Blogger is owned by Google.com. It is a free site that will allow you to create your own blog. In fact, you will have the option of creating as many blogs as you like and all for free. Put the following URL into your web browser: http://www.blogger.com When you do, you will see the following screen. From this screen, there are three things you can do. You can sign in (which will be an option once you have created an account), you can take a quick tour (which will not be necessary if you read the remainder of this chapter, although can be helpful to some learning styles), or you can create your own blog now. Click on the orange arrow that says, Create Your Blog Now. Step 2: Create an Account For this step, you will need to create a user name and password. It does not matter what user name you choose. You will also be asked what display name you wish to use. When you post to your blog, this name will be displayed at the end of each post. For now, go ahead and put an editor. Later, in Chapter 9, you will learn how to change this for each blog if you wish. Finally, you will need to type in your email address (make sure it is a real address) and check the area that says you agree to their Terms of Service. We have included the Google's entire Terms of Service in our Appendix. Once you have entered the information, click on the orange Continue arrow. Step 3: Naming Your Blog Now you will get to name your blog. The first area is the Blog Title of your blog. In this example, the blog title is Kidney Stones. That means, the title at the top of the blog will say Kidney Stones. Later, we will show you how to optimize your Blog Title for search engines. The Blog Title can be changed at any time. Next you will be asked to create a blog address or URL. Notice that the URL does not have the traditional www at the front. Picking a blog address can be a bit tricky. If you want to keyword optimize your URL for AdSense or other marketing purposes, you will want to read Chapter 8 to find out how to pick a good name. Before clicking on the orange Continue arrow, you will be asked to type in the characters you see in the picture below. Click on the orange arrow that says, Create Your Blog Now. Step 2: Create an Account For this step, you will need to create a user name and password. It does not matter what user name you choose. You will also be asked what display name you wish to use. When you post to your blog, this name will be displayed at the end of each post. For now, go ahead and put an editor. Later, in Chapter 9, you will learn how to change this for each blog if you wish. Finally, you will need to type in your email address (make sure it is a real address) and check the area that says you agree to their Terms of Service. We have included the Google's entire Terms of Service in our Appendix. Once you have entered the information, click on the orange Continue arrow. Step 3: Naming Your Blog Now you will get to name your blog. The first area is the Blog Title of your blog. In this example, the blog title is Kidney Stones. This makes sure that you are a person and not an autobot creating the blog. There is one other issue with picking a blog name the name you want may already be in use. If it is, you will see the following page after clicking continue: At this point, you simply choose a different blog address. In the sample above, you might want to try blog-and-ping using the dashes, try reversing the name to pingandblog or ping-and-blog, try bloggingandpinging or blogging-and-pinging, or any other number of variations. Once you find a URL that is not taken, you can move on to Step 4.