Step 1. Unleash Ideas Within You
Don’t feel daunted by the situation. Take a moment to catch your breath. You have the ability to handle it. Success in blogging does not require a complete overhaul.
In order to have a productive conversation, it is important to clearly state the topic you wish to discuss.
One effective approach is to find inspiration from a role model in your field or area of expertise. Is there a chance they run a blog?
In case you do, peruse it before allowing your thoughts to take shape. If you don’t have anyone particular in mind, seek out someone you look up to and allow ideas to form.
Express your distinctive experiences in your own style. Make use of your vocabulary and individuality, without overthinking it. Allow the words to come naturally.
If you remain consistent, your tribe will adhere.
In terms of selecting the niche for your blog, you should inquire about two essential aspects.
1. Do I Enjoy Learning About This Topic?
Your lack of passion for a topic will reflect in your writing. It is advised to not commence a blog if you do not have a love for the subject matter.
No matter what subject you choose, it is essential to have a passionate interest and innate curiosity for it.
Otherwise, you will quickly exhaust your ideas, along with the momentum you had initially built.
The crucial point is that you’ll be unable to produce content that can steadily expand your audience.
Consider the subjects that people seek your guidance on if you are uncertain about your direction. Are you frequently consulted by acquaintances or relatives regarding fitness routines, culinary suggestions, or professional counsel? By reflecting for a brief moment, you can promptly discern the domains in which you possess specialized knowledge.
2. Are Others Interested in The Same Things?
Although you may think that you are the only twenty-something who is passionate about knitting, there are several others like you.
If you perform a speedy Google search, you will discover more than a million outcomes intended for individuals similar to yourself.
You may be questioning whether your concept is too peculiar or too general. My recommendation is to zero in on a topic that sincerely captivates you.
Avoid using general terms like “travel” if you are planning to begin a travel blog. Opt for a more precise theme, such as “backpacking.”
Step 2. Choose a Name For Your New Blog
The enjoyable step now is to come up with a name for your blog.
Your brand is pivotal in determining how people will remember you.
Avoid over-analyzing. A brand’s enchantment is gradually created. Despite feeling stuck, continue to make progress ahead.
To arrive at the ideal name, the initial step is to engage in brainstorming. In the previous phase, we highlighted the importance of releasing all your thoughts and precisely defining your area of expertise.
It is now the appropriate moment to transform those concepts into a title.
Begin by creating a new spreadsheet or taking out a pen and paper. Proceed to jot down every word that comes to your mind for approximately ten minutes.
Begin by merging words and phrases until something catches your attention. Generate 5 – 10 possible names and record them.
It’s now time to check if those names are accessible as domains, which is the online location of your blog.
My domain is neilpatel.com, to give an example.
I go by the name of Neil Patel, which is also the name of my brand and what you enter in the address bar to locate me. However, this indicates that the domain is not available for use as I am the current owner.
Using your own name as your domain, as I did, is an option available to you.
It is my suggestion to opt for an alternative name when naming your blog as it can simplify the process of selling the site in the future.
If you cannot find any available .com site names that you prefer, return to the start and continue to generate new ideas.
Below are additional recommendations to help you select a superb domain name:
- Always choose a .com when possible
- Avoid using numbers, hyphens, and homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently)
- Keep it as short and concise as possible
- Should be easy to say and understand
- Avoid complicated and commonly misspelled words
Once you come across a name that is available, simply click next to include it in your cart automatically.
Hold off on the purchase for now. In the subsequent step, I will demonstrate how you can acquire your domain at no cost.
Step 3. Get Web Hosting with Hostinger
It is now the moment to make your blog available to the public.
Although it may appear complex initially, there’s no need for concern as it’s simpler than it appears.
Before commencing your blog, you require web hosting (a platform for your blog) and a domain name (the blog’s URL). The favorable aspect is that Hostinger, the web hosting company I favor, presents them together in a package.
Hostinger
Best Web Hosting
Obtain reliable web hosting at an incredibly affordable price. Commencing at $1.99 per month, shared hosting is an excellent fit for your fresh blog. Alternatively, you can choose to pay $2.49 per month for a complimentary domain name or $3.99 per month for daily backups.
Begin today!
Hosting your blogging website with this option is remarkably inexpensive.
Proceed to Hostinger and select the “Start Now” button.
Afterward, you will come across a selection of three diverse plans. Move the screen downwards and opt for the WordPress Premium package, which costs only $2.49/month. This plan furnishes you with all your basic needs for starting out and is the most affordable plan that offers a complimentary domain.
In case you need it, you have the option to upgrade later.
Choosing the four-year commitment will give you the most favorable offer. However, there are alternative options including one-year, two-year, and month-to-month terms.
Afterwards, the completion of your account setup will be required.
Once your payment has been approved, you will be directed to Hostinger’s Panel that will assist you in completing the setup process.
Step 4. Get Familiar with WordPress, Your Blogging Software
Blogging requires the use of blogging software, and I choose to use WordPress to run all of my blogs due to its user-friendly, free, and powerful features.
Opting to create a blog outside of WordPress can result in significantly higher expenses. With WordPress, a plethora of free plugins are available for you to customize your blog to your heart’s content.
The good thing is that Hostinger handles the installation of WordPress for you when you first set it up, so you don’t need to do anything to prepare it for usage.
Once the Hostinger setup wizard is complete, a window will appear allowing you to either link your domain, access your website, or navigate to the WordPress dashboard or Hostinger control panel.
Why Blog Design is so Important When Starting a Blog
The design of your blog layout can have a significant impact on the behavior of your readers, even if you are not personally interested in design. According to a study conducted by the University of Basel and Google in 2012, users form an opinion about a website’s aesthetic appeal and perceived functionality in just a fraction of a second, ranging from 1/20th to 1/50th of a second. Additionally, due to the Halo Effect, people tend to extend their initial judgement about a blog’s design to all other aspects of the blog.
Building trust through blogging requires good design. A well-designed blog demonstrates your commitment to its aesthetic appeal. However, this doesn’t call for excessive animations or an overload of colors and fonts. In reality, the most effective designs are minimalistic, comprehensible, and easily legible.
After choosing the appropriate WordPress theme for your blog, it’s crucial to explore the universe of WordPress plugins. These tools will expand your blog’s design and functionality abilities, and are necessary for your blog to grow into a successful business eventually.
10 Essential WordPress Plugins You Should Install on Your New Blog Today
The proper selection of essential WordPress plugins is a critical task that can greatly impact the function of your blog. It is important to prioritize this step in order to benefit both your audience and search engine performance.
Although WordPress plugins offer a wide range of options, the challenge lies in selecting the appropriate plugins out of the thousands available. To simplify your search, we’ve compiled a list of essential WordPress plugins that you should install as soon as you begin blogging.
- Yoast SEO: The more people that can find your content, the better your blog will do. The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress helps you to optimize your blog post titles, descriptions, content length and other elements across your entire blog so that you can be found easier by search engines. This is by far the most established, best SEO plugin on the market, and worth installing on your blog first.
- WPForms: You’ll want your readers to be able to get in touch with you easily, which I highly recommend—as it’ll encourage other bloggers who want to collaborate with you an easy opportunity to reach out. WPForms is an easy-to-use plugin that allow you to drag & drop contact forms onto any page of your blog.
- Site Kit by Google (Analytics Dashboard for WordPress): This is a 100% free plugin made by Google that allows you to see all of your relevant Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, Google AdSense and Google PageSpeed optimization data directly inside your WordPress dashboard. Connect the plugin to your Google Analytics 4 & Search Console accounts (you can sign up for a free Google Analytics account right here and you’ll automatically set up a GA4 account) to find out who’s coming to your site, how long they’re sticking around, and what your most popular blog posts are.
- UpdraftPlus: Again, sometimes things will go wrong on your blog (and it won’t always be totally in your control). It’s always smart to have a backup plugin that’ll save all your hard work on a regular basis, and this free one stands high above the rest.
- WP Rocket: Faster websites rank higher on Google and give your readers a better experience. WP Rocket is a plugin that caches your blog pages, reduces your file sizes, and does much more to ensure that your blog loads faster for everyone.
- Bunny CDN: Speaking of speed, Bunny.net makes a fantastic WordPress plugin-based CDN that’ll make images and other static elements of your blog load at lightning speed, earning this plugin top marks to consider as a complement to also using WP Rocket.
- Insert Headers and Footers: Sometimes to edit your blog theme, you’ll have to add code snippets to your header or footer (it’s not as scary as it sounds). However, doing it in the code of your theme can cause issues. This plugin lets you add small snippets of code easily to select locations around your blog.
- Lightweight Accordion: If you like the way I create the collapsible (accordion-style) content boxes here throughout this guide and in the FAQ section near the bottom of this post, then I recommend installing the free plugin I use to make those content widgets come to life: Lightweight Accordion. In just a few clicks with this plugin, you can quickly add collapsible FAQ box functionality to your WordPress blog.
- MightyShare: Automatically generate social share images in WordPress for free. Rather than having whichever boring social share image your blog uses by default, this free plugin automatically generates beautiful social images using multiple templates, fonts, color choices and robust customization. It includes support for all post types, multiple templates and new templates added monthly.
- Antispam Bee: Antispam Bee is one the best free anti-spam WordPress plugin around, with a sophisticated toolset for effective day to day comment and trackback spam-fighting. Built with data protection and privacy in mind, you’ll be able to stop spam comments on your blog (for free) with this plugin.
Creating a Blog Content Strategy
- Define your blog goals: What’s your purpose for starting a blog? What do you want to achieve with your blog content? Your blog goals might change as you go from learning how to start a blog into growing your blog, but it’s still important to know it early on.
- Get to know your blog readers (and where they hang out): Your readers will determine whether or not your blog becomes successful. To write for them, you need to really understand them—which is why it helps if you’re also writing for yourself. It’s useful to some research around the audience you’re writing for. Think about the demographics and psychographics of your target audience.
- Decide on your blog’s main content pillars: When it comes to deciding what you’re going to write about, it’s good to have a few guiding categories that you’ll refer back to. For example, if you’re starting a blog about personal finance, your pillars might be: personal finance tips, interviews with experts, industry news, paying off debt or otherwise.
- Map out the content you’re going to create soon after starting your blog: Shortly after launching your blog, it’s worth taking a little time to plan out your content pipeline for the coming weeks (possibly months). You never know when your first blog post might go viral. In that case, you’ll want to have at least a game plan to quickly engage the new readers you get.
