How to start a blog in 2021- Complete guide.

A beginners guide for starting a blog and making money in 2021

You are in the right place if you want to start a blog and establish your career as a blogger. You can do this in both parallels. Blogging is more than just following your passion and making money. The main reason for starting a blog is

1. To share new learnings

2. To document your thought and your view on a particular topic

3. To generate passive income and make money.

4. For receiving free gadgets and other stuff for review.

5. To travel for free.

The reason for you to start your won blog can be among the points mentioned above. This in this article, we are going through how to start your own blog. We are going to provide you a detailed and practical knowledge for getting started.

How to start your own blog?

I. Choose an appropriate blogging platform

The first thing you should think about is where you are going to create your blog. There are plenty of blogging platforms available on the internet and people have different opinions about each of them. One of the most common and popular platforms that most of the blogger starts with is WordPress.

About 37% of the world’s total website is powered by WordPress today. Once you’ve finished testing the blogging platform, it's time to do something meaningful now.

Remember not to be confused with WordPress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.org is the platform (self-hosted) that you should get started with.

Best Blogging Platform 2020 : Best Platform For Exploring Your Content.

II. Find your Niche

This is the most important part while starting your blog. You should clearly know what your blog is about to be. Conduct research and find the appropriate niche to target.

If you are still wanting to make money by blogging at random things, this may not work in 2021. Focus on the single topic and try to give your best on the particular single topic.

It may not be so fruitful even if you are Jack of all trades and want to start a blog on multiple topics. People are just interested to subscribe to a blog that is an authority on a particular topic.

One interesting thing is that the search giant Google also prefers a website that is built on a single topic.

Here are some tips on how to find an appropriate topic for your blog.

1. Select the topic which you know better than anyone else. It can be anything. Anything means literally anything. Take time to think about the topic that you most like to talk about.

2. One nice idea to select a topic is to pick the topic that you usually read about. The topic that you read most of the time is the topic that interests you the most.

3. The topic should also be the subject to which you can add your own values with your insights.

4. You as a newbie can take the help of paper and pen and write down the topic in different columns. The topic can be Fashion, Science and Technology, Finance, Photography, Scientific research, healthcare and so on. Once you’ve selected the topic, try writing about it without taking references which helps to discover the topic that you like the most.

The above-mentioned steps are very crucial steps for anyone who wants to start a blog. This will ensure that you will not burn out once your blog goes live.

Awesome Types of Content you can create for your blog.

III. Pick domain name and blog name

There is no hard and fast rule for selecting the domain name, but there are some things to take care of while selecting a good domain name for your website. The domain name should be easy to remember, easy to pronounce, easy to type, and should represent your brand value.

Your website’s domain name is the URL that users type to visit your blog. For example www.technicalaide.com.

For having your own custom domain you should spend some penny out of your pocket. You will need $12 per year.

You can use the Bluehost domain suggestion feature for checking whether the domain name you’ve thought is available. It will show the domain name suggestion once you enter any word that you’ve picked for your blog.

Use your own name as a domain name if you are trying to create your personal portfolio or if you are planning to make yourself a brand.

But the advantage of having a generic name is that you can have people running it and enjoy the benefit of solopreneurship.

Your domain name should not be too long. The best length can be up to 12 characters. Always select extension .com or .org and not an extension like .net .info and so on as they tend to rank bad in search engines.

IV. Pick a suitable hosting

Now, it's time to host our blog. i.e building our blog on hosting. Web-hosting is where your site or WordPress will be installed. It is actually a server that serves your blog post, images, or everything 24*7.

Hosting is cheap and there are a lot of hosting service providers out on the internet. Bluehost can be an idle choice because it offers everything that you require to create your own blog. It offers features like

1. Unlimited storage.

2. Unlimited bandwidth.

3. Free SSL

4. Live chat support.

5. Free domain name.

6. Easy to use cPanel.

The best thing about Bluehost is that it costs only $2.95 per month. Once you have bought hosting and domain name, it will automatically install the WordPress software on your domain name. You as a beginner can now enjoy some cool stuff once your blog gets installed.

V. Setup your blog

Bluehost will automatically install the blog for you but you are not done. You need to complete few things before you start writing your first blog post.

Refer to this article for setting up your WordPress blog for the first time.

VI. Setup design of your blog

Till now we are done choosing the best blogging platform, selecting Niche, and choosing hosting and domain name for our blog.

A good design is also one of the most essential aspects of the blog. Visitors will love your blog if you’ve designed your blog gracefully. It is similar to our outfit. Nicer the outfit nicer you look.

If you have built your blog on WordPress, there is a concept called “ WordPress themes”. These are the ready-made designs which are available for all types of blog.

WordPress offers varieties of free and premium WordPress themes out there. You as a beginner are recommended for going in the premium package as you can find all the support and starter guide as well as quality design for your blog. Here are some themes to try out.

1. Genesis

Genesis is one of the best themes available. All you need to do is to buy the theme and skin to make it suitable for your blog.

2. Astra theme

Astra theme is a lightweight theme that offers templates for almost all kinds of blogs. You can pick from the ready-made template and the design gets ready with 30-40 minutes. It can be a perfect companion for a new WordPress blog.

VII. Use of WordPress plugins

You can get thousands of WordPress plugins out there. The most important plugins for your newly created WordPress blog are Yoast SEO, ShortPixels, and Jetpack.

As mentioned earlier, there are lots of plugins but the above plugins make sure that you have all the basics plugins installed on your blog.

VIII. Plan your content

Content planning is one of the most important tasks while writing your first blog post. You can use Trello or excel for planning your content. The Trello board comes with a checklist that helps you to write the perfect content. Write down all the content that you wish to write on one specific board (say Article ideas) and give it a time.

IX. Write your first blog post

Now, begin writing your first article.

Here is a guideline for writing the perfect blog post. The important tip while writing your content is, always to write your content in first person tone because there is a single person reading your content. Always begin with “ I” or “ You”.

The topic you choose should cover the overall aspects and feel free to write 1000+ words.

X. Add important pages on your blog

There are some important pages that you must include in your blog. The most important pages include:

1. About page: It contains details about your blog.

2. Contact page: It contains a page with a contact form.

3. Media Kit pages like Disclaimer, Disclosure, and Terms and conditions.

XI. Get social

Now, you should make your blog social after you’ve established your blog. Once you make your blog social, readers can join your community and enjoy your content. The most common social media platforms are Facebook page, Instagram account, and Twitter account.