How to Start Your Blog – Step By Step

Curious to know how to start your blog, become a full time blogger and make money online? Follow these simple steps and become a blogger without having any prior experience.

You must hear it that just start your blog and make a six-figure income without working for a 9-5 job.

Am I right?

You have heard it right. When I started my blog, my only purpose was to share my experiences and make money from my blog but I made a lot of mistakes.

Like you, I also thought I will start my blog, write a few blog posts, and money will start pouring on me.

I was wrong. Blogging is not a month or even a year thing. It takes time to give you the result you want.

If you are serious about blogging since the beginning and want to do hard work, it will 100% pay you off.

This post contains affiliate links to tools and services to help you start a blog. If you make a purchase through these links, I’ll receive a small commission at no cost to you. Read the full disclaimer here.

Why should you start a blog?

You have decided to start your blog but have you ever thought about why you want to start your blog.

Find your reason to start your own blog. It may be any of the followings:

• Want to learn a new skill
• Want to express your own thoughts on any specific topic
• Want to start your own business
• Want to learn a new skill
• Want to teach others
• Want to get paid or make money

Whatever will be your reason, if you have decided then don’t wait. I have regret in my life that I started my blog so late.

Questions you may have before starting a blog

You have made your decision but still, there may be a few questions like:

• Should I choose a self-hosted blog or start with a free platform?
• How to choose my domain name?
• How will I design my blog?
• Do I know coding to start my blog?
• How will I do SEO for my blog without any technical knowledge?
• Does anyone will read my blog or how will I get the audience to read my content?
• How much time it will take to earn money via blogging?

Stop overthinking.

Because I am here to help you.

It’s been almost 7 years when I start my first blog. 

I took help online, read articles, took online courses, and am now here for you.

So stop waiting. The longer you wait, the longer it will take the search engines to index your website and traffic/audience to come in.

For me, it took about 4 months to show on Google search results.

So let’s get started.

3. How to start a blog with zero technical knowledge?

1. Choose your niche

What does it mean? What is a niche? You might be thinking.

A niche is a subject on which you want to write so that you can target a particular group of audiences.

Let’s say. You love to cook and want to share your recipes on your blog then cooking will be your niche.

It’s always good to choose one niche for a blog and share your expertise on that niche.

Once you have defined your niche and write on it, then it will become easier for search engines (Google, you can say) to show your blog and as well as for your audience.

If your audience is searching for any particular recipe and they know about your blog, they will come again and again.

Chances are that they will follow you on social media or subscribe to your email list.

So choosing a niche is the foundation of your blog success. Don’t spend too much time on it, just ask yourself what I am passionate about to write and go ahead.

2. Pick a good domain name

Now that you’ve decided on a niche, it’s time to move onto the second step – pick a name for your blog.

What is a domain?

A domain is the entry point of your blog. You can say like it is an address for your blog.

So it is thus important to keep a few things in mind before choosing a domain name:

• Make sure it is easy to spell
• Keep it concise, short, and easy to remember: If it’s short, it’s easy for people to remember and type.
• Use a proper extension: You should always try to make the extension a .com domain name. It is found easily through search engines, etc.
• Make sure to avoid numbers of symbols: It looks fancy to add these details, but numbers, hyphens, etc., make the domain name harder to remember.

If it’s hard to think about your domain name then you could follow in my footsteps what I did.

I took a pen and paper and write a few keywords on which I want to write on my blog.

Even you could take the help of Instagram hashtags to choose your domain name.

Once you have a few names on your paper, you can check their availability to make sure that it’s not already taken by someone.

Type your domain name in the box below to make sure it is available.

3. Choose a hosting provider

For many of you who don’t know what hosting is, let me explain.

Hosting is a place for your website on the internet.

For example like you pay rent for your house where you live, the same way you have to pay for space where all your files, image data, etc. will be stored on the internet.

Now you have your niche and also you have finalized your domain name.

A common question you might be asking here why would I pay for hosting if there are so many free blogging platforms available.

Yes, you are right. You can go with the free platforms. But here I would suggest you to think like a businessman.

When someone wants to start his/her business, he/she need to start investing in it. So treat your blog like a business that soon will make money for you.

Now you might be thinking about which hosting provider should I choose?

There are many to choose but I started with the Bluehost because:

• It is very user-friendly
• Super affordable plans start at only $3.95/month
• Get a free domain name for a year
• Free SSL certificate
• Easy WordPress installation without the help of a developer
• Helpful customer support

4. How you can set up Bluehost?

– Go to the Bluehost website home page and click on Get Started

– Choose the best plan according to your need or start just with a basic one.

After choosing your hosting plan, enter your domain name which you have finalized as you can get a FREE one with every Bluehost plan or if you have already purchased a domain name just enter it!

You can also consider Namecheap to buy your domain.

– If you are not sure about the domain name, you can just skip this step and move on to the next.

– In the next step fill your account and payment information. Refer to the screenshot below:

Once you’ve filled in all the information boxes click “Submit” and on the next step create your password for your Bluehost account.

Now you are done with your hosting, you will get a payment confirmation mail on your email id to verify your details.

5. WordPress installation

Bluehost promises to give just one-click WordPress installation.

Once you’ve created your Bluehost account click on “Go to login” to start setting up your WordPress website.

After you’ve signed in you’ll see the below screen:

Here you will have to enter your blog name and a tagline of what your blog is about.

Once you’ve done it, click to continue.

The next step is to choose a theme for your blog.

You’ll get a list of recommended themes based on the information you entered in the previous step or you can search through different categories like Blog, Food & Drinks, News, etc., and pick a theme of your choice.

In the beginning, you can explore the free themes or can go with the paid theme like Astra WordPress Theme

But don’t worry much about the theme as you can change it later!

Once you picked your theme you’ve officially installed WordPress!

You’ll be taken to the next page where you have to click on the “Start building button” > “Login to WordPress” and you are ready to go.

Now that you have installed WordPress, go to the appearance option on the left-hand side and customize your theme with font, color logo, etc.

Play around with settings and install all the necessary plugins for your blog.

6. Set Up Important Pages

By default with WordPress installation, a Home page is created where all your content will be shown.

For better user experience you have to create some important pages like:

About us – Write 2-3 paragraph about who you are and what you blog is all about.

Contact us – write your email address where people can contact you or add a contact form.

Privacy policy – It is an important page before you launch your blog because with this page you are telling your readers that you are collecting their personal data through Google Analytics, email address, or the comment they leave on your blog.

7. Write at least five unique blog posts

Now it’s time to write some posts for your blog.

Before starting make a plan for this. Create a list of a few ideas on which you want to write.

And then one by one each of those topics on Google, who else has written on the same topic and how would you able to add value to this existing content.

Most of the beginners just copy the content from someone’s blog and paste it on their own post. I am telling you don’t do this SPAM practice.

Take your time and write your original content for your blog. You can launch your blog with 5 unique blog posts.

Your content will decide if a user wants to come again to your blog or not.

Once you have uploaded all these 5 posts, it’s time to launch your blog to the public.

To make it live go to your Bluehost dashboard in WordPress and click on “Launch your site”.

Now it’s time to let the world know about that awesome blog you created! Yippie

How Do You Get Traffic To Your New Blog?

You created your blog and made it live. Now what?

How will people know about your blog? In terms of Google, how would you get traffic on your new blog?

There are many ways to get traffic for your blog but as a beginner, I would suggest you to focus on the below ways:

• SEO
• Pinterest
• Quora

Once you start getting traffic, take your attention to other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Emailing, etc.

SEO:

It stands for Search Engine Optimization. In this process, you have to make your individual blog post user-friendly.

For that, you could download the All one SEO plugin or you can check Semrush SEO tool.

For basic SEO you have to choose a keyword for that particular blog post and then add that keyword in your:

• Blog post title
• Description
• URL

SEO practice usually takes around 6 months for a new blog to start seeing traffic, so don’t lose your patience and keep optimizing your blog posts.

The sooner you start optimizing your content, the sooner you’ll start seeing results.

Read this complete guide to learn SEO from the beginning.

Pinterest:

Pinterest is a social media cum search engine where you can promote your blog post on your Pinterest account.

Just create your Pinterest business account, add some relevant boards and start pinning.

Quora:

Quora is a question-answer website where some people ask questions and some give answers. As you are an expert in your niche, you can give answers to them and get followers. Later you can give a link to your blog post in your answers.

The best practice here is that start giving answers firstly without any link, once the audience starts trusting you, you can take them to your website.

How To Make Money With Your Blog?

Now that you’ve started your blog you’re wondering when can I start monetizing my blog?

How much traffic do I need to earn money?

You can start from NOW. How? Let me explain

There are many different ways you can make money with a blog:

1. Google Adsense: Apply to Google Adsense, once approved, you will able to display Google ads on your blog and when someone will click on that ad, you will earn.

2. Affiliate marketing: It is a process of earning money by promoting products and services from companies.

Find the products and services you want to promote in your blog and apply them to their affiliate programs.

Once you get approved into an affiliate program you get a unique tracking link. You can share that link on your blog and social media. Whenever someone clicks on that link and buys something you get a commission.

3. Sponsored posts. It is a post that is created in collaboration with a company. If you write about them or their products, they pay you for that.

4. Selling your own physical or digital products on your blog.

5. Offer services like coaching, writing, virtual assistant, etc.

Final Thoughts

There you have it, this is how you can start your blog in 2021!

It’s not as hard as it seems, right?

I really hope you found this post helpful.

If you have any questions or need help with starting your blog, let me know in the comment section below.

Happy Blogging!