How to Start a Blog: Quick Guide for Beginners (2021)
We have talked briefly before on blogging as a source of passive income and how much you can earn from a blog. However, we realized that we never covered the topic of ‘how to start a blog.’ So, this article will be dedicated towards the very easy steps of starting your own dream blog and getting started on your dream journey super fast.
In 2021, starting a blog is so easy. You don’t need to know anything about any technical stuff related to the Internet to get started. This is a big relief for anyone (myself included) to step into the massive realm of blogging. Essentially, you are setting up a website–a tiny part of the Internet at first. Hopefully, you will be able to make a sizable dent that can benefit you in so many ways.
In this article, we will take you through some simple steps you need to follow to get set up on your website/blog within minutes or hours. But let me warn you, the first step is the hardest and the most time-consuming. But it can be the most enjoyable thing too. So, let’s get started.
Disclosure: third-party links in this article (such as hosting services are affiliate links. If you use any of them to begin your blogging journey, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Step-by-Step Guide to Starting Your Own Blog
- Decide on a niche and a blog name
- Choose a blogging platform
- Check to see if your blog name is available or taken
- Get web hosting
- Install WordPress on your blog
- Install a suitable theme on your blog
- Write your first post
- Continue writing
If some words like ‘niche,’ ‘hosting,’ or ‘WordPress’ made you go ‘meh! do I have to learn this now?’ do not worry, we will explain everything in detail below. You just have to follow the instructions as we mention and after this one-time process through steps 1 through 7, you are set for life.
Starting a Blog in 2021: First Steps Explained
Step 01: Choose your favorite niche and a blog name
Like we said before, this can be the most enjoyable or daunting task in this process. If you already have a topic which you want to blog about, you’re all set. If not, take a break from everything else and spend a few hours, if needed, to find your passion. Picking the right avenue here will decide the longevity of your blogging efforts.
A ‘niche’ is a particular area or a topic of interest that you can write about in your blog. There are literally millions of possible topics you can touch such as music, space, vehicles, traveling, photography, cooking, books, music, pets, finance, hobbies, movies, education, painting, electronics, DIY stuff, celebrities, medicine, and the list goes on and on. These are called niches and you have to pick one.
It helps A LOT to pick a topic that you are personally passionate and knowledgeable about. Otherwise, doing research on a topic that does not interest you can quickly burn yourself out.
Once you have a topic in mind that you are eager to write about, we have to see if this topic is hard to tackle on the Internet. You can do so with a simple Google search of your topic.
Make sure to go to Google.com (not any other variations such as Google.ca, Google.ru, Google.co.in, etc.) so that you search on the biggest platform of all. Type in your topic and hit search.
Chances are you will get millions of search results in a fraction of a second. Look for the number of ‘results’ just below the search bar. You will likely see a number in millions or even billions. A search query for ‘travel tips’ gives us ‘About 2,920,000,000 results’ on Google. When numbers are in billions, it becomes a dangerous avenue to trod on.
You can either pick a different topic or ‘narrow’ your topic. Our example here, ‘travel tips’ is a pretty broad search query. However, if we narrow it down to ‘travel tips for beginners,’ Google gives us ‘About 156,000,000 results.’ Now, this is a sizable chunk one can manage.
Tip: Once you search Google on your broad topic, scroll down to the very bottom of the search results. Google will suggest some related topics that are much more concise and specific. You can use these to brainstorm topics for your blog
This search result number gives you two important clues about your topic on the Internet. 1-competition, and 2-interest in your topic on the Internet. So, while a very high number represents a very high competition, a very low number also means that no one else is interested in this topic. Unless you plan on revolutionizing the world with your blog topic, stay away from search results that give you less than a million results, too.
Another approach you can take is to use a search tool like Wordtracker. Here, you can search for keywords relating to your topic and test out the waters before you jump in of sorts. You can see the Internet’s interest in your topic and competition for the topic. Interest should be higher and competition should be lower.
The first step is the hardest and likely the most time-consuming. But this is crucial for the success of your blog in the future.
Once you filter out your favorite and Google-friendly topic, it is time to name your blog. You can essentially name your blog anything, but it does help if the name hints at what your blog is about.
For example, it helps for a blog about traveling to have the word ‘travel’ or ‘voyage’ or ‘holiday’ somewhere in the blog name. It helps a blog about cooking to have the word ‘cooking’ or ‘tasty’ or ‘yummy’ or ‘chef’ or something related in the blog name.
At this point in the timeline of the Internet, you will not be able to own a blog named ‘travel.com.’ This ship probably sailed 20 years ago. So, you have to be creative with your blog name. Try mixing 1 to 3 words maximum and come up with a name. More than that would be difficult to remember for your fans and also it becomes a sentence rather than a name at that point!
Don’t worry, the rest of the steps are easier…
Step 02: Choose a blogging platform
A blogging platform is where your blog or website will be running on. There are a dozen of blogging platforms to choose from. But you will likely end up on WordPress. This is by far the most popular option among bloggers with over 90% of the blogs in the US are run with WordPress. It’s easy and the software is free. WordPress also gives you full control over your blog!
Other popular options are platforms such as Blogger, Tumblr, HubPages, or Medium. You can easily set up your blog on these too and these are absolutely free. But your website name will have an addon that can look ugly. For example; your website called ‘my travel destinations’ will be set up as a subdomain on Blogger as ‘mytraveldestinations.blogspot.com.’ On Tumblr, it will look like ‘mytraveldestinations.tumblr.com.’ Essentially, your website is a subpart of the bigger platform that is Blogger or Tumblr.
The biggest pitfall of choosing a platform such as Blogger, Tumblr, HubPages, or Medium is that you are bound by these organizations’ rules and regulations. Some organizations such as HubPages have serious quality requirements on the articles you post. If your articles don’t meet these guidelines, they will not even give your articles a chance on Google. You should not have to worry about stringent quality guidelines when you are starting off. Also, if you break any of their guidelines, your blog can be taken down easily!
If you are selecting a third-party blogging platform such as Blogger, Tumblr, HubPages, or Medium, you don’t need this guide any further. Go on the respective website, and follow their instructions on how to set up your presence on their platform.
We strongly recommend you using WordPress as your blogging platform.
Step 03: Check if your blog name is available
So in the third step of starting your own blog, we come to another crucial point. This is crucial in the sense, you have to check if your blog name is taken by someone else. If it is taken, you cannot just have another blog of the same name. To be precise, we are talking about the domain name or the URL of your blog.
For example, this blog is called ‘Personal Finance Guide’ which is the blog name. The domain name is, fortunately, ‘personalfinanceguide.net’ as I was able to find a domain name matching my blog name. So, if your blog name is ‘my travel destinations,’ the best option is to own ‘mytraveldestinations.com’ on the Internet.
If this is already taken, sadly, you will have to change the domain name or the URL. You don’t necessarily have to change your blog name, i.e. you can still have the blog name ‘my travel destinations’ and have a different domain name called ‘mytravellingdestinations.com.’ But it looks more professional and less chaotic if both blog name and the domain name matches.
Tip: You don’t need to pay to obtain the domain name of your dreams 99% of the time. When you buy a hosting plan from a hosting service provider, they will add the first year’s domain registration for free into your purchase bundle. (Refer: Step 4.1 of this guide).
Another option, if your domain name is already taken, is to change the “.com” part of it. Internet has so many of these “domain extensions” such as .com, .net, .org, .info, .gov, and so on. Some of these extensions serve specific purposes. For example, .gov extensions are used by government websites. The two extensions dot com and dot net are the most popular and you should aim to own one of these. But, we also don’t recommend you going for ‘mytraveldestinations.net’ if someone else already has ‘mytraveldestinations.com.’ This way, both these domain names will be competing heavily in the same niche, and you don’t want that.
You can do this check by simply searching the desired domain name on Google. But, more precise would be to use a hosting service to search. With this, we go to step 4.
Step 04: Choose web hosting
We cannot afford to have a dedicated server/computer at home to keep our website running 24*7, so we get a third party to do that for us. They are called hosting companies because they host our website on the Internet. This is where you will have to incur a monthly cost.
But not to worry. Hosting space has become so competitive now, you can host your website as low as $2-5 per month. Some popular hosting companies are SiteGround, Bluehost, WordPress, HostGator, DreamHost, GoDaddy, and so on.
When you select a hosting service, a few things to consider are the cost, uptime, level of customer support (very important initially), and availability of a ‘shared hosting’ plan for starting up.
‘Shared hosting’ means your website will be running in parallel with one or more other websites on one of their servers/computers. So, their resources will be shared among the few hosted websites thus reducing the cost per website. This is why ‘shared hosting’ packages are the cheapest on all the above hosting providers. Some companies may have different names for this. But, to start up, select the lowest cost hosting plan. When your website grows much bigger, you can easily transfer to a higher hosting plan with the same company or even a different one.
Step 4.1: Buying your domain
Your domain or the website URL is something you have to buy, too. But again, competition has driven prices of these prices. You can buy your domain for something around $20-$40 per year. BUT, most of these hosting companies will let you buy the domain with them for FREE when you select them for hosting. So, watch out for this option too, when you select your hosting service provider.
So, select your hosting provider, register with them, pick your domain name with them, pay up the hosting fee, and you’re almost there.
You can do the entire process from steps 03 to 05 when you register through WordPress first. Click on this link, click on ‘Start your website’ and follow the steps on the screen.
Step 05: Install WordPress on your brand new blog
WordPress is the software or platform that enables us to build the website–the actual stuff you want to put on your blog. All hosting service providers help you with installing WordPress as part of their onboarding process. Once you log in to your account with your hosting provider, you should be able to see something like ‘create a website’ somewhere. If you don’t, try contacting their live support. Usually, you can get assistance with this through live chat.
For example, HostGator has a ‘one-click’ WordPress setup button. BlueHost gives you the same option through the ‘Start Building’ button. On SiteGround, you should something like ‘Start a New Website’ and then you get select ‘WordPress’ as your preferred platform. You can try navigating around your hosting account to find this yourself or the easiest is to contact live chat.
Now, to access your WordPress control panel (or your command center for your blog), log in to your hosting provider account and find something similar to ‘Login to WordPress.’ This should redirect you to the WordPress control panel. You can also access this control panel by typing in ‘yourblogdomain.com/wp-admin’ on your Internet browser.
Step 06: Install a WordPress theme on your blog
Take a few minutes to take in the WordPress options in front of you. You will see several options for controlling everything related to your blog on the left-side panel.
Your website should be live at this point. If you type in your domain name on the address bar on your Internet browser, the website should load up with a blank interface. So, this needs to change. The first step in changing this is to add a theme. This eliminates the need to learn website coding and designing to make the website look beautiful.
We will add some videos on installing WordPress on some popular hosting providers below.
How to Install WordPress on SiteGround Hosting
Get SiteGround Hosting as low as $4.99/month with 100% renewable energy match
How to Add WordPress to BlueHost Hosting
Join BlueHost for $3/month with this sign-up link
Install WordPress on HostGator Hosting
You can navigate to Appearance -> Theme in the left side menu of your WordPress control panel. You will see some default themes shown and you can scroll up and down to discover more. These are free WordPress themes and you should be able to find something to your likes among them. Later on, when your blog is earning money, you can buy a premium theme from vendors such as Envato.
Once you find a theme you like, click on it and you can preview it before installation or simply click on ‘Activate’ to install it. And, done!
Go back to your website URL and see your website in its new thematic glory!
If you want to adjust the nitty-gritties, you can customize these themes to change the general layout, font types, font colors, background colors, and menus. Take a look at the video below to learn how to customize WordPress themes.
How to Customize the WordPress Themes
Step 6.1: General WordPress settings
Head to Settings –> General on the left side menus in your WordPress control panel. These settings allow you to tweak some basic settings and set up basic information about your website.
- Site title – your blog title
- Tagline – a catchy phrase to describe your blog. On this website, we say ‘Your personal finance guru for financial independence.’
- WordPress address/Site address – both should be the same which is your domain name or URL
Adjust any other setting as needed. Usually, default settings work for the rest. Then scroll down to the bottom and click ‘Save changes.’
Step 07: Write your first post
This is why WordPress is so easy to use to build websites. You don’t have to learn HTML (the building block language of websites) to be a blogger now. WordPress gives you the interface to adjust everything on your blog.
Posting your first article is a big deal. Maybe you want to introduce yourself, your blog, or your niche. Or maybe, you just want to jump right into content creation.
There are two options when creating articles. You can create a ‘Post’ or a ‘Page.’ Both of them allow you to create an article like the one you are reading right now. The main difference, according to WordPress, is that ‘Pages’ are much more static content than ‘Posts.’ For example, your ‘Welcome’ or ‘About Me’ article can be in the form of a ‘Page’ since it will likely not change with time. ‘Posts’ are the general content you create on your topic for the website. If you are unsure, just create posts.
Once you are in the WordPress control panel, you can see the ‘Posts’ menu on the left side. When you hover your mouse over it you will see a new drop-down menu with some options. You can select ‘All Posts’ to see the articles you have already published on your blog. For now, select the second option ‘Add new’ to create a new article.
You will be redirected to a pretty simple interface where you can add an article title and then the body of the article. To the right of the screen, you will see some options relating to the post. One of the most important of these is the ‘Featured image’ where you can add an image to the article that will show as a thumbnail when you share the article on social media and such.
Another important section is ‘Tag’ that you can use to add a label as to what your article is about. They are like keywords from your article. If you are writing about a trip to the Amazon rainforest, tags could include ‘Amazon,’ ‘Brazil,’ rainforests,’ and so on. Visitors on your website will be able to see these tags and browse articles of similar topics by clicking on the tags.
So, add a creative title for your article, add 300+ words to the body of the article, and re-read to check for grammar and spelling mistakes. Once you are satisfied, click on the ‘Publish’ button to the top right of the screen. They will ask once more to verify, and again click on the second ‘Publish’ button that appears on the top right. BAM! Your first article is live. You can navigate back to your website and see your first article live on the website in its full glory.
Now, there is A LOT more to writing an article than what I have said here. Your articles have to be appealing for the reader, compete with other websites of similar niches, and be loved by search engines. These techniques are called SEO (search engine optimization). But this is for another article.
Step 08: Continue writing
All the 7 steps so far were just reaching the base of the mountain. Now begins the climb and the climb is hard. But hopefully, since you are passionate about the topic you picked, you will enjoy writing and creating content.
Keep writing, follow best practices in writing, try and build a community around your blog on social media, and keep writing. In no time, you will see visitors trickling in. Slowly but surely, your blog is only headed upward toward greener pastures from here.
Once you have a decent amount of monthly visitors reading your articles, you can begin monetizing your blog and covering all the hosting and domain costs.
Conclusion
This is the end to our comprehensive guide on starting your own blog in a few easy steps. If you still find some parts of this tutorial difficult to tackle, do leave a comment below and we can address your individual situations separately.
If you have any other remarks about the guide, do leave a comment below. We love feedback. Thank you for reading. Happy blogging!
