Blog writing is not something very uncommon these days. You might already know what a blog is, but if you are unsure how a blog works or how to start a blog, then this online guide is perfect for you. A blog can be of many types; travel blogs, educational blogs, daily lifestyle blogs, and many more; if you can correctly open and keep your blogs up to date, you can earn some good money from your blog. Hence, when you start searching on the internet on how to start a blog, It can be pretty hectic work to find all the required information. So, I decided to compile up all the information together and prepare this guide for you. Hold your horses and read this whole guide, and in no time, you will be ready to start your blog.
Purpose of your blog
Before you jump to the steps required to make a perfect blog, specify your primary purpose of creating a blog. Blogs can be a great way to practice and improve your creative writing skills, or you can just simply use a blog to make some good connections with others in the same field of your blogging, or in more simple turns; if you play your cards correctly, you can even earn a right amount of money. It is essential for you first to understand the primary purpose of your blogging and whether you are ready to work for it. Hence, if you have made your mind that you are prepared for the hard work, then we can jump to the part where I will teach you how to start a blog.
Starting your own blog
I will break the process of creating a blog into simple eight steps, including creating a blog on WordPress.
Step 1: The Ideal Niche for your blog
The first and foremost step of starting a blog is to choose the perfect niche, which in simple terms, is the topic you will be writing about in your blog. It is always essential to understand your readers well to find the perfect niche. The accomplishment of your blog relies upon how well you can follow your readers; you have to find out who will be the readers of your blogs and what they want to read. To choose the ideal niche, you should always go for the topic that suits and interests you more. If you chose a topic you are passionate about; it will help you set up your content in the blog more beautifully and attract more readers. Niche blogging basically works with the principle of advertising for a specific sector, and niche sites are always easy to monetize and earn money through different ads, affiliate marketing, and many more.
Step 2: Finding the best platform for blogging
You will generally find two types of blog management tools for your blogging site; Self-hosted and free. You need to choose the best platform that matches your requirements more profoundly. Down below, I will discuss both platforms in detail. However, it is recommended to use self-hosted platforms to make your work of setting up a blog much more comfortable.
Self–hosted
If you choose the self-hosted, you will have full access to your blog, and you can edit and modify your blog according to your needs without any restrictions. With a self-hosted service, you can use your own domain and web hosting, provider. So, spend a few bucks and get full access to your blog. The market is filled with many different self-hosted platforms, but if you ask about my opinion, I will suggest that you use WordPress.org; it is one of the most renowned self-hosting platforms for bloggers.
Free Hosting
If you are just a beginner in the blogging arena and is in short of cash, then the best option for you is to use free hosting services like Blogger, Tumblr, and many more. These free services come with serious disadvantages; they will control your blog with their own restrictions and will limit your ads according to their choice. So, it is always preferred that you go for the self-hosted options.
Step 3: Getting a Domain name
You might want to choose a unique address by which your readers can easily find your blog on the internet. To do this, you need to pick a domain name, and this name will be unique to your blog, and no one else can have the same domain name until you keep paying the yearly fee for the domain. On average, you have to pay approximately 10-30 dollars for a domain name yearly. You also got an option to choose the domain name from like for example, “dot-net” or “dot-com” and many more. However, I will suggest you go for a “dot-com.”
Step 4: Choosing a web hosting provider
You read the title right; to start a blog, you need to find the right web hosting provider. These web hosting providers will relieve you from the hard work and do it themselves. They will make sure that your blog is always up to date and available to potential readers. Web hosting providers will be responsible for the proper performance and functionality of your blog.
Well, choosing a reliable web hosting provider can be a painful task. Since I have decided to make this a complete guide on how to start a blog, I will be sharing with you the most reliable provider that I use, and that is “SiteGround.” Siteground is in the market for very long now, and there are very few complaints regarding them until now, and it works very well with WordPress.org.
Step 5: Setting up your WordPress blog with SiteGround
Here I will briefly describe how you can set up your WordPress blog with SiteGround.
- Visit the SiteGround website and choose your most preferred hosting plans. You will have three basic hosting plans, choose the one that best suits your requirements.
- Choose your domain name, SitegGround will allow you to register for a domain name through name (which I highly suggest). However, you can also transfer your previously bought domain name.
- Fill up all the forms with your full information. Make sure to input all the correct info in this section.
- Fixed the length of your plan, like how long you want the initial plan to continue. You can also add extra services for some extra cash.
- Your account is now created; you will now go ahead with the account setup option.
- After you are done with the account setup wizard. You will choose your blog niche type and the platform you are going to use your blog for; for example, here I am working with a WordPress blog, so we are going to choose that.
- Provide your login information and set up the web template that you like, and with SiteGround, you will get a free web design template. And after you are done choosing the template. Your account is entirely ready; now, you can log in and start to unleash the writer inside of you, time to start blogging.
Step 6: Choosing the right theme
Regardless of the fact, which web hosting services you use, you must choose the perfect theme for your blog. No one likes a dull and gloomy blog, so if you can select the correct eye-catchy theme, you will surely catch more reader’s interest. A WordPress blog with a good theme will always gain you more readers, and hence you will earn more money.
When it comes to the theme, you can either use free themes or premium paid themes. WordPress.org has access to over 3000 free themes; you will also find many free themes on SiteGround.
Step 7: Preparing your blog
You are not yet done, hold your horses. Leaving your blog empty isn’t going to gain you, readers. After you are done setting up your blog, it is time to start writing in your blog and fill your blog with quality content. Make sure that the contents are useful to the readers reading it, and this will encourage them to come back again to your blog.
Always try to create content that is directly linked with the niche you have created your blog for. Adding useful photos, videos will always attract more crowd to your blog. Your content should always be created in such a way that it interacts with the readers.
Step 8: Promoting your blog
- Social Media Marketing
Creating a blog is not enough; you need to start promoting your blog. The best way is to promote through social media like Facebook and Instagram. You can take the help of google ads and boosting to promote your blog so that it reaches your future targeted audience.
- Connect to search engines
The second most effective way of promoting your blog is by submitting your blog URL to the search engine. This isn’t that tough as it sounds like. You just need to sign in to your Google account, and then you can find an option written as submit your URL in Webmaster Tools. You can also submit your blog to other search engines like Bing and many others like this.
- Bookmarking sites
You must have heard about sites like Reddit, Scoop. These are a few of the famous bookmarking sites. Bookmarking sites will help you gain more readers who are looking for something that is related to your niche.
Additional Money–making tips
The main purpose of your blogging might be to earn money, and why not? You will be investing quite a lot of money on your blog, including hours and hours of hard work. So, it isn’t silly to think about the returns you will be getting. There are various ways that you can use to make money through your blog.
Affiliate Links
You can include affiliate links of different products in your blogs (you can even write about them to promote the products). So, when one of your readers buys anything following the affiliate links, you will earn a commission. The more visitors you have in your blog, the higher the percentage of chance you have to earn money.
Creating and posting ads on your blog
You can easily run ads of all types regardless of the fact that what type of niche you are working with. With ads running on your blog, you can easily earn money without much hard work.
Selling own products and guides.
You can also use your blog to sell and promote your products, and selling products through blogs helps increase sales. You can also create different types of technical guides and eBooks and sell them on your blogs. If your readers are interested and impressed by your content, then these guides will sell in no time.
Frequently Asked Questions
After reading this guide on how to start a blog, it is apparent that you might have some questions. Down below, I will be discussing a few of the most commonly asked questions.
1. Can I Start a blog for free?
Answer: As I have mentioned above that yes, you can start a blog for free using free platforms like Tumblr and Blogger, but these come with some serious restrictions. So, it is always advisable to use the paid hosting services to make your blog a useful one.
2. Can I write about different types of niches for my blog?
Answer: Yes, you can write about different types of niches if you want to. However, it is best to write about one or two specific types of niches so that your content is more specialized and developed. You surely don’t want to be “master of all trades, jack of nothing.”
3. How much money do I need to start a blog?
Answer: Well, it doesn’t cost that much to start a basic blog. If you use the SiteGround Hosting service, it will only cost you ^.99 dollars per month to host your WordPress blog.
Conclusion
I wrote this guide intending to give all of you out there, a clear idea of how to start a blog. If you read and understand this guide clearly, you should have no problem by now with starting a blog for yourself. Regardless of the fact whether you wish to create a free blog or a paid one, I have entirely discussed both of the sectors. Now it is your time to decide which better suits your preferences and start with your own blog.