So you’ve ended up at this corner of the web somehow, then it means that you’re looking for a step by step guide for creating a personal blog from complete scratch with a little investment or no investment at all.
Am I right? If yeah! Then you’ve ended up at the perfect place. I wrote this guide with a single goal in my head, and that’s to answer all your how’s, what’s, and why’s when it comes to starting a blog and be a blogger.
Before you start with the guide, I’d like to say that it would be a long read (5000 Words), approximately 20 to 25 minutes. But you would learn every nook and cranny of how to start a blog without having any prior experience or web site designing skill. I’ll share how you can build a WordPress blog from complete scratch with Bluehost (A hosting provider recommended by millions of bloggers and WordPress officially. )
Before you found this guide, you might have read some stories here and there about how to start a blog, and how easy it is to start a blog. All those readings would have helped you to get a general idea of what you need to do, or they might have confused you so much that you might be thinking of just giving up on this whole shenanigans call how to start a blog?
My friend, believe me – This guide is going to be very simple and easy to understand without those complicated nomenclatures that you’ve not heard of, and those complicated steps. I am not going to make things difficult for you, that’s my promise to you.
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty, I would like you to make aware that this guide is going to be a long one, because I’m going to cover every single step that you need to take to create the perfect blog you’ve envisioned.
In this guide, I’ll show you how to set up a blog with Bluehost, and as well as WordPress.com blogs.
So, let’s get started with how to start a blog that will generate money for you later.
How To Start A Blog In 10 Simple & Easy Steps:
- Why Do You Want To Start A Blog?
- Why Do You Need To Choose A Niche For Your Blog Before Doing Anything Else?
- Which Blogging Platform Is Right For You?
- The 2 Most Important Thing You Need (Small Investment & Free Alternative)
- How To Choose A Domain Name And Web Hosting For Your Blog?
- Installing & Setting Up WordPress
- Choosing The Right Design For Your Blog
- How & When You Should Write Blog Posts?
- The Right Way To Monetize Your Blog
- Why Traffic Is Everything?
- You Can Ask Me Any Questions
Before I start explaining each step in detail, let me rehash that this guide aims to teach you how to start a blog and all the needed information.
The First Hurdle: Why do you want to start a blog?
Don’t read the rest of the guide if you’re unclear about the answer to this question, because you should never start with a journey if you are not sure about your destination.
If you start blogging without a goal or determination, you’d be just one more newbie whose trying to get heard in the crowd, and after a few attempts, you’d give up on the whole thing.
You don’t want that to happen to you, right! Then you should be clear about why do you want to start a blog. It doesn’t matter what the reason is as long as you’ve one, Whether it’s to make money, sharing your writing, promoting your skills or, just an escape from the devils of your life.
When you have got a clear reason why you want to start this blog, the whole process for you becomes a breeze.
Wondering how? The journey becomes way easier when you know where you are going, and why you are going there. Right!
So figure out why do you want to start a blog?
PS: Write it on the piece of paper, you’d need it later.
The Second Hurdle: Why Do You Need To Choose A Niche For Your Blog Before Doing Anything Else?
Before I tell you why choosing a niche before starting a blog is important, I’d like to tell you what is a niche, and what the word means.
It’s not rocket science!
In simplest words, niche means a market segment that you’re going to write about on your blog. If you’re going to write about how to create a website and things related to it, your niche is web development.
I hope you’re clear about what is niche blogging.
Why do you need to think of a niche before you start a blog?
You don’t want to start a blog that’s everywhere, without a fixed set of audience and goal. The secret of successful blogging is sticking to one niche and cater to the people who seek help in that niche with your blog and content.
Niche blogs are easier to manage and monetize as compared to community blogs or blogs that just talk about pretty much anything.
How do you choose a niche for your blog?
To create a successful blog, you need to figure out the niche you’re expert in and can write high-quality content with ease.
You’ve to pick up a niche that you’re familiar with, the niche you’re passionate about, also certain that you can provide value to your audience.
By choosing the right niche, you’d be able to establish yourself as an expert in that niche over a period and generate loads of money.
The Third Hurdle: Which Blogging Platform Is Right For You?
You’re clear about the niche of your blog, it’s time to choose the right platform for your blog.
Before I tell you about the most popular platforms, I’d like to tell you that there are two ways to start a blog, Free & With Investment.
I’d recommend that you invest a little bit of money to get tons of freedom when it comes to what you can do with your blog and building a respectable reputation in your niche. You can’t expect people to follow you sincerely with a free blog or a blog that looks like a child’s sketchbook.
FREE Platforms:
There are many platforms where you can start your blog, but the most popular ones are this 3:
- Blogger (By Google)
- Tumblr
- WordPress.Com (Free Version)
Setting up a blog with these platforms won’t take more than 30 minutes, but as the saying goes free lunch is never enough to make you feel full, the free blog won’t get you far and put many restrictions on your blog, in terms of usage as well as monetization.
The worst thing about these free blogging platforms is that they use your blog to generate money for themselves. You’d be working so hard to drive readers to your blog, and in the end to lose them. I am sure that’s not what you want.
If you’re serious about blogging, you’ll want to not start with this option.
Self-Hosted Blog:
Self-hosted blogs allow you to be the boss of your blog. You’ve complete control over your blog in every possible aspect.
Even when it comes to self-hosted blogging platforms, you have several choices, but the most popular one is WordPress.Org. I can promise you that more than 90% of blogs run on WordPress self-hosted CMS.
What Self-Hosted Blogging Platform, Or CMS Means?
It’s called self-hosted because you’ll be downloading the WordPress files and hosting it on your webspace and connecting it with a domain name. If you want to start at an affordable price and don’t want to sacrifice on quality, then I’d recommend this hosting company where you can save up to 60% on your hosting account and get a FREE DOMAIN NAME with $200 marketing credits. The blogging platform is completely FREE.
Even though you have the option to start for free, I’d strongly emphasize starting with your blog, especially if you’re going write your unique articles, and would be working to send tons of traffic to make money with your blog or promote your services.
Pay a small amount of money for your blog, because it will yield you better profits in later stages. I promise you, my friend, you won’t regret the investment.
The Fourth Hurdle: The 2 Most Important Thing You Need
The two things which I am going to tell you about are very important essential for your blog, so make sure you give a little thought before deciding them. I’d help you to my level best my sharing some resources that help you.
Domain Name:
A domain name is like a name that will be used by people to access your blog. Just like how in life if someone wants to call you, they need to know your name. Your domain name needs to be unique, and you need to pay an annual fee (around $8 to $15) to keep using it.
Users who know your domain name can simply just type it in the browsers URL bar and access your blog. They can also find your blog through social media, search engines, and other blogs.
You can choose a highly popular Dot COM domain name or any other TLD (Top Level Domain). Mostly people like to stick to Dot Com because people are prone to think that every domain name is by default has Dot Com in the end until they see your domain name or read it.
Here’s a useful tool to help you search that your domain name is available to book or not.
=> https://www.bluehost.com/domains
Remember, make your domain name unique, easy to remember, and a little bit quirky. If you don’t want to go through this heavy thinking, then just go with your name as a domain name, it helps build your brand.
Web Hosting:
Once you’re done with your domain name, choosing a reliable web hosting provider would be another important decision that you’ve to make. Your blog is highly depended on the web hosting provider, the speed, functionality, and security for your blog rely on the hosting provider. While choosing a good web hosting provider you’ve to make sure that your blog is accessible for readers 24X7.
Almost every web hosting provider offers a domain registration service. I’d suggest that make sure you buy everything under one roof because it becomes very easy for you to manage in the future.
You might be wondering how to choose that best-hosting provider that’s affordable and yet fu**ing awesome.
Choosing the right web hosting provider plays a major role in creating a successful blog. Based on the experience of 8 years in the blogging world, a reliable provider is Bluehost, I can be certain that it’s being used by thousands of bloggers, and most importantly it’s recommended by WordPress officially.
The Fifth Hurdle: How To Choose A Domain Name And Web Hosting For Your Blog?
I’d not say that choosing a domain name and web hosting is an easy process, but I’d say that we should not make it more complicated by overthinking. By following the bits of advice and information shared here, you can come up with a catchy domain name and get started with that perfect web hosting provider, which is affordable.
You should be only thinking about 3 things when you’re deciding a domain name for your blog:
1- It’s perfectly fine whether your domain name is relevant to your niche or its not.
2- Make it easy to remember. People don’t like domain names which are like more than 13 to 15 characters long.
3- Add the quirky and funny touch to it.
When you are choosing web hosting, you should pay attention to 4 things:
- Pricing & Affordability
- Features & Add Ons
- Security & Support
- WordPress Friendliness
If you find everything under one roof, go for it, there’s no need to scratch your head and think that it’s a good choice or not. A good option to start with is Bluehost, it perfectly fits the bill, and you get a FREE domain name & up to 60% off by using this link.
The Sixth Hurdle: Installing & Setting Up WordPress With BlueHost
Here I’d share step by step instructions on how you can sign up a hosting account with Bluehost and set up your WordPress blog.
First Step: Bluehost
By using this link, you’ll get a FREE Domain Name & Up To 60% Discount on your shared web hosting account. Click On this link, and then just hit that GET STARTED button.
Second Step: Choose The Hosting Plan
I’d suggest starting with the basic plan because it would meet all your requirements at the start. Once you see that your blog is growing and it needs an upgrade, then you can move on to the other two options. But currently, the basic plan is the perfect plan for you to start with.
Third Step: Get Your Domain Name
Just type the domain name that you’ve decided for your blog in the field of the new domain, and Bluehost will tell you if it’s available or not. If someone has already bought the domain you’ve entered, Bluehost will show you some suggestions to choose from, or you can input your other options and hit NEXT.
Fourth Step: Signing Up For An Web Hosting Account
Once You’re done with the domain name, Bluehost will redirect you to the registration & payment page. Here you’d have to share your details and choose the hosting plan you want. It would not take more than 2 or 3 minutes.
Fifth Step: Choosing The Plan & Payment
Make sure you check your hosting plan twice or thrill to make sure it’s the one you want. When you’d look at the hosting plans, the 12 months plan would have lower cost, but if you think about long term investment and want to avoid the headache of renewing it every year, then the other two options are great.
Just uncheck all the boxes because you don’t need them right now. In the future, when you need them, you can always buy from inside your hosting panel.
Sixth Step: Installing WordPress
You’re doing great! We’re just one step away from installing WordPress for your blog. Login to your Bluehost hosting panel, look for WordPress Icon which says Install WordPress and click it. Yeah! This is what I was talking about earlier, just one click and your blog is ready.
Now, if you try to access your blog URL, you’ll see a coming soon page, it means your new blog is almost live, just go back in your hosting panel and click on the launch button.
Hurray! Your blog is live now.
The Seventh Hurdle: Choosing The Right Design For Your Blog
After you’re done installing WordPress, your blog is ready! But it won’t be looking very appealing to the eye, because it comes with the default WordPress design. That design is hardly used by any blogger, WordPress has tons of resources whether it’s free or paid. There are tons of good free blog themes available, which you can just download and set it up for your blog.
If you want more fluidity, professional sleek look, and give readers the best reading experience, I’d suggest going with a premium WordPress theme. It won’t cost you much, and it’s going to be a one-time investment.
Free WordPress Themes:
You’ve to find a WordPress theme that suits your blog perfectly. If your blog looks like a jigsaw puzzle pieced together, you would lose many readers, so to avoid that, you’ve to find that perfect theme.
How do you find that perfect theme for free?
I’d share five things that you need to consider when you’re deciding a perfect theme for your blog.
1- Browse Some Blogs In Your Niche
Just do a simple google search to find a few blogs that relevant to you and see how visually appealing they are, what kind of designs they are using. Pen down things that catch your eyes because you’d need a theme that has those elements too because your blog is going to revolve around some type of audience.
2- Browse The WordPress Free Theme Section
When you have the visual layout in your head, all you need to do is search something on those lines for your blog. It’s going to be time-consuming, but you can’t escape from it.
=> https://wordpress.org/themes/browse/popular/
3- Read The Description & Feature
While you are going through the themes, makes sure you read the description to understand, what you are going to get with this theme, and is it enough for you to run your blog efficiently?
4- Check The Demo
You like one theme, good! Before you decide to use it, make sure you check out the demo of that theme. Preview every aspect of the theme, whether it’s the looks and feel or user experience.
5- The Responsiveness (How Your Blog Is Going To Look On Mobile)
When you’re previewing the theme make sure, you also check the responsiveness because most of the readers nowadays use mobile phones to access blogs or any information, if your site looks haphazard on phone, it’s very bad for you.
How do you check the responsiveness of any theme?
To check the responsiveness of any WordPress theme, there’s a simple way.
Press right-click and then click on inspect element.
Click on the tablet and phone icon in the left corner
Click on the three-dot (alignment option) In the right corner
Now browse through the theme.
Premium WordPress Theme
Sometimes the free options don’t fit your requirements. In that case, you can browse the premium themes and buy the one which fits your need perfectly.
A premium theme has a few advantages over a free theme. It’s more professionally developed, offers a lot of features that you’d hardly get in the free ones, and when it comes to look and feel it’s way ahead from free themes. You get support from the developer when you buy a premium theme, which is a great asset as a newbie because if hit an error, the developer would solve it for free.
You can browse good premium themes here.
How to install a theme for WordPress?
Installing a theme for WordPress is very easy, and it can be achieved in 3 simple steps.
First Step:
Download the theme you’d want to install for your blog. You’ll get a zip file, extract it, and inside you would find documentation on how to install it, if it’s a premium theme, and you can just follow the instruction there.
For the free ones, you might have a guide or not. But the installing process is easy. You don’t have to extract the zip file in a free theme.
Second Step:
Go to yourblogname.com/wp-admin, and log in to your WordPress admin panel.
Follow this path:
Appearance > Themes > Upload
You’ll find a theme option in the appearance tab when you hover on it. Click on it, and you’d get an option to upload your theme files. The same goes for the premium themes also.
Third Step:
After you upload your theme zip file successfully, you’ll get an option to activate the theme, click on that option and your new theme would be live on your blog.
Eight Hurdle: How & When You Should Write Blog Posts?
Now your blog is perfectly ready for you to publish content and build your audience.
But, before you publish that first post, there are few pages that your blog needs to have. It’s like a fixed custom for every blogger to create these pages, and you’ve to follow this custom too.
What are those pages?
- About Us page – This Page Should Tell your Story
- Contact Us Page – This Page Should Offer Contact Details To Get In Touch With You
- Work With Me (Hire Me) Page – This page allows people to hire you for the services you provide.
If you don’t know how to get started with these pages then simply browse through some blogs and take a look at how they have created this page, what kind of information they are sharing there, and based on the inputs you get from this sites, just create yours.
Once you have the pages live on your blog, you can start publishing the blog posts.
So coming back to the main point, how you should be publishing your blog content?
There’s no fixed layout on how you should be publishing your blog posts because different bloggers use different ways to publish their blog posts. Some like write in first offline and then upload it live, some like to use third party writing software, while some like to directly write in the WordPress editor and publish it.
You can pick your taste here.
But I’d suggest using a distraction-free writing tool like Typora to write your blog posts offline and then upload it on your blog.
When You should publish your blog posts?
Again the answer varies from blogger to blogger.
You don’t need to worry about when you should publish your blog post, what you should be worried about more is the consistency of your blog posts. If you are frequent and consistent, your blog readers would know when your blog is going to be updated, and when they need to visit to consume the information.
Create a fixed schedule or calendar every month for your blog posts.
Ninth Hurdle: The Right Way To Monetize Your Blog
We might have started our blog for different purposes, but one thing we all have common, and that’s how we can monetize our blog to generate a good amount of money.
There are tons of methods that you can use to monetize your blog, but I’d like to bring your attention to the top 3:
Google Adsense:
Google Adsense allows you to put ads on your blog that are relevant to your content and niche. When someone clicks on those ads you make a certain amount of commission.
Sounds easy, right? But it’s tough, and I’ve seen many people give up on blogging because they failed with AdSense. Google tracks every click, the blog traffic quality, and many other factors if you get defaulted in a few factors, your accounts get blocked, and you lose your earnings.
Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate marketing is a process where you promote someone else product to earn commission on every sale you generate.
Again, it’s a well-known method to make money online, and some people are making thousands of dollars every month with just affiliate marketing.
Don’t think it’s easy, it even tougher than AdSense.
Affiliate marketing is a whole science in its self. Why? Because you have to sell other people’s products. It might sound easy to you, but it’s hard, very hard to find people who will buy the product you’re promoting. You’ll have to test many methods and fail until you figure out that one method that works for you.
Lots of bloggers can’t survive the journey and give up. I’d suggest going through the struggle because that’s where the real money lies.
CPA (Cost Per Action Or Acquisition) Offers
CPA marketing is a model where you get paid commission of specific action is completed by the user. These offers have few restrictions that make the conversion process tough.
Few good websites that provide CPA based offers are:
- MaxBounty.Com
- Peerfly.com
- cj.com
You can pick your taste again here. Choose the monetization method you feel you can work with, but remember they all have their struggle phases, please don’t give up in the middle.
Tenth Hurdle: Why Traffic Is Everything?
Let me tell you a fact!
Without a reader, your blog post doesn’t mean a thing, even if you write like Shakespeare.
The success of your blog, how much money you make, it all depends on one thing, that’s Traffic.
How do you get that traffic for your blog?
Oh! there are hundreds or maybe thousands of different strategies floating all over the internet that you can use to drive traffic to your blog. The effectiveness of all these strategies depends on many different factors, but once you modify them to suit your needs, you can drive tons of visitors to your blog?
What are those traffic strategies?
As I said, there are tons of methods to get traffic, so I can’t share all of them with you, because If I try to then this guide on how to set up your blog would never end. I’d only sharing a few of the traffic strategies that can get you thousands of visitors every month if you execute them properly.
Be Active On Other Blogs:
Just like you, many bloggers have already build a good amount of traffic for their blog. All you’ve to do is visit those blogs and be an active user there to divert traffic to your blog.
Use Social Media Marketing:
Social media has a huge audience, all you have to do is find groups, communities, people who are relevant to your niche, and build a relationship with them.
I’m working on a FREE ebook of 48 Marketing Methods that you can use to drive traffic to your blog, and soon it would share it with my blog reader. You can download the ebook and implement all those strategies to drive tons of traffic from social media to your blog.
Forums Sites:
Find forum sites that are relevant to your niche and take part in the discussions, that you think you can add value by offering your advice because when you help a person, that person would check your profile and your blog. And don’t forget the power of signature, you can put your blog link as a signature to get the maximum amount of traffic form this forum websites.
Q&A Website:
I am pretty sure you’re familiar with Quora. What if I say you can use Quora to get hundreds or maybe thousands of visitor for your blog if you spend some time there.
It doesn’t require rocket science! All you’ve to do is find questions that are relevant to your blog niche and answer them. But here’s the catch, You’ve to attach a custom message at the end of every answer you write. The custom message can simply ask the person to visit your blog for more information or relevant content to the question.
If you want to multiply the effect of Quora then find a few Q&A sites and become an active member there.
Remember, it won’t happen in a day or two. It takes time, so don’t expect instant results. There’s nothing like instant traffic unless you advertise.
Download This Ebook (48 Marketing Methods For Social Media):
The purpose of this ebook is to help people who are struggling with traffic and making less income with their blog. The strategies that are mentioned in the book would perfect for any niche if you execute them the right way.
** I’m Still Working On The Ebook, It would be live in a week.**
You Can Ask Me Any Question
Phew, I am happy that you finished the complete guide.
Congratulation! On your new blog.
Do you’ve any questions that you want to ask me regarding blogging, building a better life, or just want to talk about how your cat is doing, then please feel free to get in touch with me. I would love to help you with your questions and contribute to your success.
One thing I’d like you to always remember, When I started blogging 8 years ago, I thought of giving up many times, but the reason why I started blogging helped me and gave me the needed courage to continue.
In the start of this guide I asked you to write why you wanted to start blogging on a piece of paper, make sure you keep that piece of paper in your wallet or somewhere safe, because when your judgment gets clouded with failures, and hardship just look at that piece of paper to get over with it.
My friend, believe me, it will help you a lot in the long run.
You can use this link to get in touch with.
