There are a number of reasons that having your own blog can be beneficial to your business or career.

• It can help you stay in contact with previous customers.
• It gives you a way of presenting samples of your writing skills.
• It allows you to attract new customers via backlinks and search engine results.
• It can even be a way for you to earn extra income through advertising and product sales.

Getting your own blog up and running is a fairly easy process too.  There are free options out there like blogger.com or you could choose to have your own domain name and hosting package too. For those that are serious about an online writing career, it is a good idea to get your own domain name. Domains can be purchased at a number of places for less than ten dollars, and it gives you an air of professionalism that isn’t awarded to those that host their blogs on a free provider.

For those of you that have decided to use a free blogging service like blogger.com, you can follow their simple online instructions to customize your new blog, and then you are ready to start adding content. Concentrate on only writing about things you know about and don’t forget to include details about yourself and your experience.

For those of you that have decided to take the plunge and own your own website and domain name, you will need to purchase a hosting package. Hosting packages can be found all over that offer different prices, terms, and benefits. Personally, I use HostGator as it fits my needs perfectly. It is affordable (less than $10/month) and allows me to have a decent amount of room and host an unlimited amount of domains and websites. For many people out there, it doesn’t take long after establishing your first site to realize that you want to make another and another. HostGator also includes CPanel access, which is basically an easy to use interface with everything you need to access with your site, including being able to install the powerful and versatile Wordpress blog and content platform with just a few easy clicks. Wordpress is extremely easy to use, after an initial learning process, and can adapt to almost any need you may have. Best of all… it’s a free software package that is continually updated so that it always stays current.

Having a blog online where you can show off your writing skills is essential if you hope to earn a living writing online. Very few future clients will take you seriously as skilled writer if you are unable to point them to some of the online writing that you’ve done in the past, and what better way to do that than to send them to your own website?