How to start a Blog in 2023 (guide from scratch)

What is a blog anyway?

In short, a blog is a type of website that focuses mainly on written content, also known as blog posts. In popular culture we most often hear about news blogs or celebrity blog sites, but as you’ll see in this guide, you can start a successful blog on just about any topic imaginable.

Let’s start,

Step 1: Choose a Right Niche(topic) for Your Blog (very important For Success)

This is the most important part, and many newbies are stuck at this point.

Did you know? That 99% of bloggers quit blogging in starting six months because they choose the niche which they don’t passionate about.

Niche is like a topic but not a simple topic because they have several topics in it.

Choosing a niche is the fastest way to lose a game in the beginning.

You have to focus on these two factors to find out the profitable niche for your blog.

Profitability

• See that you can make money from that?
• They have enough affiliate programs or not?
• Is that niche is having a good volume of keywords or not?

Passionate

• Are you interested in working on that niche?
• Can you share the article of that niche?
• Can you solve other problems with your writing on that niche?

I think now you can find the perfect niche after seeing the above part, and if you can’t figure out, then you can do this to find an ideal niche.

• Take Paper & Pen
• Write down your interest or which you are passionate about (Add three or more) on the list
• Find the niche which you liked the most from the list
• Also, find an affiliate of that niche
• You are good to go.

Step 2: Choose a Good Domain for Your Blog

Selecting the website domain is not very tough and you can easily select a perfect domain name for your new blog. If you decided your domain name so you can skip this part. 

Here are four tips which help you to find your dream domain –  

• Keep it Short & Simple – Try to keep your domain as short, don’t make it too long because it’s not easy to pronounce and keep your domain name simply because it’s easy to remember.
• Use Keyword – You can use your main keyword in your domain, which helps you in SEO.
• Don’t Use Numbers – You can’t use numbers in your domain because it’s not easy to remember the numbers
• Always Use TLD Extension – I recommend you to use domain extension like .com because it’s for globally.

If you are still not able to figure out the domain for your blog, then you can find brandable domain name using one tool: LeanDomainSearch.

Note: Which blogging platform should you choose?

I am not going to take much time here to explain to you which platform is best,

There is a lot of blogging platform which you can use to make your blog, but I recommended you to go with WordPress.

Why?

Because in other platforms, you can’t have access to edit or customize everything, but WordPress gives you the freedom to make your blog as you can.

In WordPress, you have many plugins and themes which you can use to make your blog Awesome! 

So I think you can get an idea of why WordPress is good,

Let’s dive in and let me tell you to steps create your blog.

Step 3: Choose a Good Hosting For Your Blog

For making a blog, you have to need web-hosting and domain,

I know you don’t know about both, but wait, let me guide you in this and tell you more about it.

Domain  Name –  The domain name is the name of the website which readers types in the browser.

Example Of Domain Name :

1. HTTPS://(Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
2. www (the subdomain)
3. infiniteinone (Domain name)
4. .com(Top Level Domain).

Web Hosting – A web hosting is a place where all your files of your blog are stored and show your blog lives when someone tries to access that. Hosting is like the hard disk of the computer, which stored all your data (images, posts, pages, and many more) and kept your data secured.

Now, are you thinking which wordpress hosting is best for you?

I recommended you to go with the siteground. But you can choose GoDaddy WP hosting it is good .

If you choose 36 month hosting plan you will get a free domain.

Step 4: Set up your WordPress blog

Installing WordPress is not like rocket science,

The only thing is that we have a proper guide. Here in this part, I will how you can set up your WordPress site to make it live on the web.

Firstly, you have to go to your siteground or If you already purchased it so you can see the similar interface after login to your account:

You have to select the start of a website option to make a brand new website.

Then, you have to click on the software which you want to install your website,

Click on the WordPress software to install to your website. After that you have to fill some login details about your website:

This information is essential, so I recommend you to write your password on diary so if you forget so you can check there,

After fill-out all the information,

Then you have to click on the big complete button to proceed with the process.

It will take a few minutes to finish setting up your WordPress website.

Now, click on the proceed button to go on customer area:

Now, click on my account button on the menu and click on the installation tab:

Now, click on the Go to Admin Panel to visit your new blog admin dashboard:

Now, you will redirect to your WordPress dashboard after that enter your login details which you choose during the installation and click on the login button:

That’s it you just complete the setup fo your first WordPress website, Remember this URL or bookmark it:

https://yourblog.com/wp-admin/

If, by chance, you forgot the URL so you can use the above URL structure to login to your dashboard (replace yourdomain.com name with your domain).

Step 5: Choose an Attention Grabbing Theme

After installing wordpress, theme and blog looks is more important if you are just starting your new blog. 

In blogging, the design of the blog matters because if you don’t have a great design, so you are losing a lot of traffic and audience. Good design helps to build more trust towards your readers.

In your WordPress inventory, there are a hell lot of free themes that are available for you, but I don’t recommend you to go with that themes because these free themes are easy to hack, and by this, you will lose you all website data.

If you are using free or nulled themes is like Architecting your own Destruction. 

If you want to do blogging as a business, so invest in themes and plugins because of this the best investment on your blogging journey. 

Some of my Favorite Themes (Personally Used)

Astra Pro – Astra Pro is lightweight and easy to customize the theme. This theme is like a generatepress, but they have a lot of features which doesn’t available in generatepress, and You can make your homepage attractive and responsive too with using elementor with that.

Focus Theme By Thrive Themes – Focus theme is the most powerful theme which has all necessary options like email opt-in, shortcodes, and many more. This theme is fully responsive and easy to customize. If you are an Affiliate Marketer so this theme is like gold for you because it’s conversion optimized. There are more features that help you to make your website more powerful.

Schema Theme – Schema theme is crafted by mythemeshop, and the best part of this theme that’s this is search engine optimized. It’s also the fastest theme as well.

GeneratePress – GeneratePress is the theme that I am currently using in my this blog, and for me, it’s work good so far because this theme is easy to customize so anyone newbie can customize it. The support of this theme is amazing. 

After picking one theme now it’s time to install that theme on your blog.

For installing any WordPress theme on your blog just follow these below steps:

First of all, you should be login on your WordPress dashboard ➡ appearance ➡ themes

1. In the themes section, you will find various free themes, but if you already have so, click on the add new button.

2. Click on the upload theme and upload your theme zip and activate that theme on your blog. 

Finally, you installed and activate your preferred theme into your blog. Installing is a theme is an easy task, but the main and important task is to customize that theme.

So if you want to customize your theme, click on appearance ➡ customizes, and now you can able to customize your theme.

After making your theme responsive and optimized now, I will tell you some most essential plugin which almost every WordPress users install, and it’s also an important part to run your website on automation.

Step 6: Some Essential Plugins for WordPress

WordPress without plugins is nothing because plugins are necessary to (Optimize your content, for SEO, Speed, and many more). There are lots of plugins on WordPress, but there are some plugins that I am currently using and making such things on autopilot.

Want to know the list of my favorite plugin?

So, here is the list of my plugins which I am personally using almost in all my website – 

Elementor or Thrive Architect – These are the page builders for designing any page. These plugins allow you to create your dream landing page by just drag and drop. I used both, and they are very lightweight to use and helps me to create a stunning page.

Rank Mathe SEO – SEO is important to rank and drive a lot of traffic. Rank math is the new SEO plugin that becomes a favorite for every blogger now. Many bloggers suggest you go with Yoast, but I don’t recommend that because they don’t have lots of features like that. 

WP Rocket – You already know that speed is one factor to rank on google. So wp rocket is the plugin, which helps you to optimize your full website and make it faster. I strongly recommend you to buy this plugin if you are looking for an alternative to this so you can go with autoptimize. 

Thrive Leads – If you want to collect emails of your readers so you can try to thrive leads which helps you to make popup lightbox, sticky ribbon, screen filler overlay, content lock, and more.

iThemes Security – Security is the no.1 priority; many times, somebody tries to hack your website, so this plugin helps you to secure your entire website. Using the security plugin is essential to keep your blog safe.

UpdraftPlus – Backup of your website is necessary, although your siteground keeps website backup daily. But for more security, I used this plugin to backup my website daily. This plugin helps you to backup your full website, and you can restore that data whenever you need it.

Anti-Spam – Many times, someone makes spam comments on your blog. This plugin helps you that if someone comment on your blog and comment looks like spam, so this plugin automatically removes it.

Resmush.it – If you are writing an informative article which has a lot of image in it so this plugin tries to optimize your images and by this your website load fast.

Social Snap Pro – Social snap is a social sharing plugin, But I like this plugin so much because they help to drive traffic from mediums like – Facebook, Twitter, and many more platforms.

These are the top plugins which I almost used in my all website to run them properly.

I don’t recommend you to go with nulled or cracked plugins because these types of plugins are easy to hack by the hacker, and by this, you lose all your website data.

If you want to do professional blogging and make money out of it, I highly recommend you keep the investment mindset and treat your blog like a business.

If you are wondering how to install the plugin? Let me help with you that,

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard
2. Then go to Plugins → Add New
3. Then upload your plugin zip file and click on the “install now” button.
4. After installing, click on the “activate button” to install that particular plugin.

Now let move on to other topics,

Step 7: Write Your First Stunning Post and Published It

Are you wondering about writing your first blog post?

So let me help you to write your first post on your blog. First of all, I want to congrats you that you have successfully set up your WordPress blog, and now it’s time to make some posts for your new blog.

For creating a blog post, you have to go: Dashboard → Post → Add New

After that, you will land on your post, and here you can start writing your first stunning post.

Now, Let me give you some tips that help you to make your first epic post:

• If you are confused about finding the topic of your new post, so I recommended you to do some keyword research around your niche, and by searching, you will find many awesome keywords that are easy to rank.

Pro Tip: I recommend you go with long-tail keywords because it’s easier to rank.

•  Always tries to make an awesome title of your blog post by using numbers and power words.
•  Make sure you should add some images for making your article more comprehensive; I strongly recommend you to make your article lengthy and more in detail, and by more detail post, you can make your reader your true fan .
• Use connecting words like I and You to more connect with your readers and try to don’t take copyright images from google. I recommend you always to use copyright-free images.

I think these tips help you to create your first blog post, 

Step 8: Some Ways to Make Money from your Blog (Bonus)

This is the bonus part for you all, where I shared some ways which help you to make money from your blog.

Before starting, let me Congrats, you because you have published your first blog post on your blog. 

Let dive into it,

There are several ways which you can use to make money from your blog. In this part, we will discuss some ideas which you can use to handsome money from your blog.

I have created a list of ways which helps you to make your first dollar online,

Are you excited enough like me? 

If Yes, then let’s move on to the list:

Affiliate Marketing: This is one of the effective methods for making money online. In this, you have to promote other products on your blog, and if you get a sale of that product so then, you will get a commission from the product owner.

Advertising on your blog: Most of the common ways ever blogger uses this to monetize their traffic and make money handsome money out of it. Many bloggers are using it and making a decent amount of money. 

Two leading websites – Adsense and Media.net, You can apply to there program and make money from there.

Offering Service: If you are an expert on anything like SEO so you can offer service to your reader, and they will directly pay you. This is one of the fastest ways to earn money from your blog.

Selling your course or product: If you know how to sell anything so you can create your path and sell to your readers, but before that, you have to build trust towards your audience if you already have an audience then you can sell them anything.

These are the ways that you can use to make money from your blog. But always remember that if you want to make money from your blog so you have to keep patience and do hard work on your blog, and you will see your massive growth.