How To Start A Blog (The Bare Essentials For Complete Newbies)
If you want to learn how to start a blog easily and without complications, you have come to the right place. In this article you will find all the information you need to set up your first blog step by step , and to get you up and running as soon as possible and with least amount of effort.
Blogging can seem like very complicated, difficult to do and to start (and it sometimes is) but it can also be very rewarding, and in this post, I’ll be going over how to start your own blog, in as few steps as are needed.
Let’s get straight into it…
First: What Types Of Blogs Exist?
There are two types of platform where you can create your blog on, and the choice between one or the other, should depend on your objective with your specific blog.
The first is free and allows you to start a blog quickly, although it will look less professional. The second is paid and it will take longer to customize it, but in return you will get a more professional result. This second option is also a lot safer, and you’re going to actually be the owner of it, and not just a user.
Let’s see what each one offers and for what type of user it is:
Free Blogs
The free platforms are intended for hobbyist bloggers who simply want a place on the Internet to write for themselves.
They are free because they host your website on their own server, but since these servers have a fixed capacity, they can limit the functions of your blog.
The most popular are WordPress.com , Blogger, and Wix . Creating a blog on one of these platforms is as simple as opening an account, choosing the name of your blog and starting to write articles.
You will recognize most free blogs because the name of the platform includes its web address.
Paid Blogs
For this type of blog, you’ll not be using the free servers of WordPress.com or Blogger… but instead, you’ll be buying hosting service, from a company to give you a space on their servers.
There are many hosting companies out there, and the price usually range between 3-10 dollars per month, for shared hosting plans.
Although you may be tempted, I do not recommend that you use the cheapest hosting you can find, for two main reasons:
- They tend to give poor technical service.
- Your blog will proabbly load slowly…which can hurt your rankings and nobody likes having to wait to see a page.
I –Highly– Recommend Getting A Paid Blog
When you pay for your blog and domain name, you get to own your articles, your domains and website files.
You’re not really “the owner” of them, if you’re using a free platform, just like you’re not really the “owner” of your posts and images, when you upload them to Facebook or Instagram. You’re just using their platform and it’s their rules.
In the case of paying for your domain name and getting your website files created, you get to own both.
For this reason, I’ll be continuing this tutorial for the paid versions of building a blog, so feel free to tag a long wether you want to get a paid blog or not.
How To Start A Blog: The Steps
These are the extremely basic and right to the point steps you need to create a blog:
- Decide the topic of your blog
- Register your domain
- Get hosting
- Install WordPress
- Set up the crucial plugins
- Start Writing!
Decide On The Blog Topic.
Although it may seem that it has nothing to do with the process of creating a blog, this is actually the most important stage.
While the rest of the steps are purely technical and very simple, the main topic of your blog is what will determine its potential and your ability to earn money with it in the medium and long term.
It’s also important that you’re really interested in what it is that you’re blogging about, or that you’re interested in learning about it. It’ll keep your motivation up, and your content going.
If monetizing your blog is the main idea, it’s important that you choose a topic that solves a problem, but that also isn’t too saturated, so as to make your blogging life, as stress-free as possible.
When it comes to the niches and topics that you can blog about, some good options include:
- Personal finance & make money online
- Travel
- Pets and pet training
- Weightloss (tons of different categories here)
- Food
- Lifestyle
- Do it yourself
To name a few…
Register Your Domain.
A domain or “domain name”, is basically another name for your website name.
In the case of this blog, for example, it would be “bazaarofmarketing.com”, to give you an idea.
When it comes to choosing domain names, you’ll want to try to find something that is:
- Short and easy to write and rememeber
- That is relevant to what you’re blogging about.
- Try not to use hyphens. So for example “bazaar-of-marketing.com” would not be a good idea.
- Make sure it’s not already been registered before.
Get Hosting: Bluehost
Even though the content management system (cms) that I’ll be recommending later on (wordpress) is free…you’ll still need to host your website files on a specific server.
Think of it as buying electricity, running water and gas, for your house. It’s a maintainance cost to keep everything running.
Hosting is simply where you’re going to be storing the data and files. It’s pretty cheap, compared to what it could have cost you even just a few years ago, so there is no real reason to be stress about it.
With that said hosting can cost you anywhere from $2.95 a month to potentially hundreds and hundreds of dollars per month!
In our case, we’re going to be going with Bluehost, and there are a few reasons for that:
- Bluehost stands as the #1 recommended web hosting company by WordPress.org.
- You get 1 FREE domain name for the first year, on the 12 month plan.
- It’s and all around great hosting for beginners. Yes, you can get more technical and choose an alternative…but if you’re just starting out, it’s a great option.
To continue, you’ll want to head over to the Bluehost website, and click on the get started button.
At this point, you’ll have different plans available to you.
I’d recommend going for the Bluehost basic plan, of the Bluehost pro plan. Either is fine.
If you think you’ll be creating multiple websites off the start (very likely if you stick at it long enough) then I’d 100% go for the plus plan. Otherwise, just stick to the basic plan, you’ll be able to upgrade later on, if you want.
Installing WordPress
The next step, is to install WordPress onto your site, so that you can start building out your website.
Fortunately for you, BlueHost already allows you to automatically install WordPress, with a few clicks, so you don’t even need to go into your cPanel and mess around with files and addon domains and such.
So for this step, simply click on a wordPress theme that you think will fit the site the better. You can change it later on, if you don’t like it, the important step is to have something up and running fast.
Set Up Crucial Plugins
The next step, will be for you to add some of the more crucial plugins onto your site, so that it works well.
Plugins are simple “add-ons” that you can incorporate into your sites, that allow for specific functions, intagrate with 3 party tools, allows for some specific functions not found in the base website, or simply change the way some of the website functions as a whole.
This step can be extremely complex, but to keep things very simple, you’ll want to get yourself, a SEO plugin, a security plugin, and maybe a links builder plugin although that is optional.
To add your plugins, head over to the “plugin” section of your dashboard, click on the “add new” button, and at the top right of the window, search for “rankmath” and “wordfence”.
For each of them, you’ll want to click on the “install now” button, and then on the “activate” button.
Later on, you can add aditional plugins, like optin boxes, image compression plugins, performance and speed enhancing plugins, more security features, but for now, we’ll stick with these three.
- Rank Math SEO: This plugin is absolutely awesome, because it’ll both allow you to generate SEO optimized content (which will help your content rank well) but will also promt you to link your website to Google Seach Console (GSC), and generate and send your sitemap page to Google, for you. This basically forces you to sign up to GSC, and do everything correctly from the getgo. This tool also has a bunch of other functions, like redirects and a ranking tracker.
- WordFence: WordFence is a security plugin that is used by a ton of WordPress websites online today, and its function is to basically protect your account from unwanted spam and automatic bot comments, brute force attacks and so on. It’s the top one on WordPress, so just go ahead and get this one.
Start Writing!
Alright, so you’ve now successfully started a blog site (if you followed all the steps).
This is where the fun starts.
Now that you have your own blog site, you get to turn your vision into a reality through your content.
You can start writing and releasing the web content for your basic pages, you can create an “About Us” page, a home page, a privacy and policy page, and any other web page you want, in addition to writing blog posts of any kind.
Start generating new articles and publishing them, at least one or two a week, so that you can start building traction to your site as soon as possible. The key is to write about things that people are actually searching for, so that you can appear in the search engines for that term, and have people check out your website!
Also, the Rankmath SEO plugin, will tell you exactly HOW to create your articles, so as to give them the best chance to rank in the search engines. You can follow allong with the steps, everytime you create a post!
NOTE: Make sure to have your website connected to Google Search Console, so that your pages get indexed. If you installed the RankMath plugin, this should be extremely easy.
How To Start A Blog: Conclusion
And that’s it! That’s all you need to start your own blog, as a complete newbie, as fast as humanly possible.
Of course, you can get extremely fancy with multiple plugins, premium themes, redirects, categories, subcategories, and much more…
But this is a simple “straight to the point” tutrial, that can get anyone stared. There is literally no excuse not to do so.
And if you’re thinking of starting, I URGE you to please give it a go. When I started blogging, I was very afraid, and overthinking every little thing. Now I have multiple hosting accounts, and over 100 different domains to my name (I’ve lost count really). After a while it’ll become addicting, and you’ll be glad you got started.
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