Are you worried about how to start a blog and make money? Then you are at right place. In this beginner’s guide, I will explain all steps to start a blog in a simple way and a low budget. You don’t need any technical experience to start a blog.
“Start a blog is easier and faster than you think”
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I’ll earn a commission, at no additional cost to you. It will help me run this blog.
7 Steps to start a Blog
- What is a blog anyway?
- Why should you start a blog?
- How to start a blog in 10 steps?
- Promote your blog to drive traffic
- Monitoring Traffic on Your Blog
- Get Started to make money from a blog
- Conclusion
I am going to introduce the blog If you know about blog already and want to skip the introduction then move the step Start a bog
What is a blog anyway?
A blog is a collection of posts (articles) on the website. The newest ones are usually displayed at the top.
Why should you start a blog?
Here are a few popular reasons from my readers:
- Make money working from home: Bloggers make a full-time income through blogging. You can work full time / part-time for blogging. It is a low risk and low overhead make a great opportunity for everyone. No doubt int starting of the blog you will not make high income but after some time you will start making a high income.
- Become a published author: Publishers want authors to have an online presence. The reason is simple: it’s a lot easier to sell books to people who already know you. A blog is a perfect way to become known in the world. If you want to make your presence online then the blog is perfect option.
- Help your business or organization: A blog helps businesses and organizations reach a lot of people at little cost.
- Just write: If you want to write, share your story or encourage others, a blog is a great place to do that.
A blog is an online home you own and control. If you’re serious about breaking into the online space, don’t put your livelihood, brand or reputation in the hands of others, like social media.
Start a blog less than $2.65/ Month
If you think, start a blog is costly, then you are wrong. You can start a blog in a low budget ($5 to $10 per month). I am running a blog in this budget for the last 5 years.
How long will it take to make money?
Those who treat their blog like a part-time job typically start making coffee money for around 6 months, and a solid part-time income around 12 months. If it’s a consistent, full-time income you’re after, allow 24 months.
How to start a blog in 10 steps
Following 10 steps are enough to get ready your blog:
- Finding a better blog name
- Buy Domain Name and Hosting
- Get familiar with the WordPress Dashboard
- Recommended WordPress Settings for your Blog
- Pick a theme /design for your Website
- Install some Plugins to add Extra feature to start a blog
- Create the Page for your Blog
- Start writing a blog post
- Create Menu for your website
- Give an attractive look to your website with Widgets
STEP ONE
Step 1: Finding a better blog name.
A blog name also is known as a domain name. it is the name of your blog website for online presence.
Your blog name should be related to your topic. First visualize all topics in your mind which you will plan to write on your blog, then choose a common name fit to your topics.
If you are not sure about blog name then keep in mind the following points before buying it.
- Domain should be short an catchy and easy to remember and spell.
- Don’t go Too Narrow: You buy a blog name about travel in Europe later you realize you can write for world traveling. So keep big standing in your mind at the time of writing blog.
- Think at least twice about using your own name, Do you want to represent yourself as a brand like a writer, professional then go with it.
- Always keep your domain name without number and special characters.
- Don’t buy a blog which already exists with brand names and trademarks. Avoid it.
- Use the blog name generator to get a better idea. DomainWheel
- You can ask your friends, colleagues, and family for help.
- Choose domian name with right extension .com, .net or .org are good.
- Check domain availability.
Doman name depends on the availability. You can buy a domain name on the lease for 1 year, 2,3 years and maximum 10 years.
You can pay one time for 10 years or you can renew domain name every year. You can’t pay one time for the domain name. you will have to pay every year to make domain name live.
If you have a low budget, then buy a domain name for one year first then renew every year.
Best option buy the domain name along with web hosting.
Quick Introduction About Web Hosting
As you know the website/blog is a collection of the multiple pages. when you visit the website you will see there is some menu available, each and every menu is connected with the web pages.
When you click on menu the next page will be delivered for you. Did you think ever “From where these pages are delivered?”
When you access the website it will be delivered to your web browser from the webserver. mean these pages have been hosted on the web server somewhere in the world.
The places where the website has been hosted called web hosting.
You cannot host your website on your local computer, because it will not be accessible worldwide through the internet.
In such condition, you need to buy some space for hosting a website on the webserver. You can buy it from the hosting providers.
We are not a hosting provider company, So we can’t provide you Webhosting.
But we can suggest you best Webhosting provider, which give you an optimized web server for better performance of the Website.
Disclaimer: We are a partner with a2hosting company, We develop website free if you will buy hosting service as per given instruction below
STEP TWO
Step 2: Buy Domain Name and Hosting
First, click here to go to a2hosting. Once on the page, click on the “Wordpress Hosting” menu link.
Select plan as per your budget.
Enter your desired domain name and then click on the check button this process bill check availability of domain name.
The regular price of a .com domain name is $14.95/year. If you will buy a domain name from another resource you will have to pay the same price.
Once the domain name is available, you will get congratulation message on the screen with your domain name Scroll down and click on continue:
Choose a billing cycle as per your budget if you have enough budget then you can buy a 36-month plan and it will be better for you because you will get a big discount.
Available billing cycle is 12, 24, and 36 months.
Scroll down and you will see lots of the option if need some extra services then you can check or uncheck them.
We are going to purchase WordPress optimized plan, So a2 hosting will install WordPress for you.
Note down the username and password will be found in the Last section of the page. We will need username and password for developing a website.
Then click on continue to process for the next step
DNS management and email forwarding are free for 1st year while ID protection is paid service. if you want to protect your personal information from being public, which you will provide at the time of the registration a domain name and hosting.
If you don’t want to buy ID protection service then simply uncheck and click on Continue button
Review the products and click on the checkout button
Please enter your personal details and billing information to checkout. And click on complete the order.
STEP THREE
Step 3: Get familiar with the WordPress Dashboard
You can access the WordPress dashboard or user panel by using URL link you have received through the email. If you bought a service from a2hosting.
See in the picture what will you get
Give the username and password and click on “Log In” button.
When the login process will be done successfully, you will get the main WordPress dashboard. see in the picture
- Welcome to Dashboard – Some of the most important areas of the admin panel listed as quick shortcuts links – these are usually your shortcuts to how to make a website.
- At a Glance, Activity, and Quick Drafts: The current status of your site and what’s going on with it.
- Posts: You can use this option to create, delete, edit, and manage blog posts.
- Media – You can upload/manage images and other media files here.
- Pages – You can create, and manage pages and sub-pages.
- Comments – this is where you can moderate comments.
- Appearance – You can customize and change your site’s design here and/or customize how certain things are displayed on the current design.
- Plugins – You can install new plugins for adding extra features on your website.
- Users – You can manage user accounts that can access the admin panel of the website.
- Settings – the main settings.
STEP FOUR
Step 4: Recommended WordPress Settings for your Blog
At this stage, it’s good to take care of some basic getting-started WordPress settings that will improve your experience further down the road.
#1 Set Your Blog Title and Tagline
Got to settings -> General and set the Blog Title and Tagline fields whatever you want.
Your blog title is important for your website/blog it might appear in various places on the WordPress blog. It depends on WordPress. I will discuss the theme later in this article.
The tagline is not as important as title, we can say it is optional. So you can leave it blank if you don’t have a tagline for the site.
#2 Set Time Zone for Your Blog
You can set the time zone in Settings → General
Setting your time zone correctly will make publishing new pages and posts more predictable.
Generally, you want to set the time zone to either where you’re at or where your target audience is at. Whichever makes more sense.
#3 Making your Blog Public
Here making website public doesn’t mean live your blog. Your blog should be public for google crawler and other indexing bots. Google will find your blog posts and index your website in its database.
Go to Settings → Reading, and make sure that the box labeled “Discourage search engines …” is unchecked.
#4 Allow and Disallow Comments:
What do you like, people will comment on your posts. Do you want to accept comments on your blog? It is totally up to you. You can change this setting at any time. You can enable or disable comment whenever you like.
On the one hand, letting readers leave their opinions and questions under your articles/pages can be great for building a community around the world.
But, on the other hand, you’ll also have your hands busy dealing with spam and making sure that there’s no trolling.
You can allow and disallow comment in Settings → Discussion area. For more details see in the picture.
#5 Disable Pingbacks and Trackbacks
I don’t know why this setting is even still in WordPress. It’s mostly a leftover from back in the day when pingbacks and trackbacks were a thing.
Though, if you want to learn how to make a website in this day and age, you can simply deactivate them by deselecting the following setting in Settings → Discussion.
#6 Set Permalinks
Permalinks define the structure of articles in URL. What will be the URL of your blog posts?
For the example you create an about page, then the structure should be https://www.yourblog.com/5-tips-to start-a-blog-and-make-money-online.
You will feel good when you look at such type of structure for a blog
You can set the permalinks correctly from the permalink section inside settings.
To set your permalinks, go to Settings → Permalinks from the main sidebar in your WP dashboard.
Once there, select this setting:
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STEP FIVE
Step 5: Pick a theme /design for your Website
The WordPress theme provides your bog/website with an attractive and professional look. Basically, as you know the theme word is known for attractive design and changing look. You can give any look of your website for a small business whatever you like with the help of WordPress theme.
There are tons of free themes available in the market. but it may possible you will not like it’s designing and look. if you don’t like to use a free theme then you can buy a premium theme.
There are tons of paid themes available in the market from different sources for a blog, with charm design and lovely look.
You are going to start a blog in less than $50, then you are not in this condition to spend more money. if you don’t want to spend extra money then I suggest you, go with a free WordPress theme.
There are tons of the free WordPress themes are available on the WordPress Store you can choose one of them. you will install and customize the theme for your website and make it more attractive likewise.
#1 Go to Appearance > Themes
Click on the add new “button” The theme window will be open, you will find a lot of free themes, You can choose one of them.
ColorMag is the best free theme for blog/magazine/news, It optimized for displaying adds and better speed.
By the way, I am going to use the colorMag theme, It is a free version for those who don’t want to spend money.
Search “ColorMag in the search bar, You will see ColorMag theme in result bar. If you want to see a preview before installing theme then click on the “preview”. Once you have satisfied then click on the install button to install it.
Once the theme will be installed then the activate button will appear, click on the “activate” button to activate the installed theme.
Once the installation has been completed, then new window will open as in picture. Click on “Get started with ColorMag” button.
Import Demo Data: It is not a compulsory process, you can skip if you want. Importing demo data will make a website similar to ColorMag demo website. So I suggest you import data in the initial process and delete unnecessary content after fullfile with your own content.
Once you will click on the import button to import demo data, you will see new confirmation windows. Read and consider terms before importing data. and then click on “CONFIRM!” button.
You can read the full documentation, All the themes have documentation related installation and customization.
The next step To customize install the theme. In the customization process, you can change Background image, Edit menu, Upload logo, And other types of editing. you can add the content what do you want to show your customers/clients.
Dashboard > Appearance > Customize
#1 Setting up your homepage.
Do the following:
- In the sidebar, go to “Homepage Settings.”
- Select the option, “A static page” under your homepage display setting.
- Click on “Add New,” to create a new page to act as your homepage.
- Input the name for the page – “HOME” seems like a good idea – and click on “Add.”
For starters, let’s change the main headline on the page. It’s a good idea to put either the name of your business there or anything else that serves as the title for the entire site.
#2 Change the site identity and upload logo
The logo is the main identity of your business/blog/website/News Website, if you have created a logo for your a blog then you can upload now if you don’t want to upload right now then you can make this change later.
Go into the site identity option and make changes
#3 Customize home page and make it attractive
See the following image, you will reach here after a click on customize under Appearance in WordPress dashboard.
There are two sections, Left sidebar is Customizer section, and the right sidebar is preview section.
You will see the effect in right sidebar after making any changes in the left sidebar. So my dear friend you have to customize your home page.
- From Customizer Area: you can go right sidebar and click on one by one option, then make changes as per your requirement. You can have help with ColorMag documentation.
- From Peview Sidebar: In the preview section, you will see pencil icons on the screen. Click on the pencil icon and access modification area in left sidebar. Change as per your requirement.
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STEP SIX
Step 6: Install some Plugins to add Extra feature to start a blog
The WordPress plugins are the same as the apps on a mobile phone. if you need some extra features on your mobile then you will install applications of related. similar if you want some extra features on your WordPress website then you will have to install a WordPress plugin.
So, my dear friends, you can install all plugins anytime click on the plugin then add new for adding a new plugin.
Dashboard > Plugins > Add New
Search the plugin by the name and then click on the install. Later, don’t forget to activate and configure the plugin installed earlier.
Every plugin will provide you the documentation related installation and configuration, you can follow the steps to work with the same plugin.
- Yoast SEO – helps you make search engine optimization tweaks and make your site more accessible to the search engines in general.
- Google Analytics for WordPress – this one integrates your website with the most popular traffic analysis solution on the web.
- Wordfence Security – improves the security of your WordPress site.
Once you have done to install this plugin it means you are your website is ready for everything your website good for the SEO and good for the security purpose.
STEP SEVEN
Step 7: Create the first page for your Blog
The webpage is the power of a website because website is a collection of the web pages. with the help of the web page, you can explain everything better to your customer through the webpage.
For example, your website has the information about your business on the front page in the section about us. but I think this information is not enough for your customers.
So you can create another page with full information about your business, mission, vision , and link about us page to this section.
To create an about us page:
Pages > Add New
You will access of new Page editing area, you will get the offered tips by WordPress to you.
Latest WordPress is using block editor to create and edit webpages/posts. Sometime before it was a classic editor. so it displays the tips on how to edit the new page.
Title: Select the most relevant title for your page, I am going to create an about us page show about us is a better title for it.
Add Block: You can see the plus icon which is used to add blocks. you can add a block type including the paragraph, image, list, table, heading, and more.
Block Setting: You can customize every block individually, Including color setting font-size and more. different blocks have different settings
Document setting as following:
Setting #1 Permalink: You can edit URL slug under the permalink section. I have described before what is permalink?
Setting #2 Featured Image: You can add featured image which is displayed everywhere when you will share this page on social media as well as somewhere else so use a beautiful image as a featured image which described everything about your page of the post.
Setting #3 Discussion: Under discussion section, you can allow or disallow comments on a current page.
Setting #4 Page Attributes: You can set a template for your current page. if you have multiple page then you can mention the first page as a parent page.
Setting #5 Page Settings: Another page setting you can choose a page with sidebar or without sidebar, footer, and navigation.
Get the good tutorial on how to use block editor in Wordpress here
Create multiple pages as you want but required pages are:
- Contact – this is where you can display some contact info along with a nice contact form, through which people can reach you directly. You can add a new form with the help of wpforms plugin. Which pre-installed for you if you buy hosting from a2hosting. Otherwise, you will have to download it.
- Privacy Policy – This page has become a hugely important element on today’s web. Learn more about privacy policy pages in WordPress here.
- Portfolio – a place for you to showcase your past work.
- Store – a crucial thing if you want to sell anything from your site. To make this work, you also need a popular WooCommerce plugin – the best e-commerce solution for WordPress.
STEP EIGHT
Step 8: Start writing a blog post
A blog is the most effective way to promote your website, products, offers, events and more. A blog is considered the most effective way of online marketing. as per data of HubSpot, the 55% marketer thinks that blogging is their top inbound marketing priority.
Creating a blog is not tough, you can write it and post articles similar to a creating page. This is a straight forward process to write and publish articles regularly.
Google will consider your blog active when you publish articles regular basis.
From a technical point of view, WordPress has blogging tools built right into it from the get-go. In fact, WordPress started as a blogging platform.
You can create a new blog post, to go to Posts → Add New from your WordPress dashboard.
I have told you already creating a blog post similar to creating a web page. There is blog editor same and block setting too.
But you find a difference in document settings, you will see the different settings:
#1 Categories: You can add multiple categories which will represent your posts belongs to. it may be an offer, events, on sale, and more.
You can add categories at the time of the writing post. otherwise, you can add Post > Categories
Fill the required field and click on add new category
#2 Tag: You can tag your post for a particular keyword.
#3 Featured Image: Describe the before.
#4 Excerpt: Excerpt is an optional text associated to a Post. Most of the time, it is used as the Post summary.
#5 Discussion: you can allow and disallow comments as well as Pingback and trackbacks.
#6 Post setting: this is similar to a page setting.
Once you’re done working on a blog post, click on “Publish.” You can use the preview option to see the post before publishing it. Publish is a final task when you are writing a post.
To make your posts easily accessible, you should designate one of your pages to serve as the main blog listing for the posts.
- To do it, first, go to Pages → Add New and create a blank page with the title “BLOG” and publish it.
- Next, go to Settings → Reading, and select your newly created Blog page as the “Posts page” as shown in below picture:
At this stage, you can navigate to that new page and see all your recent blog posts there.
STEP NINE
Step 9: Create Menu for your website
Menus are the primary source through which visitors have a deep eye on your site. Visitors move and access your website and information from using theses menus navigated with pages and other resources.
You will have a couple of options to choose from regarding menu settings, depends on your theme. Menus settings may be changed with the change of theme. but the primary menu remains the same for every theme. Here’s what you can usually do on Hestia’s theme. I am using this theme for example and demo purpose:
First, go to Appearance > Menus in your WordPress dashboard.
You’ll see this default panel:
#1 Add menu items
Item #1 Pages: if you want to link a page with the menu then select page and click on add menu button you will see the menu item has been added in Manual structure bar.
Item #2 Posts: if you want to connect a particular post to the menu then you can tick on the checkbox front of that post. then click on the “Add to Menu” button.
Item #3 Custom link: if you want to link a particular resource then you can use a custom link option there are two Field one is URL where you will feel that customer living and another is the text where you will enter the text for a menu item.
Item #4 categories: If you want to link A category to a menu item then choose the category and click on the “Add to Menu” button. The new category item link will be added to the menu structure.
#2 Menu structure:
You can see all the added items in this section. You can simply drag and drop to arrange them up and down. if you want to make a submenu then drag the left side.
Give the name for this menu and click on the save menu so the structure will be saved.
You can create multiple menus.
#3 Manage locations:
The theme has an option to manage locations for the menu. Mostly the primary menu and footer menu exists in every theme.
Click on the manage location > and select the menu for every available location
Then click on the Save changes button.
STEP TEN
Step 10: Give an attractive look to your website with Widgets
Widgets for an important feature in WordPress. It is a small part of the content that can be displayed in various places on the website.
Mostly widgets are displayed on the left/ right sidebar and footer area. But now you can add anywhere on the website. If you want to display an inside page/post you can. You can display widgets after every post.
To access the widget settings Appearance > Widgets from the WordPress dashboard. You will get the screen like an image below.
To activate a widget drag from available widget are a sidebar and other place or click on it and select widget area. To deactivate a widget and delete its settings, drag it back or delete it.
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Promote your blog to drive traffic
Most bloggers fail to promote their blog, and they don’t get in popularity and traffic due to the lack of promotion. keep in mind if you are not promoting your blog no one will aware of your blog and your creativity.
Don’t be shy about telling people about your blog.
I have heard from many bloggers who tell me that they are not promoting their blog simply because they don’t feel it is worthy of promotion at this time. They say things like “I don’t have enough posts yet” or “I need to work on my site design first”
Forget everything if you have a single post start promoting it because you have written your best on the first post. day by day your skill will improve and you will write better tomorrow than today, and today is better than yesterday.
Today I am going to share with you the basic way of promotion. please tips will help you to promote your blog around the world.
Method #1: Email Marketing:
Email marketing is the best way to get returning users on your website. You can collect by using newsletter signup form, you can use another way to collect email list.
Create an email list of your friends, relatives, colleagues and virtual friends. And send the bulk emails to the list, after publishing a new post.
Method #2: Social Network promotion:
There are useful social sites where you build community, In the starting phase join other popular communities on a social network like facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, etc related to your blog topics.
Ask a question, give an answer and build trust. Later you can post your articles and link. People will go on your site and you will start getting traffic from social networks.
Method #3: Commenting on other blogs:
Search blogs related to your topics and comment there. When the user will read the comment he will come to your website.
This method will work to increase awareness about your blog.
Method #4: Link to other blogs:
When you link another blog post on your blog then there is a trackback feature that exists in WordPress and sends a backlink to the same page.
When the user visits the post where your track backlink has been created it is chance to divert user on your page.
Method #5: Guest Posting:
writing articles on your is good nature, but only writing articles cannot give you more traffic for more value for Google and other search engines. your blog must have the multiple links ok with other websites and block blogs.
You can write articles for other blogs and you can mention multiple links in your post when you are writing articles for the other blog.
Method #6: Online Forums:
Search the forums related to your topics and Technology or category, then search some questions hosts related to your article and posting there.
Method #7: Regular Posting:
frequently posting on your blog can make you a most reliable blogger in the eyes of Google and other search engines. also regular posting makes your blog more trustable for your subscribers and your users.
User is satisfied with your post and you create another post I assured you that old user will come back on your blog.
Monitoring Traffic on Your Blog
After the promotion of the blog from different -2 sources, you will start getting traffic. So you must know how many visitors are coming on your blog.
You can use free tool for monitoring traffic on your blog. It is Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. Google launched the service in November 2005 after acquiring developer Urchin
Follow the given instruction:
Step 1: Open google analytics dashboard, Complete the authentication process by entering an email address and password.
You will access new windows, click on “Sign UP” button to start the process
Step 2: Fill the account details and click on the “Next” button.
Step 3: Select Web for measuring your website Click on Next button.
Step 4: Fill the property details, website name, Website URL, Industry Category and Reporting Time Zone and click on the “Create” button
Step 5: A new window will popup for reading and accepting terms and condition. So read the terms and accept by tick on every checkbox then click on “I Accept” button
Step 6: You will see the website tracking code, Copy it as shown in the following picture.
Step 7: Now go to your website’s dashboard > Appearance > Theme Editor
Select the Theme Header (header.php) in the theme file section, paste the code after <head> Click on “Update File” button.
Note Editing wrong theme file may affect your theme function, so edit file carefully.
Step 8: Now again go to the Google Analytics page and click on the “Home” button and see the performance in “REAL TIME REPORT” dashboard. If it is recorded your data, it means you have placed code properly.
Now google analytics will have record and information about all your visitors.
Get Started to make money from a blog
You can use tons of methods to earn money from your blog, Like Google Adsense, Ad choice, infolinks, Taboola and more.
Google Adsense is the most used and popular way to monetize your blog. Most of the blogs are monetized with Google Adsense. Mine too.
When you start posting regularly and earn traffic more than 300/day, then you can apply for monetization.
If you are using blogger for writing blog then you can also monetize your blog.
Step 1: Go to Google Adsense website and Click on the Signup button
Step 2: Fill Sign Up form with Website name, Email (It should be Gmail account), Then click on “Save and Continue” button.
Conclusion
I described every basic thing about how to start a blog and make money online. You are the owner of this business. This is the single business in the world which will run a long time without investing more money. You will get passive income from this business.
When you will start a blog then keep in mind regular posting is important. Try to write better content. Because content is king. Great content will work as a booster to your blog.
Thanks for Reading
If you have any question please post in the comment box.