Is it possible to start a personal blog with little or no money?

[Kee]

Yes. Pick a blogging service, figure out a purpose for the blog, and start adding content. Go with one of the developer-based services below unless you are trying to incorporate a blog into a larger web site (Wordpress or Typepad would work well in that case). See the 360 team post on "How to blog":
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-1qCkw2Eha...cq=1&p=303 .

Yes, you can make money from blogging - typically through advertising features like Adsense or just by adding ads to your blog location. However, you can't advertise if you start a blog on Yahoo! 360, as that's against community guidelines. See http://problogger.net for a wealth of information on how to make money blogging.

Popular, free blogging services:
Blogger/Blogspot (http://vox.com ).

Popular, free social-networking services with blogging capabilities:
MySpace (http://xanga.com ).

______________________________________...
YAHOO BLOGGING (also free):

1) I use Yahoo! 360 (http://profile.yahoo.com ).

Go to http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/360/ . Keep in mind that 360 is a beta service, so there are many bugs. If you have problems, check the Answers area or click on my avatar and scroll down to click on my "Starred Questions" tab.

See the 360 team post on "What makes a 360 page interesting?":
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-1qCkw2Eha...q=1&p=3513

Press release that explains "What is yahoo 360?":
http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release1222.html


2) Another blogging service is Yahoo! Shine, which is geared toward women. See http://shine.yahoo.com/page/about/ for details.

Go to http://shine.yahoo.com . Clicking any of the links on that page (to an article or section) will lead you to an area where you can compose a blog. See the right side of the page.
______________________________________...


The popularity of your blog depends on several factors, including the effort made to promote the blog:
1) Connect with other users (i.e. social networking)
Find active users and be active yourself. Visit other blogs and develop online relationships with others. On sites less dedicated to social networking features, commenting on other blogs and having people comment on your blog is very important.
2) Promote your space or blog
Wherever you can, you should put a link to your blog. Your profiles, your signature in personal e-mails, and etc. You should do this without spamming sites and people though. Send a link to your 360 space to all your contacts (friends and family) and encourage them to pass it on.
3) Make the blog easy to find
Create shorter or easy to remember blog address. Enable RSS for the blog, if possible (http://developer.yahoo.com/rss/ ).
4) Last but certainly not least: Consistently post interesting content