If you think to open your own blog site, a question may appear in your mind “How to start a blog”? I am here to show you the right way to start your blog. You need not much experience to start your blog. When you make a decision to money from your own blog, you may be frustrated by thinking how to make a successful blog site. In this condition, a step by step instruction will help you to start a blog easily.
What is a blog and why should you start it?
We can say that a bog is one kind of website where some written contents are posted regularly which are known as blog posts. There are different types of blogs such as a new blog, celebrity blog, technology blog, etc. A blogger always tries to connect to the reader with their articles. If you notice carefully, you can see that most of the blog sites have a “Comments” option that brings the visitors connect to the bloggers directly. It is a great benefit for a blog. This helps to interact and also share the ideas to the people. It also makes your blog trusty to the visitors.
It may be a question that” Why should you start an online blog?” Now see the reasons.
- Make money: You may want to start an online blog and want to earn money. You should know how to start a blog and make money. Online blogging is becoming popular as the online business day by day.
- Self-business: Nowadays, we depend much on online to get any information. If you want to start your business as a blogger, you just need to know how to start a blog of your own. It will be a self-business for you.
- Make a community: Blogging is a good idea to get connected with people. When you write a content and post it on your blog site, many people will visit your site to have the information. It will give you the opportunity to touch with people.
A complete guide to How to start a blog
Let us see a complete instruction to start a blog. I have tried it myself for my blog. So, I hope it will provide benefits to you also.
Step 1: Decide your subject
The first thing to start a blog is to make a decision on which subject you are interested in to open your blog or which service you want to provide. You should be flexible to choose the topic. You can start a blog about something that needs a lot of contents and they are interesting. Besides, you can start a blog about any enjoyable topic or a niche you have established. If you notice on the internet, you will find travel blog, vegetarian blogs, writing blogs, political blogs, fashion blogs, romance blog, photography blogs, etc.
Your blog site can be the reflection of your hobby. So, choose a niche that you are ardent about. However, your blog must be enjoyable to you.
Step 2: Choose a name for your blog
It is very important to choose a blog name to start your own blog. A personal blog can be contained various topics. Or your blog can provide one specific topic. To choose your blog name, you also need to explore the tone of your blog. Then write down something that can describe your blog tone. You can get the blog name from these words. Moreover, it is a considerable thing that you must consider your audiences to select your blog name. However, you must consider that what will your blog provides. Besides, you can research some similar blogs to choose your blog name.
The mane of your blog plays an important role to increase your visitors. So, try to pick up an attractive and creative name for your blog so that it can make more visitors.
Step 3: Choose a blogging platform
It is easy and cheeps to start a blog because there is some free software to create contents and make the blog site more beautiful without any programming. However, before starting a blog, you need to know the blogging platforms. There are different kinds of blogging platforms for beginners. Before choosing your blog platform, you must think what type of blog you want to start. You may want a platform that helps to get more audiences. If you search for a blog platform, you will find WordPress.org, Wix, Blogger, Tumbir, Scoop, and many more. Then choose the suitable one. In the image below, you will get a
You see that WordPress is used by most of the people. It comes with thousands of sites design editors, many platforms, and various content management solutions. We know from a research that WordPress has 72 million users. It is the best platform to start a blog. However, you will get it free and it is secure also. For an easier blog, you must choose WordPress and should know how to start WordPress blog.
Step 4: Select a domain name
When you choose the WordPress as your blogging platform, now it is the time to think about two matters. You need to select a domain name. It is the address that you use to visit your site. namecheap.com, Godaddy.com are the companies that provide domain names. I recommended you to get domain name from namecheap.com. To get domain name from namecheap.com, you need to visit there. Then see that which domain is available for you.
Then add your domain name to the Cart option. However, it is very easy to buy a domain name from namecheap.com.
Before buying your domain name, you need to consider some important things. They are below:
- Use a short name: It is always easy to remember a short name. You can easily tell your domain name to your nearest one if your domain name is short and simple.
- Do not use digits: It is always good to avoid any digits in the domain name such as tip2top.com because it can confuse the visitors to remember the correct name.
- Always use Dot Com: Dot Com it the international identity for domain provider. There are different domain names according to different countries such as .co.uk for UK, .pk for Pakistan, etc. This type of domain name only targets only one country. So, Dot Com is the best option.
- Avoid double or triple letter adjacent: If you choose a name such as BestTricks.com, it can confuse people to keep it in mind. So, try to use small letters.
Then you need a hosting provider. This service places your site on the internet so that anyone can visit your site. Do not worry if you are new to start a site because the settings process is so easy.
Step 5: Choose the hosting plan
The next step is to choose the hosting plan that may appropriate for you. Hosting is the service that stores your data. So, you need to select a hosting company very carefully. I recommended you to take BlueHost. This company provides discount to the bloggers. Here you will find Basic, Pro and prime. It is better to select the premium one because it will provide you more features. If your budget is limited, then you can pick up the Basic plan. However, you can upgrade it at any time
The basic plan will cost you $3.49 per month and the plus plan costs $5.95, Pro plan costs $13.95. Choose you plan and just select one of the green buttons.
»Basic plan
It is the cheapest shared hosting plan for you from Bluehost. It is a good package with rich features that will cost you $3.29 per month. If we calculate, you need to pay $59.4 for a year for one year. But if you want to buy it for 3 years, you will have to pay $106.20 ($2.95/month). Basic package offers you 50 GB bandwidth per month which is enough for running your website on a shared hosting. You do not get Cloudflare in your starter package. But there is option to sign up for it at any time. It will help you to lessen your bandwidth. However, you can choose the basic plan if you do not want more sites to add in future.
»Plus package
It is the most popular package of Bluehost. It is a feature rich package that offers you up to 10 hosting for websites, free CDN and many more. Besides, you will get marketing coupons. This package will cost you $5.95 per month. If you buy this package for 2 or 3 years, you will get discount.
»Pro package
It is the package with huge features. This package also include SSL certificate. It is Best for E-commerce website. You will get more free domain here. It will cost you 13.95$ per month.
To have a package from Bluehost, go to www.bluehost.com and then choose a plan and sign up.
I personally recommend BlueHost hosting.
Considerable things before buying a hosting plan
Before choosing a hosting plan, it is necessary to consider some important things. They are in the bellow:
Space: It is important to have unlimited space for your blog site. So, choose a company that offers unlimited spaces.
- Domain name: Some companies offer making website only their hosting. But there are some companies that provide unlimited domain names to create many websites.
- Support system: It is very essential. The hosting company you select must have the 24×7 support system. It will help you to get any problem solved at any time.
- Bandwidth: It is the technical term that decides the number of visitors a website can handle. So, you need an unlimited bandwidth.
- Easily manageable: You will get different companies that provide different admin dashboards types. You should choose an easy dashboard. However, you can pick up cPanel which is very easy to manage.
Step 6: Sign up with the domain name
Now select an option that named “I have a domain name”. Then put your domain name there. Then you need to submit your credit card to pay for it.
Step 7: Choose a Best WordPress theme and install some plugins
Now it is the next step of how to start a blog. To make your site attractive, you need to choose a modern theme and add some plugins. mythemeshop.com and themeforest.net are two websites who offers lot of modern themes for WordPress. If you want to buy theme from mythemeshop.com, you need to sign up here and then add the theme to the Cart. They also provide plugins to make site more responsive. However, plugins make your site easy to manage. In your WordPress theme, you will get Dashboard, Post, media, Pages, Links, Comments, etc options to customize your site.
Download WordPress Free Themes and Best premium theme website like mythemeshop.com and buy a theme for around $47.
I personally recommend mythemeshop.com WordPress Theme
Step 8: How To Write a Blog post in WordPress
Now it is the time to create posts. To post a content, go to the admin panel and you will see “Post” option. When you click it, you will see “Add new post” option. In this part, there are a title area, content area, editing tools, publishing tools, etc.
However, from here you can add a post on your blog site.
Why WordPress?
WordPress is mostly used by the blogger worldwide. They provide the best support to their customers. It is an open source platform to develop an own blog for you. However, WordPress offers a lot of design layouts, plugins to make your blog site attractive. You can easily install and design it as your wish. WordPress is SEO friendly and provides some tools that make your content SEO. To be a successful blogger, you need to acquire trust from your visitors.
When you have a self WordPress blog, people will trust on you.
The flexible design, easy setup, mobile responsive, time management, easy membership, SEO friendliness, improved security, etc make WordPress a popular and trustful blogging platform to the users.
Finally, we are able to know how to start a blog. I hope now you can start your blog site to online blogging business. It is not a complicated process. So, try your site and enjoy your blogging. If you are able to take all the steps properly, you will be a successful blogger.