How to Start a Blog : Step-by-Step
If you are looking to start your first blog I would like to first congratulate you. Creating a blog is challenging. The learning curve is fairly steep. But starting a blog is also liberating and empowering as well. And once you know how to do it, you will possess a marketable skill that others will envy
.Different Types of Blogs
There a quite a few different ways you can start a blog. Some are free and some are not. Let’s look at both.
Free Blogging Platforms
The easiest and quickest way to get your content published and on the web is to use the micro-blogging platform Tumblr. You can literally have a free Tumblr blog up and running in less than 10 minutes. While this seems cool in the short term, I can guarantee you will quickly want more. In my opinion Tumblr is a great supplement to your main blog, not an actual blog. It should be treated as a form of Social Media, much like you would use Facebook or Twitter to help drive traffic to your main website.
Speaking of free blogging platforms, let’s talk about blogger. Blogger is a blogging platform offered by Google.
What I love about blogger: It’s easy to use & it’s a Google product.
What I hate about blogger: Your website URL will be a subdomain (yourname.blogspot.com) and you do not own any of your content. The second one is a biggie. Could you imagine spending a couple years creating tons of content for your awesome blog and then not own any of it. It just doesn’t make sense. Plus if you violate just one of their terms of service they can shut your blog down. For this reason, I stay away.
Paid Blogging Platforms
Wix is a tool for creating a personal or business blog/website that is starting to increase in popularity. It’s on the rise because it’s easy to create a site. Essentially drag and drop.
Wix is also a sort of hybrid option. They offer both free and paid services. While I have never used Wix to build a site, I believe they will continue to grow as more and more people start creating their own websites. If you decide to go with Wix you can get a domain and hosting for bundled together for one low price. Now I did mention they offer a free service, but if you are going to be serious about blogging you are going to have to spend a little money, generally less than $10 a month. That’s a small price to pay for the luxury of owning your carefully created content and blog posts.
You’re also limited when it comes to customizing free sites. The last thing you would want is a blog to become successful, only to be unable to monetize it fully.
And then there’s WordPress.
WordPress is the undisputed king of blogging platforms. WordPress is open source meaning free for everyone. While there are such things as paid themes (blog styles) and Plugins (Add-ons or tools), there is more than enough free themes and plugins to create a beautiful and fully functional blog.
Every serious blogger I know uses WordPress. A lot of business owners are also now creating their own professional websites using WordPress as well. This blog you are reading right now was created using WordPress.
Remember, when I created my first blog years ago, I knew nothing about creating a website. I did my research, I went with WordPress and I am glad I did.
How to Create a Blog with WordPress
The first step in creating a blog is deciding what you want to blog about. All blogs should have a central theme or focus. Get too varied in your content and you will have a tough time gaining loyal readers. Too many random thoughts and Google will have a hard time figuring out your blog, thus making it less likely that your work will be discovered.
The focus of your blog should be something that you are knowledgeable and passionate about. In order for your blog to become successful you are going to have to churn out a lot of content. This is much easier if you are writing about something you enjoy. This is where a lot of people who take up blogging as a way to make money go wrong.
Most people want to make money with they blog. So they decide to write about photography because cameras are expensive. They figure they can make a lot of money as an affiliate promoting $3000 cameras. They use Amazon’s affiliate program (called Amazon Associates) and get percentage of the sale just by posting a link in their content. It’s really easy to do and looks like this:
Amazon’s affiliate program is a great way to monetize your blog. After all, 6% of $3000 is $180. Not a bad payday. The only problem is they don’t know all that much about photography, and it’s more of a hobby than a passion. Their blog suffers. Nobody wants to read it and they sell exactly zero $3000 cameras. Last time I did the math 6% of nothing is nothing.
I cannot stress this enough.
Stick with what you know and what you love. If you follow this piece of advice then content for your blog will come easily. There are so many different affiliate programs available these days that you can literally find a way to monetize any and all content…as long as you have enough of it.
Getting Your Domain Name
Now that you know what your are going to cover in you new blog, it’s time to name it. You only get one shot at this so choose wisely. Take some time to come up with a great name but don’t over think it. It should be related to your content or your name (depending on what you are branding, yourself or your information) but it doesn’t have to be exact. As a matter of fact, Google annoucned they will be penalizeing low-quality exact match domains in their search results.
What does this mean? In the past, if you were creating a review website about cameras (obviously with the purpose of linking to a sales page with your affiliate link so you can earn a percentage of the sale) it would be a huge advantage to own bestcameras.com. You could throw up a quick site and get quite a few hits just based on your domain name. This made exact match domain names valuable. Now, this same URL or domain name would essentially be worthless without great content to go along with it.
Other Domain Name Tips:
- Keep it fairly short
- Don’t use hyphens or numbers
- Avoid words that are commonly
mispelledmisspelled - Make it easy to type
- Make it easy to remember
- Fulfill expectations. Make sure it gives an accurate preview of what the reader will find on your blog or website.
- Only choose Dot-Com domains
- Make it unique
- Think about keywords
When you have two or three that you like, go see if they are available. This might automatically narrow it down to one for you. Or it may be that none are available. Either way, see what your options are before you agonize over the name too much.
Registering Your Domain & Hosting
Once you settle on a domain name you are going to have to register it. I use HostGator for my domain registration and hosting. They are a major player and have never let me down. Another popular domain name registrar is GoDaddy. There are others as well but these two are big, reputable, safe and offer competitive pricing. Whichever one you choose, I highly recommend you register your domain name with the same company you are going to host your domain with. It’s just way, way, way easier.
Ok, Let’s Launch Your Blog
- Click Here to go to Hostgator.com.
- Once there, click on the “Get Started” button. Don’t worry about all the other options on that page. Right now we are going to start with the cheapest plan possible. Once your blog becomes popular you can upgrade. It’s super easy (they’ll even do it for you).
- Choose your hosting plan. I recommend the “Hatchling” plan because it’s the cheapest and it works great for one blog. It’s what I started with and I just upgraded as I got more visitors and started making more money.
- Enter your new domain and make sure the .com tab is selected on the right. Hostgator will let you know if your new web address is available. If it is, awesome. If not don’t worry. Try your second choice. Remember my domain name tips and don’t stress if you have to go through a few choices before you find one that’s available. The perfect domain name will choose you.
- After you select your domain, a box will appear below. It will ask you if you want domain privacy. It costs $9.95 a year. It’s up to you. You might get a few more spam emails if you don’t sign up for it. But you don’t necessarily “need” domain privacy. I never pay for it. Just uncheck the box if you don’t need it.
- Choose your hosting plan payment options. This is totally up to you. It’s a little bit cheaper to pay in advance, but I recommend selecting the “1 month” option at first. You want to see if this is something you are actually going to stick with.
- Enter a username and select a pin number. And then your contact information and billing info.
- Below that you will have some “Additional Services” offered. You don’t need these right away in my opinion. Uncheck all the boxes and proceed (you can always add things later.)
- Check Out
Congratulations, you now own a piece of Internet real estate. Feels kind of cool doesn’t it? Time to make it pretty.
Making Your Blog Live & Loading WordPress
The first thing you are going to have to do is point your domain (web address) to your hosting account. Go to manage domains.
After that you will click on your domain. This will bring up a box that will allow you to configure your settings.
On this page you can change your contact information, get an overview of the account, manage domain locking, privacy, and auto-renewal. This is also where you are going to designate your name servers and point your domain to your web hosting plan.
Click on the “Name Servers” tab and select your hosting account. This will automatically enter in the proper Name Servers.
Load WordPress
After your domain is registered and your hosting is secure, you will get access to cPanel. cPanel is a graphical web-based control panel that helps you quickly and easily manage your website and hosting account.
If you use HostGator it will look like this:
As you can see, I have pointed out the icon that allows you to load WordPress. After you click the icon you will be taken to a set of step-by-step instructions that will easily guide you through the process of launching your blog.
Tip: Bookmark your cPanel login page so you can easily return.
Login to WordPress & Start Customizing Your Blog
Now your blog is actually up in running. Time to start customizing it and making it amazing. The first thing you are going to do is login to your WordPress dashboard. This is the control panel for your new website/blog. You will find your login page at:
yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/
The first thing I always like to do when I start a new website or blog is load the theme I am going to use. The theme is important to your website. Not only is it the design of your blog, it also greatly affects your sites readability, functionality, and reader engagement. All of which dramatically affect your SEO, Google rankings, and ultimately the amount of traffic your site will see.
I have used a lot of paid and a lot of free themes over the years. The first company I ever purchased a theme from was My Theme Shop. They are great for beginners. Their themes are modern, clean, responsive, and fast. Essentially they are everything that is important in a great theme and nothing that isn’t.
My Theme Shop has many great themes and plugins available. I use their paid themes for my blogs these days, but they offer many great free WordPress themes as well.
I truly believe that free themes are just fine when you are getting started. Most theme developers treat these free themes as a sort of working interview. It helps them lure customers to their paid themes. They figure if you like their free WordPress theme then you will be more likely to stick with them when it comes time to purchase your next premium theme. For this reason, developers put a lot of care into creating these free themes. Now that being said, eventually you will want to migrate towards a premium theme for added functionality and performance.
Once you have chosen and downloaded your theme you will have to install it in WordPress. This is much easier than you would think. From the WordPress dashboard click “Appearance” on the left side menu. This will bring up a sub-menu. Click on the first one listed which is “Themes.” From there you click on “Add New” (see image below) where you can upload your new theme.
Get WordPress SEO by Yoast
While your theme is responsible for be a bulk of your sites functionality, you will want to add other tools (called plugins) to make it better. The most important plugin in my opinion is WordPress SEO by Yoast.
For beginners it is imperative that you have this plugin before you write your first post. This free plugin will teach you how to write great content that is search engine friendly. You can easily add this plugin from your WordPress dashboard. Simply click add new and search WordPress SEO by Yoast as shown below.
Don’t Forget to Change Your Title & Tagline
This is one thing that can easily be overlooked. In the WordPress dashboard you will once again click on “Appearance” located on the left side menu. The second option down will be “Customize.” When you click on that you will be taken to a page that gives you a preview of the front page of your new website. On the left hand side you will see a menu item that is labeled “Site Title & Tagline.” Change that to whatever you want. For instance, my title is “Create and Monetize” and my tagline is “SEO, Affiliate Marketing & Social Media.”
Create Your First Post
That’s it. You’re ready to start blogging. As time goes on you will be constantly tweaking your blog. Adding plugins, upgrading your theme (if you started with a free theme), moving around widgets, placing ads, and so on. But that will come with time. Don’t get hung up on that sort of thing yet. The most important thing you can do now is just Start Writing. Write and write and write.
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