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Want to learn how to start a blog in WordPress?
Are you looking to create a WordPress blog and make money blogging?
If you are here, then chances are that you have chosen to start a blog,
You have done your research and probably even gone ahead to choose your blog niche…
But now you are stuck wondering…
How do I create a blog in WordPress? Where do I begin?, What do I need to do? Where do I start?, How do you create a blog?
Today we are going to look into a straightforward guide on how to start a blog on WordPress.org using HostGator as our hosting provider of choice.
First, let’s take a look at what a blog is and what you need to start a successful blog.
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What Is A Blog?
A blog is an informal way of writing online typically run by an individual or a small group.
It usually contains blog posts and articles about a specific subject area or topic
Usually written in a very informative way that keeps readers engaged and willing to read more.
It is one of the best ways to share ideas and information online on a particular topic.
In this post, we will be focusing on how to start a blog in WordPress.org, not wordpress.com
Why Should I Start A Blog?
There are so many reasons why people choose to start a blog, the most popular reasons are that you:
- Will be willing to share your knowledge with like-minded people like you who are interested in what you do.
- Want to become financially independent and be your own boss.
- Wish to have a side hustle and make money online.
- Want the freedom to work from anywhere in the world.
- Are looking to build a brand online doing what you love.
If you fall into any of the categories above then blogging might be for you!
Even if you are looking to start just a hobby blog,
It is a great way to spend your time online and build relationships that last forever.
What Do I Need & How Do I Start A Blog In WordPress?
To start a blog on WordPress.org, you simply need:
- A Domain Name: The name of your blog example. 6figureblogger.com
- Web Hosting: For online services that put your blog on the internet, you can use Bluehost.com or Hostgator
- A Blog Theme: A structured layout of how you want your blog to look
These are the most important requirements for starting a blog in WordPress, everything else is secondary.
If you have these 3 things, then you can start a wordpress.org blog in 30 minutes or less!
Can I Make Money With My Blog?
Yes, you can!
After learning how to start a blog in WordPress and following the steps listed here,
Making money with your blog is possible, although it depends on what kind of blog you want to start.
If you are looking to start a personal blog, your choice of a niche can greatly impact blog monetization.
But in general, you just need to grow your audience and increase your blog traffic and you can easily monetize your blog and start earning from it.
How Much Does It Cost To Start A Blog?
If you are starting a free blog…
All you have to do is simply create an account on a free blogging platform like Blogger or Squarespace,
Then choose a blog name and voila, you are all set to go!
But if you are looking into creating a professional blog that you fully own and control, then you want to create a WordPress.org blog.
For the purpose of this tutorial,
I will be teaching you how to create a blog on WordPress.org as I believe it is better to start off a blog fully owned…
Don’t worry….it doesn’t cost so much…
Domain Cost on HostGator – Free 1 year
Hosting cost 1 year – $33 (65% Discounted On the first year)
Reasons Why I Chose HostGator.com
If you are wondering how to start a blog in WordPress with HostGator and why I chose HostGator as my web hosting, here’s why:
- It’s Affordable: You can host your website for a small price of $2.75 per month for the first year.
- Great Performance: You can expect fast-loading websites and zero downtime for your blog.
- One-Click WordPress Install: You can easily install WordPress on your domain name by simply clicking on a button.
- Get A Free Domain: Instead of $19.99 for a year for your domain name, you can get one year of free domain payment for free if you pay for a year-plus subscription.
- Easy Upgrade: You can easily upgrade your website hosting to a faster one when you start getting more traffic
- Free SSL Certificate: You can get a free security certificate for your website to prevent malware attacks and spam bots
- Free Email: With your domain name and web hosting, you can create a free custom email for your domain name with HostGator.
How To Start A Blog In WordPress In 2023
To help you start a blog website as fast and simply as possible, here is a full guide:
If you are ready, let’s get right to it…
Step 1. Choosing A Domain Name / Blog Name
Here’s a very comprehensive post on how to choose a domain name for your blog,
It covers a lot of tips and tricks on how to choose a really great memorable name for your blog
One that your readers will remember and keep coming back to.
Feel free to check out the complete post!
Step 2. Checking For Domain Name Availability
After you have taken the time to choose a domain name that you are most comfortable with,
It is now time to check if that name is available.
You can do this using two ways, one is by going to Google and typing it into the search bar and seeing what comes up.
For example; type (“www.amazingamy.com”) and if such a website exists,
It will take you straight to the website’s home page.
The other way to check if the name is available is to search for the domain name availability through a hosting company like HostGator enter your domain name in the box and search for it.
HostGator will inform you if the name is available or not and if it is not available,
It automatically suggests related available names for you
If the name you wanted is not available (currently being used by another website).
3: Registering Your Domain Name And Web Hosting
After getting your domain name and making sure it is available,
It’s now time to register and choose your web hosting.
Web hosting means simply paying for your website to be put online on the World Wide Web,
This way, if someone searches for your domain name in a web browser, they are directed to your website.
Think of it as putting your website on the internet so that people can find it.
To do this, simply go to hostgator.com and choose the type of web hosting you would like,
Since you are a starter, you need to go for the simplest hosting package available and upgrade as your blog audience grows.
If you are comfortable with the domain name you have chosen, then it’s time to choose your hosting plan and pay for it.
HostGator offers a shared hosting package and you can sign up for the hatchling plan which costs $2.75 a month,
choose any of the plans you want below…
You also get a 65% discount if you pay for a year or more plus 1 free domain registration for 1 year!
Next, click “Buy Now” to go ahead and choose the length of your package type
The next step is to choose any additional services that you might like to add in addition to hosting and domain name,
There are a few options,
You can scroll through them and choose anyone you like.
If you are satisfied with the services you have chosen,
The next step is to enter a coupon code if you have any.
Next, you want to fill in your billing information and credit card details and pay for your hosting and domain name.
Receive A Billing Account Login Email From HostGator
After payment, you will receive a confirmation email to your registered email address,
Informing you of your purchase and your billing account login details,
The email should look something like this.
Note that HostGator needs at least 24 to 48 hours to register your domain name and circulate it to all web servers around the world before it becomes accessible to you.
After the propagation is finished, you will be notified via email, otherwise,
You can get in touch with their customer care to confirm if you are very excited and can’t wait,
They are always happy to help!
Use the link at the beginning of the email to be directed to the customer portal to log into your HostGator account.
Step 2. Installing WordPress On Your Domain Name
After being directed to the HostGator billing account login page,
Enter the username and password in the email sent to you by HostGator to log into your dashboard.
HostGator offers a one-click installation for WordPress,
This means that you can simply install WordPress on your domain name by just clicking on a button!
Amazing right?
Click on the Cpanel button to have access to the administrative control page of your HostGator account,
Navigate to the site builders and CMS (content management system) part of your cPanel dashboard and click on wordpress.
This is where you need to click on the button to install WordPress on your chosen domain name.
After Installing WordPress on your domain name,
You will be navigated to the next page where you will be informed that your installation is now complete
You will be provided a username and temporary password which you can use to log into your WordPress dashboard.
Be sure to change your login details after you log into your dashboard,
You can change it to something more comfortable that you can easily remember,
It will be required whenever you decide to log into the WordPress dashboard of your website.
Log Into Your WordPress Dashboard
You are now officially ready to log into your WordPress dashboard and install your WordPress theme.
To do this, simply type your registered domain name into the Google search bar
You should be automatically redirected to your website showing a standard coming soon page that looks like this.
Now that you know your WordPress installation was successful,
Click the admin login button on your website page to be automatically redirected to the WordPress login page,
Here you will enter the temporary username and password you were given during your WordPress installation process.
This is what your WordPress dashboard should look like after you log in.
Step 3. Selecting & Installing Your WordPress Theme
The next step is to choose a WordPress template and install it on your WordPress website,
A WordPress theme is basically the skeleton of your WordPress website,
It is what controls how your website looks to your readers and other people visiting your blog.
As a new blogger, you don’t need to be so extravagant when it comes to getting a WordPress theme,
You can go for simple free themes already available on your WordPress dashboard.
You want to choose a theme that really matches the aura and tone of your website
One that brings the quality of your content and the information being shown on it.
There are so many WordPress themes available that you could use but for the purpose of this tutorial,
I will be showing you how to install a free WordPress theme,
Free themes are readily available right inside your WordPress dashboard you don’t need to pay for them.
As your blog grows, you can choose to change the WordPress theme to a premium theme, in the meantime, a free theme will do.
Next, you want to go ahead and install your WordPress theme by clicking on appearance and themes.
Next, click on Add New and search for your preferred WordPress theme
There are more than 4,000 free WordPress themes available and directly accessible from your WordPress dashboard,
You can select any theme of your choice from any of them,
Use the search button to search for more themes made specifically for your chosen blog niche.
Click on the theme of your choice and activate it by clicking the activate button at the top left-hand corner of the theme viewing page.
Customizing Your WordPress Theme
The next step is to customize your chosen theme to make it look how you want it to on the front of your website
(the part of the website your readers see when they enter your domain name into the Google search bar and are directed to your home page)
To customize your WordPress theme, simply go to Appearance > Customize
Here you can edit the design of your blog by changing your preferred color, typography, etc.
You check if the changes you have made look good on both desktop, mobile, and tablets,
Use their respective bottom at the bottom of the customization page.
When you are done with your customizations and are satisfied with the changes you have made,
Click the Publish button at the top left corner of the customization page to make your WordPress theme design visible to visitors.
Step 4: Choosing A Brand Identity, Colors, Logo, etc
The next step in creating a blog is choosing your brand colors, designing your logo, and choosing a font.
The reason you want to do this is that you want your content to look the same, uniform, and consistent across all your platforms online.
This showcases authority as a brand and helps people to trust you more
because they know that you are a legitimate source of information for anything they need in that particular niche.
You can use a free tool like Color Hunt to choose your brand colors and Canva to design your logo,
there are tons of free elements and templates to incorporate into your logo and make it the best!
When you are done designing,
Simply head over to the customize section of your WordPress dashboard as I showed you earlier to upload your logo and change your typography setting.
Step 5: Creating All The Necessary Core Pages
In every blog, some pages are absolutely necessary, pages that you simply need to have on your website.
Not just because they help you get accepted to monetization agencies like Google Adsense,
But also because they help your blog avoid lawsuits and other cyber content liability issues.
The most important pages to have on your blog are:
- Home page: The first page people see when they navigate to your domain name, it should be easy to navigate and should showcase the services you offer upfront
- Terms of Service: It is a document that tells your readers about your copyrighted work and helps to limit liability and content misuse
- Privacy Policy: It tells users about the kind of data you collect from them when they visit your blog and what you do with the information you collect from them.
- Disclaimer: It is a page that simply discloses how your blog makes money to your users, it can contain information about products or services that you are affiliated with and how you are monetizing your content
- Contact: A page where people can easily contact you directly by filling out a form
- About: A page that lets your readers know who is the face behind the blog
You can find templates for any of these pages online that are free like termly, and use them at your own risk.
You can also visit other websites in your niche and follow their format to create your own core pages.
Step 6. Creating Your First Blog Post
After you are done with your WordPress theme installation and setup,
The next thing you want to do is to go ahead and do is to create your first blog post.
Based on your blog niche, your blog post type will vary, for a list of blog post ideas that you can create in any niche, click here.
You can customize your blog post as you like and simply click the publish button at the top right corner to publish your post when you are done.
Step 7. Customizing WordPress Theme & Plugins
The great thing about learning how to start a blog in WordPress is that you get the freedom to maximize your website to the fullest,
You can change so many things, add so many things, and even delete things that you simply don’t want to be on your blog.
Whereas, in other blogging platforms, the control you have over your blog and its customizations are limited to inbuilt systems already designed just for blogging.
In WordPress, you can use plugins to change every single aspect of your blog and make it so much better!.
All you have to do is install a plugin by uploading one or by using the search bar to search for available plugins that fit the need you have and get started customizing it to fit your blog.
Be careful, even though using plugins is great for optimizations,
Too many WordPress themes on your blog can do more harm than good, they can slow down your blog as well.
Step 8: Setting Up Google Analytics For Tracking Website Visitors
The blog creation process is incomplete if you have not yet set up Google Analytics on your website.
Personally, I love to set up Google Analytics as soon as possible, this way, I get to track my entire progress from the day it is launched.
To set up Google Analytics on your WordPress blog, here’s a simple setup tutorial for you to follow to help you set up Google Analytics for your WordPress blog.
Step 9: Setting Up Google Search Console To Monitor Page Rankings
If you are starting a blog then you simply need to set up Google Search Console.
It is one of the most important Google webmaster tools that help you to index your blog posts on Google,
It helps you show them to people searching for the kind of content you are creating when they type a sentence or two into the Google search bar.
Whenever you create a new blog post on your blog,
It can take a really long time before Google bots can scan your entire website to discover that one page that is your new blog post,
Uploading the link of your new blog post to the Google search console helps to get your blog post indexed a lot faster than normal.
It can also show you the page rank of currently existing blog posts,
This metric helps you know if you should alter the structure or quality of your blog posts to help you rank on page one of Google.
To set up Google Search Console, all you have to do is to go to Google Search Console,
Claim your domain by inputting a tracking code into the head of your WordPress website and tada!
You can start tracking your blog posts!
Asides indexing,
Google Search Console also helps you monitor your website page speed,
Using the Pagespeed insights tool directly accessible from the Google Search Console Dashboard.
Step 10: Setting Up Social Media Pages For Your Blog
The next step to setting up your blog is to create social media pages for your blog, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
You need to check that the name of your blog is available on social media,
Then create pages for your blog on social media,
You can create a social content calendar and use a social media scheduling tool like Later or Creator Studio to post frequently on your social media channels.
Social media is a really great tool for helping you increase traffic to your blog and build up authority.
Step 11: Installing & Activating A Security Plugin
When it comes to having an online presence,
especially a blog, the security of your blog and your readers should be at the top of your list!
Every day, a good number of websites are getting hacked, and spammed all over the web,
You have to take action to make sure that your blog does not fall victim to any of these things.
There are so many WordPress security plugins that you can install that are ready to combat these issues on your blog,
Having them installed and activated ensures that you are protecting yourself from losing access to your blog
or other personal information of your readers to cyber criminals.
Step 12: Backup Your WordPress Blog
After you have created your blog and are satisfied with how it looks,
It is essential to set up a backup routine
This helps you automatically back up your WordPress website on a particular day every week.
This is important because there are a lot of things going on at every given time on your blog,
From plugin updates to WordPress and theme updates,
you might run into an issue where you might lose all of your work.
To avoid this happening to you, you can back up your website using a plugin called updraft plus,
It’s free and it automatically backs up your WordPress website to your preferred storage location,
If you don’t have any cloud storage available you can use Google Drive on your Google account.
Step 13: Choosing An Email Marketing Software For Your Blog
Email marketing software makes it easier for you to gather and grow subscribers to your blog.
With email marketing software,
you can send out weekly newsletters and email marketing campaigns to all your blog subscribers in bulk and even monitor their responses with email marketing software.
You can also set up an RSS feed for your blog, so your subscribers are automatically notified immediately after you post on your blog.
The most popular email marketing software includes Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Convert Kit, etc.
Step 14. Increasing Website Traffic To Your Blog
The next step when starting a WordPress blog is to get traffic to your website,
Now depending on your blogging niche,
Simple details like where your target audience (your ideal readers) are and where to find them will differ from blogger to blogger.
However, there are tools to help you find your target audience,
You can go to websites like Quora, Reddit, Pinterest, or even Facebook
Where you can find people looking for what you are blogging about and then creating content designed to solve problems for those people.
Social media is a big one!
It is something you shouldn’t hesitate to work on right out when you first start your blog,
You want to position yourself as an authority in your niche and what better place to do that than social media,
where millions of people are connected on the same platform daily.
It can be a really great source of traffic for you!
Step 15: Making Money From Your Blog
After you have started getting a good deal of traffic from your blog, the next step is to monetize your website and start making some money.
The different ways that you can monetize your blog include:
- AdSense
- Affiliate Marketing
- Coaching
- Consultancy
- Sponsored Posts
- Guest Posts
- Selling Ad Spaces
And so much more!
How To Start A Blog FAQs
- Web.com
- HubSpot CMS
- Gator Website Builder by HostGator
- WordPress.com
- Squarespace
- Blogger
- Weebly
WordPress.org however, is the most popular blogging platform because it offers more flexibility and control than other blogging platforms out there.
Another way to build a blog without hosting would be to set up your computer to work as a hosting server but this is not advisable, especially if you are not a very technical person.
C
- Choose A Completely Random Name
- Use Your Name
- Scope Out Your Competitor Blog Name
- Try Blog Name Generators
- Find Synonyms Of Your Blog Niche
- Use Abbreviations Of Words In Your Blog Niche
- Use A Different Language
- Merge 2 Words Relating to Your Blog Niche
- Use A Short Sentence
I have a full blog post on how to choose a blog name you won’t regret, read it now!
But for a self-hosted website, It costs a maximum of about $60 to $100, including a free domain name, web hosting, and a premium WordPress theme.
A blog can be run by someone anonymous, especially if you are not comfortable showing your face, although it is advisable to show a face behind the brand, especially on your blog’s about page.
It helps people trust you more.
All you have to do is install a Podcast plugin called the Blubrry Powerpress Podcasting Plugin and Smart Podcaster Player plugin, activate your plugins, and upload your recorded podcasts to the Blubrry plugin on your website or podcast blog.
All you have to do is install a plugin called Polylang on your WordPress website and activate the plugin, Polylang translates the pages on your website into different languages.
There are so many options to design a blog without coding skills,
You can create it on a free hosted website like WordPress.com or Blogger,
Another way is to create a blog on WordPress.org by simply registering a domain and web hosting, installing a blog theme, and starting to write blog posts!
WordPress comes with an in-built gallery block editor that you can add to your WordPress pages and posts.
You can also add a WordPress gallery plugin to get more control and flexibility on your photo gallery.
To create a custom email address ending with your blog name, you want to approach your web hosting provider and create a custom email from your hosting account.
All you have to do is to pay for your self-hosted web hosting website and domain name and speak to your hosting provider’s customer service and they will walk you through the entire website transfer process.
To get access to more images, you will need to upgrade your account.
How To Start A Blog – Conclusion
I hope the steps I listed in this post help you learn how to start a blog in WordPress that you are proud of and that your readers will absolutely love,
If you followed this tutorial to the end, then you should have a blog now.
Starting a blog is relatively easy, sticking to it and making it a success is where the hard part is, but I have got you!
I am always here to share helpful blogging tips and tricks to help you build your dream blog and make six-figure blogging.
Did you enjoy this post? have any questions? Did you start a blog online? want to know where to start a blog for free?
Leave a comment below or check out the FAQ section to get answers to any questions you might have on how to start a blog.
You can also contact me by writing a custom message.
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