So you have been thinking about starting a blog for a while but you just have no idea where to start? Today, you will learn how easy and quick it is to get started and build a blog ready for you to start posting your amazing content, without needing any website development or technical knowledge at all.
In this post I’m going to run you through the following seven very simple steps to getting your blog up and running:
- Decide what to blog about
- Naming and branding your blog
- Where to get your domain name
- Where to host your blog
- Choosing a blogging platform
- Designing and creating your blog
- Promoting your blog
But, blogging is SO 2005! Right? Right?!?!
Blogging started wayyyyyy back in the mid-90’s when people used blogs sort of as an online diary so that they (and their family and friends) could keep up to date on what was happening in their life.
Then, with the rise of popularity of the internet some smart cookies out there started figuring out ways to make money from their blogs and some people were even making millions from their blogs (and still are!).
To get an idea of how much you could possibly make from blogging, check out 10 inspiring income reports that will make you want to start a blog, TODAY!
I know what you’re thinking! You think you can’t make money blogging anymore, huh? That there’s too many websites out there, too many blogs and bloggers, all the niche’s are just too saturated? There’s nothing left to blog about!
Well, yes there are A LOT of blogs and bloggers out there. And there are also a lot of bloggers making a TON of money.
But here’s the thing – there are SO many people on this planet that there are enough readers to go around for everyone! You don’t need every single person on the planet to read your blog for you to make money and/or be successful.
Also, a lot of blogs out there are pretty garbage. So, just make sure to create a blog and content that actually really helps people and you’re halfway there!
So, now that I’ve busted your first excuse to not start a blog let’s move onto the next.
You have NO idea how to start a blog. There is so much information out there, it’s so overwhelming. You have no experience starting a website and you have no idea what all the jargon means.
Great! That’s what my blog is for! I started my first blog wayyyyyy back in 2006 (a beauty review blog called Puckered, which still happens to be active if you want to see how bad it was). Back then I had no idea what I was doing and had to slowly learn every step of the way since there wasn’t any blog’s like this back then teaching how to do it.
Since then I’ve created many a blog, online store and website over the years so here are the steps you need to get a blog up and running in literally a couple of hours.
PICKING A NICHE.
Okay, time to bust your number three excuse! But I don’t have anything to blog about. No one will want to hear what I have to say. What can I possibly teach someone else? All this information is already out there in the world wide web.
Firstly, yes, pretty much everything about everything is already on the internet. But that doesn’t mean people are finding it. Or that it’s any good.
Secondly, there will always be someone out there who wants to hear what you have to say. You just have to put yourself out there for them to find you!
And thirdly, I can guarantee you that you know something about something that other people don’t know. The thing is you don’t have to be a “guru” or “expert” or know every single little thing about a topic. You just have to know a bit more than someone else.
There’s a buddhist quote that I love which goes:
“If you want to learn something, read about it. If you want to understand something, write about it. If you want to master something, teach it.”
By knowing a bit more than someone else about something, you can teach them and in doing so you learn even more yourself until eventually you do become a master at that topic.
PICKING A NAME.
At this point you will need to decide if your blog is going to be named after yourself or if you are going to create a brand name.
But here’s the secret. Do not spend long on this part at all. I repeat, DO NOT SPEND LONG ON THIS PART.
I know that it may seem extremely important and something you really, really want to get right but honestly, the quality content you put out is far more important that the name of your blog. So just pick a name quick and move onto posting great content.
When I used to create a blog or website I felt that the name of it was SO important and would spend days and days thinking, researching trying to come up with the most awesome, exciting name possible.
In the end, the site usually never got off the ground because I didn’t think of a “good enough” name! Crazy, right?
Please, don’t spend a week or two (or more) coming up with the name of your blog. An hour (or two) at most is acceptable.
REGISTERING YOUR DOMAIN NAME.
Generally, your domain name will represent whatever name you choose for your blog or as close to it as you can get. These days it’s extremely hard to get the exact domain name or social media handles that you want but you will want to keep your domain:
- as short as possible
- very easy to spell
- free from numbers, hyphens or underscores
- a broad term in case you want to expand what you post about in the future
As I have multiple websites, I purchase my domain names from GoDaddy. If you decide to use a hosting provider other than Bluehost, then GoDaddy is a great option for domain names.
GoDaddy does a good deal for the first time purchase of your domain but I find their renewals can get a little pricey so if you have the budget, register the domain for a few years at the beginning. If like me, you want to spend as little as possible, register it for one year then you can always look at transferring it to a different registrar later.
My best advice is though, is to set up your blog hosting with Bluehost and if you use my special link right here, you will get your domain name for free.
SET UP YOUR HOSTING ACCOUNT.
You now need somewhere to keep your website so that it becomes live on the internet and people can actually see it. Yikes!
For years I hosted my sites with Hostgator and while I didn’t really have an issues with them, I also wasn’t being serious about any of the sites I was building so none of them were ever fully completed or successful.
I now host my sites with Bluehost. They are one of the cheapest I have found but have awesome features including:
- Unlimited sites/domains
- Unlimited email accounts
- Unlimited email storage
- SSL included (especially if your site will have a checkout or login area)
I like to use the Prime package as I have more than one website and I want to get access the maximum amount of features available.
It’s not their cheapest package available but, in my humble opinion, is still very cheap at only $5.95 per month.
To get the cheapest Bluehost package available just click this link here. Note: this plan is billed annually to get access to the cheapest price.
TO BLOG YOU NEED A PLATFORM.
Now you are ready to actually build your site! WordPress is the most widely used blogging platform out there. It’s very easy to use and there are a bajillion themes (free and paid) that you can use on the WordPress platform.
Don’t bother with anything else, just install WordPress.
If you are using Bluehost (or most other hosts) you will be able to install WordPress on your site in one click from your hosting panel.
If not, then download WordPress and upload to wherever you are hosting your site.
Simples.
IT’S ALL ABOUT LOOKS. PICKING YOUR THEME.
Jokes, I’m kidding. I’d rate your theme somewhere around your site and domain name in importance. When you are first starting out you will have minimal traffic so just get a theme uploaded that is easily customizable and set up the basics so that you can start getting content out.
Tweak it as you go if you want to change the aesthetics of your site.
A great place to get awesome themes that look professional straight out of the box and need minimal tweaking to look pretty is Elegant Themes.
Their most popular theme is the Divi theme but they also have lots more to choose from if you have something specific in mind.
It’s only $89 per year to join – which is mega cheap for a WordPress theme but you actually have access to every single one of their themes and plugins as well as any updates they make to the themes and plugins in the future.
PLUG IT IN, PLUG IT IN.
WordPress uses plugins to add additional features to your site. It’s a very simple concept and although it sounds technical you don’t need any kind of web development knowledge to use plugins.
There are a few plugins I’d recommend installing at the beginning to help your site run smoothly and gain traffic.
- Shareaholic – Adds buttons to your website so that your audience can share your content on their social media platforms.
- Contact Form 7 – Adds a contact form to your contact page so you don’t have to display your email address. This reduces the amount of email spam you’ll receive.
- jQuery Pin It Button – Especially important if Pinterest is part of your social media strategy. Adds a Pin It button to your post images so that you and your audience can Pin your articles in one click.
- TinyMCE Advanced – Adds comprehensive formatting options for your posts.
- wpDiscuz – Adds a much prettier comment section at the end of your posts.
- SEO Yoast – You’ll need this to set up rich pins on your Pinterest account, if Pinterest is a big part of your traffic generation strategy.
These are all free plugins and will give your site a bit more of a polished look to begin with and will give you some great back end features too.
As time goes on and you want to customize your site, you can add more plugins that you feel necessary to run your site the way you want, but these will get you off to a great start.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CONTENT. (SERIOUSLY.)
Yay! The fun part! Filling up your site with lots of awesome, helpful content. But wait! What the heck am I going to write about?
If you need inspiration to get you started on what you can blog about here are some ideas:
- Check out other people in your industry for ideas. Don’t copy them, just see what topics others are writing about to see if there’s anything you can post about and put your own spin on.
- Go through Pinterest to see what people are pinning, re-pinning and sharing.
- Join Facebook groups in your niche and see what questions people are asking. If people are looking for answers on Facebook, they are most likely searching Google and Pinterest too. Then write a post answering these questions.
- Check out Quora.com to see what questions people are asking – similar to bullet point right above.
- Keep up to date with what holidays are coming up – these can be really fun and are usually trending topics on all social media for a little while.
BONUS: Check out my handy calendar I made so that I know what holidays are coming up to help me with blog post ideas.
IMAGE IS EVERYTHING.
Having clean, professional images on your site and your social media platforms is a must. Fuzzy, blurry and amateur looking photos really turn people off.
But don’t stress as it’s super easy to find free and paid stock photos to use on your website.
Here are some paid stock photo sites where you get access to tens of thousands of images:
These ones are some stock photo image sites which have a great range of photos you can use absolutely free:
If you are looking for the gorgeous feminine styled stock photos that you see across the blogs you love and Pinterest pins you see all over Pinterest then check out my awesome freebie, The Ultimate Guide to Free Feminine Styled Stock Photos where I tell you where you can access too 100’s of totally free styled stock photos.
LET’S GET SOCIAL.
I have some bad news for you. When Kevin Costner said “build it and they will come”. He lied. Big time.
Oh, if it were only that easy. The reality is that no one is going to find your blog unless you tell everyone about it as much as you can.
These days the best way to do that is via social media.
But you can’t do it all. Trust me, I know the excitement of wanting to get your stuff out there for all the world to see and I did the same thing when I first started building online businesses.
And here’s what happens. You set up what seems like hundreds of accounts to all the social media platforms. You do #allthethings. You don’t really know how to use them properly so you do what you can hoping it’s enough.
There are SO many platforms you get overwhelmed at how much social sharing you have to do. You also don’t really have an audience because you just don’t possibly have the time to spend on all of them building one.
You end up spending most of your time not really knowing what you’re doing on any of them and figure it’s all too hard and it doesn’t work and hopefully people will just organically find your site.
But they don’t.
Here’s what you should do.
Pick one or two platforms that will work best for your business, that you enjoy using and learn everything you can about them until you have mastered them.
I felt like I had to be everywhere all the time and the relief was immense when I decided to just focus on one or two. Once I did this, I started actually getting somewhere.
These days I focus on Pinterest and Instagram. I still have accounts with other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter but they don’t get much attention from me at all right now.
P.S. Those are all linked to my accounts if you’d like to follow me.
IT’S ALL IN THE LIST.
Every online business owner on the planet will harp on about building your email list. And for a good reason.
Do this from day dot.
If you keep your audience on social media your will never own them and never have control over them.
Imagine working your butt of to build a loyal and engaged audience of 20,000 followers on Instagram. Then imagine waking up one morning and Instagram has shut down.
Overnight your audience and possibly your income, is gone. Zero. Zilch. You have to start from scratch.
Your goal is to turn your social media audience into your email list subscribers, then you will always have access to those email addresses no matter what happens on social media.
The second reason you want to build an email list is because on social media your complete audience doesn’t actually see what you post. For example, on Facebook and Instagram only around 10% of your audience will actually see what you post.
So, out of your 20,000 Instagram followers, only around 2,000 will get served your post.
With your email list, every single person receives that email.
If you are looking for a free option then Mailchimp is a great start. If you build up a substantial email list you may want to change to another platform that’s cheaper with more features, but it’s fine in the beginning and very easy to use.
If you want to start off or change to a paid option then ConvertKit is a great email platform used by many, many bloggers.
Now that you have the first steps to building and starting your blog, you can see how you can have your website set up and ready for you to post content on within a day, right?
From here your job is to continue to create awesome content and share it to your social media platforms to drive traffic back to your site.
Cheers!
