There are a lot of guides, eBooks, and posts on how to start a blog online. This is because the topic is always hot and trendy with more and more people willing to become bloggers. As blogs today have grown to be the main platforms where users can express their thoughts and present their ideas to the world, a huge number of individuals and businesses decide to try running a blog.
However, this isn’t as simple as it may look like at first sight. There are a lot of steps to follow and a bunch of little details to take care of before going live. That’s why the eBooks and guides you turn to should provide all those things and offer advice that can actually be implemented. A lot of them speak on the matter in general and don’t truly give away the helpful aspects. So, you should always focus on finding some that are more detailed and to the point, like this guide we’ll present here.
Before we get to it, though, users should understand that blogging takes a huge amount of time and effort, so they should be well-prepared to give that.If you are, let’s dive into the steps and see what exactly you need to do in order to start your blog the right way.
Contents
Start a Blog in Five Necessary Steps:
- Figure Out Your Niche
- Get a Domain & Hosting
- Start with WordPress and Install the Necessary Plugins
- Choose a Responsive & Attractive Design
- Create Quality Content That’s Useful to Readers
All of these are totally needed for a strong beginning. This is especially since most of them are technical steps and the whole platform you’re about to set up depends on them. So, here are all the details you should know about them.
Figure Out Your Niche
You can’t start a blog if you don’t know what you’ll be blogging about. Because of this, it’s imperative to discover the niche you think you’ll be successful at.
More precisely, this is the subject that your posts will be about, so it should be something that really suits your knowledge and preferences. Nowadays, many bloggers go for a broader niche, covering multiple topics with the goal to attract more people.
But instead of attracting, this may chase away the visitors. Why? Because usually, they search for a solution to a problem they have or for suggestions on how they can do something. So, when they see a bog that talks about numerous topics at once, they may get discouraged and start doubting the blogger’s actual knowledge and expertise in the matter that concerns them.
To prevent this from happening to you, it’s the best to pick a niche that’s specific and focused on one main thing. For instance, if you want to start a food blog, go for a single aspect related to food like healthy food, recipes of your favorite meals, places that offer the best food and so on. The possibilities are endless.
In any case, try choosing a niche that you love and is connected to the things you’re passionate about. And research the online world a bit to see which topics weren’t explored a lot before. That way you’ll be able to rise to the top more easily.
Get a Domain & Hosting
Just like a person, the blog needs a name in order to be recognized. It’s one of the most important aspects of blogging. While some people take it lightly and put whichever name pops up into their minds first, this is way more serious than that.
Once you set a domain name, it’s very hard to change it. So, you should make sure it’s the right one for your blog. Not only that it should perfectly sum up what you’re blogging about, but it should also be short, memorable and catchy. That way, users can remember it as soon as they see it.
However, your host is as vital in this as the name. Some hosting packages even include the option to get a unique domain name from there, intertwining these steps into one. But stop right here and think for a while. This is the part where you make one of the biggest blogging decisions. Do you want a free hosting or a paid one?
Before we get to what each of them means, though, don’t forget that your whole platform depends on your host. Starting from the customization and maintenance up to the safety, it takes care of it all. This brings the necessity to choose it very wisely.
Many bloggers decide to begin with a free host. Sites like Blogger and Tumblr offer this. However, it comes with a few conditions that don’t really help you establish your blog as a quality one. Firstly, with a free host, you aren’t allowed to get your own unique domain name. This means that your web address won’t be able to finish in .com, .org or .net, but with blogspot.com or tumblr.com. Doesn’t sound very professional, right?
Then a free host doesn’t really let you own your blog. There are numerous limitations all the time connected to the optimization, maintenance as well as monetization.
This leaves us with a paid hosting. All bloggers that are serious about blogging decide to go for this option, making hosts like Bluehost more and more popular. Not only that it gives you a chance to get a domain name, but it provides WordPress support and a non-stop customer service.
Yes. A lot of people think that this will drain their budget. But the truth is that a paid hosting costs between $3 and $10 a month, which is around the price of a few of your morning coffees.
Start with WordPress and Install the Necessary Plugins
Now comes the part where you should actually build your platform. And the most famous software to help you with that is WordPress. Almost all blogs you come across each day run on it.
What makes this software special is its simplicity and effectiveness. Everyone, regardless of their technical knowledge can easily find their way around and access all options. There are countless of features and plugins, as well, allowing bloggers to write, edit, and format their work all in one place.
Add to this, the plugins you can install in order to enhance the experience even further include some for leading your SEO campaign, adding keywords, placing the posts into categories and so much more. Largely they depend on the niche and the type of blog you run, so go over them and install only those you think are necessary for your platform’s performance and appearance.
Choose a Responsive & Attractive Design
When users come across your blog, the first thing they notice is the design. It represents the way your platform looks like to everyone that comes to visit it. For this reason, you should pay special attention to it.
A great design is the one that presents all pages and posts in a clear and accessible way. Also, it isn’t cluttered with information, allowing users to pick up everything you have to offer without feeling like they are in a tight place.Aside from this, it’s crucial to follow the trends and pick a design that’s optimized for all devices, especially mobile phones.
WordPress has a bunch of free themes so you can check them out here. Or if you want you can get a premium theme from sites like ThemeForest.
Create Quality Content That’s Useful to Readers
Finally, we come to the content – the crucial part of your blog that really brings all the people to it and helps you get discovered. A blog simply isn’t complete without it.
Depending on the niche, you should explore some of the trendiest topics and write posts related to them. Note that in most cases people come to blogs searching for answers to their problems and burning questions. Before anything else, you should provide that in your texts. If your readers find them useful, they’ll surely keep coming back.
More precisely, some of the things bloggers should focus on while crafting a successful post are:
- Putting a catchy title
- Keeping the style conversational yet professional
- Giving concrete solutions to problems that have been proven and tested
- Adding visuals to explain the matter more clearly and make the posts prettier
- Including call-to-action (CTA)
- Publishing posts consistently
6 Ways to Start Making Money From Your Blog
- Amazon
- eBay
- Blue Host
- WordPress Themes
- Maxbounty
- Google AdSense
Amazon Affiliate
One of the biggest online marketplaces for selling everything people can think of – Amazon gives bloggers an opportunity to earn some cash from their blogs. How? It lets them become affiliates aka advertisers of Amazon’s products and services. That way both sides win. The blogger gets money when a user goes to Amazon’s link and Amazon gets the wanted sales.
This comes in handy especially to beginner bloggers that still don’t have any products or services to sell.
Basically, what you should do is write a quality post and slip in Amazon’s link sleekly so that readers don’t feel like it was added there just for the money. Then after users click on the link and are redirected to Amazon you get a commission. It’s a great way to gather some income in the early stages of blogging.
eBay Affiliate
It’s similar to eBay. This huge online market offers bloggers, site owners, and social media profiles owner to join their network as partners. All you should do is enter the affiliate program and start referring people to eBay through your blog and posts.
As soon as the users purchase something, you’ll receive a percentage of eBay’s revenue. So, the more traffic you bring, the more you’ll earn.
Aside from the referral commission, though, you’ll also get a percentage if you bring new buyer or reconnect older ones.
BlueHost Affiliate
Blue Host is another website offering earning options. This is one of the largest web hosting platforms, so they give some great rewards to those that bring traffic to them.
The procedure is really simple. You should only promote it on the blog by putting banners or adding links to Blue Host’s pages. After a user signs up through the link you provided, you get $65. It doesn’t get easier than this.
Themeforest
Convincing more people to get WordPress themes from Themeforest can help you make some money, as well. The site has its own affiliate program open to all site owners and bloggers.
The steps you should follow are:
- Open an account at Envato Market here.
- Include any link from the Envato Market in your posts and bring in traffic.
- Make a unique referral URL with your account username at the end.
Maxbounty
Maxbounty is one of the largest places for affiliates. With more than 1,500 campaigns for earning cash, it truly opens a lot of possibilities. They are spread over a bunch of niches from dating and finance to dieting, so that a lot of bloggers can have the chance to join in.
You can choose from models like Pay per Call, Mobile, CPA, CPL and others and earn a thousand dollars a month. If you earn this sum in the first three months, you’ll get additional a thousand in the fourth month.
Also, note that Maxbounty is performance-based.
Google AdSense
There are blogs out there that exist only for the sole purpose of ads, which equals money. Google AdSense is one of the (if not, the) most popular ad networks right now. And the owner of the blog gets the money only by featuring ads on their blog. AdSense works both for blogs on Blogger and WordPress blogs, which are self-hosted.
For all those wondering how this ad network by Google works, you can earn dollars through 2 ways. The first is through impressions, which means that you get cash depending on the views of your blog or how many people come to your blog. Just a quick example – for every thousandth user on your blog, you get a certain amount of cash. The second way, however, is based on clicks. If a person clicks on an ad that’s displayed on your blog, you get a certain percentage (keep in mind that it isn’t a big one).
And now let’s get to the most important stuff – which is how much can you make using this network? The key factors are how many people visit your blog and how many of them click on an ad. Note that you mustn’t click on your ads because you’ll be penalized. Some influential bloggers report that they earn 3000 dollars per month, whereas some even ten thousand dollars.
Conclusion
Anyone can start a blog, but not everyone can excel at that. It’s not just for the sake of starting a blog that you should go into the blogging waters. You need to know why and you need to have a purpose that explains your decision to run a blog. Providing content and helping people are among the noblest reasons, so they should definitely be on the top of your list. And in this guide, you get the chance to see how to technically make your blog and only then include the content.
However, you’d be surprised to find out how many people are earning cash just by doing that – blogging. Using some of the most popular monetizing platforms, bloggers’ bank accounts can have more than three or four zeroes. So, what are you waiting for?
Have you started a blog or plan to? We want to hear about everything!
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