Step-By-Step Guide to Starting Your Own Blog
You sure must be tempted when you see those posts on social media about people blogging and making money. It’s not so difficult to start a blog. And, all the more in 2021, it has become easier than ever to start your own Blog.
Using the instructions in this guide, you can have your own Blog up and running within an hour. That too, a professional looking Blog with all the essential features that a Blog needs.
With a knowledge about the right set of tools to use, you can avoid mistakes that new bloggers usually make. This way you will save time in setting up the blog, which can be better utilized in creating content for your Blog.
- Choose a topic for your Blog
- Choose the right platform for Blogging
- Set up your Blog on your website
- Make basic changes to your WordPress installation (Configure)
- Select the right theme for your Blog
- Design your logo and change the colors of your Blog theme
- Write content for your Blog.
Choose a topic for your Blog
What do you want to write about in your Blog? Do you want to establish a community? What do you want to be noticed for? What are you passionate about?
Do some introspection and choose a topic that you can write about. Or, if you are learning something new, you can choose to share your wisdom about it; so that other people learning the same trait could take some tips from you.
We suggest that you select a topic that you are passionate about. Something that you are very much interested in. Though most successful blogs are about one topic, be it food, or travel or SEO, or designing, or carpentry, or politics. But there are equally successful blogs that focus on more than one topic.
Don’t worry about how many people will be interested in your Blog. The world is huge, and there are all sorts of people, all with varied tastes and interests. You cannot have everybody liking your blog. And not everyone will dislike your Blog posts either. You will build an audience on the go.
So, start blogging. Every Blog post you write will teach you something, if you are willing to learn. As a result, each of your new Blog posts will be better than the previous ones.
Even if you feel you chose a wrong topic. You can start off with a new one. No one will stop you from changing your Blog topic. The Internet is a free world.
Choose the right platform for Blogging
The main decision in choosing the platform for your Blog is to go for a Self Hosted Blog or a Free Blog.
Each one has its own benefits.
Free Blogging Platforms
The free Blog platforms include Blogger.com, Tumblr.com, Ghost.org and WordPress.com. Yes, WordPress.com is offered by the same company that offers the WordPress platform for building independent websites.
With most free blog platforms, you will have limited options in terms of storage, design and functionality.You also have to provision for ads being thrown in by the free blog provider. And these ads definitely are annoying sometimes, especially to your readers.
In addition, you will use their domain name, Something like xxxx.blogpost.com or. If you want to use your own domain name, you have to pay for the domain name. But if your motive simply is to share your written thoughts with the world, you can get along with any of these free platforms.
To start your blog on Blogger.com, you need a Google account. And if you have one, use it to login into Blogger.com and get going.
Self Hosted Blogging Platforms
Self hosted Blogs require a very nominal investment. You pay for your domain name and you need hosting web space (more on this follows). That is it. WordPress is free to download and use. Here are a few more benefits of using WordPress that you should consider:
- WordPress is Open Source. This means that it is not owned by a single person. Thousands of Developers contribute in making it and developing it on a regular basis.
- In terms of design, you have plenty of free templates to choose from.
- In addition, there are plenty of free WordPress plugins too, which you might need to enhance the functionality of your website.
- You have complete control over your Blog.
You should know that WordPress is not the only Blogging platform. There are plenty of others. 
Image Source: https://trends.builtwith.com/cms/blog/traffic/Entire-Internet
Every time I look at this data, the market share of WordPress has increased by a substantial number. It stands at a whopping 97.07% today. What more proof do you need?
Unless you have something else in mind, WordPress is the platform / technology to build your Blog.
So, how much do you need to pay for your self hosted Blog?
Not much. You can get your own .com Domain name for as low as US$12.95. Some domain extensions are cheaper still, but the default domain names end with .com. You can also get it for free when you buy web hosting space. Choose your domain names here.
Web Hosting Space starts at US$2.75 per month which gives you more features than you will need. Hostgator is a very reliable Web Host, and I strongly recommend buying the web hosting space for your Blog from this company. They offer one click WordPress installs, unmetered Web Space, unmetered Bandwidth and free domain name registration.
All this amounts to about US$33 per annum.
Set up your Blog on your web space
So, how much do you need to pay for your self hosted Blog?
Not much. You can get your own .com Domain name for as low as US$12.95. Some domain extensions are cheaper still, but the default domain names end with .com. You can also get it for free when you buy web hosting space. Choose your domain names here.
Web Hosting Space starts at US$2.75 per month which gives you more features than you will need. Hostgator is a very reliable Web Host, and I strongly recommend buying the web hosting space for your Blog from this company. They offer one click WordPress installs, unmetered Web Space, unmetered Bandwidth and free domain name registration.
All this amounts to about US$33 per annum.
As you know that Hostgator offers a One Click WordPress install, you can set up WordPress on your web space the very moment your account is active.
Click on WordPress and follow the on screen instructions to install. Set your backend administrative panel username and password and note it down for safe keeping.
Make basic changes to your WordPress installation
Once you have installed WordPress, it’s time to configure it to suit your Blog.
Go to the backend administrative panel of your newly installed Blog. It is at your-domain-name /wp-admin by default. Login using the username and password you setup and stored.
Once you are logged in, you will see this:
General Settings
In the left sidebar menu, look for “Settings”; then go to “General”
There are two main settings you need to check, one is the Site Title and the other one is Tagline.
Site Title is the name of your site. Search engines use the title to determine your website rankings. And it is the first thing that a visitor sees in search results.
Tagline is one short sentence to describe what your Blog is about. It summarizes the gist of your Blog.
Allow Google to index your Blog
People at large can reach your Blog only through Search Engines like Google. To enable that, go to Settings → Reading from the left sidebar menu.
Scroll down to find “Search engine visibility” and Uncheck the parameter “Discourage search engines from indexing this site”. There should not be a tick in this box. I wonder who in the world would keep this box checked.
Creating a structure for the URLs of your Blog
Let’s say you visit a website and come across an interesting page which tells you the difference between a pie and a cake. You want to save / bookmark the page address for reference sometime later on, and you notice that the URL is https://raunharman.net/?p=123
If the page address had been https://raunharman.net/difference-between-pie-and-cake, you would identify the content of the web page from the URL itself. That is the power of custom URLs. These URLs are user friendly, as well as Search Engine friendly. These are called SEO URLs.
The best part is that you too can create custom URLs for all the posts, pages and archives in your Blog! This will improve the usability of your pages and make them look relevant. Just define the structure, and WordPress will create such fascinating URLs for all your Blog posts.
Go to Settings → Permalinks. Select the option which says Post name.
Select the right theme for your Blog
You may not be very good at graphic design or you might not know anything about HTML or coding. But you will be happy to know that you can have a brilliantly designed Blog using “themes”. Themes take care of the design aspects of your Blog.
You have access to thousands of designs (themes) to choose a design for your Blog. And most of them are FREE.
Look for the Appearance menu in the left sidebar, and go to Themes. Appearance –>Themes.
Clicking on “Add New” will take you to the WordPress website where you will be shown themes listed under different Tabs: Featured, Popular, Latest, Favorites, Catch Themes. Click on Popular, and browse through the themes available. Keep your blog topic in mind and choose one. When you bring the mouse / cursor over the theme thumbnail, you will be shown options to Install or Preview them.
Do not install unnecessary themes in your blog installation. Though only one theme will be active at any given time. Having unused themes will slow down your website, which you cannot afford to do.
Once you have installed your favorite theme, click on “Activate”, and when you browse to the frontend of your blog, the looks have changed. The best part here is that the content (articles) on your blog will not change. You can keep changing the theme as frequently as you want without losing content.
Design your logo and change the colors of your Blog theme
You will be surprised to know that you can also change the color scheme, of your theme, to your liking. In addition, you can and you should add a logo to your blog.
To begin, go to Appearance→ Customize.
The menu options to customize vary from theme to theme. However, all themes do provide you with these choices:
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Global: You can choose the fonts, font colors, font sizes, header fonts, button colors etc.
Header: This option lets you choose the logo, site icon (usually called favicon), header size and its placement, menu position etc.
Footer: Here you can decide which widgets to place in the footer of your blog, items on the footer menu and the copyright text.
Additional CSS: CSS stands for cascading style sheets and is used for designing various elements of your blog. This is meant for expert users. At this moment, you should know that you have this option available.
I will leave it for you to explore. If you need any help during the set-up process, get in touch with me here and I’ll help as best I can and answer any questions you might have.
Write content for your Blog
Now, we come to the most essential part of your blog. A blog is insignificant without content. The content you create for your blog will be used to sell a product, or a service, or send your message out.
You will learn how to add a “post” to your blog, and also how to write content which is “engaging”. When you write engaging content, you keep your readers, or your viewers engaged. They want to read more of what you have written. I am sure, that is what you want.
To add a “Post”, select Posts from the left sidebar menu, and then “Add new”. Once you are here, give your post a “title”, and then add a “Block”. The simplest way to create a good post is to add a block of “Heading” , followed by a block of “Classic Paragraph”. Repeat this technique throughout your post. The content in a Classic Paragraph can be, and must be, further split into small paragraphs, which makes reading easier. Use headings (h1, h2, h3, h4) as much as possible in a structured way.
The best way to start your blog post is with a killer headline. The headline determines if the reader wants to continue reading, or bounce off the page. Research has proved that headlines that feature how, why, you, because, free and new help drive more conversions.
The next important thing is the sub heading or introduction. You should try to match the text here with the intention of users. This is called user intent, and it is the purpose why the reader is interested in reading your blog post.
Further, adding images, pictures or visuals helps to improve performance of your blog post. But be careful about using copyrighted images. Try to use original images.
That is it for now. Let me know in the comments below, if I have missed out on something, and has worked well for you.