How to start a blog in Australia

I was socialising at a meetup group the other night and when they found out I was a blogger, people asked How do I start a blog in Australia?

Of course, I’m thinking it’s just like setting up a blog in any other part of the world, but replied with, “Do you want a free blog or a business blog?”

Often the first response is ‘Free’ but then when I find out ‘Why‘ they want a blog I almost always refer them to a paid solution because this is the best first step they can take.

So for those of you that I spoke with the other night, he’s that blog post I promised 😉

** FYI – If you want a free blog you might as well just use a Facebook Page as you’ll likely get a better return on your time. **

How To Start a Blog – Australia

Let’s just assume you’ve figured out that a free blog is too limiting when you actually want to use your blog for a business.  And you’ve already figured out what your blog is going to be about.

Where do you host your blog and what do you use as a blogging platform?

Perhaps there is another question we should ask.

Where does your Target Audience Live?

This is really the first question you should ask yourself.

The mindset of a new blogger is they’ll blog about local events or products and then get a little too specific to their local area or country. They often forget their audience can come from all corners of the world and shouldn’t neglect this fact.

However, you might still be limited to your native tongue, but hey what’s stopping you from publishing your blog in other languages anyway. This does require a lot more work but if you have a niche that’s not covered well in other countries then you should consider publishing in more than one language.

Although it’s great to niche down on a topic, it’s unlikely you can keep your audience to your local country because if your writing is good enough then it will leak into other parts of the world anyway.

You really should have a world view when considering your target audience, but I’ll provide options for both scenarios.

Your Target Audience lives in Australia

Ok, if you’re blogging about a subject that’s more local, say Australian Politics, then most of your traffic might be local anyway. Then again other people across the world might be interested in Australian Politics so maybe this is a bad example. What about ‘Australia Tax Law’? Nope, this also has a wide reach.

See where I’m going with this.

The Internet is global not local, but let’s say 80% of your audience is Australian here’s what I would do.

Get yourself a .COM.AU domain name from a domain registrar. One of the largest companies to use is  CrazyDomains.com.au, but there are plenty of others around and you can shop on price because the product is really just the same. They are simply registering your name against an Internet Address (domain name), so don’t pay more than you have to. Another discounted  domain name registrar I use is goDaddy.com.

Now you can get <YOURNAME>.COM.AU as long as you live in Australia, but other domain names require you to have a trademark or business name. Sometimes it’s easier to just grab a global name like a .COM if it’s available.

If you already have a business name setup then go ahead and grab the associated Australian Domain Name if it’s important to you.

Next you’ll want to get some blog hosting which again CrazyDomains.com.au provide and they have the 1-click WordPress installation feature which makes installation a breeze. Also, if you’ve purchased your domain with them it makes redirecting you domain name much easier.

There are others companies providing shared hosting on Australian Servers, but some of these companies I have no experience with so I’m hesitant to recommend them. Generally, you’ll find most web hosting companies provide a similar service and it’s just the price that’s different.

Now you don’t really need to use a blog hosting company that’s Australian based because you just use a caching service like Cloud Flare to improve the page load speeds for your local readers. 

Next you’ll need to decide on a hosting platform. However, I’ve previously mentioned you should install WordPress for your blog, which is the most popular blogging platform and there are plenty of free courses on using WordPress.

If you are starting from scratch then here’s my free 7-day Jumpstart Course to get you started with Blogging. It’s email based and only takes 1 hour a day to complete.

Given your domain is a .COM.AU Google will figure out you really are just expecting an Australian audience for your blog, and will send you the most traffic from there.

Your Target audience lives around the World

Of course, they do. The great thing about the internet is it’s global and you can connect with people from all around the world, so why wouldn’t you?

Even if you’re blogging about local things in Australia, you’ll be surprised at how many international visitors will read your blog.

People travel and do like to research the places they’ll visit before they go, don’t you? So when writing blog posts consider your international audience as well.

Now when you purchase a domain name for your blog it’s wise to go for an International one like .COM or one of the other International domain extensions out there. Again a company like CrazyDomains.com.au can provide an international domain name at a discounted rate.

Unlike getting an Australian domain name, there are no restrictions from buying International domain names which in turn means everyone doesn’t either so it’s harder to find the name you’re looking for. If you’re getting stuck finding a good domain name then use a Blog Name Generator to help you find that perfect web address.

Next you’ll want to get some hosting for your blog and given a large percentage of your traffic will be American or European based I prefer to use Hosting Servers that are based in the USA. This means my readers have great page load speeds and I don’t lose a lot of traffic because they can’t be bothered waiting for a web page to load.

My preferred web hosting company is Bluehost and have used then for over 10 years. Here’s my full step-by-step guide on starting a blog using Bluehost.

If you’re starting from scratch then here’s my free 7-day Jumpstart Course to get you started with Blogging. It’s email based and only takes an hour a day to complete.

Now, if you’ve purchased an International Domain there’s one other step to take and that’s to let Google know which country they should use to target your readers in their search results. You would set this up in Google Webmaster Tools if you still want to mainly appear in Google Search results for Australia.

However, you can ignore this if you want a mix of local and International Readers.

So, that’s about all you’ll need to know if you want to know ‘How to Start a Blog in Australia’. It’s really no different to starting a blog for the rest of world especially if you recognise that limiting yourself to one country might not be in your best interests. Afterall Australia’s population is tiny compared to the rest of the world.

If you need a hand starting your blog then have a look at the resources around this site, or connect with me directly on Facebook or Twitter. Or if you like, you could leave a question in the comments below and I’ll get back to you.