Starting off seems intimidating, but it is often the most important step.

  I don’t have any blogging experience whatsoever. I do not have any marketing experience either. I am fascinated by the increasing number of people on the web making a living directly from blogging – over 6 figures in some cases. I just started to blog and 6figureblogger is where I will keep notes/track of what I am up to with my other blog. I currently have zero subscribers, no traffic and almost zero knowledge about where to start. I am however motivated and patient and the goal indeed is to go from absolutely zero dollars in revenue per year to over six figures. A bit exciting to get started actually. Just finished setting up my first blog and these are the highlights:

1.) Think of a name, get a domain

This part was a bit difficult for me – in fact, I probably spent at least 2 weeks trying to come up with the perfect name for my new blog. Each time I came up with a great name, none of the domains were available. I wanted a standard .com because I did not like the sound of any other TLD’s (.net, .org, etc). I realized that by trying to come up with the perfect name was preventing me from getting started, so I made up my mind on a decent name and also found a domain name that matched perfectly. I have read online that it is better to have a “older” domain name when starting a site, but I figured I am going to test this fact and just buy a regular old $10/yr domain from Namecheap.

2.) Get WordPress

Based on all my research WordPress seems to be the most popular blogging platform as of now so I decided to go with it naturally. I may be new to blogging but I am thoroughly impressed by the ease of use and the flexibility of WordPress. Also, my host also had a 1-click install option for WordPress that made the installation processes mighty quick.

3.) Sign up for Feedburner

The first and most important step in my opinion would be setting up a Feedburner account for potential RSS & Email subscribers – how else can you really keep track of your subscribers/readers ? Not tracking something as important as your subscribers/readers sure does sound like terrible idea. The process was pretty simple: Go to the Google Feedburner website and simply create a feed. I would highly recommend using the same name as your blog for the feed. Remember to go to Publicize > Email Subscriptions if you would like your readers to subscribe via email.

Quick Tip: I found it useful to have all default WordPress feeds (ie: domain.com/feed) re-directed to Feedburner via .htaccess. This way, you can keep a much more accurate count of your subscribers. Simply place this code in your .htaccess file (after replacing it with your own feed name) and you are ready to go!

4.) Install Plugins

I installed a few important plugins in my newly installed WordPress blog.

1. Akismet : Helps prevent comment spam/robots
2. Better WP Security: Helps tighten down overall WordPress security
3. WP-MalWatch: Monitors wordpress files for malicious MalWare
4. Comment Reply Notification: If a user gets a comment reply, this will enhance the interaction in your blog
5. Google Analytics for WordPress: Probably the most important of them all – helps me track everything
6. Google XML Sitemaps: I have no idea what this one does, but people seem to recommend it :p

These plugins were installed mostly based on others recommendations. I consider the Google Analytics plugin to be the most important plugin along with Akismet and Better WP-Security. This would be a great starting point in terms of which plugins one must install when starting out.

5.) Theme & Logo

This part is easily one of my biggest distractions – I probably spent more time figuring out which WordPress theme to use and whether I should pay someone to design a logo for me than all the other tasks. Guilty as charged. Luckily, I snapped out of it and decided to go with Modernist (a free WordPress theme) and whipped up a very basic logo myself. A common theme among successful blogs seems to be: excellent content and a unique design. The reason I decided to stay cheap on the theme and logo aspects of the new blog was so I could focus most of my time on what really matters: content.

6.) Create Content!

I don’t like the word “Content” — that’s what most people advise new bloggers to focus on when they start. It sounds contrived. I think a better way to put this blogging would be to simply say “Write about what interests you in a useful manner so others could benefit from it”. Apparently, one of the most important things when it comes to putting up blog posts is : consistency. I don’t know about you but I surely CANNOT force myself to come up with good quality writing long term if it does not interest me! I am going to start out with at least 2 blog posts per week and adjust accordingly.

These may seem like very basic steps (and they are!) but without these crucial steps, you are not going to end up having a successful blog. Got a long way to go!