Why do you want to blog?
You might be a budding writer wishing to let the world know how your imagination can soar, or you may have a hidden journalist hidden within you fighting to come out. Probably you know more that everyone about the dietary habits of people of shire, or might be you just want to tell every one how your last vacation was.

Who is gonna read your blogs?
If you take the pains to write, what fun it would be if no one read your blogs. Before you start writing, think! Is there an audience for what you will write? Is the niche already too overcrowded with writers? There might be a huge audience for blogs about iPods, but with millions of people writing about it, what chances your blog has of getting popular? Will writing about the latest gossip in your locality be a better idea?

Where are you gonna blog?
To start blogging you will need to choose your blog provider and platform. www.blogger.com is the foremost blogging platform today and it is free. You may want to host your blog yourself; wordpress from www.wordpress.org is most suited for it. www.wordpress.com offers free wordpress based host. There are some other options but these are most popular.

Who are your visitors?
You need to track your visitors, see where they come from, what browsers they use and how they find you. Tracking your visitors is important as it tells you what your visitors like to read about, and help you in optimizing your blog. www.statcounter.com provides free invisible tracking, with very extensive results.

Brand yourself.
No matter what blogging tool you use, it will come with a set of default templates. Your visitors will be sick of seeing the same template over and over. Change it to something more original. When they are reading your blog they must be aware of it. Get a good logo for your blog.

Ping, link, comment.
When you update your blog, ping to blog tracking services so they may index your upadated blog and visitors find you. Link to other realated blogs and they will link to you. Visit other related blogs and leave a comment. Generally people will come to visit your blog and if you have great content a large percentage will be hooked.

Most importantly, have patience. A popular blog takes time and effort to build. So many people leave midway. If you follow these advice, and put in some effort, your blog will surely get popular.