If you are struggling to start a blog, you are at the right place! In this post we will see how to start a blog successfully.
There can be many questions coming into your mind when you want to start a blog. As a beginner starting you blog may seem more difficult than it really is.
You can have questions like, How to start a blog or How to earn money blogging or even the how to start a blog for free.
In this guide we will see about all the questions that may come to your mind as a beginner blogger.
Table of Contents
What is a blog?
A blog is a website containing articles written to share knowledge on a particular niche. Unlike news articles, a blog has a more personal touch to connect with the audience.
You do not need to be a great writer or an expert in your field to be a blogger. Mostly people check blogs for personal perspective of things in a blog.
You do not need to much time to write. Most blog posts are valid for a long time, but are need to be updated regularly.
How to Start a Blog?
Now here comes the most important part of this article, how to start your blog. To start your blog you need a Pc and a stable internet connection, with a good amount of will to start a blog.
1. Find a Niche and a Name
Sounds easy, right? It is not so easy as it seems like. I have checked multiple beginners doing the mistake of selecting a improper niche or name.
Choose a right Niche
There are various topics you can blog on, only a handful of niche will be best suited for you. To select a niche you should be clear on some questions.
- What you are interested on?
- What niche gets paid good by ad networks?
- How big your niche should be?
Interest
The niche you select must be interesting enough for you. Blogging is not a one day work, it will take time to be a successful blogger. During the time, you must be able to learn more about your niche, spread your knowledge without getting bored.
Pays Well
Suppose you selected a niche, that you are interested in. But what if you do not get paid at all or get much less paid. You may feel that all your hard work went bad. It is important to select a niche that gets paid by ad networks like Google AdSense. You can try website traffic checker tools to check with keywords pay good by checking the cost-per-click (CPC) and also the traffic.
Also Read: 4 Best website traffic checker tools for beginners
Depth of Niche
Now let us suppose you go a interesting niche also that pays well. But it still can be dangerous if you fail to make boundaries on what topics you will focus on. Like if you take technology as a niche, you can write SEO articles, or give tech tips or write about programming. As a beginner, if you try to write all inclusive, it will be a headache and most people will not understand what your site is all about.
Name Your Blog
When you are all set with your niche, you must move on to choose a good name for your blog. While choosing a name for your blog you must keep a few things in mind.
Rememberable
The name you choose, must be easy to remember. A easy to remember, name can be a word of mouth if your content is well.
Describes your Work
Check these two names Seojournal.com and neilpatel.com, if you look at the first one you can easily say its about SEO tips. But for the second one, you need to have super hero content, like everyone knows Neil Patel is a digital marketer, so neilpatel.com should be about digital marketing.
2. Choose a Blogging Platform
After having your niche and name known, its time to choose a blogging platform or a Content Management System (CMS). There are several blogging platforms to choose from like Blogger, WordPress, WIX, Medium, Tumbler.
But to choose the best blogging platform, you must consider a few features.
Easy to Use
The blogging platform you choose should be easy to use. The blogging platform must contain a beginner friendly interface without compromising on features.
Ownership
You put a couple years to build your blog, but suppose one day the company you were using banned your blog.
It would feel terrible, right?
So, you should choose a blogging platform, which you can host on your own hosting and can not be banned just by some companies.
Monetization Options
If you are writing your blog as a part of side hustle, you must consider this aspect also. There are different monetization options like affiliate links, ad revenue, selling products, sponsored links. You must choose which platform is best depending on which sources of monetization you want to choose.
Features
Last but one of most important aspect is looking into features.
Suppose you are using a platform where you have guess hard and build your SEO. On the other hand you have a platform where there are plugins, you can use and build the same easily.
Which one you would choose? The first one, which reduces your work load.
| Name | Full Ownership | Monetization options | Easy to Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | yes | Affiliate links, Ad revenue, sell products, sponsored posts/links. | medium |
| Blogger | no | Affiliate links, Ad revenue | easy |
| Medium | no | Affiliate links | easy |
| WIX | no | Affiliate links, Ad revenue, sell products, sponsored posts/links. | Medium |
Conclusion
After checking all the aspects, only one platform fits best WordPress. WordPress can be hosted on your own hosting platform, it is easy to use, and packed with plenty of plugins to enhance functionality.
But there is a second option, if you do not like WordPress. Blogger is hosted by google and another good blogging platform. Blogger is completely free to use. You can use monetization options like ad revenue, affiliate links in Blogger.
Also Read: Blogger vs WordPress : Which is the best Blogging Platform?
3. Get a Web Host
Now you need to make your blog online, so that people can visit and read your blog. To do this, you need a web hosting. A web hosting, will host your blog so that people can visit your blog from any location across the globe and you can edit the site from the admin panel from any location.
But for some blogging platforms like Blogger or Medium, they have their own hosting as your blog will be owned by that company itself.
But I prefer using WordPress and Bluehost as hosting provider. You can buy a Bluehost subscription here.
Bluehost has one click WordPress installation after you buy your hosting and domain. If you still have a problem, you can contact the after sales support, after purchasing the hosting and domain.
4. Design your Site and Write your Blog
Finally, your site is all set and its time to design a look and publish your first blog. Here I will show tell you how to design your WordPress site.
WordPress
If you are using WordPress as your platform, below is how to design your site and publish your first post.
Design
To design your WordPress site, you need to go to your admin panel.
Admin panel is normally accessed by the URL www.yoursite.com/wp-admin, change the yoursite.com as per your domain name.
After goin to the admin panel, look for Appearance > Themes from the left side panel.
You can carry on with the provided theme, but I would suggest to get a new one. Go to Add new, and select a theme as per your needs. I prefer using Astra.
Write your First Blog
After you are good with an elegant design, its time to post your first Blog. Posting your blog is simple, look for posts in the left side panel, the click on Add new. And start typing your post.
Please note that there are several SEO factors apart from keywords, you can read about SEO on the book Cracking the basics of SEO by Saptarshi Samanta.
5. Add Revenue Channels
When you blog is all set for users, you may think about earning from it. There are several ways to earn from your blog, here we will discuss in brief how to monetize your blog.
Showing Ads
One of the most popular and effective way of earning from your blog is by showing ads. There are several Ad Networks like AdSense, Propeller Ads, Pop Ads, Revenue Hits.
You can google them and follow the signup process. You will get a code to be inserted in your website, you can use Ad inserter plugins to insert those codes and start showing ads.
Some ad networks like AdSense take long for approval, as it is one of most demanded ad networks.
Also Read: How to easily get approval from AdSense?
Affiliate links
There are companies selling products, it can be some product of Amazon or even some WP theme or even a web host. To boost their sales, these companies let people share a trackable link. If any of your users purchase a product through their link, you get a commission and they get a sale.
To apply for affiliate links, you can simple google for the company name along with affiliate program like amazon affiliate program and follow the signup process.
Blog memberships
If you are using WordPress, you can easily set up membership levels. You can set up membership levels for certain perks like extra posts or even blocked ads.
There are multiple plugins like MemberPress, Paid Memberships pro, Paid Member
Selling Digital Products
Even though least used by beginner bloggers, this is still a good option to make a few bucks. You can make some product like a Ebook or a WP theme, and sell it in your website.
Should I Start a Blog in 2023
You may have heard people say Blogging is dead. But the truth is it is not, not even close. Just by using WordPress, 409 million users generate over 20 Billion views every month.
Yeah, but you can argue that it did not explode like multiple other social media careers like YouTube. But still blogging is a good option to consider.
It is never too late to start a blog, even if it is 2023. All you have to do is choose a niche wisely and work hard for some years. But if you want to throw pebbles at some random niche, or just not work for your blog, it will not be a worthy option to start your blog.
