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Starting a Blog – How Tos
Step by Step How to Start a Blog Guide
Start a Blog for just $0.99. Details below.
Looking to start a blog but is feeling overwhelmed?
Want to know how to start a blog and make money but don’t know where to begin?
Then you are at the right place bud. This blog post will teach you everything that you need to know on how to start a blog. It will have video instructions along with textual instructions that you find in every blogging tutorials.
When I first started this website, I had to spend hundreds of hours collecting bits and pieces of info from different sources to finally get this website functioning properly. It was really hard and it is really hard and daunting for people with no tech expertise.
Hence I created this epic how tos of starting a blog even if you have absolutely no tech expertise.
In this blogging tutorial, you will learn
- how to pick your niche
- how to choose your domain name
- choose your hosting company
- install wordpress
- install ssl certificate
- create your own business email account
- get a free awesome theme
- design a simple yet beautiful website
- design a simple logo
- publish your first blog post and second post and third and much more
- have all the necessary legal disclaimers and disclosures in place.
- install all the necessary WordPress plugins – social media share buttons and others
- use Pinterest to drive massive traffic
- learn how to create awesome images for your posts, edit images and much more.
- learn how to create awesome pins for Pinterest and drive massive traffic to your site
- and so much more.
Here are the steps to starting a profitable blog.
Table of Contents
Selecting Your Niche
What is it going to be about?
Niche means the topic that your blog or website would be about. It is the subject on which you would be writing contents on.
So how do I pick my niche. Its very simple –
- Find out your interests – could be sports, running, health, parenting, childcare, technology, travelling, outdoor activities, event management, grooming, fashion, celeb gossips, current events, technology, so on.
- Find out your hobbies.
- Find out something that you are really good at- like you know the pain points and how to solve it. People love contents that solves their problems.
Here is one final tip –
NICHED DOWN, THEN NICHED OUT
When I first started my blog OutsideThatCubicle I was only writing about search engine evaluation. It’s because I was a search engine evaluator then (I still am) and I knew the ins and outs of that work. I was an expert at it, knew everything about it and hence I was writing about it.
After writing about it for quite some time, I have now branched out to some other related topics like make money online, bitcoins, and now, I am also branching out to blogging, creating courses and so on.
Imagine if I had kept my domain name as SearchEngineEvaluator.com I would have ran out of content ideas by now. More on domain name later on.
Thank goodness, I kept my domain name a bit broad to accommodate contents on other related topics later on.
Choosing your domain name
Get the right .com
Domain name is the name of your website or blog.
The domain name of this website is “outsidethatcubicle.com” The domain name of Facebook is “Facebook.com“
Here are my tips in choosing a domain name –
- Don’t be too specific. If your domain name is “samsungphonesunder300.com“, how many blog posts can you write on Samsung phones under $300? Hardly few right. On the other hand if you keep your domain name as “budgetphones.com” it is quite narrow but not as narrow as the former. You can write hundreds of content about it and rank it well in Google.
- Don’t be too broad.
- Keep it short if possible. If you can find a one word domain name, lucky you.
- Make it easy for people to remember it.
One final tip.
Domain name has nothing to do with your posts ranking in Google search.
If you search “search engine evaluator exam” in Google, you will see my website ranking at the top.
My website’s name has no relation whatsoever with the keyword “search engine evaluator exam but my site is ranking for that keyword.
So don’t worry about finding a perfect domain name that matches your passion, hobby or interests.
You can even have your own name as your domain name and write about making money online or blogging. Its perfectly fine. It will have no affect in generating traffic or ranking in Google search.
Moreover it is good for personal branding.
One final word.
Don’t over analyse domain name. Don’t overthink it. Just pick a name and go with it. If you want to rename your website, you can do it later on. So many people renames their websites later on.
So don’t overthink it. Just pick something and go with it.
You might want to pick at least three domain names because sometimes we cannot find the domain names – they are already taken by others.
Picking a Content Management System
WordPress
There are two ways you can start a blog –
Code hundreds of lines of codes of HTML,CSS, Javascript
or
Use a simple drag and drop content builders
Now less than 1% of the entire population of the world are coders and I’m assuming you are not a coder either.
Hence we will be using a content management system which will enable anyone, with zero technical skill, to start a blog like a pro.
Now there are multiple content management systems such as
- WordPress
- Wix
- Drupal
- Joomla
- Magento, and so on.
Here is the breakdown of their market share –
So you can see that WordPress has a market share of almost 60% of the CMSs.
Hence in this tutorial, we will be using WordPress as out CMS as it is the most popular, easy to use and has thousands of developers.
So this post will essentially be a how to start a WordPress blog post.
Choosing Your Hosting Company
Pick the best one
To host your domain (your website), we need a hosting company.
If you visit another city or town, you either book a hotel room or rent a guest house for as long as you want to stay in that city or town. Hotels are the host here. So you are hosted by hotels or guest houses.
Similarly, if you want to create a blog or a website, it has to hosted somewhere for as long as you want it to be online.
There are several hosting companies to host your websites, but I use Siteground.
The reason being –
- 24*7 Awesome customer support.
- Extremely fast website (which means better ranking in Google. Slow sites are penalized).
- Cheaper than others.
I have found Siteground to be the best hosting company among all others.
Click on the link below to get and start the blog for just $0.99.
That’s right in account of Coronavirus pandemic, Siteground is offering a massive discount in hosting in their Start Up Plan (perfect for beginners).
Most hosting companies will charge you at least $2.99/mo for hosting.
But Siteground is offering hosting for just $0.99 for the first 3 months.
Click here below to claim the offer.
Please note that the offer is valid, only for new Siteground customers.
Make Your Blog Live Online in 5 minutes
Before watching the video, make sure to click on the above Siteground link above or here to claim the offer.
You would be taken to a page like this –
Select WordPress Hosting as shown above by red arrows.
Now you are ready to take your blog live in 5 mins with this step-by-step video tutorial on –
How To Start A WordPress Blog With Siteground
Take your site live in 5 mins or less
Installing SSL, Theme, creating your first blog post
After making our website go live under 5 mins, we now secure our site by installing the free SSL certficate that comes along with this package.
We also be installing a free wordpress theme, publishing our first blog post, categorizing it, adding tags, setting featured images, and much more.
Watch the video for step by step instructions.
Installing some essential plugins, designing menus, taking care of sidebars, setting footers, legal disclosures and so much more.
Watch the video and follow the instructions step by step.
Setting up your business email account, setting up contact form –
This tutorial will teach you how to create your own business email and set up a contact form on your website.
Learn how to set up FaveIcon, Logo, Configure social media share buttons & add legal disclosure.
To design logo, faveicon or to edit any images, I use PicMonkey.
Check it out here
If you need any help with setting up your blog, you can comment below.
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Sure 🙂
buddy in “Choosing Your Hosting Company” you typed ‘had a had—” i know you will proof read it after completion!.
Fixed !
Thanks. 🙂 Plus the post is updated. You can check it out.