How to Start a Blog on WordPress in 7 Easy Steps

Find out how to start a blog in just 7 steps, using these steps you will have your blog up and running in no time at all. Creating a new blog can seem scary at first, but once you realize that it isn’t difficult and it’s still possible to reach people then you will wonder why you didn’t start years ago.

As of 2021, there are about 1.3 billion total websites on the web. More than 455 million sites use WordPress, clearly, it’s rather easy to make a WordPress site if so many websites have been created.

What Is a Blog, and Why Should You Create One?

I am sure by now almost everyone knows what a blog is, but for those who might not know exactly what it is here is a short description.

According to internetlivestats.com as of 2021, there are 5 billion internet users and it grows by nearly 100 million each year, so the best time to start a website really is right now. Essentially your potential readers are increasing each year, so jump in and start the blog you always wanted.

Reasons you should start a blog today

Since you’re reading this I can safely assume you’re at least considering starting a blog, and you’re probably wondering if you too can create a successful blog. Well, you will never know if you don’t give it a chance right?

So what’s stopping you? From personal experience, I have always thought that it is either too late or too hard to make it in blogging since everything has already been written right? Well, you haven’t written anything yet, the internet hasn’t seen your work yet, so everything hasn’t been written yet. And I see new bloggers make it big in recent years, so clearly it isn’t too late either.

With that let’s get into it and make a blog on WordPress.

Blog Definition

A Blog or “weblog”, is an informational or discussion-based website that consists of text entries (posts). The posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order.
It’s a platform where an individual or a group can share their views on a subject.

How to start a wordpress blog

• Set your Blog’s focus area
• Pick a Domain Name
• Choose a Website Host
• WordPress Theme
• Get some Plugins
• Build Core Pages
• Create Content

Step 1: Set your Blog’s focus area

It’s a good idea to pick your niche first and design the rest of your blog around it, but it isn’t vital, if you don’t have a niche idea yet you can skip ahead to step 2.

First let us be real, while it might not be the main reason to start a blog, a big influence is the potential income you can generate from it, and all focus areas or niches weren’t created equally. There are some clear differences in profitability between different niches.

Tips on selecting a niche

• Don’t go to granular, you want a focus that can generate a large audiance. If you want to blog about tea cozies, you might rather want to blog about tea in general.
• Keep profitability in mind, how many people are interested in your focus?
• Don’t think about how many other people have blogged about the topic, if you write great content, then you have potential.
• You don’t have to be an expert in your focus yet, just research your topic carefully when writing about it, soon you will become an expert.

The below Venn diagram shows that the best niches will be right in the middle, anyone can learn the skills, so if you are passionate about your niche and it is profitable then great, get the skills to write amazing content.

If you want to jump the gun, head on to BlueHost to start your WordPress Blog.

Step 2: Pick a Domain Name

Your domain name is the first impression everyone will get about it, so put some thought into deciding what it will be called. Keep your focus area in mind when picking this. But relax, you can always pick another early on.

Nearly half of the internet uses .com, it’s a safe choice for a professional blog.

• Make it memorable
• Keep the spelling simple
• Avoid numbers and special characters
• Keep it broad enough so you can pivot if you need to

After you thought about a domain name, use this nifty tool to check if it is available.

Step 3: Choose a Website Host

Your website host is vital for performance, so picking a good one will really help you later on when SEO (Search Engine Optimization) becomes important for growth.

Almost all website hosting providers can host a WordPress site, but to make it easy I’ll give you two great options.

Popular: BlueHost starts at $2.95/mo on an annual subscription.

Cheap: IONOS starts at $0.5/mo on an annual subscription.

Both of these hosts offer one-click installations for WordPress, it’s really rather easy, once you open your account you can go to your dashboard and click the install WordPress button, give it a sec and your website is created, then all that’s left is customization and content creation.

Step 4: WordPress Theme

Next, you need to choose a theme for your website, this not only determines the look and feel of the website, it often adds functionality. A theme also affects your website’s performance, the more minimalistic the theme the better it runs on your server, which is good for getting listed higher by search engines.

Themes with great performance

• Hello Elementor
• Neve
• Any of the default “Twenty” something (Twenty Twenty One) themes
• Astra

Install a couple of themes and try them out, you can normally change themes later on so don’t worry too much about getting it perfect.

Installing a theme

You need to log in to your WordPress dashboard by going to “YourDomainName.com/wp-admin” and login, then navigate to Appearance > Themes, and at the top, you can click on “add new”.

And it’s that simple. Now you’re essentially ready to start posting your blogs, but I will take you through a couple of additional essentials.

Step 5: Get Some Plugins

Plugins are tools that integrate with your website and provide additional features, there is a couple of type of plugins that I really suggest you install. There are good free versions available for all of them.

Core Plugins

• SEO Plugin– RankMath
  • Create sitemats, robot.txt, meta descriptions and add keywords.
• Page Builder – Elementor Page Builder
  • Easy drag and drop page builder
• Performance – WP Rocket
  • Increase website performance by implementing caching and minifying assets.
• Backups – UpdraftPlus
  • Makes backups of your site in case anything breaks.

Step 6: Build Core Pages

Before you start actually blogging, you should create a couple of pages, so that readers know what your website is about, and pages to protect yourself from a legal point of view.

Home Page

Your goal with your home page should be to give the readers the information they are looking for as quickly as possible, if they can’t find it within 10-20 seconds they will likely go look elsewhere.

Add links to your best pages, and make sure you have a menu that can easily be used.

About Page

This page should give the reader all the information they need to know about you or the group of people.

Think about writing about:

• Why you started a blog
• Who you are
• Expertise or background

Privacy Policy Page

If your blog collects data from readers then you should have a privacy policy page, data can be of any form such as email signups, google analytics, cookies, etc. So it is best to have a good privacy policy in place to protect you.

Check out privacypolicies.com, to get help with generating a custom privacy policy for your site.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer nor do I work in the legal space, so nothing in these pages constitutes legal advice. Always consult a suitably qualified lawyer on any specific legal problem or matter.

Step 7: Create Content

Definitely the most important step in making sure that your website becomes successful, you need to create quality content.

You want to keep readers entertained as well as answer the questions that they have.

Quick tips

• Know your audience
• Use rich media like images and videos
• Always add value to your readers by answering problems
• Use bullet points
• Optimise for SEO

Post types

• “How to” posts
• Infographic
• List
• Newsjacking
• Pillar
• “What” is posts

Hubspot has some good-quality blog post templates available for free.

Find Writers on Fiverr

If you don’t have the time to write your posts then get someone to write them for you, there are plenty of good writers out there on websites such as Fiverr, then you can concentrate on editing and proofreading the posts. You should still create the outline of the post that you want, but the content can be written by someone else.

Frequently Asked Questions

Closing

As you can see starting a blog is easy and there is always room for you online, and to start a blog from scratch can actually make you feel slightly proud, if I do say so myself, I hope these tips on starting a blog helps you out, feel free to leave a comment if there is anything that was unclear.

Take the leap and create your blog.