Ok - the way I will be laying this how to series out is in a simple format. Each post will be a different step toward the end goal of having a monetized blog, i.e. a MonthlyCheck ! I am going to keep it straight forward enough for beginners and interesting enough for existing blog owners to get some handy tips. Another factor that I use is that everything must be FREE. If you want to move all of this to your own web server, thats a whole other conversation. Lastly, we aim for high traffic to your blog - lots 'o clicks and visits. Let's get started!

STEP 1: Think of your niche idea. To be successful you must have a unique idea or area of focus that narrows the number of choices a surfer has to read. You can't compete with the big players, but you can when you focus on something like ONLY Xbox 360 First Person Shooter video games or ONLY Chevrolet Corvettes from 1970-1975. Focus, focus, focus. This is probably one of the hardest items for this post: What will I blog about? Be passionate about it as you need to update your blog at least 3 times a week. Everyday is best.

STEP 2: Find a blog host site. I recommend Blogger for a number of reasons: It's free, easy to use, Google Adsense integration, automatic 'pinging' to alert search engines of new entries, and single login with Gmail (can be a nuisance with multiple logins - so keep your blog profile ID the same as your Adsense, Google Analytics and blog email address). You could also select WordPress or any other wide range of free blog hosts. For the sake of simplicity, this whole blog will focus on Blogger. You use www.blogger.com to log in, create and manage your blogs and your actual blog site will be on the blogspot domain (for instance this blog is http://monthlycheck.blogspot.com), but I post and manage through blogger.com.

Here's what you do in order:
a. Decide on what the blog's name will be. Keep it as concise and on topic as possible and be prepared to have to change it if the name is already gone.
b. Go to www.gmail.com and create a new user (best to copy what you think you will name the blog, like onlyxboxfps @ gmail . com, or log in with an existing account.
c. Go to www.blogger.com
d. Take the tour if you like, or simply click on the 'Create your blog now' link.
e. Use your existing Gmail log in, or current one. Fill out the form.
f. Find a URL that Blogger has available FIRST, then name your blog to match. Name your blog something that is exactly what you are talking about. For instance: 360 Degrees of FPS ! It is important to name your blog on topic as it helps a great deal for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
g. Next select your template for the blog - this is what your blog will look like (font, colors, layout etc.) - I recommend selecting a simple white background with black font and blue highlights so that placing ads is easy. I am using the Tekka template for this blog; simple and very readable - the links are blue like everyone is used to. You can change this later, but you will probably have to change your ads to match too which is a pain. Once you get better with the HTML color pallette you can try other color themes; I used mainly green with MarketSaw.
h. You are ready for your first blog posting! We will get into the settings tab with my next post; we want to set up the blog for monetization as well as readership! Remember just because you post something doesn't mean that anyone will drop by to read it. We will get into how to build traffic to your site later.

Go ahead and create your blog! You can always delete and start again if needed - remember all of this is FREE. I will be including screen shots of upcoming steps when needed so stay tuned...