Deciding to start a blog was my focal point in 2020. I decided to focus on work from home jobs for all ages, traffic growth and email marketing. I remember that was around the time everyone was trying to find a perfect side hustle or even an online job to start working from home. Some were lucky enough to be essential workers. Others, fortune smiled on them and they were able to shift to work from home settings – heaven smiled on them 🙂 Others lost their places of work and they were at home – jobless. Well, I kind of found myself in between those three situations last year. I was working as an essential worker but still, I needed something to do when I couldn’t go to work every day and again I just had a newborn so I was very sure that I wasn’t going to work for another one year or so and that I needed a plan B as soon as possible.
I did my own assignment of doing research about different work from home jobs and of course, I got the answers I needed. I had been working on some online jobs for years so it wasn’t hard to quickly jump into working from home mode. I already knew the drill and how to go about it. I just wasn’t sure though about starting a blog. I had created websites with blogs for other people but I didn’t see it as a thing for me. However, considering how successful these blogs have been, it is then I decided to give it a go. And today I am here to talk about how to start a blog to someone who is clueless about starting a blog or you are just doing your research on whether to start a blog or not. I would love to answer the questions about what a blog is, how to start a blog, blog ideas that are not just about blogging, the pros and cons of blogging and so much more. So stay tuned as I unfold some of the best tips and tricks I have learned this far.
No more stories, let’s get started!:)
SO What is a Blog?
A blog is an online journal where an individual or group of people record activities, thoughts or beliefs. Let take an example of your favourite news channel, if you decide to google it there are already stories already written for you to read at your own time and pace. These are written as posts in a blog. Sometimes you will open a website and decide to either scroll through to the footer menu and normally you will come across a blog section and if you click on the blog section you are normally directed to more read the latest articles of that company.
Can Anybody Start A Blog?
Of Course Yes! Anybody can start a Blog. Well, remember those days in school when you were made to write compositions about an event you attended? Those were some kind of journals. What you wrote on those compositions are things that you remembered. Am sure in that composition you wrote about the ways events unfolded. Blogging is the same way. You write about topics that you are good at. For example, if you are a nutritionist working in the health industry you can decide to write (Blog) about a list of healthy meals and recipes people can add to their meals or something similar to that. If you are good with finances, look for topics related to that such as how to save money, maybe how to budget your money. If you make nice meals or you love cooking share that through recipes and helps people try your recipes by writing them and sharing. In other words, everyone is good at something, however basic it is, it can be beneficial to someone else. I keep emphasizing for you to look for something that you are good at as this will help you to write about what you already know thought getting burned out. Burnout is real if you are a new blogger if you don’t plan out your content well. Tell me your thoughts and experiences about burnout as a new blogger in the comment section.
What To Write In Your Blog (Blog Ideas).
As a new blogger finding a specific topic or in other words niching down to one thing that you are good at and that which you can enjoy writing about for a very long time. Do you know why? This will help you stand out to your followers as someone who has authority over that topic and this in return can help you drive traffic to your blog.
So to find your niche, ask yourself these four questions:
- What are you good at? eg finances, health, cooking, maths,english, weight loss etc
- Is there a demand for it?Create A problem or demand
- Can it add value to someone in need of this information?And can it be monitized?
- How will you solve it?
Once you have answered these questions, take a pen and paper, sit down and carefully write down a list of how you can help and the solutions to that. This list becomes your blog ideas or titles. Then the solutions become the blog post or article. How exciting is this?
Some of the best blog posts titles that catch peoples attention start with:
- How to..
- Best of…
- 5 TOP…
- 5 Awesome….
- Top….
Below are sites you can get blog ideas to write from.
- Portent
- Quora
- Uber Suggest
- Feedly
- Answer The Public
- Hubspot Blog Topic Generator
- Youtube Auto Complete
You can get more inspiration by going to Pinterest and searching for keywords related to your blog. Facebook groups are also a go-to resource where you can use the search section to find groups related to your niche.
Best Blog Niche Ideas to Write About.
- Web development
- Business
- Sales softwares and apps
- Email Marketing
- Personal Finance
- Recipes
- Vegan Meal
- Self care
- Mens health
- Mental Health
- Dating
- Pregnancy
- Navigating divource
- Game reviews
*The list is long but for sure you can get started with one of these topics.
- Cryptocurrency
- Freelancing
- Sidehustles
- Makemoney Online
- Videoediting
- English lessons
- Software reviews
- Baking and cooking tips
- Product reviews
- Makeup tutorials
- Organisationa Hacks
- Home renovation
- Real estate
- Artand craft
- DIY
- Gardening
- WordPress topics
- Search engine Optimization
- ContentMarketing
- Frugal living
- Online Courses
- K 12 Blogs for parents
- Restautants and bar reviews
- Skincare tips
- Weightloss
- Xbox games
- Minecraft
- Interior design
- Dog training
- Nomadic Lifestyle
- Successful entreprenuership
Can You Earn With Your Blog?
Good question. The simple answer is Yes. There are different ways to monetize your blog starting from having sponsored posts, affiliate marketing and many more. Being a new mum I knew that I needed to find a niche that was in demand and could be monetised. This made it easier for me to blog for fun and also earn something from it. Yes for fun because I blogged about what I love and am passionate about. You too can strategies on the same. Besides setting up a blog your website can also house an e-commerce store where you can sell your own products or affiliate products. Hence maximising the profits of your blog.
Here is the fun part, as long as you can drive traffic to your site by focusing on such engine optimisation (SEO) then you can make money with WordPress premium plans because you get added to word ads and can be paid by WordPress for allowing them to run ads on your site. SEO helps your site show up higher on Google’s results page when your potential customers type in related keywords. Pro-tip though, The more you create content the more the word ads ‘robots’ will know your niche and allocate ads related to your niche in your site. Hence more potential for making more money with your blog. Well, by now you already know that this is just one of the many ways you can monetize your blog. Hurray!
Here are the reasons why I love hosting my blog on WordPress:
- Is easy to set up
- Hostingis included
- Self hosted websites (Premium/Paid) available to monitise
- Site maintainance is done for you
- Built in stats
- 24/7 support is available onpaidplans
- Many themes and plugins to suit your needs
- You can include a shop to your blog and sell physical and digital products depending on your niche.
I recommend WordPress as it has both free and paid plans to suit everyone depending on where they are staring out.
It’s Time To Create Your Blog By Choosing A Blogging Platform.
There are different platforms available to host your blog. For this site, I chose WordPress because it was easy to set up and it had authority over other platforms I compared with. Other blogging platforms you can choose to have your blog on include Bloggers and Squarespace just to mention a few. But for this post, I will talk you through starting and creating a WordPress Blog.
For this tutorial, I will walk you through how to host your WordPress site using Bluehost.
Why Choose Bluehost?
- Bluehost is an all in one website platform providing everything your website needs from start-up to success. Bluehost is one of the top recommended WordPress providers by WordPress.org for more than 10 years.
- You get a free domain name for a whole year when you sign up with my special link. You save $12 upfront if you want to bootstrap your blog expenses.
- Step 1: Choose Your Plan.
Bluehost has three plans to choose from:
- Basic
- Plus
- Choice Plus
I recommend new bloggers start out with the basic or plus plan. The Basic plan kickstart your new WordPress blog with everything you need to start blogging. With the Plus Plan, you will have access to unlimited domains, sub-domains, unlimited email accounts and storage and much more. I have personally found myself with three blogs after I created my first blog. You too may get that same feeling. However, if you are just starting out then the basic plan is perfect. You can also save big if you choose the yearly plans which are so discounted. I personally like discounts because try to save as much as I can when setting up a website.
Step 2: A Domain Name And Hosting.
A domain name is a name you would love people to search you up on search engines such as Google, Bing and so on. For example, if you want to have a weight loss blog you would name it LOOSEN UP RIGHT take for instance. Therefore a domain name is a name your business identifies with. Your domain name should represent what your blog is about.
As a beginner finding the right domain name and if it’s available can be challenging when you are not sure if someone else calls their business by the same name. Bluehost provides a name checker that you can type in any name of your choice and see if it’s available for you. Type any name of your choice below and see if your domain name is available and an extension of your choice. I highly recommend .com as it’s an extension that is easy to remember.
Once set up your sites should be searched as https://www.yourdomainnamehere.com
In this step you have the option of creating your domain name, choosing to use a domain that you own maybe you purchased it before or skip this step and create a domain later. Which I would say that these are great options when trying to figer what is the right name for your blog.
Step 3: Payment info
Here you fill in your account information such as name, phone numbers, business names and address.
You also get to see your package information where you get to choose a plan and Package extras such as Bluehost SEO Tool Start, Sitelock security Essentials and so Much More. If you choose the 3 years plan you dont have to worry about paying for hosting in three years.This is good because it will give you more time to concentrate on building your blog without worrying.
Payments are done through a Credit card or Paypal.
Once payment you have chosen your choice of payment, the next step is to read the terms and conditions and tick the box that you have read them and click submit.
You will get an instant confirmation that the purchase was successful and another confirmation of your purchase through the email address you provided in the account information section.
Then from there, you click create account to set up your account, to access features and start working on your site or blog.
You will be then be prompted to create a new password.
Step 4: Bluehost Automatically Downloads and Install WordPress.
Bluehost Automatically installs Bluehost WordPress Account with WordPress default theme. You can change it to a theme of your choice, add a logo, set up your domain. You don’t need any advanced tech skills to get your blog ready because the Bluehost support team will walk you through if you get stuck.
Step 5: Log into your Bluehost WordPress Account and start blogging.
Log into your control panel and start writing. I can tell you for a fact that before I started my first blog I had all these crazy ideas that I felt I wanted the ideas to be released from my mind and help someone with that information because I knew that someone would benefit from reading it. Do you also feel the same at times? That’s why choosing to start a blog was a very good option for me. I now concentrate on creating more niche content.
STEP 6: Tell me about your New Blog!
Hurray!!. Your Blog is all set. Yay! Tell me about it and be sure to send me a link. Was this information helpful? Leave a comment or send me an email to tell me more about it or ask any questions. Happy to assist where I can.
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- How to overcome being Camera shy.
- How to improve conversions and get more leads.
- How To Get Your Business Back On Track.
- The Best Way To Grow Your Email List.
- A list of 42 Transcription Jobs Worth Your Time.
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