how to start a blog

How to start a blog: Complete Guide for beginners

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In this article, I am going to write all about blogging, how can you start a blog? What are the essential factors which make your blog successful?

First of all, you should know about blogging… what is it?

Blogging is either a hobby or a part of an online business. Yes! We can call it a business because through blogging you can make the right amount of money. There is no need to work days and nights. There will be no one to boss you. Your house will be your work-space, and you will be your boss.

Therefore, it’s an online business, where you write something, monetize the content with advertisements, people come to your website, read it, and you will start earning when they click on the ads or when they see the ads (impressions).

Note: There are some technical terms I used, we will discuss them in further blogs.

The three terms which are used in this field are:

  1. Blogging
  2. Blog
  3. Blogger

Blogging: As I mentioned, it’s an online business, you can also say that it’s a field where we share anything to the world in which we have the expertise, people take benefits from it, and we start earning money through advertisement and monetization.

Blog: Blog is also known as a post, article, etc. It’s a web-page/document which is written on something, that you update/publish on your website.

For example: On this page, I am writing “How to start a blog” then, it will be a blog.

Blogger: A person who writes blogs on own or other’s websites. For example, I am writing this blog that means I am a blogger.

Here are some of the steps which are necessary to start a blog, you can start your blog by following these steps.

Basic steps to start a blog

First of all, I would say thanks for showing your interest in blogging. It’s a fantastic field in which you can start earning by working from your home. There is no need to spend more money to invest.

I am assuming that you don’t know anything related to blogging (except little knowledge about it).

There are two ways to start a blog:

  1. Free, using Blogspot or WordPress.com.
  2. Self-hosted, like blogs hosted on servers for which you pay.

Note: self-hosted means you pay for a server, not that you host it on your personal computer.

I would strongly recommend you to start with the free version. It will give you all the necessary knowledge required for blogging, such as using the editor, using the headers and the traffic expectation. The best part is that it is free and you get a first-hand experience of blogging. If you are starting from scratch then head-over to blogspot.com or wordpress.com and create a free blog.

Now comes the pro part. If you already have the first-hand experience and you want to step things up then try self-hosted blogging.

The essential things which are needed to start self-hosted a blog:

  • Domain name
  • Hosting
  • CMS (Content Management System)
  • Content
  • SEO knowledge
  • SMO knowledge

These are the six basics, but the most important things to start a blog. Let’s understand one by one in detail.

1. Domain name

Domain name is also known as website name, so you must have a domain name before starting a blog, and the domain name must be unique and memorable because it is the address of your blog on the world wide web.

Things to remember while selecting a domain name:

  • It should be unique, related to your website niche/topics
  • It should be short so that anyone can remember it easily
  • To get a good ranking, website authority chooses “.com”, “.org”, “.net” or “.info”
  • If you are writing country-specific content like India based, you may use “.in”
  • For education websites (like college, universities), it should be “.edu”
  • For government-specific websites, it should be “.gov”

How and where to purchase a domain name?

There are many websites in the world, which provide domains like godaddy.com, bigrock.com, domains.google.com, hostindia.net, etc.

Go to any of the websites, find search for the desired domain, and if it is available, buy it. It will cost less than $10 for a year (when you’re a new visitor, you may also get a domain in $1 or $2).

2. Hosting

Hosting is related to managing your files which belongs to your website. Hosting services are provided by the hosting service provider companies, and they keep a record of your website; they serve the website on request. That means when someone opens your site. The hosting provider sends that particular page to the client browser in HTML format.

How and where to buy hosting?

Most of the domain providers (which I mentioned above) companies provide the hosting services, and it will cost around $20 to $50 (less or more than it, it depends on your requirement).

Some of the basic things, which you should remember while buying a hosting service:

  • Read the reviews of the company; hosting is the most critical factor in this field. It directly associates with the reader and website. If Hosting Provider Company is unable to serve the requested page in seconds, the reader will leave the page and may not revisit your site, ever.
  • Remember the platform on which you have designed a website. For example: if you build a website on WordPress, you must buy a WordPress hosting (basically Linux Hosting), if you make a website on “DOT NET” hosting must be “Windows”, and if you design website in simple HTML you can buy “Linux or Windows” hosting.
  • Check the bandwidth, storage for your website, server’s RAM, etc.

3. CMS (Content Management System)

If you want to start blogging, you must be aware of CMS. A CMS is a platform which manages your website’s contents. Either you can design it by yourself, or you can choose any CMS which is popular nowadays.

Some of the content management system platforms are:

  • WordPress
  • Blogger/Blogspot
  • Drupal

Note: “WordPress is the most popular and most easy to learn. Most of the blogging websites are using WordPress as their CMS.

If you want to start a blog on WordPress, here is the list of some of the best free hosting provider companies:

Reference: You can read at or visit the article “7 Best Free WordPress Hosting Providers Reviews”. This article is providing the link to the top website that offers free WordPress hosting and reviews, features of all websites.

4. Content

Content is the first thing to start a blog (since everything connected with each other, but the content is the main thing that you are going to share with the people).

People don’t care about domain names, hosting, SEO, SMO, etc. Readers want great content that can help them.

So, you have to choose your website’s niche/topic and write content that can help your website’s Readers.

How should it be?

  • Content must be meaningful and related to the topic.
  • Search engines, readers both love the content, so the content must be unique, descriptive.
  • Content should be SEO friendly, and images should be there so that you can attract the readers (Images are the better way to explain anything most).
  • Remember: “Content is the king” in blogging.

5. SEO knowledge

The full form of “SEO” is “Search Engine Optimization”. SEO referrers to the techniques to optimize your website for search engines. So that search engines crawl your website, index the pages and start serving your web pages links to the readers on their query.

You must have basic knowledge about Search Engine Optimization before starting a blog.

What SEO does for your website?

  • SEO helps to rank your website on the search engine results page (SERP) so that it can be ranked and served to the people when they search for the topics.
  • SEO helps to boost your website traffic and the traffic that search engines send organic. And the organic traffic helps a lot with websites.
  • Organic traffic that is serving through the searching engines helps us to earn the right amount of money. (There is the logic, fact behind it. Some of the Advertisement providing companies like Google AdSense pays an excellent amount of clicks if the people visit your website via search engines).

Therefore, to get traffic, to earn good money, your website should be SEO friendly.

6. SMO knowledge

SMO stands for “Social Media Optimization” it refers to optimize a website for Social Media or promote your website on Social Media websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Why is SMO required?

  • SEO takes time to rank your website in search engines, so it is the first way to generate traffic for your site. If you want to reach more visitors, you have to optimize your website for Social Media platforms.
  • Most of the people use Social Media all the time. If you share any blog on social media, your followers can see the blog’s link instantly. If they like the post, they will visit your website.
  • Social Media provides backlinks to your website (but, those are not very effective).
  • And many more…

So, the term “SMO” is related to optimizing the blog/website for Social Media promotion, like:

  • What should be the Title, that can attract the reader to click on the post
  • What should be the image within content that can display on social media with your article? Blog posts with the pictures attract the readers to see the post.
  • The description, sample text that will be shared with the post, etc.

Conclusion:

There are a lot of things that require making a blog successful. In this post, I shared some of the basic but most important things which are essential for starting a blog.

If you are planning to start a blog, read this full post, and if there is any confusion, you may leave your query in the comment. I will be happy to help you

Cheers!