Last Updated on July 1, 2022 by Brie
You can learn how to start a blog in less than an hour. By following the successful tips, I used to create this very blog. You can know precisely how to start a blog and begin to make it profitable in 2021.
How to become a blogger in 6 simple steps:
- Choose your website name and or pen name
- Choose a hosting platform
- Add WordPress to your site
- Pick a theme to customize your blog
- Connect to Pinterest to reach your readers
- Write interesting content that your readers will love
How I Started This Blog
Are you looking to create something that is entirely your own? Something meaningful? Something that you can look back at over the years and watch your growth and progress. Well, creating a blog can offer you all of these things and more. I started Mommy Daughter Love in the spring of 2018, and I’ve been blogging ever since. Over the last several years, I have watched as my writing style has changed for the better. My typing speeds have improved, and so has my creativity. I have been able to branch out into writing books, curriculum, and copy-write because I started a blog years ago. Blogging gave me the confidence and computer skills I needed to feel prepared to work for myself. It also gave the freedom to work from anywhere. That freedom is something I knew I always wanted, but it became even more critical once the pandemic hit.
When I started a blog years ago, they were prevalent around the internet and on every topic under the sun. There are blogs about frogs and turtles, medical blogs, and mom blogs (a few kinds). When I started, I was clueless about everything about blogging, other than the topics I wanted to blog about. There were so many choices of platforms to launch on. I didn’t even know what hosting meant at the time. The questions on a new blogger’s mind are endless:
- When should we start?
- How do we register a domain name?
- What is hosting?
- Which blogging platform should we use?
- How do we choose a blog theme? What is a plugin?
In 2018, I waited three months to start my blog as I researched every blogging topic under the sun. I wanted to be prepared. Do you know what I learned from that? Well, I realized that I didn’t need to wait. It was as easy as all of the blogs I read said it would be. Of course, there was a learning curve as I got started, and I learned many lessons about blogging in my first year and my second. Heck, I am still finding myself learning even today.
Disclosure: The Mommy Daughter Love blog is hosted by Bluehost. Bluehost can help you set up and host your blog. Because Mommy Daughter love is a Bluehost affiliate partner (i.e., I earn some revenue, at no additional cost to you, when you purchase using my links), my readers can use this link to sign up and get Bluehost hosting for just $2.95 during their first year of blogging.
How to Become a Blogger? Video Tutorials
If you would prefer to set up your blog by watching a video tutorial, several charming tutorials are available for you to use. If you would instead scan through the quick and easy steps by reading them, then stick around.
Here is another one on how to become a successful blogger with a money-making blog.
How to Start a Successful Blog in 6 Easy Steps:
- Choose your website name and or pen name
- Choose a hosting platform
- Add WordPress to your site
- Pick a theme to customize your blog
- Connect to Pinterest to reach your readers
- Write interesting content that your readers will love
There are several platforms from which you can run and customize your blog. These include things like Tumblr and blogger. BUT every blogger worth their salt that I have ever seen uses WordPress as the method of choice. Not only is it easy to navigate from the user standpoint once you are in the system, but WordPress blogs are highly customize-able. They allow the blogger to get the perfect look and feel they want for the blog.
Choosing your Domain Name
The domain name is the text that is in between you http://www. And the .com or .blog, or whatever dot you chose. The dot com is the most common among bloggers. Your domain name is an essential first step when starting a blog. Not only does it personalize your little corner of the web just for yourself, but it also is what your readers see when they pull your site up in their browser.
Your domain is your URL. You could choose your name: yourname.com, or you could choose your business name, for instance: yourbuisnessname.com. Maybe you are working on starting your brand like I was when I came up with Mommy Daughter love or mommydaughterlove.com. Whatever the case may be, choose your domain name wisely because years down the road, after you have built up all the work on advertising your blog, it is very frustrating and challenging to change the domain. If you don’t have anything that comes to mind when starting your blog, check out the free service: wordoid! It gives you various domain names to roll around the tongue and see which one you like best.
Choosing a Hosting Platform:
Multiple hosting platforms come with different benefits and price points that might make your wallet cry a little bit. When I was choosing my blogging platform, I narrowed it down to Wix and Bluehost. I finally decided on Bluehost, and years later, I am still grateful I did.
The Hosting platform is where your blog will live on the internet. While you will have a .com that is all your own and no one will know, unless you explicitly tell them your hosting platform, a hosting platform is vital.
One question I asked myself, and you may find yourself asking the same question, was: Why do I need a hosting platform for a self-hosted blog?
Well, you need a company that always has internet access and the ability to offer a strong connection and significant bandwidth for your blog. You can technically, with the right know-how, host the website directly from your computer. It is always running, never needs to update, and acts as a server itself for your blog. For most of us, this is not possible or worth our time. It would also greatly diminish the quality of the site and the speed that it runs for your users. That is why I recommend hosting through a platform. It is so easy to get set up with Bluehost as your platform. It is also cheap. They have room to grow with your plans if you decide to start another website or even have multiple users logging in and working on your websites.
- Great Customer Service: Blue host has great customer service and a 30 day refund policy if you end up being unhappy with the purchase of your website.
- FREE DOMAIN NAME! You have to purchase your domain name on the web from many vendors. But with bluehost, you get a free domain name during your first year of service. This helps you cut costs that first year, and insures that you LOVE blogging before dumping a bunch of money into it.
- Privacy: This is a big one. Blue host offers a DNS package where they put Bluehost information in place of your personal information, like names and addresses in the online website registry.
- Blogger Friends: There are so many bloggers that use bluehost as their hosting platform that it came highly recommended when i signed on.
- Affordable: The Bluehost plans are affordable, and the longer you renew your plan for, the cheaper the monthly rate is. If you snag a 3 year subscription and pay it up front it is way cheaper than paying by the month! These kinds of discounts make it worth your while.
Now that you are ready to get started on your journey blogging. Go to Bluehost and click the Get Started button.
Now, choose a plan.
You can see plans that range from around $3 to about $6 a month. They have single programs that allow you to host just one website or more extensive plans to enable more website hosting and growth. (started with a single plan and have since expanded to the choice plus plan.
Once you have selected your plan, it is time to put in that domain name you decided on.
If you haven’t bought it yet, just put it into the box and see if it is available as a web address. The next thing you will do is put in your basic account information.
Once you set up your password and get your BIG’Ole congratulations page, then you are all set to go! You have a hosting platform and a domain. You are almost there on your way to becoming a great blogger.
Add WordPress to you Site:
Start by logging into Bluehost using your new username and password that you created. It will pop up with some options to make your blog. SKIP THEM. You will then be allowed to install WordPress. WordPress is what you want. Once WordPress is installed, you will click “Start Building” to get started on the WordPress-Bluehost platform.
Pick a Theme to Customize Your Blog:
The dashboard of your WordPress account gives you the option to “customize the theme of your blog.” This way, you can choose an existing theme to set up your blog and make it quickly look like what you want. When you are looking at themes, don’t look at the color. Look at the layout of the theme. Look at what kind of font the theme comes with and the header choices for the theme. You can customize things like color and fonts in many cases once you have the theme downloaded. I chose the Bard wordpress.org theme because it is free and offers a lot of customization. Not only this, but you can have a large banner across the top of your blog! The wordpress.org themes are primarily free ones.
Many bloggers are against free themes and believe that you should purchase a theme for a successful blog. But I don’t think this is a necessary expense when you are starting.
Whenever you want to re-access the site you set up, log in to your Bluehost account. From there, choose “my sites” and log into WordPress on the site that you want to edit.
Connect to Pinterest to Reach Your readers:
Pinterest is the best free tool you can use to connect your readers with the content on your blog. Most of my blog traffic started out coming from Pinterest and still does! When you have a Pinterest account, the key for growth is to pin consistently. Try to aim for pinning the same amount of pins each day. The best times to pin are between 2-4 if you are a mom blogger. But this can change based on the blog-type you have, when you post blogs, and your audience.
If you are a person with a life, like most of us, you probably don’t have time to create and pin 20 to 30 new pins at the appropriate times every day. That is why tailwind is so valuable. I got a tailwind account two years after setting up my blog, and I wish I had set one up from the beginning! Tailwind is a Pinterest scheduling tool that allows you to link your Pinterest account, and then it pins for you at the appropriate times to gain you the most traction. When I started, you had to make your pins. Now, tailwind will do that for you too! You can add in all of your branding logo, website, and color information. Then plop a blog link into the pin creator and pick from 1000’s pre-generated pins for that page. It even incorporates the photos you have on the page!
Tailwind made Pinterest and blog marketing easy. It takes me two hours to set up tailwind to pin to my Pinterest account for the entire month. That is a month that I don’t even think about marketing. I pin about 3000 graphics every single month if that puts it into perspective for you!
I am affiliated with tailwind, so you will get $15 off your first year of tailwind using my link! Access tailwind for your blog today!
Add the Content to your Blog
You will want to write a few posts so that there is something on your blog for readers to explore when you launch. I started with five posts already on the blog. Admittedly those five posts kind of sucked looking back at them, but I was new! You will want to have all the other trimmings of content that makes your blog great too. These include:
- Photos! Include photos and logos on your site to brand it as your own.
- Privacy Policy Page: to own a site on the web, you are legally obligated to have a privacy page. If you have the new version of the Bard theme, 2020 or above, it as a pre-written privacy policy that you can use by simply dropping in the fill in the blank details.
- Set up comments on your posts and how long people can comment after the post has been published. Do you want commenting open forever, or just for the month that the post was published?
- Include your social media links on your blog!
- Contact page: Include a contact page for business inquires and other complaints that people may have so that they are not littered in your comments section.
- Publish posts: Then consistently publish posts to your blog to grow! This could be a weekly post to start out with or a monthly post if you don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to the blog.
Now that you are all set with your blog grab a nice writing space and enjoy life!
Brie
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