Are you thinking of setting up your own blog?

Are you thinking of setting up your own blog? Here is the solution for you that might help you set up your own blog. Firstly, you might need to think where you actually want to host your blog. There have been

Dedicated & Shared Hosting Services
Dreamhost - Offers a lot for a very small amount of money.
CirtexHosting - Hosting plans starting at as little as $2.
BlueHost - Another affordable hosting solution.
HostGator - Cheap shared personal hosting.
Media Temple - Grid based hosting; known to be able to sustain lots of traffic.

Paid Blog Hosting Services
TypePad - If you are a MovableType fan, then TypePad is the premiere service to be using to host your blog.
Blogsite - An enterprise level blogging and publishing platform. Multiple blogs can reside withing one blogsite. Amazing SEO visibility.

Free Blog Hosting Services
WordPress - WordPress allows you to create and host a blog on their own servers and you can display it to the world. You don’t get as much customization and functionality as if you have it hosted on your own server (for example, advertising is not allowed), but it is still a very good way to blog without paying money.
Blogger - A service owned by Google, Blogger is a way to have your blogs hosted for free and you can post as much as you want. It allows Google’s AdSense to be used.
Xanga - iXanga is a lively community of online diaries and journals. Users create their own profiles and there are many opportunities to interact with other users.
LiveJournal - LiveJournal is excellent if you wish to blog on a personal level and join a community and share your blogs among friends.
Vox - A new contender to the arena but Vox is a very nice and powerful blogging tool; not to mention free!; You receive many social experiences with this option as Vox is based heavily on community based blogging.
Tumblr - Tumblr is great if you don’t have time to blog, but still want to share something now and again. It lets you easily post videos, pictures, links, and of course you can write there too.

Pick up one of those blog hosting service and register for it. If you are an amateur, then you might be interested in choosing free blog hosting services. That's it. Now your own blog is up and it's all yours.

If you still can't satisfy with the basic functionalities provided by the hosting services and want to add more functionalities like tracking who visited your blog, where they are from, the no of times they have come and visited your blog, then below services from other parties might help you achieve your dreams. Just choose one of the below service and register your blog with it.

StatCounter - A completely free statistics and analysis tool for tracking your blog’s numbers.
Site Meter - Site Meter comes in two flavors, Site Meter Basic and Site Meter Premium and this service offers advanced analytics of your site statistics.
AWStats - A free and open-source alternative to track your site statistics.
Feedburner - A wide range of tools to spiff up your RSS feed, including HTML preview, geotagging, merging link and photo feeds, password protection, and one of our favorites - a customizable GIF-based headline animator. They can also insert ads into your feed and have both free and premium analytics.
Alexa - Alexa has the statistics for all of the internet and it lets you compare your blog to another.
Google Analytics - a free, full-featured (albeit a bit slow) analytics program from Google (ex. Urchin).
MeasureMap - another free tool for detailed analysis of your blog’s visitor habits

Still can't please with the basic widget and pagelet provided by your hosting provider? Here are some useful widgets that might help your blog looks professional.

MyBlogLog’s Recent Readers - this widget can easily be called a hit amongst blog owners; its popularity even managed to convince Yahoo into buying MyBlogLog. The widget lets you see the avatars of recent visitors to your blog, provided they’re also members of MyBlogLog.
Flickr Flash Photo Stream Badge - display images from your Flickr profile with a handy Flash photo stream.
LineBuzz - inline comments for your blog. Very handy for blogs with frequent lively discussions.
ClockLink - display time in various time zones with these nifty Flash clocks.
Criteo AutoRoll - displays links to blogs similar to your blog.
RockYou Horoscope - This widget shows horoscope (doh!) and does it in a nicely designed colorful box.
Giftspace - your friends never know what to buy you for birthday? Let them know what you really want with this nifty widget.
LibraryThing - show off the latest books you’ve been reading.
del.icio.us Tagometer - display how many times have del.icio.us users saved your page.
del.icio.us Linkrolls - this badge shows your latest bookmarks from del.icio.us.

Just go and register with them, follow their instructions and, yeah, there you go.

Still don't understand and want to ask more questions? The following sites might help you answer all of your unclear questions.

Blogger Forum - This site has a nice forum with plenty of resources for helping you on your beginnings in blogging.
Bloggst - a fairly new community devoted to bloggers, and blogging, with howtos, interviews and other resources.
True Blogging - a forum completely dedicated to bloggers, blogging resources and blog monetization.
Blogger Talk - great resource for bloggers who want to share their experiences.
Bloggeries - a community for bloggers from all over the world to gather and discuss their blogs.
Webloggers - forum on marketing blogs, software for bloggers, blogging news and mobile blogging.
The Blog Herald - a source of blog and blogging related news for bloggers.

That's it.

Stay Tuned,
- Zaw Win Htike