With a plan and guide, it’s much easier to start a blog and make money in 2022, successfully! You have stories, tips, and information to share. Or perhaps you are looking to make some money online. You’ve been eyeing starting a lifestyle blog, or a blog for your business… but you just don’t know how to start a self-hosted site. When you think about all that it takes to create a blog, it’s overwhelming!
Not surprisingly, on Google Trends in 2021, one of the top searches for blogging was “how to start blogging and make money.”
You’ve heard the stories and you’ve seen the pins on Pinterest about people leaving their day jobs and making gads of money through their blogs. And while this is definitely possible, you have to start somewhere.
For the past 12 years, I’ve been blogging with Suburban Tourist from the early days with Blogger and now WordPress. Since 2000, I’ve been growing MargaretBourne.com as my new business site and blogging blog. As a blog coach, I’ve helped many clients start and grow their blogs.
In this post, you’ll learn how to start a blog (especially how to start a lifestyle blog) that is set up to become a business, with these steps:
- How to choose a blog niche
- Choosing a blog name
- Setting up a self-hosted site with a hosting provider
- Start your blog and make it go live
- Set up your legal pages
- Upgrade your blog theme
- Write a few blog posts
- Set up key plugins and set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console
- Customize your blog’s key pages, branding, etc.
- Monetizing your blog
While some “blogging experts” claim that you can do all this in less than a day, the truth is that starting a blog to make money fast will take at least a month if you do it right.
You can start a blog in a week if you dedicate all your time to it.
Yes, the technical part of self-hosting can take anywhere from an hour to a day. But the rest takes a bit of time. And after all, Rome wasn’t built in a day!
You may want to read my top 10 reasons why you should start a blog in 2022 if you’re still not sure about it. It might be the best thing you ever did!
How To Start A Blog And Make Money
Before we jump into creating a blog for you, you need to know one thing.
Yes, it’s possible to start a blog and make money in 2022.
While there are many fantastic blogs out there, I need you to know that you can start a blog and make it FANTASTIC too.
Starting a blog isn’t for everybody. There are many reasons you may want to start a blog or start a blog business.
Some of the key reasons are:
- You want a creative outlet, and you may want it to be a source of passive income on the side
- An entrepreneurial mindset and skills mean you can turn a blog into a business with products and services to sell
- You want to quit your job and start your own consulting or freelance business, and a blog is a strong way of promoting yourself
No matter the reason, you’ll need to be dedicated to continue growing it for it to be a success. It won’t happen overnight. With time, patience and consistency it will ultimately succeed.
Your mindset will be key to your success. Don’t compare yourself to others. BE YOU!
Make your own blog goals and work to achieve them with realistic deadlines in place.
1. Start Your Blog By Choosing Your Blog Niche
Let’s answer the question of how to start a blog by looking at what you need to do before you purchase a domain and a self-hosting plan.
For those who are using a blog to promote your business, you already know your niche! Congrats, you can skip along to point #2.
For all the others, read on.
When I started out, I wanted to know how to create a blog that would work within my interests. So I spent hours online reading up on how to start a lifestyle blog.
The key piece of advice I tell others is that before you delve into the technicalities of launching a blog, you need to determine its niche.
You may want to start a business blog or start a lifestyle blog. Maybe it’s one that focuses on your profession. Whatever your desire, you need to “niche down” to be successful.
A little tip, based on experience: general lifestyle blogs tend to fail over time.
Fine-tuning your niche is preferred because your readers may want to follow you specifically for a certain topic. When you start blogging about unrelated topics, they will stop following you.
A broad niche is one that covers more than one targeted niche: for example lifestyle which could include food & drink, beauty, wellness, living life and parenting. It’s not advisable to do this as you can easily lose focus on your key audience!
You can still write on a few lifestyle topics (a good number is 3), however, it should be for a specific niche audience: for example, busy working moms. So your lifestyle niche can be lifestyle balance or organizational tips for busy moms. Your food topics can be under quick 15 minute meals and kitchen hacks. Your style tips could be hacks for capsule wardrobes and quick make-up routines. And finally, your parenting tips can be for how to get your kids to get ready for school quickly.
The problem you’re solving is giving those busy working moms more time and less stress.
Always start thinking about the big problem you’ll solve with your blog.
To find your blog niche, there’s a bit of soul-searching required. You do need to answer a few questions:
- What is my expertise? About which topics am I most passionate and knowledgeable?
- Who is my audience? What kind of posts will interest them? What are their pain points and how can I help them (brainstorm them!)
- What kind of content will I be developing (e.g. more recipe posts versus simple product reviews etc.)
- Finally, do I see my life evolving? If yes, will my niche also be able to evolve? If you’re planning on getting married in the next year or so and having a family, consider how your blog will change in the near future. Blogs are personal, so if you can’t see an easy fit if your life changes, you might need to broaden your niche just a bit.
This is your general plan for your blog. A start to building your blog’s brand identity.
This will become extremely important in how your site visitors perceive you, and whether they will come back for more. Once you’ve figured all of this out, you can begin getting to the technicalities of building the site.
Do not skip this step when you are starting a blog!
| Related: How To Choose A Blog Niche That’s Profitable
How To Rebrand Your Blog And Change Your Blog Niche Or Category
2. Choose Your Blog Name & Domain Name
Another key question many have when they’re figuring out how to start a blog is what will they name it? This can be a tricky thing when you’re starting a blog from scratch.
Here are a few general rules:
- Keep the name short without hyphens. You want people to remember your blog name easily. Shorter names mean prettier URLs too!
- Make your potential blog name list long. There are numerous sites out there with names that will be the same as the vast majority that you brainstorm.
- Consider blog names with your name. For example, if I was to launch a new parenting blog, I would have mine as Maggie The Mom. There’s currently no other lifestyle/parenting blogger with that blog name.
- If you have a unique name, use your name! This is a great idea if you plan on providing a service in the future and you know your niche will remain the same.
Search through Google to see if anybody else is using it.
Also, consider what your social network handles will be and check if they’re available before you start a blog.
You don’t want to purchase a domain and get started and then realize somebody else has all of your social media handles!
Check to see if your potential blog name’s URL is already in use. I like to go to Domain.com for a quick search.
Finally, do you see this name being used in the long run? Are you planning on expanding what you’ll write about? It’s harder to re-brand your site when people have become used to knowing it under a certain name.
When you’re ready, you can purchase your domain name through Domain.com. It has an easy-to-use dashboard to manage your domain names. Alternately, you can get it through your hosting provider in most cases.
Consider purchasing not only .com but other versions of your domain name. For example, I primarily use .ca, but I also have the .com version of my Suburban Tourist’s domain.
| Read More: How To Choose A Blog Name That You’ll Love For A Long Time
3. Setting Up Your Blog On A Self-Hosted Site
If you’re thinking of starting a lifestyle blog, business blog or any other kind of blog, I strongly recommend going with a self-hosted WordPress blog.
While there are other blogging platforms that are making a big push for users (SquareSpace and Groove being some of them), WordPress is still the key one that most will use.
Some of these platforms have big limitations and you’re stuck with whatever options they give you.
Why is WordPress so popular?
For two reasons: self-hosting and the plethora of plugins, resources and tools in place to make it easy for you to customize your site as needed.
Why do you need a self-hosted site versus a free platform?
- More FREEDOMMM!!!!! (Imagine me screaming like Mel Gibson in Braveheart). In general, free platforms aren’t very free. They are limited in what you can do.
- You can install the theme of your choice, not from a selected few that work with the free platform.
- Widgets and plugins mean you have more control over your blog’s functions and look and feel.
- It’s good SEO. Search engines prefer self-hosted, secure sites. Since you can optimize your site, you can also make it very fast, making it even more appealing to search engines.
- Self-monetization! You can put ads on your blog and YOU get paid for them. The best thing about blogging is making money!
- With access to more plugins, you can build a following and quality email list.
- Finally, it looks more professional to have your own blog.
Why I Use Bluehost And Why You Should Too
When I started, I was using a Canadian hosting provider that was pretty awful at providing a decent server for my self-hosted site. The support was brutal.
My webmaster friend recommended Bluehost. The switch was fairly painless, with great customer support fixing any kinks.
- Bluehost is very reliable. I haven’t had any issues with the server being slow or down.
- It’s fast!
- A free SSL certificate!
- Support staff are awesome. When I moved over to a secure HTTPS site, the support technician answered all of my questions about SSL certificates and gave me instructions on what to do next. Also, any time I had any issues, they were able to fix my problem without any issues or delays. KEY TIP: For me, it helps to be polite during the chats with support people, as they are always spot on with helping me out.
- It has a reasonable monthly fee. I’m a blogger, not a big brand with thousands earmarked for top-of-the-line servers. Bluehost starts at USD $2.95/month to start and goes up depending on your needs. After the first year’s introductory rate, the increase is still reasonable when compared to other providers.
- It’s a decent hosting provider for beginners. If you decide to switch, you can always do so at a later time.
Creating A Blog With Self-Hosting On Bluehost
So how do you set up your self-hosted site? It’s super easy!
Here are the three key steps:
1. Register Your Domain Name
The next step in starting your blog is purchasing and registering a domain name.
Remember that long list of blog names and domain names you created? Now is the time to whittle it down to one. Take the name that you like the best and go with it.
With a full 12 months of Bluehost web hosting, you get your domain for free for a year. This makes it so much easier to set up a self-hosted site, as well as more cost-effective for you! Not to mention, you don’t have to constantly pay month-to-month.
The first step is to choose a plan. For most new bloggers, the Basic plan will do just fine. You can always upgrade later on as your blog needs to grow.
PRO TIP: Get a 36-month term and save more money!
Once you have chosen your plan, now it’s time to find the domain. Get your list out!
2. Choose Your Hosting Package
Once you have chosen your domain name, set up the account along with your chosen plan.
While you may be tempted to start with the Basic package, I highly recommend the Choice Plus because you can add additional blogs in the future, and you get a backup service.
This is very important to ensure you don’t lose your blog if there’s an issue or if you accidentally make a vital error.
You can choose 12 months or 36 months (greater savings per month).
What’s great about Bluehost is that you can get your secure https site with an SSL certificate for free. A secure site is always looked upon more favourably by search engines such as Google.
You will notice in your package options that there are other add-ons. You don’t need any of these at this time, so you can un-click them.
The next few steps after choosing the package include the payment and set up your password. These are pretty straightforward.
PRO TIP: Change your username from Admin to something else. Choose a complicated password, as hackers can get access with simple passwords.
3. Choosing a Theme and Start Creating Your Blog
After everything is all set up with your password and you’ve logged in, Bluehost helps you set up your WordPress. Follow the prompts!
First, choose a theme. Any theme that Bluehost recommends will do. This will not be the theme you most likely will end up with, but it’s a good starting point. We all have to start somewhere!
Once you’ve chosen the theme, Bluehost helps you walk through the details of setting up your blog. If you choose Business or Personal, you will get walked through the process.
The detailed instructions help you learn how to use WordPress.
I suggest looking around at the various ways you can create content and navigation before you press Launch.
| Related: 10 Things To Do After Setting Up A Self-Hosted WordPress Site
4. Upgrade Your Blog Theme
If you like the theme you have chosen, you can keep using it.
You can easily purchase a new theme from other sites such as:
- Bluchic (where I got this business theme)
- Evanto Market (aka ThemeForest – where I got the CheerUp theme for my Suburban Tourist site)
- Creative Market
- Sugar + Code
Take into consideration the reviews on any theme, the instructions for setting it up (sometimes it’s easier to have a simpler blog theme that’s easy to set up than a complicated one), and what you can do with it.
Some of them will require to be uploaded to your content a certain way through your C-panel.
Ask the developer for instructions (they usually will have them available to you).
Usually, you can add your new theme by clicking on Appearance, then Themes, and uploading your new theme.
How To Log In To Your Blog
So you start a blog and then you don’t know how to log in to update it!
This caused some panic in me because I didn’t know how to get BACK into WordPress once I logged out.
To log in to your WordPress site, you can easily do so by going to Bluehost itself. There will be a button on the main page you click and you enter your username and password.
A little tip: write these down in a special notebook for all key passwords you’ll accumulate when you sign up or use services for your blog.
The alternative way to log in is to go directly to WordPress by entering your website’s URL into your browser’s search bar and adding /wp-admin to the end.
This will take you to your login page where you enter your username and password.
Bluehost has simple instructions for logging in if you get stuck.
And of course, you can always reach out to the support team if you encounter any problems.
5. Set Up Your Legal Pages
Every blog needs to have three key legal pages on its site, easily found by blog visitors.
Mine are in the footer of this site, a location where many sites have this information.
These three legal pages are:
- Privacy Policy – telling visitors how you protect their private information gleaned from their visits to your site, sign-ups to your newsletter, etc.
- Disclaimer – clarifying what visitors can and can’t do with the information on your site, and identifying how you work with affiliate programs and third-party links.
- Terms & Conditions – is the agreement between you and your site visitor as to what they can do with your information. Essentially your blog’s rules regarding your content.
You need all three to legally protect yourself and your blog from potential lawsuits. You could be sued for thousands of dollars.
To make it easier for you to create these legal pages, I highly recommend the easily customizable starter Legal Bundle from Amira, A Self Guru.
She’s a blogger AND a lawyer and has created a super-easy, always updated according to new legal requirements legal bundle including all three key legal pages and 6 extras that keep you uber protected.
It’s a small investment to make to sleep easy at night that you won’t be losing thousands if somebody decides to go after you legally.
It’s been used by many bloggers in the US, Canada and internationally to protect their blogs.
NOTE: I loved her legal bundle so much, that I purchased several other key legal templates such as a coaching agreement template, among others.
6. Start Writing
The next step in starting a blog is to begin developing the content.
Many bloggers ask – “how many blog posts should I have before I launch my blog?” I’ll help answer that question momentarily.
Most bloggers wait until they have “launched” their blog and made it live, but I recommend that you pre-write a few blogs posts in advance.
Why?
It makes it much faster for you to set up and publish blog posts and get started promoting your blog!
Here’s what I would do:
- Research a few key blog posts that you know your audience will want to read about (make them posts that answer burning questions your target audience needs to have answered).
- Write out the introduction, body and conclusion of your blog posts. Add one or two relevant external links to reputable sources.
- Search out images that you want to use in your posts, edit them and optimize them to be smaller files (you can use a plugin on your site that optimizes them when you upload them, but it’s best to do this manually in your editing process). Also use Pixlr-E, a free online photo editing tool and save your images at the correct minimum size for your theme and at 70% quality for a small, fast-loading file.
- Save the draft and when you’re ready to publish, hit Publish!
This is my recommendation as it helps you get at least four to five blog posts ready to be published as soon as you officially launch your blog.
You can keep customizing it and setting things up, while you also focus on writing blog posts.
Determine Your Categories & Brainstorm Topics
This is also a good time to start figuring out your categories because you will need to determine which ones you’ll focus on in your blog.
The worst thing you can do is to write about everything that interests you.
Instead, narrow down your topic categories to 3 to 4 key ones, under which you can have many different blog posts.
A good example of a lifestyle blog with solutions for time-crunched, busy moms is:
- Parenting Tips
- Easy Family Recipes
- Home Organization Tips
- Self-Care Tips
Brainstorm 4 to 5 blog post ideas for each of those categories to get you started. Consider writing one cornerstone blog post that’s long, and full of great information for each category.
This will help with your SEO and interlinking, ultimately helping you boost your ranking in Google searches faster.
| Read More: SEO Tips For New Bloggers – How To Write Posts Optimized For Google Searches
Do A Soft Launch So Google Can Crawl Your Site Sooner
When you’ve made your site go live with a few blog posts, this means Google and other search engines may begin indexing it. It may take a few days before your blog and posts begin to show up in searches.
Don’t be disappointed if it’s not showing up. You may need to do a few things first to get your blog found properly by Google and we’ll get into this a little later.
Although it’s fun to see your blog “out there”, live and ready to be shared, you may want to take a few extra steps first.
NOTE: You can officially “LAUNCH IT” by promoting it when you’ve got several posts done and everything all set up.
PRO TIP: It will take up to six months for your blog to be properly crawled and indexed by Google and to show up correctly after you’ve submitted the sitemap to Google Search Console.
7. Branding And Customizing Your Blog
When you start a blog, one of the things you’ll need to do is brand your site so people know what it’s all about.
So you’ve got your blog set up on your self-hosted site, and you have a few blog posts in the works. But you want to make it look your own.
There’s much more to be done to make it stand out as yours.
- Since you now have a confirmed blog name, it’s time to create a logo.
- Create a brand look and feel – decide on fonts, colour palettes and the overall look of the blog.
- Set up your social networks if you haven’t already done so and link them to your blog.
- Start your Pinterest profile and start pinning for every post!
- Create an About Me page so people know who you are. Include a photo!
One of the key things you’ll want to start right away is your newsletter list. To do so, you need to use a service that helps you create opt-ins and your newsletters.
The best email marketing software and automation provider is Mailerlite, which is super easy to use and full of great features. It’s also free for up to 1,000 subscribers! I’m using it currently and like how it works to create opt-ins and lovely newsletter templates.
There’s also Convertkit, which many blogging pros use, especially if they’re selling digital products and services.
I’ll share more information about setting up an email list a bit later in this post.
8. Set Up Key Plugins & Connect Up With Google
While you’ve started writing your first blog posts, take little breaks and set up a few other key things for your site.
This isn’t the sexiest part of creating a blog, but you must do them as you set it up. You can do some of these after you officially launch your blog.
Speed Up Your Blog
Next, speed up and optimize your blog with a few key plugins:
- WPRocket (I use this – it’s the best caching plugin, worth the small investment, as it’s very easy to set up and makes your site run super fast). Optional free plugins are: W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache
- If using the free plugins add Autoptimze to optimize the HTML code.
- Add an image optimizer like Smush.it or EWWW Image Optimizer to reduce the size of your images for the speedier loading of your site.
These are all very useful plugins to ensure your site loads faster. Nobody likes to hang around waiting for a page to load!
NOTE: Always optimize your blog post images to the minimum size for your theme, and save them as smaller files using tools such as Pixlr.com (online image editor). I save mine as JPGs, at 70% quality for small sizes that load fast.
Other Useful Plugins
When you’re starting a blog, you also need to make sure it’s running well, to give your site visitors a great experience.
START HERE: I’ve shared my favourite FREE plugins for WordPress to get you started and get your blog looking like a professional blog, right from the start.
A few useful plugins you may want to consider adding:
- Rank Math SEO to help you improve your on-page SEO. I’m currently using it and love its many free features.
- Pretty Links that will help you with affiliate links, masking the ugly long link with a customized one with our domain name
- WP Tasty for easily adding Pinterest Pin Titles and Descriptions for your Pinterest pins for each blog post. It saves you the hassle of fiddling around with HTML.
- UpDraft Plus – a free backup plugin that saves a copy of your site’s content in Google Drive or Dropbox
- Antispam Bee to reduce spam comments
- Insert Headers and Footers plugin to easily add HTML code to these two areas of your site without having to play around with the integral code files, accidentally causing major issues to your site.
Most of these are free with upgrade options. In most cases, you can use the free version without issues.
Set Up Your Analytics
I recommended the Insert Headers and Footers plugin because it will come in handy with this next part of starting a blog.
Connect your blog to Google Search Console and Google Analytics. These two tools will become invaluable sources of information so that you can tweak your content to better serve your readers with valuable content.
It’s important to also have access to your analytics for advertising opportunities. Once you hit a threshold of 10,000 sessions you can sign up to better advertising platforms (Ezoic, Monumetric) for an income from ads.
9. Launch Your Blog!
Now that you’ve got everything set up for your new blog, and you’ve got a few blog posts ready, it’s time to LAUNCH your blog!
Congratulations – you’ve just started a blog and the adventure begins!
Remember to promote your new blog on:
- your personal Facebook page
- the Facebook page for your blog
- your Instagram accounts (personal, and the one you’ve created for your blog)
Share it with your friends and family! Make a big deal out of it, because you’ve worked hard to get here!
10. Monetizing Your Blog
After you start a lifestyle blog or your specific niche blog, you’ve got a few posts up and a presence started on social networks, and you’re ready for the next step.
You can start making money! See? It’s fairly easy to start a lifestyle blog. It just takes a bit of time and following the steps.
Before you go any further though, read up on how you can mess up monetizing your blog, and how to fix it. I’m sharing this with you now so that you don’t make these mistakes as you start growing your blog.
Advertising
I often tell my students, that advertising with a completely new blog is not something on which they should focus.
You start getting an income from advertising if your pageviews are over 10,000 a month. Ads also slow down your site and create a poor user experience.
However, if you want to add ads after you start a blog, here’s what I recommend:
Set yourself up on Google Adsense. It’s the simplest way to get ads placed on your site. You can have them placed in the sidebar, in your posts or in other spots as you desire.
There are other ad providers that you can work with (e.g., Ezoic), but Google Adsense is the easiest to implement.
You may need to blog for about two to three months before you get accepted by Google Adsense.
Don’t spend too much time on ads. Read my post on the BEST ways to monetize your new blog and focus on these.
Affiliate Marketing Networks
You can start earning a passive income with a blog that’s only a couple of months old!
Join affiliate marketing networks. There are many options for you depending on your niche or key category.
One of the biggest ones that I like using is Shareasale – it has many fantastic brands as merchants.
Impact Radius is increasingly showing up on my radar and has one of my favourite graphic design tools – Canva. It’s a must-use tool for any blogger.
I also use CJ Affiliate, which is one of the bigger ones with International, US, and Canadian brands and retailers.
There are also many brands that you love that have their own affiliate programs. Check out their websites to see if they have an affiliate program you can join.
Setting yourself up may take about a week, but once you’re in, you can start including affiliate links and banner ads throughout your site, where appropriate.
| Read More: Affiliate Marketing For New Bloggers – 6 High Paying Programs To Join
Join my Blogger Academy Affiliate Program and start earning 30% commission on sales of my courses, ebooks and templates. Read more about the Blogger Academy affiliate program!
Sponsored Collaborations
Once you’ve been blogging for a while and have built up a following on social media, start reaching out to brands and PR representatives with collaboration ideas.
Determine your rate for sponsored work and pitch a brand as an influencer. You may start with free samples, but over time, you will start getting paid sponsored collaborations.
NOTE: When you get an email from somebody seeking to do a sponsored post and they want to provide you with the article and request a do-follow link, I strongly recommend you decline.
Why? Because their content usually is very salesy, focused on promoting a brand or product, and it’s usually not original content.
You can potentially harm your SEO by using your FANTASTIC blog to sell out to a “sponsored post”.
The only ones you should be open to are those brands that want you to write and make authentically yours.
PRO TIP: Have a media kit ready to send to prospective brand partners. To fill up examples of product reviews, purchase a few favourite items and review them on your blog. These will serve as examples of what you can potentially do for a brand.
Get a media kit template for Canva and get started!
| Read More: How To Get Sponsored Posts For Your Blog
Create Your Own Services & Products To Sell
Look at ways to sell your own services or products.
For example, I help beginner and intermediate-level bloggers with their blogs. I offer one-hour coaching sessions that guide new bloggers through their challenges as they start up their blogs.
You can start transforming your beginner blog into an online business and use online coaching tools for productivity and promotion.
E-books, printables, courses, and consultative services are just some of the other ways you can make money.
You can test what your audience wants by creating freebies and seeing which ones do well. Take them and build on them! Make them into complete courses or e-books.
TIP: A great way to make money as a new blogger is to start freelance blogging for others. Check out ProBlogger’s job board for blogging opportunities.
One Additional Step: Set Up Your Email Newsletter List
An extension of your blog is your newsletter! So when you’re starting a blog, don’t forget to set up your email newsletter list!
For this, you can use great email marketing platforms such as Mailerlite (I’m currently using this and LOVING IT), or Convertkit. Each of them is very easy to use and gives you up to 1000 subscribers for free.
Start Building Your Email Subscribe List
To start building your email subscriber list, you’ll need to find one or two GOOD opt-in freebies to include in as many posts as possible (relevancy is important!).
Think of what may be some of the biggest challenges your readers are facing and offer them a checklist, template or something else that’s easily printable that will help them. It has to be a SUPER VALUABLE freebie for them to be willing to follow you.
It will be the basis for future sales funnels for selling your own digital products.
The best practice is to have a welcome series of emails that tell your followers a bit about you and what you do. Get a little personal here if you like.
Then stick to a weekly schedule to send out an email to your followers. It could include your latest post, an interesting tip, affiliate links with great sales that you recommend, or your own products/services that are on sale.
Get Organized: Create A Content Calendar And Start Writing!
One of the final tips I can share with you as you start your blogging journey is to get organized with blog topics.
Whether you brainstorm the topics yourself or tap into recommended topics (like my 70+ lifestyle blog post ideas), you should be starting and managing a content calendar or what’s called a blog editorial calendar.
Read my tips on how to get started with a blog content calendar, using several different types of blog posts, and useful tools to keep you on track.
One last tip: think about what you can write about for your first cornerstone blog post – one that you will want to rank for, that wows your readers.
To make things easier with promotion on Pinterest, I’ve created Pinterest templates for Canva (get the Canva PRO, it opens up options and is easier than Adobe Photoshop). Sign up here and get the link to get started today!
A Recap
So in this brief road map on how to start a blog, you’ve learned how to:
- Choose your blog niche
- Carefully choose your blog name and domain
- Set up your blog on a self-hosted site
- Upgrade your theme
- Set up the legal pages
- Start writing blog posts
- Brand your blog
- Set up with key tools and plugins
- Add Google Analytics and Google Search Console
- Monetize your blog!
Now go forth, and blog away! Whether you start a lifestyle blog, food blog or business blog, these are some of the key steps to take to get going.
Finally, learn from others. I’ve got a list of new blogger tips to help you get ahead faster.
Get Started Today!
There you go! You’re all set for starting a blog and creating a self-hosted site with Bluehost.
A great alternative is NameHero, if you don’t mind spending a bit more for a faster speed for your site load, and better service. And if you don’t want the hassle of upgrading to a better hosting provider down the line!
Remember… pace yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day. It will take you time to start a blog and make it a success.
But you will get there with perseverance, hard work, and effort.
What’s Next?
This blog post has a whole lot of information!
If you prefer to go step-by-step more in-depth, we can do two things:
If you’re still feeling overwhelmed with all the pre-planning, set up and things to do before you officially launch your blog, contact me! I’m available for coaching, blog audits and troubleshooting.
Or, if coaching is not your thing, you can do a step-by-step go at your own pace FREE course that I’ve put together with more details and tips.
It also includes a toolkit including all the best templates, worksheets and printables that you’ll find useful as you start your blog… as well as a sweet discount on my Pinterest course and SEO e-book.
You can sign up and get started immediately!
So have I answered how to start a blog? And start making money with it? If you still have questions, drop me a line in the comment box!
After you have started your blog, the next step will be to learn all of the key things you need to do to grow it.
That’s a complete long blog post… but I’ve transformed it into a course, which is the equivalent of 9 coaching sessions with me!
QUESTIONS: What do you find is the hardest part of starting a lifestyle blog? What is the most confusing part of starting a self-hosted site?
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