How to start a blog

 

How to start a blog

Now that you know what blogs are, why are they so popular, and what reasons inspire people to start blogging, it’s your turn to start your own. Here’s a complete step-by-step beginners’ guide to help you build your own blog in just six simple steps. At the end of this tutorial, you’ll have your very own blog, well set and fully functional, and with the right foundation for steady growth and a solid money-making strategy.

Ready? Let’s begin.

1. Pick your blog topic (niche)

The first step to starting your own blog is to find a topic you want to talk about. What issue or idea do you want to explore or examine? What theme or thought do you want your blog to be known for?

In blogging, your topic is known as your niche. So what niche do you have in mind? Perhaps you’d like to share prudent money management tips and start a personal finance blog. Or write about your exciting travels and adventures on your own travel blog. Maybe you want to form a community with fellow work-at-home moms on your mommy blog. Or maybe you’d like to create a blog that’s focused on the virtues of minimalism.

Go ahead and pick a topic or niche you want to blog about.

How to find the ideal niche

If you don’t have a topic just yet, here are some useful tips to help you find your niche. 

• Pick a topic you’re passionate in. You want to blog about something that you’re wholeheartedly interested in, a topic you enjoy not only today, but also in the long term. When you’re passionate about your topic, writing about it will not feel like a chore and it becomes easier to create quality content on a consistent manner. Besides, if you pick a topic you don’t like, you might quickly lose interest in blogging and give up altogether.

• Make sure there’s an audience for it.Chances are, you’re not just blogging for yourself – you’re blogging for other people, too. You want to attract engaged readers and followers. You want to connect with them. And you want them to buy the products and services you’re offering on your blog. So pick a niche that many others – and not just you or a select few – are also interested in.

• Should be something profitable. Of course, you do want to make money with your blog – a side income, fulltime income, or much more. So pick a topic where you can earn, where there are products and services to sell, and enough people to buy them. After all, blogging, even if purely for passion or as a hobby, still costs time, effort, and money, so you might as well earn from it.

• Make sure it has a future. You want to build a blog that lasts, and it all starts with the right topic. Pick a niche that’s for the long-term, something that’s relevant (and profitable) not only today and tomorrow, and but also ten years into the future.

Most popular blogging niches

If you still can’t decide on a topic, here are the most popular – not to mention profitable – blogging niches on the Internet. Notice that these are very broad topics. You may want to choose something from here and narrow it down.

• Personal finance
• Food, recipes
• Fashion, beauty
• Lifestyle, mommy blogs
• Travel, outdoors
• Blogging, digital marketing
• Health, wellness, self-care
• Fitness, sports
• Arts, crafts, DIY
• Home, décor and design, gardening
• Pets
• Technology, gaming

But these are just a few examples of blogging niches. You can literally write about any and every topic imaginable. Don’t limit yourself to the abovementioned. As we’ve learned earlier, blogging is popular and relevant because it accommodates all kinds of theme and thought, and not because it is restricted to a select few subjects.

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Remember, choosing the right topic is the most important step in starting your own blog. You’re laying the foundation of your future success here.

So it’s alright to take as much time as you need. Do your research. Weigh your options against what you want, and what the world wants. While it’s ok to pick a niche purely out of passion, make sure you’re being reasonable – passion alone won’t determine future growth and profitability.

Once you’ve selected a topic or niche, it’s time to move on to the next step.

2. Choose your blog name (domain)

The second step in building your own blog is to choose a name for your blog. That’s what’s called a domain name. Your domain name forms part of your Universal Resource Locator or URL – basically, your website address, or what people type in on the address bar to go directly to your site.

Examples of domain names include:

• google.com
• microsoft.com
• wikipedia.com
• Ohsoglamy.blogspot.com (my own domain)

Every domain name is unique. It can’t be shared between different websites or blogs. And it costs money to own and use a certain domain name. You have to pay an annual fee to register and keep your domain name. If you stop paying the fee, you lose the right to use that domain name and it goes up for sale.

But don’t worry about registering and buying your domain name just yet – you can do that in the next step.

For now, focus on crafting a great name for your blog.

How to create the ideal domain name

So what do you want to name your blog? You can use your personal name or a variation of it. Or maybe something related to your topic. Or perhaps something else equally creative. Remember, your domain name is a very important element of your blog. It’s your brand, your image, your identity. So give it a lot of time and thought.

To help you craft a great domain name for your blog, here are some useful tips to consider:

• Make sure it’s available. Every domain name is unique. You can’t have one that someone else already owns. So come up with something that’s still available. You can use the nifty little tool below to check if your tentative domain name is still unclaimed. If it is, you can register and claim it in the next step.
• Something easy to remember. You want your domain name to be something unforgettable, or at least easy to remember. So make your blog name unique and catchy. Maybe nothing too long. And it helps if it’s easy to spell and pronounce.
• Easy to type in. Avoid overly complicated names with lots of numbers and symbols and an unreasonable mix of uppercase and lowercase letters. The last thing you want is for potential visitors to mistype your domain name and end up on a different site!
• Probably related to your topic. Your domain name can give potential visitors a hint on what your blog’s about even before they get to it. So you might want to pick a name that’s related to your niche, especially if you’re blogging about topics like personal finance, food, etc. But this is just optional.
• Choose a domain name extension. A domain name extension, domain ending, domain category, or top-level domain (TLD) is the last bit on your web address (.com, .net, .org, .gov, etc.). There are lots of unique and creative TLDs (.cool, .sexy, .pizza, .coffee, etc.), but you’re still better off using the tried-and-true ‘.com’, or if that’s not available, then ‘.org’ or ‘.net’. Did you know that ‘.com’ domains are over 33% more memorable than those with other TLDs? Or that when people misremember a domain name, they’re 3.8x more likely to assume it ends in ‘.com’ than anything else?

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Remember, while the right domain name is important, you don’t want to spend too much time creating the perfect domain name. Otherwise, you’ll only end up wasting valuable time and effort, which you could have spent in building your blog around a good domain name instead. Worse, you might get caught up in trying to choose the perfect domain name that you never start blogging at all!

3. Set up your web hosting

The third step in starting a blog is to set up your web hosting.

Web hosting is what allows your blog or website to be on the Internet, to be seen and accessed by you and other people.

You see, a website or blog is made up of many different files, and these files are kept in a special computer known as a server. All websites are stored on servers. When someone wants to access your website, all they need to do is type your domain into their browser. Their computer will then connect to the server hosting your website, and your website will be delivered and made accessible to them on their browser.

The bottom line is that you can’t have a blog or website without web hosting.

Why Bluehost is the best choice for web hosting

Now, web hosting is a paid service provided by web hosting companies. These are the businesses that own the servers that store and host websites. When you buy web hosting service from a web hosting provider, you’re renting a space on their servers to store your blog’s files, put your blog online, and make it accessible to you and other people.

There are plenty of web hosting companies out there. But the ultimate option for you is Bluehost. Here’s why:

• Beginner-friendly. Bluehost provides you with all the tools you need to build a blog from scratch in just a few clicks.
• Free domain. Bluehost will register your custom domain name – free of charge – for your first year.
• Reliable. Bluehost ensures your website stays online and accessible, and works smoothly and problem-free, all year round. 
• Fast. Bluehost guarantees your blog loads at high speed, so you needn’t worry about losing visitors and potential revenue.
• Secure. Bluehost provides you with strong security measures to protect your blog from hacking, malware attacks, spam, etc.
• Affordable. Bluehost offers a variety of web hosting packages at the most affordable prices on the market.
• Money-back guarantee. Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so there’s no risk in case you change your mind.
• Customer-friendly. Bluehost employs expert customer support to ensure you get nothing less than the best web hosting service for your blog.
• Trustworthy. Bluehost is the trusted choice of over 2 million website owners across the globe.