Creating a blog is not easy unless you know what you are doing. Blogging needs you to acquire different talents that you have to use on every step in the process.
Creating a blog is also a time-consuming and money demanding process unless you work to make it simple and easy to do. Many people, for example, are stuck on choosing a topic. Others can’t pass the varity of hosting services or blogging platforms. Therefore, they pay thousands for some one to show them, only to know they have not moved that far.
All this is a waste of time.
If you can’t decide and begin the real process, that is to post and to find readers, then you are wasting your precious time. You as well need to quit now.
Themes are the look of your brand , but these are not the soul. The soul is the content, the solution that you bring to the table.
Here, I will show you the process of creating a blog and launching it as fast, and as cheap as possible.
Creating a Blog: A Topic to Dedicate For
Don’t get stuck here. Any topic you chose has a potential to make money. And it has the potential to attract visitors.
Before you start searching for your topic, I will show you four niches that are destined to be profitable. These markets have millions of people looking for a solution in, and this won’t goes out of the market any sooner.
These are Wealth, health and Relationship, and hobbies. Everyone is looking to make money, stay healthy, have someone to love, and have fun with their time.
These are big markets. For hobbies market for example, you need to choose one simple sub-niche that you can give solution or that you can talk about for long time. Golf , travel, boats are few of these examples.
Don’t talk about everything at the beginning. focus on one topic. Even travel could be further get focused to ‘travelling on budget’, luxury travel’ , or ‘travel in NY’. The more you are focused , the more you can talk, and the better you can solve problems.
- 16 Profitable Niche Market that Makes Money on the Internet
- A Guide to a Successful Niche that make money
Creating a Blog: Register a Domain Name and Hosting
Creating a blog starts here. Even before you create any content, you need to register your domain name. Your domain name cannot be used by more than one owner. Then if someone else register it before you do, then you will lose that domain until that person drops it.
You cannot afford to do that.
You need to register as soon as possible and you need to keep the domain idea to yourself until you register it.
Once you decide on your topic and domain name, the next process is to find hosting and register services.
Here, I will show you how to register you name in few steps.
- Domain Name 101: How to Choose a Great Name for Your Blog
- Creating a blog: 129 Unregistered Domain Names you can Use Today Free
- Creating a blog: A simple (but best) guide How to Pick a Domain Name
- Creating a blog Hosting 101: A Practical Guide to Hosting Your Website
Creating a blog: Starting with Bluehost
Blue host is a good way to start creating a blog. Blue host has made its name in the industry with its generous options and cheap hosting a high-quality service.
Blue host also gives you a fast customer service response and if something goes wrong, they will be with you all the way and help you in the process of creating a blog.
The first step here is to go to bluehost.com
Begin on the first page. Domain registration is not expensive. But the first year with blue host is free.
Hosting is as low as 3.95 USD.
- Click get started to put in your information that will help you on creating a blog.
2 You have three options here. If you are a beginner, you don’t need a lot of storage. And you are probably starting with one website. Then you have all the option on the Basic plan.
If you already have more domains or websites, then you can choose the Plus or the choice plus options and pro options.
Blue host recommends choice plus that is only 6.95 USD per month. This is very affordable option, more than any other hosting service out there.
3-Click on the package you want and setup your domain. Your domain is free for one year and it will be registered with your name. You have two options here. You can create a new domain, that you already have and you have not registered any where else.
The second choice is you can put a domain that you already registered somewhere else. If you buy from other people, then your domain may be already registered. You can transfer it to Bluehost simply by entering it in the second box.
Then once it confirms that your domain name is available, enter your account information. You can sign in with google to make the process simpler.
You may need to enter hosting price for 36 months. You have big discount and a domain that is registered for long time will have a trust from google.
Enter your information, and pay the small amount and your blog is few minutes away.
Here they will email you a step by step guide to launch your website on their hosting your purchased. This does not take you more than 30 minutes. Once you know what you are doing it is a 5 minutes task.
In the email, you will find a link to your hosting admin. You can access it yourdomainname.com/cPanel. (replace your registered domain name in the URL)
In the setting click install WordPress. You will find it under website category or you can simply search it in the admin panel.
The main things you will do is choose your domain from the list
Give a website name (can be changed anytime from your WP admin). That is it.
Click it and it will finish it for you. This is where creating a blog begins.
Creating a Blog: Setting up Email in BlueHost
In your Bluehost account, under hosting click email. Email is used to communicate with your audience. This is a necessary step to creating a blog.
Once click on email then click on create domain. The domain could be [email protected] or [email protected].
The next step is to add email forwarder. Forwarder is useful because it saves you time from checking email every time in your hosting. Instead you will add a formal Gmail or yahoo or other email where all your emails will be forwarded to.
Then you will get your email in your normal Gmail or other account.
Creating a Blog: WordPress
Once your finish the hosting part, you can go to yourdomanname.com/WP-admin to access your WordPress admin.
It is here you will edit your website name, your design, and more. This is the platform where you will work the rest of the blogging days.
Enter your credentials that you filled when you install WP in your hosting.
Once you signed here, you probably don’t have much as you didn’t install any design. and as you don’t have nay post yet.
The ugliness of the beginning is the beauty. Because it is you who will make it pretty along the way. And it does not have to be that pretty yet. And if you don’t like the design, even after your installed good themes, it is probably not about the aesthetics, it is because you don’t have enough posts that make your site look beautiful.
In the WordPress, there are five things you should be aware of as a beginner.
1-Posts.
Posts are where you will put your new blog posts. It is there where you will access your already published ones. Posts are updated regularly. This means you are expected to post at least one blog post a week. Many top bloggers do post 3 or more every week.
Under posts you will find three subcategories where you can view your posts, where you can add new post and the category of the post.
Category is an easy way to categorize your posts. Category may not seem useful when you are starting out but when your grow to 100 or more posts, you seriously need a folder where you will put your posts and you can access fast.
This is useful for the audience as well. For example, if you are in weigh loss niche, you may have a category for diet, and weigh loss tips, and yoga and more. These are totally different thins and need to be categorized accordingly.
Add new post: Here you have an option to add a title, and your content. On the side bay you can add featured image, categories and tags.
2-Pages
Pages are static contents. These are general guides or explanations of the website. About page or FAQ page are pages since these are not updated regularly.
3-Appearance
It is where you will change your theme (your design) and where you install your plugins. You will use it at the beginning as the setting of the website theme is also here.
In the appearance the first things you need to do is go to themes. In the themes panel, you see a twenty theme that is there by default. You can begin with these demo designs, if you don’t ned to pay for a premium one.
Creating a Blog: WordPress themes
The demo themes have limited setting and they are similar to the dude who uses same free theme. The good things about buying your own theme is because it is customizable so that it is different and brandable.
The free once only give you option to change limited font, or change colour and add image on the blog page background. That is totally useless.
If you plan to go free then you can click add theme and choose the themes you like from the list.
If you are serious about blogging, then you need a theme like any of us.
Themes pre written codes that will help you customize your website without a knowledge of coding. In the previous website designs, prior to WordPress, you needed codes to change a simple colour or a line. Now, with WordPress, you only need to access the WordPress theme setting. And with a click you can change many things.
These days many themes provide options with drag and drop of homepage elements. And you can rearrange these elements with a single drag or simple click.
First, every theme is different. Based on the objective they are designed these themes give you unique functionalities.
The basic customization you will get is a simple way of uploading the logo and options of home page design. Some themes give you 5 or more home page designs
Creating a Blog: Creating Menus that Inspire More Click
Menus are different from categories. Menus are a simple way of helping readers to access the content. Your menus could include blogs, about page, start here page, and more. At the top of the website, you can put your menus so that the readers know what you want them to access.
To set your menus go to appearance than to menus. Here you can choose from pages, posts, and categories what to include in your menu. You can structure, prioritize, and categorize in a simple way for readers to access.
Creating a Blog: Plugins
Plugins are like extra life with extra fun. These are small codes that you integrate with your theme to make it more functional. The best thing about WordPress is the themes and the plugins. This makes life easy. You don’t need to code for everything like the HTML days.
There is a plugin for everything. If you plan to add sharing code on your website, you need a plugin. There are lots of sharing plugins that third bodies coded and listed on WordPress for free. Some make money from AD others is labour of love.
What every you need go to plugins on the left side, then click add new and enter a keyword of what you need. You can find contact page functionality, or analytics, or cache functionality or more.
Install, caching plugin, security plugins, and additional plugins such as insert header and footer.
Widgets
Widgets makes you life simple. These are functionalities you can drag and drop on side bar or on footer of your blog. This makes creating your blog very easy.
In widget you can add a side bar that include signup to your email list, or more posts or related posts and more.
This setting could differ depending on the theme use are using. The premium WP themes give you a better widget function.
4-Creating a Blog: Settings
Settings helps you change website name, or to setup the overall character of the website. Under setting this are several things you need to do.
General– Untick the setting anyone can register. This will save from spams. If you need people to register later, you can use separate plugin. The WordPress register is usually a spam.
Reading – Usually, this function is useful when you use a premium theme. In the free themes, you use your latest posts as the home page. Here you can set how many posts you need on the front page of your website.
You can also set if you need full text on the front page or a summary.
Make sure the search engine visibility is on. You need the blog to be on google database from the beginning. Even if you change your designs later, you can always update the google data base to your new design and posts.
Permalink setting: is by far the most useful setting. Here you need to change your URL setting to a keyword to get search traffic. For this make sure your permalink setting is on ‘post name.’
This means your URL will be yourdomainname.com/your post name.
You can see your website at yourdomainname.com (put your domain name on google search or another engine search.
Creating a Blog: Images
Images make your blog better. And finding good images has been a hard task. Especially overly exaggerated stock photography price is still a hurdle for many bloggers. Paying for an image, probably 3 or more for a single post is hard.
If you plan purchase stock photos, you can use adobe stock and others.
You can use sites such as Pexels, Pexabay, and Unsplash to find completely free images that you even don’t necessarily have to give credit to.
Creating a Blog: Posting
Creating a blog post is not hard. You need to follow certain rules.
- Always have an outline first.
- write as fast as you can.
- Always answer a certain question.
- Create long posts.
How to Write A Blog Post? Use this and Avoid that.
Launch Your Blog
After creating your blog, the next step is to launch as fast as you can. The faster you launch your website, the faster your pages get listed in search engines.
- SEO 101: Three Things you Should Know to Win on Google
- What SEO Is: A Complete Guide to SEO
- What Is SEO? How To Rank Your Website For Maximum Traffic
If you have questions or tips on creating a blog, write us.