How To Start A Blog And Make Money Online (Read These 7 Easy Step-By-Step Guide)

How To Start A Blog: Easy Step-By-Step Guide

Welcome here ! Have you ever wondered ? “How do I start a blog”? “How do I make money blogging”? “How do I make money online”? Then this guide is quite for you.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to start a blog and make money from your blog without any special knowledge of website coding.

I wrote this free guide to help you learn how to create a blog without any website coding skills or having to pay an expensive web developer to do it for you.

How to start a blog and make money

Starting a blog is one of the easy and most accessible ways to launch your own business, advertise it and earn an income online (from anywhere in the world).

You don’t need to be a professional content writer or web developer. You don’t need any credentials, years of experience in your field, or a degree in order to blog and become successful with it.

You can start blogging regardless of your age, location or experience level and still build a profitable online business.

I started from the same place you’re at right now. The only difference between you and me is that I’ve already been doing it for long.

This guide shows you how to avoid the same mistakes I did when I started then. This will make it easier, and quicker for you.

Quickly Explore These Terms

Click on the following terms to expand and read about them.

[lightweight-accordion title=”What is a blog ?” schema=”faq”]A blog is a term used to describe a website that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. It is a regularly updated website where new content is frequently published, usually written in an informal or conversational style with the goal of attracting readers and generating an online income. You are reading on this blog here right now, and this easy-to-follow guide will walk you through learning how to create a blog of your own.[/lightweight-accordion]

[lightweight-accordion title=”Types of Blogs” schema=”faq”] There are different types of blog you can build. Here are few of them. • Journalism blogs • Health blogs • Travel blogs • Book blogs • Fashion blogs • Lifestyle blogs • Wedding blogs • Project blogs • Sociology blogs • Education blogs • Quizzing blogs • Legal blogs • How-to/Tutorial blogs  [/lightweight-accordion]

[lightweight-accordion title=”What is blogging ?” schema=”faq”]A Blogging is a process of maintaining or running blog posts, articles and informations on webpage.[/lightweight-accordion]

[lightweight-accordion title=”Who is a Blogger ?” schema=”faq”]A blogger is a person who owns or runs a blog or a person who maintains a blog. That is, posting articles or new posts, information, sharing the most up-to-date news and opinions. Such entries are known as blog posts.[/lightweight-accordion]

[lightweight-accordion title=”Difference Between a Blog and a Website” schema=”faq”]A blog is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts) which are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Notable examples are awakesure.com, flashlearners.com and wpbeginner.com. While a website is a collection of web pages and related contents that is identified by a common domain name and published on web server. Notable examples are wikipedia.org, google.com and amazon.com. [/lightweight-accordion]

[lightweight-accordion title=”Content Management System (CMS)” schema=”faq”]A software that provides a method of managing a website is commonly called a CMS or “Content Management System”. Many blogging software programs are considered a specific type of CMS. They provide the features required to : • create and maintain a blog. • make publishing on the internet. • simplify writing an article. • give titles to blog posts. • organize the posts under categories. The most used CMS that powers almost 43% of websites on the internet is WordPress. [/lightweight-accordion]

Why You Should Start A Blog ?

1. To educate your audience (Through Tutorials and Guides).

2. To build your online brand (Through Email marketing).

3. To learn new skills (Through CMS e.g WordPress).

4. To improve your writing ability (Through Article Writing).

5. To generate an income (Through Ads, Affiliation, Online Courses and product sales).

6. To meet new people (Through Blogging Community).

7. To land your dream job (Through Freelancing)

How A Blog Can Help Your Business Grow Faster

1) Through blog you will get more visitors and traffics to your business.

2) It helps your email marketing campaigns.

3)It helps you keep customer coming back.

4) It gives easy access to your business products and services.

5) Customers can order your products from anywhere in the world.

Please Note These:

In term of making money blogging, blog can be profitably used in two ways:

1) To advertise and market your business online:

Blog is a content marketing tool on the internet nowadays used by creators,companies and brands to advertise and market their businesses.

They also use blog to guide and educate audience and customers on the use of their products.

2) Taking blogging as a business itself:

When you take a blog as a business, you will need to monetize your blog so that you can earn income from it.

To achieve this, you have to be hardworking and understand that blogging is not a quick-rich business.

But with commitment and persistency, you will be making money blogging, even you can be making a passive income from blogging to the extent that you quit your job and face blogging as a full time business.

So if you have wondered how to make enough money blogging to quit your job? 

You can do it. Tons of people already have. Do you want a proof ?

1) Alex and Lauren – Two professional bloggers who went from broke and frustrated to making $103,457.98 in their first year of blogging !

You can read their income report here.

2) Ryan Robinson – A full-time blogger & content marketing consultant who makes over $30,000 per month on Blogging.

You can read his income report here.

3) Neil Patel – A blogger who gets over 2,436,100 unique visitors to his blog a year and generates well over a million dollars in annual revenue. He has generated $381,772 in just one month.

Neil Patel Income report statistics. How he generated $381.772 in one month.

How To Get Started

When you start a blog, probably the first thing you need to take into consideration is what type of CMS you’ll use to compose it.

There are a lot of CMS’s out there. The most famous among them is WordPress. It is easy to install, and easy to use, and even easier to customize.

Therefore, it is best for you to choose WordPress for the CMS with which you’ll establish your blog especially if you are not a tech savvy.

WordPress.org  logo screenshot on how to start a blog

Note 1: CMS is a software for publishing a blog online.

Note 2: WordPress.org is different from WordPress.com.

WordPress.org is a free software installed on a web server that gives you total control over your blog.

While WordPress.com is a platform where blogs are built and hosted, it is full of restrictions unless you upgrade.

To get started, you need to have certain things.

1) Web hosting that will provide you the web server on which you will install WordPress and save all your website’s files and documents.

2) A Blog publisher(CMS) that will help you publish your website into the World Wide Web where all the files and documents you saved will be visible to the public.

3) A domain name that will serves as your website address through which a visitor can visit your website.

Now, how can we get these things ??

Don’t worry, I will help you out to get those three things with ease and without paying me single penny. Just make sure you follow the below steps accordingly so that you can get your blog started and launched today.

Today ?? Yes Today, you will create a complete beautiful and responsive blog today by yourself without any technical knowledge.

Now let’s go through the whole process in detail. Here are the 7 steps to take:

  1. Choose Your Blog Niche (what your blog will be all about).
  2. Choose a Domain Name (the name of your blog).
  3. Pick a Hosting Provider (your web server provider).
  4. Build Your Blog (Install WordPress, Theme and Plugins).
  5. Get Started With WordPress Dashboard.
  6. Promote Your blog and Get Audience.
  7. Make Money From Your Blog.

How to Start a Blog in 7 Easy Steps.

Let’s start the journey, don’t skip any step and devote your time for 10-15 minutes.

Here we go:

Step One: Getting Started and Choosing Your Niche.

Choosing a niche is to pick a topic which your blog will be all about. It is recommended to choose the topic you know about very well, it can be your hobby ,your work or about anything.

Just make sure you have passion or create passion for your chosen topic so that you will have something detailed and reasonable to offer.

When it comes to choosing your blog’s niche, there are two key questions to ask yourself.

1. Do I Enjoy Learning About This Topic ?

If you don’t love the topic, you will quicly run out of idea. You shouldn’t even start a blog if you don’t love what you’re blogging about.

To cut it short, think about what your family and friends come to you for when seeking advice.

It might be heath, fitness, recipes, or relationship advice. You know best.

You can also think of any skill you have already learnt like graphics, copywriting or marketing.

2. Are Others Interested in My Chosen Topic ?

You may feel like doing something whereas people out there are not really interested in it.

You can do a quick Google search to find out if people are really searching for your topic.

Truth About Choosing Your Niche/Topic

Sometimes, you might not know if a particular topic is good for you or not until you’ve tried it. Even you may not really know if you will do well in blogging until you try it.

Just make sure you select a niche that you have an interest in or one that you have experience in.

The below are some profitable blog topics you can choose from, You can even pick two topics or more and combine them.

  • Education
  • Health and Fitness
  • Fashion and beauty
  • Recipes
  • Travel
  • Parenting
  • DIY and Crafts
  • Lifestyle
  • Finance
  • Home Decoration
  • Making Money Online
  • Relationship Advice
  • Technology
  • WordPress

Do you want to learn an in-depth guide that shows you the right ways to discovery your talented niche ?

Step Two: Choosing a Domain Name

Before anyone can begin building a blog, choosing a domain name is one of the most important part as this is how visitors will find the site and identify the brand name.

The domain name is what people type into their browsers to get to your blog.

You can decide to choose a domain name that you derived from your own personal name or nickname or from the skill you want to blog about.

It is recommended to pick a domain name that both represents your brand and easy for people to remember.

Your domain name is your site’s permanent address on the Internet. For example, “toyaab.com” is the domain name of the blog that your are on right now.

People will type “www.toyaab.com” in their browser’s address bar to reach the contents i have in my blog.

Here are some extra tips for choosing an excellent domain name:

  • Always choose a .com when possible.
  • Avoid using numbers or hyphens.
  • Avoid using homophones (words that sounds the same but are spelled differently)
  • Keep it short and simple as possible.
  • Should be easy to pronounce and understand.
  • Avoid complicated and commonly misspelled words.

Please don’t overthink this too much. I wasted most of my time trying to choose a perfect name. You should not do the same. Let me give you a tactic :

Grab a pen and paper. Then spend about ten minutes writing down every word that comes to your mind or that has relationship with your niche.

From there, start combining words and phrases until one potential name stands out to you. 

Step Three: Set Up Your Hosting Account and Pick Up Your Plan.

Once you have picked your blog name and niche, you will need to buy a domain extension and hosting plan that best suits the needs of your website.

Web hosting provider offers you web server on which WordPress software will be installed. The server serves as a place or room where your blog lives on the internet.

As you live in a particular room in your house as your blog lives in a particular server on the internet. Hope you understand ?

So, there are different server types offered by web hosting companies, the basic web server type is Shared Hosting.

Since you are building your blog on WordPress.org, it is recommended to choose a web hosting provider that suites for WordPress and buy both Domain name and Hosting together.

A new domain name typically costs around $14.99 / year, and web hosting plans normally costs $7.99 / month.

That’s a lot of money for beginners who are just starting out.

Thankfully, Toyaab Build, an official hosting service by Toyaab, has ready to offer all new bloggers a free domain name and over 60% off on web hosting.

Get Started With Toyaab Build ($2.75 per month)

→ Or Read Complete Setup Guide →

I know you might have been wondering and finally ask :

How Can I Build a Blog For Free?

Well, you can start a free blog if you want to.

But you shouldn’t start a free blog if you want to turn your new blog into a successful business.

Here’s why:

Free blog platforms come with a whole lot of limitations, including…

  • Ugly domain name.
  • Unable to run your Ads.
  • Limited ways of monetization.
  • Looks unprofessional.
  • Less bandwidth (Traffic)
  • Less customer support.
  • Lack of total control.
  • Small web storage.
  • And quite a few more!

You can’t start a blog for free, without putting any money into it, and expect to earn money from it.

If it were that easy, everyone and their families would be doing it, and everybody would have been making money online!

Trust me when i say that you should NOT start a free blog if you want to turn it into a successful online business.

Thankfully, Toyaab Build, our best cheap and secure web hosting service is ready to offer you a free domain name + free SSL and a very cheap plan price on web hosting.

→ Get Started With Toyaab Build ($2.75 per month)

→Or Read Complete Setup Guide

 

Step Four: Build Your Blog.

After setting up your hosting account, you will need to get started and build up your blog right away.

Therefore, you have to install the following:

1) WordPress: Blog Publisher Software.

2) Theme: To customize your blog to suites your choice.

3) Plugins: To enhance the functionalities of your blog.

When you have chosen Toyaab Hosting as your web host, WordPress installation is as easy as ABC.

After few clicks, everything will be set up automatically. No technical knowledge is required.

To avoid this post been too lenthy, I have written a guide to install WordPress, theme and plugins. Click the button below to access it.

Step Five: Get Started With WordPress Dashboard.

Now, it’s time to familiarize yourself with some WordPress terms in the dashboard area. It is very easy to master.

Once you understand the basics, you’ll quickly know how to use the dashboard.

WordPress Dashboard for beginners

Here is a basic overview of dashboard features:

1) Posts

Your posts are your blog posts, or “articles.” This is where all of the contents that you write will live. You can go back to edit it anytime you want.

Blog posts are can organized into categories so that people can easily find the content that they are interested in.

For example, on this blog, my posts are organized into the following categories:

  • Blogging
  • Marketing
  • Ecommerce
  • WordPress

Blog posts have specific purposes that usually involve educating your audience about a topic.

2) Pages

Pages are used to write “static content” that isn’t updated frequently.

Pages are similar to posts. They looks similiar in WordPress and have the same editors.

  • Contact page (usually has a form or email address where people can contact you)
  • About page (about you and your blog)
  • Legal pages (refund policy, privacy policy, disclaimer, etc.)

The purpose of blog pages is usually to provide more technical information about your website.

3) Comments

This is where you can see the comments that people write on your blog posts and respond to them.

You can view them on each post that someone has commented on or you can see them all at once in this area.

4) Media Library

The media library is where all of the images that you upload to your blog are stored.

You can add images directly to the media library or you can add them directly into blog posts and they will automatically be added to the library.

5) Appearance

This is where you can make customizations to your blog like changing themes.

You can also create and edit your menus, sidebars, and other widgets in the Appearance section.

6) Plugins

A plugin is add-on software that you can install on your blog to make additional customizations that are outside the capabilities of your theme.

Plugin enhances the functionalities of your blog.

There are both free and paid plugins and they can help you:

  • add live chat to your blog
  • speed up your website
  • add social icons and buttons
  • help with blog security
  • And so much more!

Plugins and themes can be used to provide additional widgets to a WordPress blog.

7) Users

This is where you can change your email and password to your site or add other users if desired.

You don’t need any new user for now but if you want to hire a web developer or anyone else to help you design or make changes to your blog, you can create new users to give them access to your bog.

8) Settings

This is where your general blog settings are, including how some things are set up and displayed on your blog.

In the settings area, you can edit the following:

  • Site title
  • Site tagline
  • Email address
  • Time zone and date settings
  • Homepage and blog display settings
  • Comment settings
  • Reset Permalink
  • Bio information
  • And more

The best thing you can do is just start exploring dashboard. Click on some of the links on the dashboards and see what options come up to familiarize yourself with the settings and others.

Step Six: Promote Your Blog.

As we all know starting something new is sometimes seems difficult and when it comes to advertising a blog, you have to do it in the right way to drive even above the expected traffics.

1) Using social media to promote your blog.

Social media is one of the good medium to promote your blog. You can do so through your social media account, news feed, status, forums, timeline, pages and groups.

You can join our digital community by creating your account here, then you can ask any question or contribute solution to already asked questions.

You can also join the following groups by networking with other bloggers.

Facebook Groups (Entrepreneurial):

LinkedIn Groups (Entrepreneurial):

Reddit Sub-Channels:

2) Using an email newsletter to grow your blog audience.

Email marketing is the use of email to promote products or services while developing relationships with potential customers or clients.

Get started with Convertkit on email marketing automation system.

3) Optimizing a blog for Search Engines.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of blog traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.

SEO targets unpaid traffic which is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results

4) Guest blogging on other blog.

Guest blogging is the act of writing content for another people’s blog.

As a guest blogger, you can write posts  for similar blogs within your niche in order to attract traffic back to your blog.

If you want to read a complete guide on how to promote a blog or any business online. Click the button below:

Step Seven: Make Money Blogging.

Now, it’s time to monetize your blog and make money from it. This stage is what all new blogger are mostly interested in, fine.

Today, i will take you through 9 proven ways to make money from your blog.

In fact, you will be making passive income with your blog.

But before that, you must have done the following :

1) Set up Hosting Account.

First head to Toyaab Build and sign up for the Basic Plan. Their plans start as low as $2.75 per monthYou will also get a free domain name and SSL Certifacate with your hosting plan!

2) Install WordPress.

Secondly, navigate here to read a complete guide on WordPress Installation.

3) Build Audience.

Audience are people who follow your blog, read your posts and have trust in you. Building audience will allow more traffics to your blog.

You can build an audience through various mediums, like your email newsletter, blog comments, and social media channels.

If you need a complete guide on building your audience, you can consider reading this guide.

4) Lastly, Publish Posts.

Try as much as possible to publish at least 10-15 posts before starting monetization.

After you have your first few posts and traffic starts to flow in, you can start thinking about how you want to make your first $1. 

You can monetize your blog in many ways, from selling ad space,freelancing, digital products, physical products and affiliate marketing. Even there are dozens of monetization methods you can explore.

For full monetization guides, explore these 9 proven ways to make money blogging.

You are ready to run a blogging business and you have just invested some money into that business.

Endnotes.

Starting a blog with WordPress is so easy that you don’t even need any technical knowledge before you can own a website or a blog.

WordPress can be used to create any type of website ranging from personal blog to an e-commerce sites (business websites).

The only need is to know which type of theme and plugin is suitable or applicable to the type of blog/website you want to create.

I hope you enjoyed this post on how to start a blog and make money online!

If you encounter any problem when you are building your blog with WordPress. Feel free to leave your question into the comment box below.

Have you started your blog ?, What is delaying you ?. Start Today.

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