That’s the spirit. I could value your interest in starting a new blog as you have landed here. And, I never disappoint you. By the end of this post, you will have your own blog in place as you desire. At the same time, I don’t want to build fake motivations that anybody can succeed in blogging just like anything.
How serious you are about blogging and how you can dedicate yourself to learning things? As a result, based on these, your blogging survives.
Especially, this ‘how to start a blog’ guide is for beginners. I will help you with easy tips to start a blog today, just with basic computer skills. I don’t feel shame to let you know that this guide is purely from my blogging experience and mistakes. When I started my first blog, I had several slip-ups. But, I was more passionate and hence, hurdles couldn’t hurt me much.
Even now, every day, I learn new things and strive hard to be updated in the blogging niche. So, whenever you got stuck at any point, I am readily available to help you. Any blogging tools like themes you find it hard to setup or plug-ins to configure or anything, ping me.
The good thing is, there more people online than ever before. And, it grows exponentially. Starting a blog in this digital age and spreading your ideas about your interests is diligent always. So, get started, today.
Pre-requisites To Start A Blog
It is obvious, so many confusions will round up your head whenever you are trying to start a blog. Even, I had the same uncertainties when I was new to this blogging arsenal. Now, with years of experience, I am contented to help you to come up with your dreams with no struggle. Hence, I am presenting this post on how to start a blog. Also, compiling the valuable resources like hosting, themes, plug-ins, etc. you might require for blogging in one place.
With that being said, let me help you to get prepared with the pre-requisites for your successful blogging journey.
First and foremost – Consistency. Stop thinking about starting a blog if you doubt your consistency. In the blogging industry, consistency decides your success than anything. If you are sure about it, then nothing can stop your growth and blog monetization. You can see most of the successful bloggers made it possible only with their level of consistency.
Contents
- Pre-requisites To Start A Blog
- How To Start A Blog And Where To Start?
- #1 Decide On What to Blog – Pick A Niche
- #2 Name Your Blog – Domain Registration
- #3 Find A Space On Web – Web Hosting
- #4 Set Up Your Blog – Installing CMS
- #5 Make Blog Appeal To Readers – Blog Customization
- #6 Speak To Your Audience – Content Posting
- How To Promote A New Blog?
- Final Words On How To Start A New Blog
Here are a few queries that every beginner will have in mind before starting a blog. Probably, those are the hurdles, stopping you to get into blogging. Hope while reading it, you will realize how true it is in your case.
I hope I have covered the preliminary questions you have in mind before starting a blog. How about you? Are you ready for blogging? Ask yourself on everything answered above, decide and then, get started. Let me know if you have any further questions that stop you still (in the comments section). Fine, let’s get into the detailed guide on starting a blog that can bring a revolution in your life journey. At last, you prepared yourself to start a blog but got stuck where to start it? This step-by-step guide on how to start a blog can help you thoroughly. Beforehand, clarify yourself about your goals of blogging. Without setting a destination point, it is meaningless to travel. You are starting a blog for a passion, or to make money, or to share your insights on something for the people, or to promote your business brand or products, etc. Set your goal before continue reading further. Picking a niche is difficult too. Why? Because it’s important. There is a saying – ‘the good decisions are taken already’. Break it now. You will get infinite ideas if you can spend some more time. Don’t give it up. Choosing a niche is a long-term choice. If you made it wrong, then this will be the long-term failure. Then, how to pick a potential niche? How to choose a profitable niche to blog about? The idea behind choosing a niche is simple. Know things that you are passionate about. It must be the matter of interest which you would even murmur in your deep sleep. Wherever you go or whatever you do, your thinking will be on the same topic. Literally, that is your favorite niche to blog. The niche you are choosing must be your area of interest, stuff you are eager to learn things, idea you wanted to share publicly, the profession you are being for years, or something. Meanwhile, don’t over evaluate thinking about niche market value, its depth, etc. Surf over the net to understand its competition and define your target audience. Run through some quality blogs on that niche to get some preliminary ideas. For an instant, if you are a Photographer, create a blog on Camera, Photo Editing, Photography, etc. Don’t put your legs on finance or cryptocurrency blogs. While sticking to a particular niche, decide on the country or region, the category of people you target, the niche trendiness, etc. As I said earlier, it is a long-term decision that is going to bring you success forever. Take your time, analyze and come up with a profitable niche. Few typical questions that beginners might struggle to find the answer while picking a niche – I am glad to help you if you have any questions further. Ok, then. With a topic or niche chosen what to do next? What domain name to select? There is no numerology or sentiments like naming a newborn baby. Still, there are some logic to remember naming your blog. The domain name is the key phrase or a set of words with extensions like .com, .net, .in, .org, etc. It also refers to the top level domain (TLD). I always recommend you going with a .com extension, irrespective to your target location or audience. For your quick reference: www.google.com Google is the domain name and .com the domain extension. The domain name is the term you users will use type in browsers search bars to locate you. Hence, it must be short, and simple to remember. Don’t use any special characters like www.me&we.com or numerical values like www.A2Zfashion.com. It is hard to remember by your audience as well as higher the possibilities to mistype often. Anyways, don’t spend too much time on this area to choose your domain name. As you have a niche in your hand, use these tools to find a suitable domain name. LeanDomainSearch, the domain name generator can fetch you hundreds of names as if entering your niche term in the search function box. Select a few that are eye-catchy and appeals to you. Then head over to namecheckr website. Enter the names that you selected from LeanDomainSearch and enter it here one by one. Check the availability of the domain name with desired TLD and on social platforms. Knowing the availability, pick the BEST one you admire. Here are my answers on some common questions about choosing a domain name – Then, you have to register the domain with any domain name service provider. GoDaddy would be the best option for domain name registration for the start-ups. Still, hold on. Since few hosting providers offer free domain registration. Hence, let’s further discuss hosting your blog and the things to consider before choosing the right host. Thereby, depending on the hosting service you choose, buy or register your domain name over there for free. Hosting is nothing but getting a server space on the internet to host your blog or domain. Only with web hosting, your blog will be live and available for the online users. It doesn’t mean that anybody can access the backend of your blog. You will get the cpanel login details from the hosts with which only you can make changes and updates to your blog. To get started with a blog as a beginner, the shared hosting will be enough to handle the minimal blog traffic. As it grows and gains more traffic, you can upgrade the hosting plans. There are handfuls of hosting solution providers available in the market. It is really tough to choose between the one offering best features, support, and reliable hosting service at an affordable cost. From my experience, I would recommend you to go with Bluehost. The primary reason being it is one of the three hosting services recommended by WordPress organization. The Bluehost servers and features are catered for WordPress platforms. Here are the features of Bluehost that admire me – To make your job simple, let me take you through the entire hosting process with Bluehost. Probably, the phenomena would be similar to any hosting service you choose. First, head over to the bluehost.com website and click on ‘Get Started’ under ‘Shared Hosting’. Upon which, you will find three different hosting plans. As a newbie getting started with a single blog, I would suggest you go with ‘basic’ plan itself. Then, you will be provided with options about domain name – entering a registered domain, or register a new domain name with Bluehost. The next step is to feed your account information. No harm in filling those details. Your account details will be safe. By then, choose your account plans for higher months. Select Basic 36 months – $2.95/month. By which, you can save some reasonable money as the renewal charges will be higher than the introductory rates. Your plan includes free SSL, free domain for 1 year, CDN, and everything as committed under every plan. Based on your selection, pay the billed amount exactly. Then, check the Terms and Conditions box and submit. Once you are done with everything, create a new password to your hosting account. If you have any of these below queries, get clarified like other new bloggers. You have your domain name hosted on the web. Your blog is live now. The very next step is to get a Content Management System (CMS) to build your blog. Though there are plenty of CMS platforms available, you can go with WordPress blindly. WordPress has the entire features that your blog needs to be successful online. Here are some statistics to justify how popular WordPress is – What else you need to stick to WordPress CMS? The great thing in Bluehost is – all its plans include WP Starter site-building wizard for WordPress installation, managed auto-updates of the core software and plug-ins, and expert WordPress support. With this WordPress CMS installation, your blog is live now. You may use the URL www.your-domain.com/wp-admin to log in to your WordPress admin dashboard. Now you are done with installing your user-friendly CMS platform. Obviously, the next thing to do is customizing your blog to grab the user’s attention. Few common questions about setting up your blog for the first time – After installing the WordPress CMS and log in to your WP dashboard, you will be asked to change the theme for your blog. The default theme will be so good. Still, go for some unique theme based on your niche. WordPress depot has thousands of responsive themes. Also, there are plenty of marketplaces to buy premium WordPress themes. As a beginner, it is more than enough to go with any free WordPress themes. But, understand its features like mobile responsiveness, SEO-friendly, customization options, documentation, customer support, etc. If you are confused to choose between the clusters of free WordPress themes, then I suggest you go with GeneratePress. GeneratePress free theme is as powerful as other premium WordPress themes. Even with its free version, you can change designs of your blog as you desire. You can see I have used the GeneratePress theme for this blog. Alternatively, if you are looking for multiple choices to pick your best suit, then go with StudioPress/Genesis themes. StudioPress has more than 60 responsive WordPress themes. All the StudioPress themes are built on the Genesis framework. So, you can randomly go with any StudioPress themes for its fast-loading, easy-to-use, mobile responsive and SEO-friendly. You can find a repository of themes to pick a one that suits your niche. Once deciding upon, install, and activate the theme. Then go to Themes >> Customize. This is the place you will have loads of options to customize the look and feel of your blog. It includes uploading your logo, blog background color, text color, layout, etc. You can also try changing the font family, weight, header & footer area, etc. You can play around with the customize options to make over your blog design. Then, let’s see about the plug-ins to add more functionalities to your blog. WordPress has a bank of thousands of free WordPress plug-ins to improvise the performance of your blog as well. From my experience, let me take you through some free and premium plug-ins that are mandatory to use. Free WordPress Plug-ins Yoast SEO – The powerful plug-in that can take responsibility for your entire on-page optimization tasks. You will get detailed suggestions to make your on-page SEO factors, perfect. You can configure Google Search Console, create a robots.txt file, an auto sitemap of your blog, etc. RankMath – The better alternative to Yoast SEO. The comprehensive WordPress SEO plug-in that has almost all the features that Yoast have. In addition, RankMath also helps with details like 404 monitoring, SEO audit, rich snippets, local SEO, etc. RankMath is available for free and premium. W3 Total Cache – To boost the loading speed and performance of your blog, you can use W3 Total Cache plug-in clearing caches. With which you can have your site mobile-friendly. Really Simple SSL – We have seen above in the web hosting section about SSL. In case of using free SSL, then install and activate this plug-in. This is to make sure that there is a proper redirection to https rather http. CAOS for Analytics – The plug-in to optimize Google Analytics for your WordPress blog. With which you can completely track the traffic to your blog, demographics, particular blog post performance, etc. WPForms – The drag and drop plugin that made building contact forms much easier. With the readily available templates and workflows, you will find it user-friendly to build the most impressive and mobile-friendly contact forms too. Autoptimize – To further optimize your WordPress blog, you must have one such caching plug-in. The tool can aggregate, minify cache, insert CSS, and minify HTML, etc. Though you are not aware of these terms, Autoptimize is a plug-in to improve your blog performance literally. Social Warfare – The plug-in by the group of social media experts and world-class developers to grow your social shares. You can have great looking social share buttons on your blog irrespective to your screen size and resolution. Akismet Anti-Spam – The proficient plug-in to save your blog from publishing any malicious contents as via comments or contact forms. The tool automatically checks all the comments and filters the spam. Pretty Links – The WordPress plug-in to shorten URL’s. Over and above, it also tracks hit on your URL’s, the origin from where the hit happens, etc. Mostly, it is obvious to clean up the affiliate links, track links, and to spread links on forum and communities. Table of Contents Plus – You can improve the readability of your posts with a table of content or index of the content. Your readers will find it easy to navigate to the subheadings which they want to read, directly from the table of contents. TablePress – If you want to include some comparison tables, rating tables in your post, TablePress makes is very much possible. It is enough to create a table in the TablePress plug-in with necessary fields and mention the table id in the post. Shortcodes Ultimate – This plug-in has comprehensive collections of visual components to improve the user experience of your blog post. It includes adding a note, different icons to the bullet points, call-to-action buttons, etc. All-In-One Schema Rich Snippets – You can make your pages appear more eye-catchy in the search engine results page. You can mention reviews, working hours, events, recipes like snippets over there. With which you can increase the click-through rates, immensely. Paid or Premium WordPress Plug-ins WP Rich Snippet – The better alternative to All-in-one schema. The paid plug-in to notify more details about your web page to the user and search engines to understand better. To the bottom line, you are customizing your search results appearance for more click through and conversion. WP Rocket – The most powerful caching plug-in recommended by WordPress experts. Probably, you don’t require installing in it for a startup blog. You may use W3 Total Cache plug-in that is available for free. Later, you can switch to WP Rocket, as your traffic peaks high. Thrive Architect – The easy-to-use page builder that is catered for conversion focussed WordPress sites or blogs. You can have more conversion concentrated plug-in by Thrive Themes to include more add-on functionalities to your landing pages/blog posts. Hope you might have these questions on customizing your theme – With the necessary plug-ins installed, you can now fill up a blog with awesome content. Before that, I insist you create a few basic pages on your blog. Normally people won’t pay attention to this area. But, it is highly recommended to include home, about us, contact us, disclaimer, privacy policy, terms and conditions, and cookies-page. Then, create new blog posts on subtopics that are trending in your niche. Make sure that your content is of high quality and offer solutions to your reader’s problems. Based on your niche, your posting frequency can vary. But, as I insisted earlier, be consistent in publishing blog posts too. Have a schedule and act upon. Here are the few FAQS to clear the entire question marks in front of you – Take a breath. Starting a blog is made simple with this. Further, promoting, bringing traffic and growing the blog will be furthermore tedious. There are a countless number of bloggers go vanished without strategic blogging promotions. Not knowing how to promote the new blog, or how to take it further, blogging fails. I don’t want you to be one among those. You cannot take instant outcomes from SEO and blogging. But, there are payoffs for sure if you are consistent in putting efforts. Once after publishing content on a topic with a focus, it needs strategic promotions. Here are some of the essential things to do soon after launching a blog – Add new content regularly – Keep your blog fresh and updated publishing new content often. There are no certain rules to post articles on your blog. But, make sure to publish at least an article of around 2,500 words in a week. Indeed, it depends on the niche, competition, and writing potential. But, each content must be valuable, inspirational, and flawless. Update old posts – Keep a practice of adding content, updated data or fresh content to your existing or old blog posts to make it refreshed and improve the chances of rankings. Proper on-page with FAQ Schema – It is obvious to make it reach as possible as the figure of audiences. For which, you will have to optimize your blog on various factors. Luckily, plug-ins like Yoast and RankMath will take care of your on-page SEO. Comparatively, RankMath has more advanced features even to embed the FAQ schema into your posts for better ranking. Using some powerful SEO tools like SEO PowerSuite, make sure your website is healthy and have proper SEO in place. There are several ranking factors to consider while promoting your blog and its content. Create quality backlinks at no cost – You will have to build quality backlinks on other authority sites so as to uplift your content and blog across the huge audience. There are hundreds and hundreds of link building techniques available like blog commenting, profile creation, social bookmarking, etc. to generate free backlinks. Buy Backlinks – Even though using traditional link building techniques helps you to build backlinks, you will have to adapt to some advanced and potential strategies to gain some authority backlinks too. But, you can’t break your mind to dig such organic link building opportunities. In such a case, outsource your link building chores to a reliable but also the professional partners like Links Management. Strengthen your link profile and improve the chances of ranking top in the search engine results page. Guest Blogging – The blogger outreach strategy is much deserved to mention here. Guest posting can help you build a huge audience base in your niche and gets you higher exposure. Likewise, you will have to participate in forums and communities in your niche, interact with expert bloggers, and build the relationship. Blogging is nothing but building networks and sharing information. If you are good at building rapport, then you can easily promote your blog literally. If you are so beginner, don’t get into more details that may lead to confusion. It is simple to pick a niche, choose a domain name, host it, install CMS to build and design your blog. Launch your blog to this world. Your actual tasks begin from there. Customizing your blog, publishing content, analyzing the market, learning kinds of stuff, driving traffic and making money all depends on your hope and consistency. You have to do your tasks with interest. Only then, you can reach your goal or the purpose of which you start a blog. Anyways, you will have to keep updating yourself to survive in the competitive world, particularly, in this digital world.How To Start A Blog And Where To Start?
#1 Decide On What to Blog – Pick A Niche
#2 Name Your Blog – Domain Registration
#3 Find A Space On Web – Web Hosting
Also, you can also pick if any additional services required like domain privacy protection, SiteLock security, Codeguard basic, etc. those are optional .
#4 Set Up Your Blog – Installing CMS
#5 Make Blog Appeal To Readers – Blog Customization
#6 Speak To Your Audience – Content Posting
How To Promote A New Blog?
Final Words On How To Start A New Blog