain extensions in low price)

Please try to update your blog everyday with content your readers love. This will increase your traffic and subscribers.

Regards,
Joy Joon

Thanks for those updates, Joy. Which provider would you suggest me to opt for if I were to get domain and hosting from same provider? And what would be the costs? Are you sure I can recover the money spent for the same (of course, if I'm seriously active with my blog)?

For starting a blog with a custom domain, you need initially 112 Rs ( Godaddy ) and this if for first and then on 700 per year. So let's talk and sum it up regarding the first-year basis.

You can start your Blog on blogger and there are many sources in google to learn about this blogger and use with your custom domain and start learning things. Just learning these things and writing your content.

After 6-8 months, you will start earning some money and this will continue and based upon your earnings, you can shift to WordPress anytime and continue your Work there.

Blogger Blogs can be deleted by Google, so the shift to WordPress is inevitable at some point.So go with WordPress.

Now if you want to kick start then go with WordPress directly with an investment of around 3-5K for Web hosting and go for some reputed one than of those which are offering you at a cheap cost.

So that's it for summing up, you need approx 4-5K ( with Domain & hosting ) to start a blog from today and learn things.

I assume that you are choosing the route of hosting on your own.


You can use services such as WordPress.com, Blogger and Tumblr. And then use your domain to point nameservers at the location. This is to be done if you choose platform hosting instead of self hosting.

Step 1 : Domain Purchase.

You have a choice to get the domain from websites like Godaddy, Bigrock, Hostgator.in. Or even any other hosting provider of your choice. Which is the right choice? It depends on how comfortable you are with the host or domain provider. I personally keep domain provider and host different to avoid the platform locking. For simplicity sake, you can go ahead with Godaddy. Prices for domains start from anywhere from 299 to 3000 Rs. And the discounts can be applied depending on the domain provider. Each extension has a price. .COM and .ORG being the cheaper whereas .NET and few other regional domains being the expensive ones.

Step 2: Hosting Provider

Get Host: You can get a hosting from either offshore hosting companies or hosting companies from within India. There is not much benefit that you can get from local hosting. Only issue that you may face is the uptime from Indian hosts. Most of the Indian hosts suffer from uptime issues, so I suggest you to go with offshore hosts. You can also use Godaddy hosting. Here are some of the hosts that you can choose - Hawkhost, A Small Orange, BlueHost, HostNine and Site5.

Cpanel: After you purchase hosting, the service will send you an email that contains the information regarding control panel, password for the control panel and the temporary nameserver details. Once you log into the cpanel control panel, go ahead and add your domain. In order to add the domain, go the cpanel's option of Add domain. Here enter the details of the domain and name server. Once you add the name server details, it takes around 8 hours to 24 hours for nameserver to point to your new host. In between you can setup blog on your website using Cpanel.

Install WordPress: Go to cpanel and choose the script that you want for blogging. For example, I assume you want to install wordpress. So you have to choose either Fantastico or the built in script installer in Cpanel of your host. It takes five minutes to point your domain and to add other details into this script installer. Once installed you get the details to login into your WordPress dashboard. e.g. http://yourdemo.com/wp-admin/

Depending on the quality of your content (as in how useful readers feel it is and how many ads they click). The amount you pay for hosting and the domain will be recovered based on that. If you create a blog on topic which brings users who click on ads or purchase something then your financial contribution will be quickly recovered. I personally think that the more traffic you get the more you're likely to make money from affiliate ads. So it's upto you from this point onwards.

@timmappa I recently asked from some professionals about Interserver hosting. I am also going to buy that in some days. You can get unlimited domain support, unlimited space, bandwidth and unlimited email hosting for Rs. 3700 per years. If you have further question then feel free to ask me either on my personal social account or here. Interserver only supports Credit Cards or Paypal, but if you have accounts in banks like ICICI, HDFC, etc. (private international banks) then you can use their debit cards through Paypal.

Regards,
Joy Joon