Your step-to-step guide to creating your own first blog and run it in no time!
You’ve probably used a search engine, hundreds of times in search for a right information. This might have inspired to some level of the extent to start your own blog to engage readers on the topic that you master. Hence, you plan to start your own blog as a business. Keep reading to know more about ‘How to Start Your Own Blog’.
Follow the best guide to start a blog within an hour. We used these steps to develop our blog in effect have over 1 lakh readers.
Why Start A Blog?
Blogging can be extraordinarily valuable for many people for various reasons. It’s just not for business! I’ve benefited from blogging personally, professionally, and financially. Here, are some other reasons, why I think, you should start blogging immediately.
- Reach target audience: A great blog begins with quality content and to become successful you need to build a strong community. In essence to reach millions of internet users with the power of blogging. It works perfectly for brands to attract an audience, a best promotional activity.
- Establish authority and engagement: A quality blogging convert traffic into leads and leads into customers. It a best practice to create opportunities by writing on important topics that are audience based. This will enhance your professional image by establishing yourself as an authority.
- Organize your thoughts: Writing a blog surely works as a therapy. It enhances problem-solving and critical thinking. Regular blogging results increase decision-making skills.
- Make money: Majority of the blogging platform allows to monetize your content. I make a full-time income with blogging online and many others just like me, enjoy it. It’s a hard-risk job while less overhead cost.
Do you see yourself in any of these reasons? Can you see yourself benefiting from blogging? Then keeping reading to learn more about how to start your own blog.
Breaking Down: 5 Steps To ‘How to Start Your Own Blog’
For self-starters, starting a blog can be breakdown into 5 steps. Each step is well discussed, in the section below.
- Choose a blogging platform, a domain name, and a hosting provider.
- Design your blog using a simple theme.
- Customize your blog page to get the desired look
- Selecting plugins for your blog
- Compile content that adds value to your blog.
Now, as we have listed the 5 simple steps to create a blog. Here, is a complete easy-to-follow guide, which requires no technical experience.
Step 1: Choosing the best blogging platform
Choosing the right blogging platform is just like selecting a car to buy. There are many options with similar features, options, and service, while every car will take you from point A to B.
Similarly, a platform is decided over your requirements and other important factors. Let’s learn these factors one-by-one:
- Why are you blogging?
This is one of an important question you might want to ask yourself before planning to decide platform. Taking the above example, when you plan to buy a car, you consider your basic need for a car; What is the size of a family? Are there any kids? Do you want a car for daily travelling or long trips?
Likewise, as you identify the purpose of beginning a blog- pleasure or business? It will help you sort out which platform will serve your needs at best.
- How much control over the blog you want to have?
If you decide to control your blog site in every aspect like full customization including image editing, positioning, selection, wide theme options, style options, and access to every plugin, will narrow down your choice of platform. This’ll come at a price and complexity.
If you desire for a straightforward, simple writing experience, they’re good options as well. There is no perfect platform while you sort your needs, you’ll be able to find answers.
- How much are you willing to invest?
Most of the starter bloggers look for a free option since that even makes sense. However, there are many free platforms available for bloggers offering them to create and share content. While investment is fairly a big step if you want to speed up the whole process.
Here is a list of popular blogging platforms:
- WordPress.org
- WordPress.com
- Blogger
- Medium
- Tumblr
- Wix
- Squarespace
- Weebly
- Ghost
- Joomla!
The majority of the sites includes both free and premium services. All of them come with multiple pros and cons, but by far, to begin with, WordPress is most popular amongst them.
WordPress allows two options: hosted and self-hosted. This guide will teach you, how to start your blog on WordPress self-hosted account.
Pick a domain name
A domain name signifies your website presence online, no matter what niche you choose. It works as a unique address on the Internet. A domain name can cost you somewhat between Rs. 3,000 to 5,000 annually for a .com domain ($10 to $15). Your domain name will be yours depending on the subscription you choose.
Readers who are aware of your domain name can enter your domain URL, directly in the web browser. The other will discover your site through a search engine (like Google, Yahoo, or You can choose a popular ‘dot com’ domain name or country or niche specific, like for .us for the United States, .in for India, .uk for the United Kingdom, or .org for organization etc. There are endless series on domain extension available. The general rule is to go for a domain with ‘dot com’ extension.
Remember, your domain will be memorable, so if a different extension helps to achieve that, you can choose it.
Finding a right type of hosting
Before we move further, the next biggest decision you’ll have to consider is to decide between, ‘type of hosting’. After selecting a right domain name, choosing a reliable source of hosting company is also a task. Alternatively, the performance and functionality of your site, to a great extent, depends on hosting service. The host will ensure that the site is live for 24*7 for potential readers to visit.
There are a bunch of hosting companies in addition, offer domain registration service. You can purchase that subscription to make the process of purchasing a domain and hosting service convenient. For a hassle-free maintenance and management, I recommend you to keep it all under your hosting account.
A wrong hosting service can be a threat to your site, just like when you choose a wrong mobile company that has no reception. To maintain a successful blog, your web host is a major piece of a puzzle. However, it’s significant to choose a reliable provider.
Step 2: Design your blog using a simple theme.
When creating a design blog, it can be tempting to go crazy. After all, you want your blog to stand out and for people to remember you. How harmful can a rainbow of colors and a plethora of fonts be? The answer is: Very.
Keep your blog design simple. Stick to no more than three colors and three fonts. With fonts; you need a heading, subheading and body copy font. Your main text font can then be enhanced by different weights or attributes, but keep these to a minimum.
Step 3: How to customize blog page
You can customize your blog appearance by designing in a way that justifies your idea. If you’re designing your blog yourself or hire someone to design it for you, ensure that your blog stands out from others.
If it’s a business blog, then ensure your logo is your blog. Else, if it’s a personal blog, then try to incorporate some photos. Even if you’re using a default template, you may be able to add an identifying graphics that differentiate your site. For an average blog, it has four distinct areas, each has its specific purpose in which to place a customized content.
Here are the steps to customize a blog page:
- Logo: A logo is a unique identifier of a site. Perhaps, should be clean, crisp can grasp visitors attention to read the blog. In general, along with is located near the top of each blog page. Majority of logos comprise of an illustrated element, special icon, and font treatment of blog name.
- Headers: These are located on the top of a blog page which contains the blog name. Also, it should define your blog theme and who you are as a writer.
- Sidebars: A sidebar becomes a major focus of the reader when it displays special links like navigation, highlighting graphics, and social network site link. Besides that, they are the extra information share with the visitor on the page.
- Footers: One of the most important section on a blog page. It comprises some extra important information at the bottom of each blog page, featuring a copyright message. More advance blogs can have to expand footers including links to content within the site.
- Colour theme: Majority of blog website comes with customizing theme options that allow you to change background and text color. Moreover, you can change the text size and font. It’s a fastest and easiest way to upgrade your blog style.
- Blog readability: The blog readability is as important as its theme specifically in the size and color. Your blog should be easy to read and blend with background blog design.
- Link colors: Most of the blog website allows you to modify the link color in three states. First, before a link is clicked; second, when a link is clicked; and third, after a link is clicked.
- Photos and icon: You can make your blog more visually interesting by adding graphics. However, adding a great photo to each blog post is an easy substitute to redesign blog.
Step 5: Selecting plugins for your blog
WordPress offers over 40,000 plugins. Besides so many choices, it is challenging to find an exact that suits your requirement. Though there are tons of plugins that could fit your needs, it might be overwhelming to just pick one.
Furthermore, it’s important to evaluate the need for plugin before you go looking for. If I’m starting a blog, would choose to make a list of things I want in the blog. this simple act will not only save you time but also help you save money.
Step 6: Compile content that adds value to your blog.
Creating content for a blog is a piece of a puzzle for people to consume. There are plenty of publishing tools that can add value to your blog. Clearly, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr etc are few sites to share original content that is not found on your blog. Definitely, this will build layers of content for people to absorb.
If you want to develop a deeper relationship with your audience on balance have a layer of content is the key. People are interested to invest there time on a blog with creative content, a journey, and which gives a sense of accomplishment. After achieving something in life, many people like to ‘share’. Gain their life experience and share in form of a blog.
Key Takeaways
And that’s it! We should be confident enough by now to set up your own blog. Definitely, you are ready to go and things this time will be very easy. Check out our other guides for more details.
If you have any questions or suggestion, comment below and we’ll help you with problems. Hope you liked our ultimate guide- ‘ How to Start Your Own Blog’.