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If you want to set up your own blog to make money blogging, you may have found that a lot of websites about blogging are full of technical language about scripts, hacks and coding. For the newbie amateur blogger this can be quite confusing. Many top bloggers and website owners come from a technical background. I worked in marketing and training before I started working online, so I had to work out whether all the techie stuff was necessary to write a blog. I had to learn a bit of HTML, but now I really do not use that very often because I am using a simple blogging system that is easy to use, without needing to learn complicated hacks and terms.

This is my step by step suggestion for you if you want start being paid to blog:

1. Get your own domain name. One of the top domain registrars, and one of the cheapest, is GoDaddy. It costs just $8 a year to register a domain name and you can us this for your blog. You can even use unlimited subdomains under the one domain name if you want to keep your costs to a minimum. An example of subdomains - this website is called www.brilliant4biz.com, and I also have a very busy Adsense Advice site called adsense.brilliant4biz.com, at no extra cost for registration or hosting.

Note - you are bound to come across will see many offers online for ‘free’ domain names registered on your behalf as part of a hosting package. This is false economy in my experience as nothing is actually free: the web host registers the domain on your behalf and sometimes the registration does not belong to you. If you decide you want to move your website or blog to a new web hosting company, your domain name will stay locked with the original host/registrar for 60 days. Of you move to a new web host you will still have to pay to register it with them. I speak from experience, so you can learn from my mistake with domain names! Here is an article for help with choosing a domain name.

2. Buy good quality reliable web hosting very cheaply at Hostgator for $10 a month with built in Wordpress software for unlimited blogs, all operating on your own domains or subdomains.

3. When your new domain names are registered point them to the Hostgator servers - you will be given the Domain Name Server (DNS) details when you open your Hostgator account.

4. Go to your Hostgator control panel, click on the ‘Fantastico’ icon and create your new Wordpress Blog. Follow the instructions and your blog will be up and running in seconds. The standard Wordpress Kubrick theme is quite boring, but you can find a new theme. Tip - choose and install your favourite theme as soon as possible, before you start adding lots of links and plugins to your blog. Also remember that surfing for themes can take up hours of time that you could use more productively by blogging - beware!

5. Pick a topic for your blog that fires your imagination. You will need to be writing new web copy every day, and that will be harder of the subject does not interest you.

6. You can use free Wordpress plugins to make your blog run well and look better - here are some of the best free Wordpress plugins that I use.

7. You will need some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make your blog rank higher when web visitors search using your keyword phrases. more popular on searches through Google, then change the format of your permalinks to include your post title in the search results.

8. Register your site at Google Webmaster tools. This allows you to check that the search engine spiders can access your site and see what people are searching for when they arrive on your pages. There is much more besides - it is essential to register at Google Webmaster Central.

9. Get an account with all the important advertising networks to start making money from your blog. These include Google Adsense, Kontera, Text Link Ads, Chitika, Linkshare, Linkworth, Amazon affiliates,

9. Start writing quality, content rich posts on your blog and visit other popular blogs in your niche to comment. Avoid spammy comments, make sure your comment shows you have read the blog and sounds sensible. Then the blog owner is more likely to allow your comment and you get a nice backlink to your site.

10. Go to feedburner.com and register your RSS feed. Always input your feedburner address when anyone asks for your RSS feed details. It looks something like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Brilliant4. Find out more about using Feedburner:

11. Carry on writing new blog posts and pages as often as possible, find popular topics to write about

12. Being paid to blog is a significant source of earnings for most bloggers. Unless your blog has extremely high traffic, money from Adsense or other advertising is unlikely to pay the mortgage. Every week there are sites appearing where you can earn money for writing sponsored posts. The income you can make from them differs greatly between the lowest and highest, and the methods of earning from your blog are also different. Consider writing paid blog posts at paid to post websites like PayPerPost, Blogitive, Blogsvertise. Your blog needs to be established for three months before it will be accepted. I post regular updates on the highest paying sites for writing sponsored blog posts, as these change constantly. Make sure you know the current high earnings from paid blog posts.

13. Check out which affiliate programmes will help you make money from your blog.

14. Ask other bloggers to add your link to their blogroll, and make sure that you give them a reciprocal link.