A Complete Guide on How to Start a Blog

Hi Buddy,

You are on this page which means you want to learn

  • How to start and grow a blog?
  • How to earn money from a blog?

Blogging is now a well-recognized career and many people earning a decent amount of money every month from blogging.

But as a beginner, you may have many questions in your mind like

  • Whether you can quit your daily job?
  • Is there any proof that you can earn?

These questions are very common. Let me make it clear to you by answering your questions.

Whether you can quit your daily job?

Yes, you can quit your daily 9 to 6 job. Blogging has the potential to generate an income that could be far better than your job. But blogging is not a job, it is a business.

Like any other business, it will take time to build a profitable blog. You may have to bear losses if you don’t follow proper guidelines. If you really want to make a success with your blog you have to change your mindset.

You have to train your mind like an entrepreneur. But as I already told you there is a risk. So, most people start blogging part-time. And when they reach their full potential, they quit their jobs.  

Is there any proof that you can earn?

There are a lot of proofs available online that you can earn. Bloggers like Amit Agarwal And Pat Flynn are earning millions from their blogs.

Here I am sharing Pat Flynn’s income report from his blog for 2016-17. Pat Flynn income report
As you see people on the internet earning in millions. You can also earn from a blog and there is no rocket science in this.

You just have to take the first step towards your success.

And that first step is of course starting a blog. Which is not difficult as you think?

Step by Step Guide to Start Blog

Now I am telling you the actual steps to start a blog. I will describe you everything starting from deciding a niche to how to earn money from that blog.

Pick a Name & Niche for Your Blog 

Now let’s move to the actual steps to start a blog. To start a real blog, you need a name for your blog.

This name is the name of your business, your online presence, and your website like I have bloggingidol.com

Selecting a name for your business may be confusing sometimes. Your domain name is important if you want your name to be matched with your niche.

Niche is basically the topic on which you want to write blogs. What are the most popular niches you can read here?

Don’t make this process complex because if you deep dive into which would be the perfect name it will be very difficult for you to go with this.

Let me give you some examples, Neil Patel has a blog with his own name neilpatel.com. Some blogger has their targeted keyword in blog name but some don’t have. So, you can choose any name having these must-have things.

  • Domain Name should be short and easy to spell like quora.com or you may have two-word domain names.
  • Domain name should be easy to remember and not like dcrgt.com.
  • Domain name must be with .com extension. If your target audience is very specific to a country then you can use .in, .uk etc.

You can choose a domain name from godaddy.com/ namecheap.com or you can decide later after hosting. Moving forward I will tell you about the hosting which will provide a free domain name.

Choose a Hosting Company

Now the next step in making a blog is choosing a hosting company. A hosting company is like a rental space for your business online.

To run your blog, you have to buy hosting from a hosting provider. Hosting is very cheap starting at $3.95/Month with Bluehost.

Bluehost offers a lot for a beginner and you can upgrade at any time. See what Bluehost offering

  • Free SSL certificate
  • Unmetered Bandwidth
  • Unlimited Storage
  • Unlimited Websites
  • 24/7 Expert Support
  • 30 days money back guarantee
  • Free domain

Bluehost’s basic plan is good if you want to host only one website but if you are thinking about more websites you can choose from Plus or Choice Plus.

bluehost hosting plans

Disclaimer: It is my duty to tell you that the prices shown on the Bluehost website are for new users and do not apply to renewals. It means when you will renew your blog you have to pay the regular price.

So, it is good if you buy hosting for 2 or 3 years and it will be cheapest if you buy for 3 years.

Note: If you need help you can contact me at robin@bloggingidol.com.

Install WordPress on Blog

After you have done with the domain name and hosting from Bluehost, it will install WordPress for your website automatically.

Or you can also install it from its dashboard.

install wordpress in bluehost dashboard

Now you can simply log in to your WordPress dashboard.

You are ready to go now, write your first post and bring traffic to your website.

But wait there are many settings that you need to set up before writing anything on your blog.

The most important one is the permalink setting which you need to set up at first as you can’t change the permalink structure later without affecting traffic.

Here you have to select which URL structure you want for your blog. This is the most common type used by most bloggers and the same we are using on our blog.

Permalink Settings

Basic WordPress Setting (Theme + Plugins)

Theme

After installation of WordPress and basic setting next step is the theme of your blog.

I prefer to use Genesis Themes for most of my blogs. The best thing about this theme is that it has a one-time payment system.

Pay once for the theme and you can use that theme on any number on the website as long as you want.

It’s not a recurring type of payment you have to make every year like with many other themes for support and updates.

Yes, it has many other features and advantages too.

Generatepress is the second most loved theme and you can use it on any number of websites you want but every year you have to pay 60% of the payment to renew a license to get updates. You can use it without updates as well but updates are important for security.

Generatepress is one of the most lightweight themes which can help speed up your website.

Moreover, if you don’t want paid theme you can use any free theme available in WordPress or a basic free theme from GeneratePress etc.

Plugins

WordPress is so powerful content management system because it has plugins for almost everything.

But you don’t need plenty of unnecessary plugins which may slow down your website.

You just need plugins for the most necessary things like SEO (Yoast), Cache (W3 Total Cache), Backup (Updraft), Image optimization (Shortpixel), and contact forms (Contact form 7).

All these plugins are free and you just don’t need any paid plugins in the beginning.

Most Important Pages

It is very much clear that you want to build a blog that could give you enough to spend.

So, you have to monetize your blog, which we will cover later in this article.

But for any kind of monetization strategy you need to add very important pages to the blog which are About Us, Contact Us, Privacy Policy, and Affiliate Disclaimer (for affiliates).

These pages will make your website authentic in the eyes of search engines and users. So add these pages and start writing what you love to write.

How to Write Your First Blogpost?

The first blog post is not important, yes you heard it right. Blogging is a continuous process and not a single (only one) blog post can make you a successful blogger.

You have to write a lot of blog posts and on regular basis to be self-independent.

But yes, you have to start from somewhere. And for that, you need to understand SEO and Value.

Even if you are a beginner then you must have heard about SEO. If not, soon I will publish a guide on SEO (Comment below if you want).

The second important thing is Value. Everyone who starts a blog just thinks about how much I can generate from this blog.

But you have to keep in mind just deliver the value rest will follow you.

Benjamin Franklin said

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about

Whatever you start first thing which should come into your mind that whether you can justify with your readers or not.

In one of the previous sections of this post, I told you how to select niche and domain names.

You can decide any name but write what you know exactly. As this can make or break someone’s life.

So here think what is your background of education, what inspires and motivates you, what you can read, and then start writing about that.

At the very initial level, you have to take the first step and start writing your favorite topics. Soon you will learn more and with more practice, you could write better.

To make your journey easy, I am telling you the easiest SEO techniques which you must follow while starting.

Basic SEO to Start A Blog

If you are going to be a blogger in the future or working as a blogger now then you have to face SEO.

Content is everything for a website that’s right and you should keep your 70% efforts on content creation and user satisfaction.

But 30% effort you have to put on SEO as well. I have seen many bloggers who just thought that with SEO they can rank any website.

Expert SEO’s can rank ugly pages but for a very short span of time. To stay in the world of blogging you have to focus more and more on content and also keep an eye on SEO.

It would be very difficult to explain everything about SEO in this post, so for now, you need to know SEO is of two types:

  1. ON Page SEO
  2. OFF Page SEO

ON Page SEO – Whatever efforts you do on your website to make it visible in front of readers is called on-page SEO. It includes quality of content, user interface, keyword optimization, website speed, user satisfaction.

OFF Page SEO – It is different from on-page. Creating backlinks, brand building, Social signals are important tasks of Off-page SEO.

How to Earn Money from Blog?

If you are blogging just for fun then you need not read this section. But if you are serious about earning money from a blog then here, I am telling you the best ways to earn money from a blog.

Successful bloggers recommend that you should focus on quality first. That is very much true as if you start thinking about money first your focus will shift to money and you could not produce good content.

To earn money, first, you need traffic and then there are many ways to earn money. Some of the popular methods to earn money from blogging are:

  • Google Adsense/Media.net – You put ads on your website from AdSense or media.net and they pay you according to clicks & impressions.
  • Affiliate Marketing – You promote others product on your website and got a commission for each sale.
  • Selling Own Products – You sell own courses, e-books.

These are very popular methods to earn money from a blog. There are many other methods like Sponsored posts, direct ads, online consulting, and selling websites.

Make a Brand not Website

When you are creating your first website it is possible you make mistakes. Every person makes mistakes but smart people do not repeat them.

Today there are millions of blogs online and millions of posts are published every day.

So, you need to stand out among them with brand building. You should focus on the brand, not the website/blog alone.

Try to create content which people love to read, write as an original person talking to readers, put your face at the end of the blog so people recognize you, help people and see people start remembering you as a brand.

I know you may have many doubts in your mind. For all your doubts you can mail me at robin@bloggingidol.com

Or you can join our facebook group where other experts can also answer your queries.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares
Robin Mehta
Robin Mehta

Hello Robin here, I am a blogger, youtuber, SEO guy and Digital Marketer. I love to write about technology, facts and online marketing. On this blog I share everything for a successful career online.

Articles: 53

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Shares