How to Start a Blog in 7 Easy Steps

Want to learn how to start a blog in 7 easy steps? Why even start a blog? Are you passionate about a topic or niche? Are you looking to generate passive income? Or do you want to expand your business and build your brand?

Well, those are all solid questions to reasons to create a blog. I have four reasons to start a blog website. 

Four Reasons To Start a Blog

First, I have been contemplating writing a book. I started to put my business concepts, my cadenced habits, my passion for helping people succeed, and my methodology into chapters of my eventual book. Then I realized some of the content is more of an excerpt or a vignette than a full chapter. This means, I have blog post-size content to share as I write my larger book projects.

Second, when I searched ‘Best Passive Income Ideas,’ almost every site had ‘create a blog’ in the top 10. Do not worry; we will get to how to monetize your blog in future posts.

Third, as my career progresses, I want to build my brand further and reference prospective leaders. Meaning, that through my site and blog posts, a person should see the value I bring through the website.

Lastly, I consider it a true privilege to coach and mentor people eager to succeed. The blog site also serves to expand my coaching and consulting business as well as create a funnel. 

Answering the Big Questions

I want to answer the three big questions:

• Is it hard to start a blog? No, it is as hard as responding to your daily email. Suppose you want to start slow. You can do one or two posts 500-1500. Keep in mind that the average email is <300 words. So, you can gauge the effort to post consistently. Oh, also, you are the boss of your blog. If you are not motivated to write today, then do it when you want. 
• Is it expensive to start a blog? NO, you can start with as little as $2.95 a month.
• How many web development skills do I need? If you can navigate around the internet, Microsoft Office, or your social media accounts, you can start a blog.

So, Where Do I Start?

Through the remainder of this post, I want to step you through the basics of starting a blog. Furthermore, I will answer some basic technical questions and video links to help many pre-bloggers prepare to get their first blog site running.

7 Steps to Starting a Blog-

1. Choosing to Niche or Not to Niche-

Many of the ‘how to start a blog’ tutorials out there will start with a canned question. “What niche are you passionate about?” Their methodology is around the intersection of passion, skills, and experience. I am not in full agreement.

I am going to lead you to start with why you are starting the blog in the first place.

It is great to start a blog about your passion. However, if your passion is completely different from your desired blogging outcome, it might not translate. An example would be building an accounting career brand blog, but your passion is pruning bonsai trees. Posts about pruning are not going to accomplish what you are looking to do. I am not saying you might write how pruning those cute trees is therapy for accountants down the road. So, there is still hope. I am just saying.

My process for selecting a niche is more about your skills, experience, knowledge, and then passion. You need to be able to leverage the experience you have acquired. You are using your ability to write about it. Think through where you see readership in the market for your material. 

There are a few easy answers.

• Want to blog about a passion for expression solely? Passion is your niche.
• Are you in sales and marketing wanted to blog to make money? Then, skills, and experience in your niche.
• Are you a teacher or trainer desiring to blog about the topic? Your skills and experience is your niche?
• You are a leader in your industry, sport, or specialty wanting to blog about it. You are in the driver’s seat of your niche.

2. Naming (Domain Name) Your First Baby

Once you decide what your blog will be about, you need to pivot to your site name. The naming convention is important, especially in later steps, to drive traffic to the site.

My suggestion is to get your domain name where you are going to host your blog. My recommendation is BlueHost since they through the domain name for free for the first year.

The do’s of selecting a domain name:

• Make it catchy or in alignment with a brand you already have. Keep it short or at a minimum.
• For flexibility within your selected field, keep it broad.
• Use X, K, and CK types of sounds. Those sounds make you more noticeable. (see Spanx)
• Make it easy to spell.

They do not select a domain name:

• Do not be too clever, while fun you will miss the traffic.
• Try to minimize numbers, hyphens, and characters. Note: one number is ok for short names.
• Must be real words. If not, it has to be phonetical. Hulu is ok because it sounds like Hulu. Also, try to stick to your main language.

You will be able to test and find the availability of your site’s name on Bluehost’s main page. Try as many as you would like until you find the perfect domain name for your baby.

This page contains affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to purchase through my links, at no cost to you

3. Signing Up for Web Hosting-

In the next couple of sections, I will cover the many reasons I recommend using BlueHost to get both your domain and hosting plan.

It all starts with Bluehost, where you get your domain name for FREE for the first year. If you have a domain name already, you can use it on Bluehost as well.

Special Offer for Pliable Dynamic Readers: Right now, BlueHost has an offer exclusive to Pliable Dynamic readers to get set up for just $2.95 per month. Again your domain name is included at a 63% saving.

Since 2005, WordPress itself has been recommending Bluehost. They support a 1-click WordPress installation, along with outstanding support. At only $2.95 a month, Bluehost is a great option for building your first website or blog.

How to get started on Bluehost:

• Click the Bluehost link to get started.
• Select the appropriate plan, the $2.95 is a steal.
• Enter and create your Domain Name.
• Select Payment Method.
• Create your blog account.

4. Installing WordPress on Your Blue Host Account-

The pricing and free domain are awesome. However, my next favorite feature of Bluehost is the one-click installation of WordPress. For beginner bloggers with little development skills, this is perfect and easy.

 

Keep in mind that both Bluehost and WordPress have great support if you struggle. The live chat support system can answer a majority of issues.

5. Selecting Your Theme-

If you are working within the $2.95 low budget start to your blog, no worries. WordPress will have a full collection of free themes, templates, files, and plugins to help you find a great look.

Even though the default theme is nice, you have more choices. You will see on the left side of the menu; you can choose different themes. At this point, you can select a paid-for theme, but I recommend staying free until you one you like.

Anytime throughout your blogging journey, you can change the theme. All you need to log into your WordPress, select ‘Appearance’ on the dashboard, then select ‘Theme.’

6. Configure Your Blog and Creating Pages

We have covered a lot already. If you are new to blogging and WordPress, you may feel like throwing up a little. However, do not be overwhelmed. There are volumes of resources out on blogs and YouTube to help.

To not make this a five-thousand-word blog, I will leave it to Bluehost’s YouTube channel to help you with the configuration lesson.

Trust me; you do not have to be technical to set this up. You need to follow instructions and the walk-through lessons.

As I mentioned above, WordPress has powerful plugins you can install to add extra functions. An example is a plugin I used for my pricing page. Here is a great video on using plugins.

Next is designing how your blog pages will look. The layout of your blogs is important. Here is where you will make your impressions with your readers.

My recommendation for your first blog to get to go live is to keep it simple. You do not need flash or feature richness quite yet. Please keep it clean, crisp, clear, and with a bit of your flare. The video below outlines how to create your blog pages:

At this point, I would like to congratulate you on creating your blog. Now here is where you get to be a freelance writer.

If you have not started your blog yet, why are you waiting? Get started for just $2.95 (63% off)

7. Start Creating Great Foundational Content-

Until you have services or digital products to offer, there are three must-have content considerations. Those pages are your home/landing page, an about page, and your blog posts. Each of these pages requires impactful content.

Home/Landing Pages-

You will notice I did not just say your home page. If you are new to blogging or digital media, having ‘landing pages is critical to creating call-to-actions. This call-to-action draws viewers to what you want them to click on next. So, if you are only blogging, you want to draw them to the latest post. If you offer a service or product, you will call for them to click through to the offering.

Keep this page to a minimum on content but be direct with what you want readers to do. A good example of this is Neil Patel’s home page. Again, design this clean, crisp, clear, and with a bit of your flare.

About Page-

No matter who you are, not everybody knows you or what is important to you. In your ‘about page, you establish credibility. There is a tendency to start with, “well, in the beginning, my great-grandmother.” Unless you are blogging about history, keep this page clean, crisp, clear, and with a bit of your flare. You are going to want to draw readers to your blog. However, you want them to know enough to want to follow you. 

Blog Posts-

Here is the meat and potatoes of why you are reading this post. A few words of caution first. Blog posts are not your Twitter feed. They are not for updates or ‘I am eating this today.’ Think of blog posts as 500 to 2000-word magazine articles. So, instead of ‘I am eating this today,’ review a location along with why you like what you ate. You can write about it only if food is your niche, of course.

Since the current online world revolves around Google-driven searches, you should learn about keywords. Using the Yoast plugin will help you with this at a basic level. Keywords will help bring readers to your post when they Google the keywords.

Here are a few tips:

• The keywords should be in the post title.
• The post’s URL should include keywords.
• It would help if you had the keywords in your headings.
• The Keywords should be in the post content.
• For example, this post’s keywords are: ‘How to start a blog.’

Finally, make your blog posts relevant to the intended niche. Once you find appropriate keywords for your topics, write meaningful content about them. Make sure you use a good grammar checker like Grammarly to make you seem articulate. Then start kicking out blog posts.

Conclusion-

Consider what you think is funny, important, cute, or mind-blowing might not be to the public. The cool part is that you get to continue to research and write about topics you know. Keep trying and sampling with a curious mindset. Through traffic statistics, you will see what people like and settle into a groove.

In the following weeks to come, I will add additional posts regarding the in-depth writing process for your blog. Until then, I encourage you to start a blog. Find your niche and create a site. Do yourself a favor and have a writing cadence. Please put it in your calendar app to write a thousand words for an hour three times a week or more. Write as much as you can handle. We will talk about monetizing the content in the future. For now, get after it and good blogging!

JUMPSTART Your Blog and eBook, TODAY! Schedule a Discovery or a Buy One Get Two Free Session and I will help!