Originally posted on September 21, 2021 @ 8:14 pm
Starting a blog today is one smart thing every business owner who wants to take her product and service online should do. Blogging has become an online marketing strategy for most businesses as it has helped in creating brand awareness, generating sales online, promoting company’s product and services and many more.
No business in recent time will thrive and reach a larger audience globally without a blog, blogging is a means to reach other means in this present digital marketing era.
Are you in search of a good guide on how to start a WordPress blog? This guide shares everything anyone, be it a new blogger, digital marketer or non-tech individual should know for starting a blog.
To conserve your precious time, I have created this free step-by-step blog tutorial to explain to you that creating a blog is easy and quick. It’s not as complex as many people believe! You can read what is a blog then come back to start creating your blog.
This guide is exclusively on how to build a WordPress blog with a one-time click installation.
Let’s get started.
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Disclosure: If you purchase products through any link on our site (e.g. Bluehost services), we may possibly get a commission. Also, it does not come with any extra cost for you but helps us to create additional valuable content.
With this free guide, 3500 persons has started and more ae starting a blog with it.
An Instant Introduction – Starting a Blog for beginners
You must understand that there are five key steps to help you create a blog fast. Having an understanding of these steps will help you build a blog within minutes.
So let get started before we dive into the main focus on starting a blog on WordPress.
1. Deciding on a Blog Niche
First of all, understand that your blog’s niche is the exact market (target audience) subject matter you will be targeting.
2. Choosing a Domain Name for your Blog
Then, getting a name for your blog will be easier after deciding your blogging niche. You can make use of your name, a descriptive of your market topic. Or, a descriptive combination of phrases.
Don’t know what niche to start with, read my guide on the best blogging niche to make money from.
Learn more on what is a domain and how it works.
3. Picking the best blogging platform
After deciding on a blog niche and a domain name for your blog, the next step is to pick the best blogging platform a start your blog. Though there are a lot of blogging platform with varieties of features. But I always recommend self-hosted WordPress – for serious minded person.
4. Getting a Good Web hosting
A web host is the backbone and the basis of any blog. Selecting a good web will definitely enhance the success in your blogging career. And choosing the inappropriate web host can ruin your hopes of running a successful blog.
5. Designing and Keeping up a Blog
In recent times, you need not be a skilled web designer or developer to create a beautiful blog! Thank God for Platforms like WordPress.org that comes with many pre-designed free blog themes. WordPress offer blog themes that you can choose, according to your desired layout and color.
6. Reading useful resources
Setting up your blog and getting it running is the first phase towards the blogging world. On the other hand, to be successful online, you have to keep reading relevant resources.
Useful Resources for Blogging after starting a blog
How to Start a WordPress Blog in 8 Easy Steps?
- Decide on a perfect niche
- Pick a blogging platform
- Make a choice on a domain name for your blog
- Get a web hosting account
- Starting a blog on WordPress
- Select a blog theme and design
- Start writing content and promoting your blog
- Make money blogging
FAQs About Starting a Blog
Before we dive into the steps on how to create a blog, let me quickly cover a number of helpful facts and general questions most people ask before they start to build a blog.
1. Why Should I Start a Blog?
Solving the puzzle in this question will give you an establish goal for creating and running a blog.
Let me give you some guidelines to help clear your vision on why you need to start a blog now;
- Do you want to share something, like a message or an idea?
- Do you want to build a community about your passion for a cause?
- Do you want to keep your followers and fans updated on the latest news with your brand?
- Do you want to explain how your product or service works and why people should buy it?
If any of your answer to the over question is Yes, then you should start a blog. A blog can help enlighten, teach, promote, and at the same time sell, but only if you understand what your blogging intentions are as you start.
So, it’s important to reflect and point out what your core message will be and what purpose is your blog achieving.
Reasons for Starting a Blog
Without hesitation, these are some reason why a number of persons create blogs and love blogging:
- To use it as a channel for creative communication.
- To grow into an online business or earn more money.
- To showcase expertise and start building an online community.
- To link with others and build a company
- To improve on their writing and thinking skills.
Here’s a thought-provoking point, are you aware that 61% of online customers make purchases according to a references and recommendations from blogs?
2. Can I start a blog for free?
This is the most frequently ask questions on Google search regarding a starting a blog on WordPress.
But the answer to this question is also Yes. But you must know the ins and outs of free blogs. Although, many blogging platforms let you start a blog for free.
Platforms like WordPress.com, Wix, Blogger let you create a blog for free. You must understand a few things about starting a blog for free.
- If you sign up for a free account, your account will be serviced on a subdomain of the platform.
- Your blog name will look like this: “blogname.wordpress.com” or “blogname.blogspot.com”.
- In the blogging community, this type of blog is a sign of an inexperienced beginner who likely won’t be taken seriously.
- Your free blog will be subject to rules and restrictions set by the platform.
- Free platforms will definitely limit or prohibit you from using ads, or they may even place their own ads on your blog.
So, if you’re resolute about blogging, moving away from this option sooner is far better rather than later.
3. What Is the Best Approach to Build a Blog?
The best approach to start building a blog is;
- Start paying for it – You get full control of your blog, having a branded domain name and have access to more features.
- Get started with self-host blog – WordPress.org is a free open-source service where you can install WordPress on any web hosting account. This I’ll guide you later in this post.
3. Is starting a blog still Important for Business?
Many folks still ask me this question. The simple answer to this is, Yes, blog and blogging is still very important this year and years to come. Owing to the fact that technologies are changing. Business methods evolves and everyone wants to be online.
With the effect of Covid-19, businesses are taking a new shape and working-from-home is becoming more prevalent. A result, blogging is a means business can connect with the outside world from the comfort of your home.
A Blog is a terrific way and approach of announcing your ideas, products, brand, business, and content to the world.
This doesn’t mean that blogging is easy. Every successful blogger works hard and give her blog the utmost concentration it deserves, most importantly at the beginning. You need to create quality content, communicate in the comments box, marketing your blog on social media sites and then remarket.
You must be able to encourage, inspire and encourage yourself to do the right thing always.
Blogs are an outstanding instrument for building community, but if you can’t be the main voice (the principal person for it), you’ll have difficulty running and maintaining it. Blogging is an open action that will put you, your brand, product and service in the public eye. The more popular you turn into; the more attention you will receive for your words.
8 Easy Steps to Starting a Blog
Now is the time to begin our step-by-step guide on how to create a blog from scratch.
Step 1: Select a perfect niche for your blog
The first step to start and run an effective blog is to choose the perfect niche for your blog.
First, make sure to pick a niche that you are the most interested in — the one you are passionate about. That way you will follow your passion and enjoy your blogging journey.
What is a Blog Niche?
A blog niche is a line of course of interest where ideas, topics of related subject matters are created as contents or articles and shared to the public through a blog to educate, inform and solve relevant problems asked by the public.
Subsequently, you should choose a niche that you’ve made your research to have enough audience interest.
As soon as you selected a niche, ensure to validate it. Further down is a 3-step procedure to check the success of your niche.
A 3-step blog success validation process:
- Check the size, audience attendance of the niche.
- Research on your potential competitors in the same niche.
- Evaluate the possibility of making money from it.
This procedure will help you gain a perfect idea of the size, competition, and monetization capacity for your intended niche.
Here’s a guide on the best blogging niche you start with and how to make money blogging
Step 2: Decide on a blogging platform
At this point, you must look for the best blogging network out there and decide the category of blog running software you are going to use. I recommend that you build your own blog on a self-hosted WordPress platform.
Once it comes to prevalent blogging sites, here are the two options available:
- Hosted Blog Platforms (free or freemium plans).
- Self-hosted Blog Platforms (free open-source software).
1. Hosted blog Platforms
For a lot of bloggers that are just starting out, well, it’s appealing to make use of free hosted platforms such as WordPress.com or Blogger.com.
Limitations of Free Hosted Blogging Platforms
You must know that these free platforms come with limitations like;
- Your blog name will be set as a subdomain (examples: yourblog.wordpress.com or yourblog.blogspot.com).
- You’ll be constraint with their rules and restrictions. Free options come in handy if you want to test the platform.
But, if you’re serious about starting a blog and becoming successful in blogging, you’ll have to start paying for full services and a custom domain name.
2. Self-hosted blog Platforms
Self-hosted blogging platforms also known as CMS (Content Management System) gives you many choices to run with. The very best and popular CMS is the free and open-source system WordPress.org.
Features of a Self-Hosted Blogging Platform
- Self-hosted platforms let you to set-up and run your blog using your own domain and web hosting.
- You’re fully in charge of your blog and its contents.
- It will cost just a few dollars every month for the hosting account, and around ten dollars per month for a custom domain name. The actual blogging platform is free.
- If you plan to run ads, sell products, or services via your blog, then this is the best way to go.
A lot of hosting service providers can support an e-commerce blog.
What is the cost to start a blog?
The table below shows a simple 1-year plan pricing similarities of the three most prevalent blogging solutions, with a custom domain name.
For WordPress.org CMS hosting services I will illustrate Bluehost web hosting’s pricing plans.
| WordPress.org | WordPress.com | Wix.com | |
| Blog hosting services | $4.95 per month (billed for 1 year) $2.75 per month (billed for 3 years) | $5.00 per month (billed for 1 year) | $8.50 per month (billed for 1 year) |
| Domain name registration | First year free, after $17.99 per year |
First year free, after $18.00 per year | First year free, after $14.95 per year |
| Storage space* | 50 GB | 6 GB | 3 GB |
| Bandwidth* | Unlimited | Unlimited | 2 GB |
| Total for the first year | $59.40 | $60.00 | $102.00 |
- Storage space indicates the amount of space your blog and media files can use.
- Bandwidth tells you the volume of files your blog can transmit to your visitors.
These two factors are very essential when starting a blog – its growth and traffic surge.
For you to create a WordPress blog, you must decide on these two important things:
1. A domain name and
2. A web hosting provider.
I always recommend that my readers try using Dreamhost or Bluehost, a company that powers over 2 million websites worldwide. I was able to negotiate a special deal only for my readers.
Step 3: Choose a domain name
The next step to starting a blog after deciding on your niche and blogging platforms is choosing an effective domain name. Whichever name you chose irrespective on what niche you have chosen, will be attributed to your business and known online.
Your blog’s domain name is your blog’s unique address on the Internet. Your domain name will continuously be yours as long as you are paying the yearly fee ($10 to $15 for a .com domain).
Your URL (uniform resource locator) can be easily typed on any browser’s address bar or can be discovered through search engines like Google and Bing – if you optimize your blog for SEO.
Related Post Alert: Learn what SEO is and how to optimize your blog for SEO.
And also Learn what is a search engine and how it works.
Your domain name could be the very common “.com,” or it could possibly be country or niche-specific – “.us” or “.tech”. The common rule is to go for a “.com” domain extension, but some extensions that just works fine is, “dot net” or “dot blog”.
At the end of the day, your name should be memorable, but if another type of domain extension or country code makes your domain more memorable, then break the rules!
Step 4: Get a web hosting account
Once you’ve chosen your domain name, choosing a dependable web hosting service will be one of the smartest step you take.
By far, the performance and functionality of your blog depends solely on your blog hosting. A web host ensures that your site is accessible 24/7 on the web for readers and it’s where your contents and files are kept online.
A large amount web hosting companies provides a free domain feature for the first year when you buy their services.
On the contrary, a bad web host will cause your blog many problems. Just picture that you have decided to buy a smartphone from a mobile company that has no receiving signal. Your web host is the most important part of the steps to starting a blog successfully; for that reason, you must choose a trustworthy provider. Bluehost is a trustworthy provider.
According to our research, many blogging experts and information obtainable on the official WordPress website, Bluehost is a best choice for blog hosting.
Step 5: Starting a blog on WordPress
This part offers comprehensive data to assist you sign up for Bluehost’s web hosting account and subsequently set-up a WordPress blog. As an illustration, I will guide you how to create a blog with Bluehost. I also add in some images of the pages that you need to go through.
1. Visit Bluehost homepage
Go to the Bluehost.com website. Then click the green “Get Started Now” button.
2. Select your hosting plan
The next page to pop up is the pricing page where you get to pick a hosting plan. But if you are just starting a blog, go with the Basic plan. Subsequently, you can definitely move to a higher plan either Plus or Choice Plus plan as soon as your blog starts increasing in popularity and traffic. Look at what each plan presents, like the Choice Plus plan goes with Domain Privacy and some other add-ons. If your financial plan permits, you can go for the recommended plan.
3. Set up your domain name
As I stated earlier in this post that your domain name is your blog’s address, take your time to craft a name that’s distinctive and memorable. Just log in your preferred name in the “new domain” box and Bluehost will let you know if it’s existing or not. If it doesn’t exist, Bluehost will make available to you a list of related names to choose from.
Don’t be troubled if you can’t get a good name at the moment, you can skip this step and pick a domain name later.
If you already gotten a domain name elsewhere, you can use the name. Just log it in the “Use a domain you own” box.
4. Registration Page with Bluehost
After choosing domain name and clicking the button “next”, the next page that Bluehost will take you to is the registration page where you get to fill in your private data yourself, or you sign in with your Google-email account to make the process simpler.
Include your account information
On this page, get started by filling out your personal info.
Pick your hosting package
At this moment, you should select an account plan from the options that pop-up. Bluehost presents a 12-month, 24-month, and 36-month packages.
But with a 12-month plan, you’ll need to pay a lower amount forthright, but with other two plans, you’ll get a better offer if you are set for a longer-term loyalty.
Package extras
Scroll that to evaluate the package extras wisely. Note, it’s not every extra that’s important, so uncheck the boxes of extras you don’t need, and as you do, your total amount you will pay will reduce.
You can keep the Domain Privacy Protection box checked, as this service will help hide your personal private info from the global file, which is openly visible to anyone on the web.
Payment information
This page let you enter your payment information. Check the box that you have read and agree to Bluehost’ TOS (Terms of Service), afterward click on the green “Submit” button.
After making payment, Bluehost will send a confirmation email to you immediate your online payment is successful. Also an email will be sent to you to confirm your email address that help activate your domain name.
Then, it’s time to set-up your Bluehost account. You are a step closer to starting a blog!
5. Create your account
It’s time to create your account with Bluehost.
- Step 1. Click on “Create your account” button.
- Step 2. Enter your password and complete the account set up.
- Step 3. Click on the “Go to login” button.
- Step 4. Fill in the boxes “Email or Domain Name” and “Password”.
You’re almost set. After that, you’ll start getting ready to create your blog.
6. Creating your WordPress blog with Bluehost
Immediately you log in to the Bluehost account, you’ll be offered a 4-step means to help you create a blog website. If this is your first time want to create a blog, you should follow this 4-step process.
But it not, you can click on the “Skip this step” button and create a blog on yourself inside the Bluehost hosting account.
4-Steps Process to Create a Blog:
Step 1.
You will start the process by answering 3 questions:
- What kind of site are you creating?
- What type is it?
- Who are you creating a blog for?
In my own case, I chose: Blog, Personal, Myself. You can choose the same if your choice matches mine or you would choose what suits your personality.
Step 2.
At this point, pick other add-ons would you like your blog to have. Bluehost lets you choose from a few options they have.
Step 3.
At this stage, you get to answer a small number of questions like
- What do you want to name your blog?
- What is your blog’s tagline?
- Are you comfortable with creating websites?
A quick reminder, you can change this anytime at the long run.
Next, you get to choose your preferred themes offered by Bluehost and check if you like any of them but if you don’t see a theme you like, skip this step. You can at any time change it and use a different one later.
As soon as you’ve complete these 4 steps process, your Bluehost account page will pop-up. At this moment, the WordPress software is installed and you are set to structure your blog!
Right now, if you enter your domain into the web browser you will see a “Coming soon” page. Let’s finish the process together and launch your blog!
7. Launch your blog
Within your Bluehost dashboard, you’ll see an option to further personalize your blog’ theme according to Bluehost’s recommendations. These options are available for you to do some pre-launch customization to your blog.
Immediately you click the “Launch My Site” button, your blog goes live on the internet!
At first when you type your blog name after launching your blog inside a web browser, it wouldn’t look beautiful because it’s the first draft of your blog. You just need to do some changes, add relevant content to make polish and complete it.
Learn more on how to customize your blog theme and how to write a blog post.
You can log on to your WordPress dashboard from your Bluehost account by clicking the blue-colored “WordPress” button at the top right edge of your screen.
Final Take on Starting a Blog
That’s it! You’ve just learned how to start a blog!
The smart thing in relation to this process I have stated here, is that you can do it all by yourself and don’t have to hire anyone. Creating a blog with WordPress as your blogging platform is the most budget-friendly solution available.
If you want to learn more regarding what to do with your blog once it’s launched – like how to promote your blog, or how to make money blogging – read any of my other guides on the blog.
Should you have questions relating this guide or you’re stuck with the steps, I’ll be more than happy to help. Please don’t be unwilling to get in touch with me and ask, it’s all free.
If you have any questions about how to build a blog from scratch, ask me now in the comments below!
He is Digital Marketer who is passionate about blogging. MarketingBlogo was birth has a result of misconceptions about the reality of online marketing for business growth.
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