How to start a blog? The ultimate guide

Hello, Friends! As you know starting a blog in the right way is a very crucial step. Because the wrong ways to start a blog will never ever bring success for you. So this article is all about “Starting a blog, perfectly and the right way”.

Start a Blog

For the sake of simplicity, I’ll navigate through every single step required to start a blog.

Introduction – Mindset of successful bloggers.

As a professional blogger, I must say – “you must know all the basics about whatever you do” because your strong foundation will definitely bring big success. You know, if you have a solid foundation, then there is no upper limit of growth. Because, without a solid foundation, no one can reach the level of perfection.

So, Let’s see the most essential basics (Quickly) before you start a blog.

What is a blog?

A blog is a webpage or website which regularly updates. Any individual or team runs it. This online field is called blogging, and owners or writers are called bloggers.

Why you should create and start a blog?

  • Blogging is an easy and effective way to share knowledge.
  • Improves your creativity by all fronts (in thinking, planning, listening, learning, multitasking, engaging with other fellow or niche bloggers, and more).
  • You can do it from anywhere as well as any time.
  • It helps to be a man with a “LEARNING ATTITUDE” (which is the most important success factor). Blogging is more of a continuous learning process.
  • Get published on the web. Update whenever you want to.
  • It is helpful for others. Your how-to guides, tutorials, reviews are always helpful.
  • You can earn money (So many bloggers making $XX, XXX (Five Figure) in a single month with a single blog).
  • Develops your business mind.
  • It helps to be successful in your other businesses as well.
  • And much more…

Important things to follow in the beginning:

So many guys doing this silly mistake, once they build a blog. They’re doing that silly mistake and saying… “I started a blog, but my blog is not making money”…

Let me say to them, you are not making money because you’re focusing on money rather than building a helpful blog for your targeted audience.

Just let me know, how many guys are making money when they’re studying in college?

You’re giving your 3-4 years to learn and experience the things/your field, and after then you’re making money (by doing a job or business).

Right? So why you’re not understanding that thing here? The bottom line is… Give the first 6 months to your blog completely without thinking about earning money. That’s it.

Also, make sure you’re learning a lot during this period. In this time span, you can learn Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing, Social Media Strategies, Promotion Tricks, and a lot more which are very crucial for taking your blog to the next level.

So, bring a learning attitude to yourself. Learning Attitude is the Key to Success.

How to Create a Blog?

This whole guide is about “How to Start a Blog”.

So, read this step-by-step guide from the start. Let’s begin!

Step 1: Choose your niche what to blog about.

Selecting a niche is a very very important step in blogging because some newbies start blogging with a very competitive field and they fail badly. So, don’t be a fool!

Ask yourself… What to blog about? Which topic/field do I love the most or am passionate about?

I strongly recommend you to be patient(take the time to find it) and choose a niche that is interesting for you + has less competition. If you choose a niche that’s highly competitive, it won’t get you easy success unless influenced or referenced by some reputed sources. For example, this blog’s niche is business and technology, I always blog on both the niche because I have better knowledge of both fields. You can choose one – start with one, if that gives to success then you can expand the niche.

You can also have a blog that has many niches, but your competition will be 10x high because you’ve to compete with numerous other blogs who are experts in your chosen niche.

But you can select some sub-niches to outrank the competition.

Step 2: Choose your blog name and domain name.

Your blog name should be brandable in your niche.

Always go for TLD (top-level domains) like .com .net .org unless you have any geo-restrictions for your niche. But if your blog is about a country only, then you can go with SLD (second-level domains) like .in for India.

Step 3: Choose your web hosting.

There are thousands of web hosting service providers in the world. But you should always go for the best available one. And, the most interesting thing is it’s available at affordable prices. You can start with shared web servers to save on cost, and later upgrade to Virtual Private or Dedicated servers if you are getting a lot of response and web traffic that a shared server can not handle.

I won’t recommend any web hosting company here, because I host my all sites on my own. I use numerous hosting companies for my clients (some need ultra-fast and responsive, and some need just fast to showcase their work).

You need to decide your own what you want and what will be your upcoming requirements with the website and servers.

I’m not recommending you anything hosting company here, because that will ruin your experience of blogging.

But I’ll suggest avoiding all those EIG (Endurance International Group) backed web hosting companies. Bluehost, Hostgator are backed by the same EIG company. You can check out a list of over 80 companies here which is backed by EIG. I’m not saying that they are bad, but they are less focused on customer service. This means you won’t get top-notch performance, your hosting service will go down on using excessive resources for more than 90 seconds. A reputed company won’t do this with their growing customers.

Of course, others are a little expensive but not costlier than a burger or pizza a month.

I use unmanaged virtual private servers, I host them manually with my requirements. You can opt for the same as you know how to manage the web servers using the command line. If you are not familiar with this better opt for managed hosting companies.

Step 4: Choose your CMS (Content Management System).

There is so many CMS on the web like WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, Joomla, Magneto, Ghost, and more. But, the most popular CMS in the world is WordPress they power over 25% of the websites on the Internet. So now, we selected WordPress as a CMS.

Step 5: Setup your blog.

To know how to set up your blog on cPanel based web server you need to follow your hosting provider’s tutorial. For most hosting companies steps are similar just look for “Softaculous” in your cPanel and install the WordPress application from there.

Once you’ve installed it, you are ready to go with further configurations and modifications in the blog itself. If you are using an unmanaged server, search for LEMP installation in our blog, you’ll find several tutorials to get you started.

Step 6: Configure your blog and make it “The Perfect One”.

After setting up your blog, you can log in to the admin dashboard and customize the blog. Navigate to – yourdomain.com/wp-admin or yourdomain.com/wp-login.php

Permalink – An SEO friendly URL is must for any blog.

Permalink is the URL structure of your blog posts. You should make it SEO friendly (It’s not SEO friendly by default) So, for doing that…

Go to Settings > Permalink > Set as a Post name.

WordPress Permalink

Plugins – Add new features on demand.

Plugins are the biggest feature and advantage of WordPress, you can add features in your blog by installing relevant plugins. Here I’m suggesting some of the common ones to start with.

  • Akismet – to block spam comments.
  • Koko Analytics – to know basic analytics.
  • Yoast SEO – for the addition of SEO features.

Remove default Posts and Pages

You can see sample posts and pages on your WordPress dashboard. Just Delete them and add your own.

You can start making required pages for your blog like – about us, contact us, privacy policy, terms and conditions, etc.

Step 7: Start blogging

Now, you have a blog, and you can manage it through the WordPress dashboard.

The next step is, write a blog post (simple :-)) Write a good headline, good permalink, good content, and hit the publish button.

How will you make your blog successful?

Launching a blog is the first level. Now, you have to take your blog to next level and make it successful.

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