How to Start a Blog from Scratch for Beginners

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Blogging has a very low investment but a high potential for profit. Thinking of starting your own blog? This article would guide you in setting up your blog from scratch and also show you how to make money blogging. This is a beginners’ guide to blogging.

Starting a blog is something you can do in less than an hour but making money from your blog would require a strong foundation.

In this article, am going to show you step by step how to create a blog from scratch, you can bookmark this post for future use and I will also appreciate it if you can Pin it for Later on Pinterest!

For those that doesn’t know what a blog is, a blog is a website that is updated regularly with contents about a certain topic. For example, this blog is all about How to create a dropshipping and Business website as well as Blogging Tips, yours can be on any topic of your choice.

Don’t Know What Topic or Niche to Blog About? Download the 100+ Blogging Niche Ideas from here or Sign up for my FREE Blogging Email Course below for more freebies. You can click here to learn more

To get started with blogging, take the following steps;

Step 1: Choose Your Blog Niche

Your blog niche is the topic you would like your blog to be known for. It is what you intend to write about on your blog. What are you passionate about? What do people say you know how to do best and they will be willing to pay for? Think about it and start your blog. If you can’t come up with a topic or niche right away, don’t worry Just start by writing about whatever interests you for now and you can narrow or niche down to a topic and focus on that later on.

Don’t Know What Topic or Niche to Blog About? Download the 100+ Blogging Niche Ideas from here.

Step 2: Pick a Domain Name

The second step is to pick a catchy domain name. Your domain name is your blog’s address on the internet.

In choosing a domain name, choose a name that can be easily remembered, choose a domain with the .com extension because they are much more popular and easy to remember, make your chosen name related to your blog niche so that your audience can instantly know what your blog is all about. Also, if you can’t come up with a name for your blog then use your own name.

Step 3: Chose an Hosting Plan

If you are really serious about blogging for cash, then I would suggest you put your blog on a self-hosted service. A free blogging platform like Blogger, Wix, WordPress.com, etc. wouldn’t give you the freedom and total control over your contents.

Setting up a web hosting is extremely simple and only takes a few minutes. In choosing a reliable web hosting company, I would recommend BLUEHOST, with BlueHost, you get your domain name for free but if you wish to separate your hosting from your domain name provider, I would recommend Namecheap, which is one of the cheapest domain name providers out there.

Smartweb is another hosting service provider I would recommend, with their plans, you get a free SSL certificate and 24/7 support system.

Meanwhile, Bluehost has a special offer on her hosting packages starting at just $3.95 a month, along with a FREE domain name. Just be sure to use my link!

To setup your blog using bluehost,

Visit www.bluehost.com
Click on get started as shown in the image below
Put in your domain name either an existing domain or a new domain as shown in the image below

Create your hosting account by Selecting your hosting plan- the Basic plan is enough to get you started as a new blogger. The 12months hosting plan is just perfect but the higher the months the less you pay.

Make payment by inputting your payment details
Agree to their terms and click on submit.

Another great feature of Bluehost is that WordPress is Automatically installed for you, all you need do is to follow the prompt to create a password and click on next for you to be taken to your dashboard.

Immediately you login into your WordPress dashboard, you are to choose one of the inbuilt themes in WordPress.

All these themes are free to use. You can also go for a premium theme if you so wish. You can check various elegant themes from theme forest which you can uploaded into your site immediately.

Do you need a free blog setup plus a premium theme? Click here to know how to Go about it.

To upload the premium theme, from your WordPress dashboard:

Click on Appearance.
Click themes.
Click on add new.
Scroll up and click upload theme.
Choose the theme to upload from your desktop.
Click on install and activate the theme after installing.

The theme you choose would determine how your blog design and layout would look.

Step 4: Write Your First Blog Post

Write your first blog post! For new bloggers, I would recommend getting 5 to 10 solid blog posts up on the blog first and then start working on building your blog audience and readers. To write your first blog post, click on post from your dashboard.

Click on add new, add your blog contents and click on publish.

Step 5: Make Money Blogging!

Now let’s talk about how to make money blogging. Once you have started your blog, you can monetize it right away. A lot of bloggers wait to do this, but if you have the right information and the right strategy to monetize your blog then I don’t see any reason why you should wait.

Some of the ways by which you can monetize your new blog are;

Affiliate marketing: This is one of the easiest ways to start making money as a new blogger in any niche. Affiliate marketing involves promoting other people’s products on your blog and in return you earn a commission anytime someone buys through your affiliate link. To learn more about affiliate marketing and how to utilize your blog traffic via affiliate marketing, I will recommend taking this course “Get Paid to Pin” The course will not only guide you on how to make affiliate sales but you will also learn how to drive tons of traffic to your website using Pinterest!

Advertising: Advertising is another great way to make money blogging once you start getting a good amount of traffic to your blog. I used Google AdSense on my other blogs. Some other ad networks you can sign up for are, Monumetric, Mediavine and Adthrive, but you will need a lot of traffic to be accepted.

Need more Blog Traffic? Take this course “Get Paid to Pin”

Digital products: This is personally my favorite way of making money as a new blogger. The quickest way to start making money from your blog is to create your own product and start selling it on your blog or on other platforms. You can start by creating eBooks or online courses.

In conclusion, to start a blog as a beginner;

Choose a niche for your blog
Register a domain name and get hosting for $3.95 a month with Bluehost or Smartweb
Pick a theme for your blog. You can choose a free theme or get a premium theme.
Write 5 to 10 blog posts and launch!
Build your Blog audience and monetize your blog.

Starting a blog is actually very easy but NOTE, it is not a get rich quick scheme! To make money blogging, you will need to put in a lot of time and effort by treating your blog as a business right from the onset in order to achieve great results!

Still confused about Blogging? Check out the FREE 7-Days Blogging course!

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