HOW TO start up a BLOG from scartch and make money from it.

HOW TO start up a BLOG from scartch.

Learn how to start a blog in 10 minutes following these simple 5 steps:

How to Start a Blog in 5 Steps:

There are five main steps you need to do in order to start a blog. If you follow this guide exactly, you’ll have your own blog set up in 30 minutes or less.

1. Choose a great blog platform
2. Choose a web host for your blog
3. How to Set up a blog on your own domain
4. Design your new blog
5. Useful resources for blogging

So, we made it. Phew. Better late than never! So, without further ado, let’s jump into the steps.

Starting a blog will be easy even if you have no technical experience—and I’m here to guide you through every step of the way. In about ten minutes from now, you’ll have a brand new blog to call your own.

In this free guide for beginners, I’m going to show you everything you need to know when it comes to learning how to start a blog and eventually profit from it. 

 But first...

What is a blog?

A blog is a regularly updated website where new content is frequently published, typically written in an informal or conversational style—often with the goal of attracting readers and generating an online income. In this guide, we’re talking about both how to start a blog and make money from it.

Should you start a blog?

Today, starting a blog is by far one of the easiest, most accessible ways to launch your own business and earn an income online (from anywhere in the world). The best part? You don’t need to be a professional writer in order to start a blog—because people who read blogs crave the more relatable, conversational tone of a blogger.

You don’t need any credentials, years of experience in your field, or school degrees in order to start a blog and become successful with it.

You can truly start a blog regardless of your age, location and experience level. If you have any of these goals for yourself, then you should highly consider starting a blog:

• Making money online. As we approach 2020, millions of people around the world are turning to making money from home—rather than pursuing a traditional 9-to-5 job. Blogging can be one of the most profitable online businesses with very low costs, if you do it the right way. And the best part is, the handful of hours you put into writing a blog post today can make money for you long into the future. We’re talking a lot more about how to blog and make money later on in this guide. You don’t need to blog full-time either. Even part-time bloggers can earn well into the six-figures from their blogs each year, like I’ve done for many years.
• Growing a business or personal brand. If you already have a business you’re hoping to grow, then starting a blog is hands down the best way to attract more customers online, or even to your storefront without spending a dime on advertising. I’ve helped dozens of small business owners write blog content that brings hundreds of new readers (potential customers) to their websites every day. And if you want to elevate your personal brand to one day land a book deal, become a paid speaker or consultant, blogging is an excellent way to display your leadership in your field. Once you start blogging to grow your business or personal brand, you’ll never want to go back.
• Telling your story. One of the most purposeful reasons to start a blog is to share what you’ve learned with the world. If you’ve built a useful skill, accumulated experience at a job or mastered a particular craft, then others out there who are just starting out can benefit greatly from the advice you have to offer. A blog is the perfect place to share everything from your own personal journey through life, to documenting your daily activities, shedding light on life updates or offering career insights to others.

So, if you’re ready to take a leap and learn how to start a blog that can eventually make a meaningful amount of online income, let’s get into this simple, step-by-step tutorial for new bloggers.

Step 1 – Choose your preferred blogging platform

Choosing where you want to build blog is pretty much the first thing you have to do. I’m going to take a leap and assume you’ve heard of WordPress, and this is the platform I advocate. It’s massive.

It’s by far one of the biggest blogging platforms in the world, with countless plugins and add-ons and almost infinite ways to design and layout your blog.

There are more than 82 million active users of WordPress = a lot, basically.

There are other alternatives, however, and they are listed below:

• Blogger – Definitely the next best thing to WordPress.
• Tumblr – Half social network, half blog. Interesting, and very simple to use.

Even though WordPress is bigger (and probably better) than those two, here are my reasons why you should still go with WordPress:

1. Super easy set-up and is free to use
2. Tons of free themes and layouts (I’m not kidding, there are gazillions).
3. There’s a massive support forum in case you get stuck (you won’t, but it’s nice to have it there if you need it).
4. Your blog will be insanely fast and it’ll also look Functionality and form – perfect!
5. People can interact with you easily. Your content can be shared, commented on, and so on.

Here’s an article about different blogging platforms (including WordPress), give it a read:

How to Choose a Blogging Platform – (updated for 2020)

Now, Step 2 (see, we’re moving fast now!)

Step 2 – Self-hosting or a free alternative?

Whoa, slow down there! This is the biggest decision you’ll have to make before we go any further. You need to decide whether to pay for your blog or grab a free one.

WordPress, Tumblr, and Blogger all offer free blogs for anyone. Awesome, right? It’s perfect for those of us who aren’t super serious about blogging. But it does have downsides:

1) You won’t be able to get your OWN domain name

On a free blog, your blog’s web address (your URL) will be butt-ugly. Like, really ugly. In short, create a free blog with any other the above free blog services and it’ll look like this:

• yourblog.wordpress.com
• yourblog.blogspot.com
• yourblog.tumblr.com

I know, ugly right?

2) Limits and more limits

There are some limits to free blogs. You can’t fully monetize it, and you don’t have the possibility to upload all those videos and images you want to show everyone – it’s all limited. Worse still, you won’t even have access to the free themes offered by WordPress.

3) You DON’T OWN your blog

It might sound silly at first, but you don’t actually own your blog. It’s hosted on someone else’s web property and they can delete it if they want to. They have done so in the past, and keep doing it in the future. Which means all your hard work on your blog, all those countless hours of writing blog posts might have vanished within seconds. Sad…

On the other hand, with a self-hosted blog on your own domain name – you are the REAL owner of your blog. You’ll be able to name your blog whatever you want, for example, “YourName.com” or “YourAwesomeBlog.com. You can end it with .com, .co.uk, .net, .org, or virtually any other web suffix. Add to that unlimited bandwidth for videos, images, and content plus the free themes and you have a winning combo.

So how much is hosting and a domain name? Not as much as you’re thinking, fortunately. It usually works out to about $5 to $10 per month, depending on your hosting provider which is less than a couple of coffees.

Step 3 – Start a blog on your own domain (if you chose self-hosting and a custom domain)

I’m going to push ahead based on the premise you’ve chosen Blogger or WordPress, and if you haven’t, you should. Seriously, they're the best.

If you’re still a little confused by what a self-hosted blog is, allow me to explain and how you can go about setting one up for yourself.

You’ll need to come up with a domain name you like and also choose a hosting company that can host your blog.

• Domain: The domain is basically the URL of your website. Examples: google.com (Google.com is the domain), Facebook.com (Facebook.com is the domain). See? Simple!
• Hosting: Hosting is basically the company that puts your website up on the internet so everyone else can see it. Everything will be saved on there. Think of it as a computer hard-drive on the internet where your blog will be saved.

Step 4 – Designing your WordPress blog

Now, the fun bit.

Let’s make your blog look exactly how you want it to. To choose a new theme, you can either head to Appearance > Themes and install a free WordPress theme or you can head to a premium theme website like ThemeForest.net and buy a theme for around $40.

I usually choose something that looks professional and pretty easy to customize. WordPress also has this awesome feature that allows you to change themes with just a few clicks. So if you start getting tired of your current blog template, you can just switch to another one without losing any precious content or images.

Remember, your blog’s design should reflect both you and your personality, but also what the blog is about. There’s no point having a football-orientated theme if your blog is about tennis, understand?

On top of that, it should be easy to navigate if you want people to stick around. If it’s tricky and difficult to move around it, people won’t stay. After all design is a subjective art; meaning everyone likes different things.

But no one likes ugly websites, and they especially hate websites that need a university degree to navigate. Make it easy for them.

Blogger also offers these services as well.

Last step! Woo!

Step 5 – Useful Resources For Beginner Bloggers

Bloggers come to blogging arena with varying degrees of online and social media experience, but we’ve all made more than a few newbie mistakes – there’s always room for more learning and improvement, whether you’re a beginner or you’ve been blogging for years.

I'll be giving some tips now that may help you avoid some of the growing pains when it comes to your first blog – enjoy!

Congratulations! You’ve decided to join the ranks of bloggers. You’re going to love it! Before you get too far into it, though, I’d like to help you avoid some common beginning blogging mistakes. These mistakes are almost a rite of passage, but why waste that time with mistakes you can easily avoid?

1.  Auto-loading music.

Please. I beg you, your readers beg you: ditch the auto-loading music! Auto-loading music is not only annoying and surprising, but it’s a bandwidth hog. It makes your blog load slowly. Do you really want to lose a reader because she couldn’t wait for your site to load? And if she waits for your site to load, will she be annoyed because she didn’t know there would be music, accidentally had her speakers on high, and a sleeping husband (or child) right beside her? I can tell you this: She won’t be back.

2. Using a design with a dark background & light text.

This issue is less about your aesthetic (though that is part of it) and more about usability and readability. Reading online is harder on our eyes than reading traditional paper. Using a dark background with light text makes it even harder on your readers’ eyes.

3.  Too much sidebar clutter.

A sleek, uncluttered design goes a long way with readers. The less clutter, the more white space you have. You can use this white space to help lead your readers’ eye toward specific content. Your images and headlines will stand out more.

Are you proud of your awards, badges, and various trinkets and show them off on your sidebar? That’s OK, those things are a rite of passage too. You don’t have to get rid of them, but why not put awards on their own page and link to it from your main page? You’ll trade 20 links for just one link and de-clutter the sidebar. De-cluttering your sidebar eases navigation for your reader. When there are fewer items competing for your reader’s attention, they’ll be drawn to what’s important.

4. Accidental plagiarism (even with photos).

Very few legitimate bloggers plagiarize on purpose. Most likely a new blogger won’t realize what they’re doing (but that doesn’t make it OK). Plagiarism applies to using any content that isn’t originally yours, whether it’s words, photography, music, pictures, or anything else.

Many new bloggers will Google a picture, then save it and use it in a blog post. That’s plagiarism — even if you cite where you found the picture — because you haven’t asked the owner if you can use it.

5. Using “click here” instead of keyword phrases for links.

Choose your link words carefully. When you are writing a post and need to insert a link, consider how you are going to write that sentence and where you will include the link. For example, which of these is more effective (potential links in bold)?

The top sentence is more effective because it has a keyword phrase that helps with SEO and is more descriptive for readers. The words “click here” or even just the word “here” linked to other files or pages are everywhere on the web. When was the last time you did a search for “click here”?

Try using a question to the you're trying to answer on that landpage as the link, that's more efficient and organized.

So, that's brings us to the end of this session, leave your questions or comments on the comment section below, we'll try to get back to you as soon as possible.

(This blog was built on BLOGGER, it's an amazing platform.- www.blogger.com)