How to Start a Blog for Your Website
Learning how to start a blog can take time. You definitely won’t be able to do it overnight.
However, if you take it one day at a time, set the right goals, and keep trying, you can get there eventually.
Starting a blog can be a great way to market your brand, make a side income or even a full-time income. In this article, we’ll be talking about some important basics for how to start a blog.
1. Choose Your Domain
Your domain name sets the tone of your brand. Simply put, it’s the first impression readers will have of you, so make it a good one.
Your domain name should be easy to spell and pronounce. And if possible, keep it short. If your domain name is too long, your readers will be less likely to remember it. Also keep it unique and personal. One way to do this is to use your name. While your interests and niche may shift over time, your name will stay the same.
2. Sign up for Hosting
Before you can start posting, you need somewhere to host your site. There are tons of hosting platforms on the market, and it’s important to find the option that best fits your needs.
Many hosting options offer a plan that includes a free domain name. Many also offer discounts when you sign up for a longer-term subscription. This can be a great way to commit to your goals, as well as save some money along the way.
3. Decide on Your Content
You will need to really think hard on this one. The content is what brings visitors to your blog and could eventually make them your customers. You need to create content around things that you’re passionate about and also have a significant amount of expertise on.
Blogs that actually fill a need for something specific tend to do well the fastest. A general entertainment blog will take longer to build than a blog that teaches people how to get in really good shape.
Most people aren’t in the shape they want to be, so websites like Legion Athletics do really well. That website was built off the back of a book written by a guy named Mike Matthews that’s basically a fitness bible for people interested in getting ripped.
A lot of people (and I mean A LOT) have had success with Mike’s book, both men and women. That’s helped him build an entire fitness company with various products like customized training, supplements, and other books like one on motivational content.
If you want to know how to start a blog about fitness, his is a perfect example. Make sure that yours is focused, but the subject-matter is broad enough that you have a lot you can write about. He started that one in 2012, which was a few years back at this point.
Your blog doesn’t need to have a ton of articles. Having at least a few major articles and some supporting ones is a must, though.
4. How to Start a Blog: Write A Few Articles
Once you land on a subject that you want your blog to focus on, it’s time to actually write a few articles. This can be done in Microsoft Word or on Google Docs.
It’s actually probably better that you do that. Why? Because you can avoid spending money on a domain name or hosting.
A solid web host will cost at least a few bucks per month. When I say solid, I mean great uptime, great customer support, and fast speed, among other things.
I’ve made a million technical mistakes that my host’s customer service team has bailed me out on.
Write at least five articles before starting out. Plan on publishing one per week and continuing to publish at least one per week going forward once you actually get a website set up.
5. The Pillar Post
If you want to know how to start a blog the right way, learn about pillar posts. Most highly successful blogs out there have one major article that’s thousands of words long (think 5,000-15,000 words). This is called a “pillar post.”
The subject of these needs to revolve around what your blog’s main focus is. It’s very important that it doesn’t deviate from that. Within your shorter blog articles, make sure that you include relevant links to the major pillar article.
Internal linking is big.
How to Start A Blog: Final Thoughts
There are a lot of key components for how to start a blog. We didn’t go over much technical or marketing stuff in this post. The main reason is because you need to focus on the fundamentals if you want to do really well in the long run. A lot of hosting packages cover the most important stuff these days anyway, like SSL, two-factor authentication, and all the other important things for having a great site.
If you look at blogs that are already successful, write a lot about something you know and love, and have the right types of articles on your site, then it should see some growth over time. You will need to do other things like link building to really get the wheels turning, but your most important move is getting content written first and continuing to write more.