With a little bit of guidance and the right tools, you can have your very own blog of your own. Setting up a blog will take no longer than 15 minutes.
Following my step-by-step guide you will learn how to get your blog up and running, while I make sure you avoid some of the mistakes I made when I started.
Sounds good?
Step 1 — CHOOSE YOUR BLOG TOPIC
The very first thing you need to do is pick a topic for your blog.
Most successful blogs focus on one topic. It could be about anything from Fitness, Blogging, SVG files, Cooking, or your business.
You should pick a topic you are passionate about. If you are an expert in this topic that is even better.
Selecting a topic is important as you will have guidance on what to write about. If you are looking to make money blogging then you should look into high paying affiliate programs. This list of affiliate programs can give you a good idea of what affiliates make the most money.
This will take more work as most are competitive but you have the best opportunity to make money.
Don’t stress if you don’t know what to blog about it’s not necessary to start a blog.
I didn’t know what to blog about, which is fine. Personally, I like using your name if you are unsure about what you want to blog about.
STEP 2 — PICK A BLOGGING PLATFORM
You can easily sign up with the plenty of free blogging services out there such as Blogger.com, WordPress.com and Tumblr.com.
However, if you are serious about blogging, the free blogging platform is not the way to go.
There are many cons and unnecessary charges of a free blogging service. They will control your monetization percentages, ability to customize your website and viewing your traffic. You will have no control over your blog.
Looking to upgrade with a free service? You’ll need to pay more than you should.
The solution is signing up for a self hosted blog that you will host yourself.
You’ll have no limitations on how your blog looks(images, styles, theme). Your blog looks professional that you have the ability to upgrade to whatever look you would like.
Which blogging platform should I choose?
There are many different platforms to use but only one that you should use. WordPress is used by 96% of the top 1 million blogs on the internet today.
WordPress is followed by Blogger, Tumblr, Ghost, and Medium.
I personally have used all of these platforms but the reality is WordPress is just the best.
Why WordPress as a self-hosted platform is best for you
- It’s open-source(free to use)
- It’s Flexible with hundreds of free (and premium) blog themes
- It has a large developer community
- WordPress is updated often
- You will have full control over your blog
How much will it cost to self-host my WordPress blog?
It will cost you less than $60/year!
All you need is
- Domain Name — your address on the internet, such as CreateAWebsiteHub.com which is around $15/year, but thanks to our exclusive deal with Bluehost you get one for free. I will show you how later in this guide.
- Web Hosting — The service that powers your blog. A reliable hosting company like Bluehost will cost you $4/mo.
One great thing about Bluehost is they provide a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you happen to not love your blogging experience this is a great reason to use Bluehost.
A domain name can’t be refunded, but since you won’t be paying for it no money out of your pocket.
I recommend going with self-hosted because you can grow your blog into a money making machine.
STEP 3 — PICK YOUR WEBHOSTING
To get started with a self-hosted WordPress blog, you’ll need a domain and web hosting.
I recommend Bluehost as a web hosting company. Not to mention, i use them on this blog as well!
Click here to get the special $2.95 per month rate on BlueHost and then click “get started now”.
I have been working with them and they provided me with an exclusive deal just for my readers. You will get amazing features along with your hosting, you will get:
- Custom domain name($15 value/Free for the 1st year), with SSL certificate(security)
- Website Hosting ( 2.95/mo+)
- One-click install for WordPress
- Free email accounts
You are not required to use Bluehost, but they are the company I recommend along with the web hosting I use.
Follow this step-by-step guide to sign up with bluehost.
Step by Step Guide To Set up Bluehost Hosting
STEP #1 VISIT BLUEHOST.COM.
Click on the “Get Started” button on the homepage.
STEP#2 PICK YOUR WEB HOSTING PLAN.
On the next page, you will see four shared hosting plans.
These plans include Basic, Plus, Choice Plus, and Pro.
While all these shared hosting plans are perfect for a new blog, I would personally recommend going for the Basic Plan. Unless you are like me and have big plans of creating multiple websites. If this is you The Plus plan is great.
STEP #3 ENTER YOUR DOMAIN NAME.
After you choose the hosting plan, you will be directed to the next page where you will be asked to enter your domain name.
If you can’t decide what name to pick, don’t worry you can skip this step and enter it in later.
STEP #4 — ENTER YOUR DETAILS
The details you will have to enter in the “Account information” section to create your account.
Make sure to enter all the information in correctly.
Scroll down, you will see the “Package Information” section.
Upon scrolling down, you will see the “Package Information” section.
STEP #5 “Package Information” And Finish Registration
Let’s make sure your “package information” is correct. Here are a few suggestions on what you need when you first are starting out.
- Domain Privacy Protection. This is $0.99 per month, and it is one of the most important items to have. This will hide all of your personal information from people on the web. If you don’t include it all your personal information will be available for people when they do a WHOIS lookup.
- Everything else like: Site Backup, Search Engine Jumpstart, SiteLock Security, Comodo Private SSL — All of these are not necessary and just upsells.
STEP #6 Create Your Password
We are almost there, Last Step!
After completing your purchase, Bluehost will send you a confirmation email, inside this email you will be able to set the main password for your account.
Install WordPress
You have successfully signed up with Bluehost, you now have to install WordPress on your blog.
Don’t worry, Bluehost offers a one click install for WordPress, so this will be easy as 1,2,3.
Login to Bluehost
Now that you are logged in, click on my sites tab and select Create Site.
Fill out the title of your blog and a tagline
Click Next, This will bring you to the next screen where you will pick the domain you want to use. Select your domain name. You can keep the plugins but i suggest only using the ones you will use like monster insights.
Your site will be created. Don’t worry it will take a few minutes for your domain to be live, so don’t start freaking out if you have a temp domain name.
STEP 4 — Configure your WordPress blog
Now it is time for the fun part, configuring your WordPress blog. This is the part that always finds the most fun.
Over the years I have found many little secrets on how to properly set up your blog for success.
Below are the different configurations you should have before you write anything:
Sitename & Tag Line
As we showed you in a previous step, when you are first creating your website you enter in a Sitename and Tagline.
- Sitename — This is the name of your site. It is the main part of what people will know you by, usually people keep this as the domain name.
- Tagline — Most bloggers have a tagline, think of this as a summary of your blog in one short sweet sentence.
Permalinks
This may be one of the most important steps on the entire list. When you sign up for your blog on Bluehost it defaults your posts to a number. This means if you don’t change this every time you post it will show your post like https://yourwebsite.com/p?123.
You want the post to be displayed with a post name so it can show like https://yourwebsite.com/start-a-blog
Checking off this one step will make sure your posts will always display with the post name going forward.
Display Name
Make sure to check out this section if you want the display name of who writes the articles to say from the default.
Turn Your Website On
When you sign up with Bluehost, they automatically place your website in the default coming soon setup. To turn your website “on” simply go to General Setting again and scroll to the bottom. Make sure to switch it to off.
Only do this last step when you are ready for your website to be live to the public.
Step 5 — Pick Your Theme
Picking a theme is quite easy in WordPress. One of the greatest things about WordPress and why I recommend them to everyone is you don’t have to be a developer to have an amazing website.
WordPress has thousands of themes to choose from — Simply go to Appearance → Themes. Click on “Add New”
Then, Switch to “Popular” tab:
This will now pull up the most popular free WordPress themes in the market. You can install anyone that catches your eye all with one click.
Go ahead and spend time looking at this list to find something you find works for your blog.
Once you have selected the theme you like, click “install” located next to the theme’s name, then select “activate”.
Don’t worry you aren’t changing any of the information on your blog. This simply changes the look of your blog and you can change it as often as you want.
You can spend money on themes as well, the two companies I recommend are StudioPress and CSSigniter
A Premium theme is not required. This blog uses a theme from StudioPress and I have never had issues with it.
STEP 6 — Customize Your Blog
The WordPress theme you’ve decided to use comes with certain designs built in. It is highly suggested you change these to make the blog feel more like your own.
This can all be done if you go to Appearance → Customize. This brings up the WordPress Customizer:
Depending on the theme, you’ll get different set of options in the sidebar menu, but there are 6 common ones that you should setup
- Site Identity — This is where you set your blog title. It also allows you to add a logo image and a site icon.
- Colors — Changing the basic colors used throughout the design.
- Header — Allows you to have a graphic or image on the top part of your blog.
- Background — Ability to set up your background graphics, images, or color.
- Menus — Ability to customize what users see at the Header and Footer of your page.
- Widgets — Customize sections of your website like sidebar and footer.
This allows for more customization. You can play around with all of the different sections to make it exactly how you would like.
Note: I would suggest setting up a siteicon(favicon). There are plenty of websites you can get them from but i suggest using Canva. They are free to use.
STEP 7 — Add/Write new blog posts and pages
Congrats on getting this far in the process. With all the above completed, you’re ready to start the most important part of a blog. The content!
Building a blog no matter what type, you’ll likely need some of the following pages:
- About — Tell your visitors what the blog is about and who’s behind it.
- Contact — Allows people to contact you directly
If there is something I have learned over the years with my blogs. The two most important things are the About and Contact.
An About page allows readers to feel like they are apart of your story. It gives them insight into your life, struggles, achievements, and the reasoning behind your blog.
Don’t worry if you are making this for a business, you still need to give the readers information about the company. It’s an important thing many people forget.
The Contact page is a pet peeve of mine. I never like a blog where it takes me almost 20 minutes to find how to content the creators. Make it easy for others to find. It just shows you care about what your readers are thinking when on your website.