How To Start A Blog- A Step By Step Guide
(Wordpress)
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So you want to start a blog, and maybe you want to make money from it. Is this just a hobby or is it going to be a serious venture for you. If you want to make money, how much do you want to make, weekly, daily and monthly. How many visitors do you want to see every month and what are you going to be blogging about.
All questions that need to be answered before you actually start your blog! Once you’ve done that the rest is easy, but let me warn you, it is time-consuming and it can be addictive!
Making money online is easy once you know what you’re doing and how to approach it!
This step by step guide on starting a blog will walk you through the steps on starting a WordPress blog.
So, here is a…
Step By Step Guide – How To Start A Blog
The process map below shows the you the steps for taking your blog from initial idea right the way through to turning it into a full-blown business.This tutorial will take you through the following steps to help you to set up a WordPress blog:
- Choosing the right blog topic for you
- Choosing a name and domain for you blog
- Purchasing a domain name
- Purchasing your hosting and setting up WordPress
- Designing your blog
- Plus lots of useful articles to help you get started successfully and build on your idea
Step 1- Choosing Your Topic
There are blogs on everything and anything. From personal finance, to photography to self-improvement. The choices are endless, however what ever you choose to blog about you’ll need to be passionate and knowledgeable about it.I’d suggest that you don’t just blog about anything and everything, pick a solid topic for your blog that you can write interesting articles about for years to come. The key to a successful blog is the ability to be able to create consistent and awesome content on a single topic.
Take some time to research other blogs and the topics they write about, looking through their archives should give you a good idea of the number of articles they have written, how they keep it interesting and how they come up with new post ideas to write about.
Picking a topic is sometimes the hardest part of starting a blog but once you have a topic you are happy with the rest is fairly easy. When you’re in the process of choosing your topic ask yourself the following questions: How interested and passionate am I about this topic and how much do I already know about it. If the answers are positive to both questions then you’ve probably got a winner on your hands.
Remember that when you start your blog you don’t want to waste time rethinking this step and changing what you write about because if the change is dramatic you’ll have to start your audience building all over again.
Step 2- Choosing Your Name
You’ll need a name for your new blog, something that stands out and captures the readers attention. This one is completely down to you, but again your research should reveal some interesting names and ideas.Have a look at the Ad Age Power 150 list, there’s some good ideas and it should give you an insight into how some of the worlds best blogs do it!
The key to selecting a good blog name is something that stands out, easy to spell and catchy. Also make sure you base it around your blog topic as it will help your audience if the two are linked, you could also think about putting a key word from your topic in your name.
For example, this blog is about blogging so the name of the blog is Blogging Toolkit, the keyword is blogging and when potential readers land on my site they know exactly what topic they are going to be reading about on here.
Step 3- Purchasing A Domain Name
It’s time to make a quick choice, free blog or paid blog?You can use free blogging platforms such as Blogger and WordPress.com. However there are some limitations to a free blog like not having your own domain name, not being able to fully customise it, not being allowed advertisement and of course it doesn’t really belong to you as it’s a free account hosted by someone else.
I recommend going down the paid route of things and setting up something that really matters to you and also committing to starting a successful blog.
Once you have decided, it’s time to choose your domain name.
If you go down the free route it will look something like:
www.myblogname.worpress.com
The paid option will look something like:
www.myblogname.com
Apart from looking more professional and that your serious about your blogging venture you also have the flexibility to do what ever you want on your blog and make it look however you want as well.
Now it’s time to purchase a domain name, if your going down the free route choose your platform (Blogger or WordPress) and register with it, if your going down the paid route I suggest that you use GoDaddy to search for available domain names and purchase one.
Once you have found one that you like and is available move onto the following step where we have a video showing you how to purchase hosting and get a free domain, so before you buy your domain for your new blog make sure you read the next step
Step 4- Purchase Hosting
Once you have a domain name, it’s time to get some hosting, this will allow your site to be on the internet 24/7 and be accessed by thousands of people.Hosting is a real crucial element of any site. It’s needs to be reliable and fast so there’s no issues when people come to look at it!
Hosting starts from anywhere from $5 a month upwards really.
Everyone has a different preference to what hosing they use and each have their advantages.
For a new blog I recommend Bluehost, they offer good pricing and they also give a free domain for the first year when you first register with them. They also have 1-click install for WordPress and 24/7 customer service.
Hostgator is also another fantastic hosting company. They have great packages and again 1-click WordPress hosting which just makes life easy!
GoDaddy are another hosting company that will give you want you need, I don’t recommend them 100% as they are very much the jack of all trades. For domain names they are perfect but their economy hosting package is a bit slow to load. Bluehost and Hostgator are specialised hosting companies which make them the ideal companies to go to for hosting and GoDaddy for domain names.
Once you have your domain name and hosting you will need to link them together. The hosting company that you choose will provide you with the steps to link them and get you up and running.
Once that is done you can install WordPress on the hosting that you have chosen.
Note: If you choose Hostgator hosting use the coupon code: bloggingtoolkit. This will give you a 25% off your purchase.
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Step 5- Designing Your Blog
WordPress functions on something called a theme. This controls the design, look and functionality of your site. You can get free themes or paid themes, the choice is yours.I recommend you go down the pad route for several reasons, you get a better looking site/blog, you have more features to play with and again you want to show that you are taking your blog seriously by having something that looks the part, however it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg, you pick up a theme for as little as $35.
Have a look here for free themes:
Free themes from WordPress
And these sites for paid themes:
Themeforest: A ridiculous number of themes for all purposes.
WooThemes: This is my favourite place to go for themes as they seem to pack so many features into them. I have used the Canvas theme on this blog.
Studiopress: Another place to explore for themes and finding what you like.
Once you have purchased a theme, you should install it and start to customise it using the options panel that it provides.
Source- bloggingtoolkit
Thank you so much...looking forward to read your articles.please tel us moor about finding money with blogs.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment.Will publish some good content about that.
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