How to start a blog

Blog, What exactly it is?

What is Meaning of blog (Definition)

A blog (a shortened version of “weblog”) is an expression of opinion on an individual subject over the internet. Imagine just as a personalised diary where people express their views on certain topics. The best part is one can have full control over the blog and easily edit whenever necessary.

So basically , Blog is an informational website which showcase informational post in reverse chronological manner (Recent post appears first )

Nowadays blogging is the best way to share your views, expertise, knowledge or information across the internet.

Mainly, Blog is a more popular channel to distribute knowledge over the internet. People used to blog instead of expressing knowledge on social media. And that’s the reason millions of blogs are getting added on a daily basis.

Why to start a blog?

Everyone has different objectives while starting a blog. Which mainly back by purpose of blogging. Mainly Personal blog and Business blog are two purpose driven types of blog.

Personal blogging is not much evolved as the major intent in personal blogging is to share knowledge on specific subjects. Further in Business blogging, Money is involved (earned ) be it direct or indirect approach. Even many people turn their personal blog into a business blog after getting decent traffic (users). And that’s completely natural.

Business blog can be managed by an individual or group of people depending upon the industry or niche of the blog. In business blogging companies are considering blogs as main marketing channels to generate leads.

Then educate leads with curated information to enter into sales funnels and drive massive business. Business blog is not just used to drive sales or earn money online, it helps you to make even more than that.

Yes, and that’s Trust and Authority. Business blog helps you to establish Authority and build Trust on readers’ minds.

Business blog can be done by any specific topic, art, or what you are good at. And once you do it consistently in the right way, you become a celebrity on the internet and earn money and fame as well.

What is the difference between a blog and website?

Website defines your business on the internet, be it static or dynamic. Website involves direct selling of products and services that you offer.

Whereas blog is an informational hub for your products or services. Blog helps you to educate website visitors about your products or services, defines usability, necessity, USP, and many other things to convert visitors into customers.

Not every website has a blog, but every blog technically operates as a website.

Now many people choose to start a blog as lucrative career options out there.

How to set up a blog?

Before actually getting started with blogging, know what is the right structure to set up a blog. Many times it totally varies by the platform where you host your blog.

But still, below is the list of blog elements.

Header with the main menu or navigation bar.
Featured Images with Headline (Post Topic)
Main body content with highlighted recent blog posts.
Sidebar with Social profiles, Favorite content, Subscription box .
Footer with relevant links like a disclaimer, privacy policy, contact page, etc.

This is just a basic structure of a blog, you can include many more widgets to bring more engagement across blog visitors.

Actually, blogs include a wide variety of elements and widgets as per blog category and business goals.

Definitive guide for ethical blogging (How to start a blog)

So you wanted to start a blog and make money out of it.

You may have heard blogging is one of the best way to make money online

Or you have seen some fascinating revenue screenshots and get inspired to start a blog.

So you think starting a blog is a good idea. And yes it is!

Well, blogging is the best way to make money online and yes, you can seriously consider blogging as a career.

My above statement is backed by personal experience and solid research on blogging stats.

Don’t just take my words for it, blogging is really the best way to make money online and can be started just in a couple of hours.

The biggest benefits of blogging for business is an extremely low barrier to entry. Means one can easily start a blog with completely low expanses.

Let me clear the most important fact here, just before you turn your mind to start a blog.

You hardly required a couple of hours to set up a blog but, it may take years to make a sizable amount of money from it.

This is the tough reality that you need definitive blogging strategy, consistent efforts to achieve success in blogging.

Here I have created a complete step by step guide for starting a blog and achieving sustainable growth, Stay tuned.

Now you have made your mind to start a blog and become a full time blogger or consider blogging as a mainstream source of income.

Yeah! It’s possible to do both at the same time. Here are few facts which will increase your interest in blogging and inspire you to start right here.

Though, the ultimate goal of blogging is to make money online. While doing so people do blogging for amazing reasons like,

Sharing thoughts & knowledge
Documenting learning for future use
Sharing key insights and experience
To receive free stuff for honest review
Free Food or Travel

Including above many other things out there for blogging and all end up with huge fun and Money.

So with blogging you can easily win on both money and passion which is rarely possible in a job.

I said it takes less than a couple of hours to set up your very first blog, true. But before getting started go through this complete blogging guide and understand key aspects of blogging.

This includes theory as well as practical knowledge along with a blogging tools guide. All you need to follow all steps to start a blog.

[ A Quick Starter Guide – Blogging for beginners]

In this section, I won’t cover everything, only the essential steps.

To start a blog all you need to have an idea, generally it’s your passion (what you are good at) and name for your blog.

If you are confused with the blog idea, I will help you with a detailed guide.

Once you have finalized name and url (domain) for your blog, move to signing up for bluehost (Hosting platform)

Choose the best suitable hosting plan for you and follow all instructions to set up a bluehost account. Skip all the package extras except for domain privacy + protection.

After you finish with the hosting account setup for your blog, you now officially hold a space on the internet for blogging.

Then go for :

Install WordPress (your blogging platform)
Choose and install a cheap/affordable theme
Customize your new theme
Write and publish your first blog post
Stick to a regular publishing schedule

After doing all above, once you have decent numbers of posts on blog, you need to think for blog monetisation.

There are many ways to make money with blogging like selling ad spaces to affiliate marketing. I will cover in detail for better understanding.]

Now let’s go through the whole process in details.

Step 1. What is the topic of your blog? ( blog niche )

The very first thing that you should start thinking about is choosing the right blogging niche, as this is the most important step of your blog.

I mean you are going to build an entire blogging business around one single niche, so think wisely.

While choosing a blog niche just not only think about a niche audience. In fact there is an audience for almost all blogging niches that you might think of.

Believe me, yoo no need to have an revolutionary idea and not even any science involved in it.

Firstly, All you need to make sure about your passion, expertise, interest area, unique experience. So you can easily handle the hardest part in blogging. That means you can continuously create informative and engaging content on the same topic that you have chosen.

So it’s a request, before finalising the blog topic just shortlist a few blogging ideas and validate based on below points.

1. Are you really interested in it?

The major concern of your interest in blogging niche is to bring consistency at creating content. Yes and that can not be ignored.

You have to be in love with a topic you have chosen for blogging otherwise it’s hard to develop interest, learn new things and create awesome content day by day.

Further, you have to be more curious about your blogging niche and build rapid skills, talent and expertise around that niche.

This is completely obvious but critical success factors for blogging success.

2. Are other people really interested in it ?

Once you are comfortable with your blog niche, you need to make sure about your blog audience. (upcoming)

You need to ensure people interest in your blogging niche, As to make money out of blog, ultimately you need to build your blog audience.

This can be done using few easy steps, just google the topic that you have chosen for blog.

You will come to know the total no of results available over Internet and that volume defines tentative no of audience interested in your blog niche.

For example, you might think that a blog topic will be “how wonderful your cat is” is super interesting — but is that going to draw in a lot of people?

On the other hand, a blog about how to take care and train cats sounds more appealing and draws a much bigger audience.

So you need to find a sweet spot between your interest and people’s interest for choosing a profitable blog niche.

This can be explain with the help of venn diagram.

For a reference you can choose a blog topic as Real Estate, Investing, Freelancing , Health & Beauty, Test Prep.

Step 2. Choose perfect name and URL (Domain) for your blog

Relax, it’s a little bit funny to choose a name for your very first blog.

Your blog name is going to be a reflection of your blogging niche and it’s going to be a future brand.

So you need to consider a few facts while choosing brand name for your blog.

Keep your blog name short and crisp (I recommends upto 14 characters)
Keep it easy to spell & pronounce
Avoid Misspelled words , numbers and hyphens
Try to go for .com domain

It would be great if you are able to find a blog name which can easily clear the purpose of your blog in readers mind. This is going to be the biggest win for you as it’s going to help a lot in branding.

Choosing a name for a blog, sometimes makes you stuck as you need to check for domain availability as well. And its harsh reality that all good names have already taken.

Here is one trick which might help you to tackle the domain unavailability issue for your blog name. Simply go for personal branding.

Use your personal name as a blog domain. Yes, many successful bloggers following this trend of personal branding.

The first benefits of personal branding blog, you can easily find .com domain name. And you own the flexibility to jump in different blogging categories.

After successfully registering a domain name for your blog, you can now move towards hosting your blog.

Step 3:- Pickup the Right Hosting and Setup your blog

This is a crucial step in setting up your blog, and sounds a bit technical but not actually.

Believe me, It’s even easier than you thought of.

After registering a domain of your choice, simply move towards setting up your hosting account.

There are plenty of blog hosting service providers, It’s up to you where to host your blog.

Listen, BlueHost is popular and one of my favourite hosting and domain service providers.

So with just one account you can take on both the things (Domain and Hosting). It’s true you can choose from Bluehost alternatives.

As of now you might have cleared your thoughts about Domain and blog Hosting. But Still FYI, Domain name is your blog address over internet and blog hosting is server space where your blog goes live 24×7.

Just head over to Bluehost website and check basic plan to start with.

Here are a few things available with Bluehost hosting that makes it popular.

Free SSL
Domain security
Unmetered bandwidth
Unlimited storage
Free domain name
Automatic Daily Malware Scan
Live chat support
30 days money back guarantee

Do check the above things if you go with another hosting provider than Bluehost.

Now click on “Get Started” button one bluehost.com

Then you will end up on the pricing page for bluehost hosting. Here you can compare available plans and features available in it.

You can literally start with a bluehost basic plan which costs $2-$3 per month, only if you are locked in for 36 months.

But I personally recommend to go with a 36 month plan to chase maximum discount on bluehost hosting. Here is one trick to save more on hosting purchase, try to find bluehost coupon code

After selecting the best hosting plan you are almost done.

Now it’s time to add your domain for your blog, if you have not yet registered a domain here at bluehost you can do so for free.

Or else you can skip this step for now and do later on. Now get finished with setting up the account with relevant account information. Choose extra package offerings by Bluehost and move ahead for the payment process.

From my experience, you only need codeguard basic and sitelock security essential from Package extras

Congratulations! Now you own a blog over the internet.

Don’t start celebration for now, instead move to installing blogging software for your very first blog.

Step 4: Installing your blogging Software, obviously WordPress.

WordPress is the world’s best blogging software, almost 30% of total websites powered by wordpress.

WordPress allows you to create and manage your blog easily and effectively. And the best part is wordpress is completely free, reliable and can be used without any technical knowledge.

Now it’s time for setting your blog on your host, just by installing wordpress.

Earlier installing wordpress from cpanel hosting was a little bit lengthy but now it takes only a couple of minutes. Yes, it’s a one click wordpress install, and all thanks to managed wordpress hosting by bluehost.

1) Log in to bluehost dashboard and click on ‘Add New Site’

2) Now add few details of your blog, Like name and Niche

3) And you are done with successful wordpress installation.

Woohoo! Your First blog is live now! 🎉

See, how easy it is, bluehost managed wordpress hosting has made this really simple.

Step 5:- Choose wordpress Theme for best blog design.

The world’s best content management system (CMS), WordPress allows you to use ‘Wordpress Themes’ for designing your blog.

Using CMS platforms like WordPress themes you can fully manage the look and feel of your blog by choosing the right WP-Theme.

There are thousands of wordpress themes available for free and paid version as well. Even you can choose the theme as per your blogging niche.

The beauty of the CMS platform is you can change your mind from one theme to another whenever you want. So with no coding you can literally change the entire look of your blog. That sounds really great.

Themeforest is my go to place for buying classic wordpress themes for my blog. It cost you somewhere around $100 to $160 but worth it. The complete user experience that themes delivered is really awesome.

Once you have finalised the WP-themes, it’s hard for you to believe your eyes that you have designed & developed this blog.

Follow these easy steps to install eyectaching wordpress themes

Navigate to WP dashboard and click on Appearance => Themes from left side navigation bar.

Here you can discover the best themes for your brand or simply upload if you have purchased from somewhere else.

After finalising WP theme click on ‘Install’ and within a minute you are done.

For more extended blog functionalities head over to install WP plugins.

Step 6: Install WordPress plugins for customisation.

Blog is not only about how it looks, you need to pay decent attention to its structured way and customised appearance.

To make this happen with your blog, wordpress plugins play an important role.

Literally, there is no certain limit for what customisation you make, but here you need to focus on essentials.

When you choose a WordPress theme, your half job is done as it brings initial appearance and look with limited functionalities.

Further you need to install wordpress plugins for full control over blog optimisation. Even using wordpress plugin you can play with blog functionality.

See, your blog is the front face of your brand and has to be completely optimised for search engine traffic (Google Traffic). As you need to attract real traffic from search engines for your blogging success.

WordPress plugins help a lot in winning blog SEO. As no one can succeed in blogging without winning at SEO.

Agreed, wordpress plugins are highly important, but do not add as such its getting free. This may lead to compromise your blog security, speed and blog optimisation.

Don’t be scared. I’m here to help you out. Just add a few essential plugins which will boost your blog optimisation and functionality.

Pro Tip:- You will get WordPress plugin recommandation only after theme installed.

Here is a list of essential plugins to start with.

1) Yoast SEO :- No other plugin can blog SEO optimisation like Yoast. This must have a plugin to win the SEO game. Just go for it. It easily handles SEO analysis, readability analysis, XML sitemaps and suggest the needful.

2) Autoptimize :- It’s a King of blog optimisation, it handles blog loading issues by minifying CSS, HTML and Javascript.

3) Akismet:- This one of my favourite plugins, which can easily detect spammy comments and remove them immediately. So it safeguards your blog from spammers.

4) Contact Form 7:- This brings your customer information to you. I mean this plugin setup contact form for your visitors on your blog.

5) Mailchimp or another ESP:- Obviously, building an email list is an ultimate primary goal for blogging. Mailchimp or any other email service provider ( ESP )will help you to build email lists.

Here I’m showing easy steps involved in wordpress plugin installation, you can simply repeat the same, every time you need to install plugin.

Now you might be worried about how to install wp plugin, where do you get wp- plugins? But all you can easily find in WP dashboard exactly the same as WP themes.

Here are a few steps involved in adding WP plugins. In WP Dashboard move to left navigation ‘Plugins’

See, Few WP Themes and Plugins are free and paid as well. Sometime you can use freemium version with limited functionalities and need to upgrade as per your need.

Step 7: Install Google Analytics & Setup Webmaster

Google analytics, you might have heard about this tool before. This is free website analytics tool offered by google. Which gives insanely useful insights of your website (Blog) visitor.

once you have make your blog live on internet, then you need to know few facts about visitors of your blog

Like How many visitors visit a day, For how long they stay on your blog, from where they came from. Have they performed desired action? And many other.

Actually GA (Google analytics) tool is a bit complex to understand and can not be totally explained in one shot. But still considering here all essential elements of GA along with GA account setup.

1) GA account setup starts with your gmail account. Create google analytics account using gmail.

2) Fill relevant account details for setting up GA for newly launched blog.

3) Enter your website details along with time zone and working currency.

4) It’s time to select the web as a property to collect data.

5) Further continue with adding your blog URL and blog name.

6) Here you need to establish communication between your blog and GA tool. And this can be done by using Javascript code provided by google analytics itself.

So, collect GA integration script from GA tool and place that snippet (JS code) on your blog.

This sounds a little bit techy. Alright , I’m here to share one trick for adding GA snippets on your website without handing code.

All you need to add one WP plugin named Headers and Footers and paste copied GA snippet in footer as shown in below image

Yes this way you are done with google analytics setup for your blog. Believe me this is a huge achievement for you.

As setting up GA and using it for blog is really a big thing. You can explore different elements of GA and analyse what’s happening on your blog.

Now it’s time to add the first masterpiece of content on your blog.

Here I would like to introduce one more amazing tool by google called google search console formally known as google webmaster.

It’s again very much important and hence I would like to cover this before you start writing for your blog. Google search console is even more easy to use than GA provides insights on performance of your blog.

Performance means you can see how many clicks and impressions you receive. And many other web performance facts including website speed and optimisation.

You will later hear about google indexing and crawling and how important it is. And Google search console (GSC )does that job, all you need to create a GSC account and submit your blog to google.

See, once you make your blog live, you need traffic to perform desired action ( click, views, signup, purchase). But just think about from where traffic will come organically. And the answer is search engines like google.

To send relevant traffic to your blog, search engine needs to crawl you blog and this is impossible without you manually submit your blog to Google (Search Engine)

Hence you need to submit your website to google via GSC , and that’s not charge you a penny. GSC account is absolutely free of cost and can be set up in a few clicks.

Firstly create your google search console account with your gmail account.

Now simply add your blog domain url and click on ‘continue’.

Then GSC will ask you to confirm your property, for that you need to pick up a verification tag for GSC and place it on the website.

For adding this GSC verification tag, go to your blog WP dashboard and click on ‘webmaster tools’ at yoast SEO plugin.

There you find options for placing Google property verification tag. After placing a tag again visit GSC and verify your ownership of your blog.

Cool, you have successfully completed GA and GSC account setup for your own blog.

Wait a minute, google wants xml sitemap of your website for better crawling and indexing. No worries, Yoast SEO handles this for your website.

Just make sure it’s enabled as shown below.

Okay, if you have kept XML sitemap ‘ON’ so yoast SEO will automatically generate sitemap URL for your blog which is to be submit to GSC as belows.

Here is your default XML sitemap URL generated by yoast SEO

https://yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml

Create your XML sitemap url just by replacing ‘yoursite’ by blog URL and place it in the GSC.

Woohoo! Now all done. And congratulations for your new blog. 🎉

Step 8. Think...Think What to write?

All technical stuff done and your blog is up and live, Now think what to write on your blog.

Basically the content of a blog totally depends on your blogging niche. That means you need to do extensive research on your niche to write classy and engaging content.

Even if you have decent experience, and expert knowledge still you need to follow a few steps for creating engaging content on your blog.

For writing good quality content you need to research a lot, as writing a content is not just one time process, but content has to be added continuously for blogging success.

I personally use answerthepublic.com for brainstorming content topics.

Here, content creating rule is simple yet powerful. You need to find what people are searching in your niche, what are real issues that readers might be facing.

What are those things about your blog niche that readers really want to know, what excites them?

This is amazing, and works really well for me. Believe me once you create

Content based on above brainstorming topics you will achieve big success in blogging.

Once you are ready to publish content, let’s move to a step by step guide for adding content (post) on blog through WP Dashboard.

Step 9: Publish first post on your blog

All Major efforts are in creating content, adding the same on blog will not take more than 10 minutes.

Yes, head over to WP dashboard, then click on Post on top left navigation bar. Then click on ‘Add New’

Done! Then write the way you want.

Here, check a few details right before hit publish for your first blog post.

Step 10:- Building your Fanbase (Setup email newsletter ) + Push Notification.

Don’t you think about how to bring back people on your blog website? Yes, returning users is the only sign of growth in any business.

Here at blogging, email and push notification are two channels which helps you in bringing customers back to blog.

Email is a more prominent channel which can easily bring traffic and sales for newly published posts on your blog. Here all you need to use ESP, email service provider to capture email addresses and send timely emails to subscribers.

This keeps you talking with your blog fans and helps to build trust / relationships over the period of time.

Remember, when people are going to engage with your emails and use to hangout over blog. This makes you a winner at both email delivery and SEO.

Step 11:- Make Money From Blog (blog Monetization)

Yes, blog monetisation is an ultimate goal of any blogger. Let’s look at blog monetisation techniques.

From my prospective any blog can be monetised by following three techniques

By Selling Other People Products (Affiliate Marketing )
By Selling Ads to Ads network
By Selling Own Products/ Service

All above blog monetising methods sound good but can not be achieved overnight. You need to understand the nuances of making money from all above methods.

you needs to have a lot of knowledge to excel in affiliate marketing, and selling own product and services. Rest, making money from selling ads inventory to ads networks like Google, Media.net is little easy. But again, making money by selling ads literally needs a huge traffic. And that’s a different ball game as you are not going to get huge traffic at launch of your blog

So initially focus on creating revenue from sending referral to affiliate products. Just sign up for an affiliate network and you will get all details about product promotion. This is a comparatively easy way to make your first $ online.

Go for it! 👍