Start a Blog and Make an Income: Beginners Guide & Checklist
Download the Blog Launch Checklist
Once you are done with all the steps or already have a blog in the making, you can use the checklist here to see if you are missing something important.
The first thing required to create a successful blog, or any online business for that matter, is having a mindset. You do not need many reasons to start a blog.
One is more than enough.
Starting a blog is easy. You will see how easy it is.
Growing up is tough, and this is where a good mindset helps.
Once you create your blog, you will have to invest your time, money and intellect into it. But there may be cases where you'll not find success, despite all your attempts.
That is fine. Success in blogging takes time. But once you get hold of it, your blog can do wonders.
My first real income took 3 years. But once I started earning, the income jumped 2X, 3X every year. Now, I make close to 7-figures in USD with blogging and allied activities.
Note: Here, "allied activities" include blog-based affiliate marketing and email marketing techniques.
If you browse the internet and search for something like "blogs are dead", you will find many articles advocating how blogs are no longer useful. That's totally wrong. YouTube and podcasts have their own significance but blogs are not dead.
In fact, blogs are now even more useful than ever. You only need to know how you can use blogs to their maximum.
If you follow this guide, you will make your blog a money-making and marketing machine.
With proper guidance, you can make even your personal blog a livelihood and will never have to hunt for a job ever again.
When it started, this blog, gauravtiwari.org, was just another blog. Today, it earns hundreds of thousands of dollars every year and is read by over 10,000 readers like you every day. It has not only grown and changed my whole life but also changed the way I perceive blogs.
Such is the impact of a blog.
But again, it isn't always like this; not everyone tastes successful in blogging.
That is why it is important to start better.
In the following parts, I have shared some proven tricks that will help you start better along with some steps that you need to follow.
In this guide, I will use WordPress on Bluehost hosting as an example to create a blog. You can go with any other WordPress hosting you want. The reason why I have chosen this stack is its usability and pricing. Bluehost is one of the most popular hosting services in the world and is rightly priced.
So, without further delay, let’s start your blog now.
What is a Blog?
Now, some of you may ask. What exactly is a blog?
Definitions don’t matter. Understand just one thing — a blog will be your own personal ‘space’ where you will publish ‘articles’.
You can add more features to your blog by adding custom landing pages (to get some sales), a portfolio, and everything else that you desire.
This collection of ‘articles’ is collectively called a blog.
Articles are also known as blog posts or just posts. So make sure you don’t get confused with these three terms. Terms like blog, article, blog post and post can be used interchangeably.
Articles can be of any size — from one word to thousands of words. But SEO experts recommend:
Average: 1200 words per article
Minimum: 600 words per article
Maximum: Not specified
Why should you start a blog?
A blog provides a great platform where a person can make themselves heard. But beyond that, several more reasons you should start a blog. Those include:
by blogging, you connect with other community members
Are Blogs Still Relevant?
People are still reading and following blogs. Not as much as during the last five years, but this does not mean that blogging is dead. Blogs are still relevant. There are opposing views on the status of blog publishing; some internet analysts correctly point out that social media and YouTube have reduced the prominence of blogs; however, others point out that blogging continues to reach the right audiences.
According to HubSpot, companies that blog receive 55% more website visitors compared to those that don't. Blogs help attract organic traffic through search engines, social shares, and direct visits, making them a powerful tool for driving visitors to a website.
Businesses that blog experience 13 times more ROI compared to those that don't. Blogging is an effective way to generate leads, with 70% of consumers preferring to learn about a company through articles rather than ads, as reported by Demand Metric.
Blogs are a key factor in improving a website's search engine ranking. According to TechClient, websites with active blogs have 434% more indexed pages, which helps increase their visibility on search engines like Google.
Edelman’s Trust Barometer indicates that 81% of consumers trust advice from blogs.
A study by Orbit Media found that 55% of bloggers report strong results from repurposing old blog posts. Evergreen blog content continues to generate traffic, leads, and engagement over time, providing ongoing value well beyond the initial publication date.
Here are the important steps you need to follow to start a blog.
Pick a Niche
This is the first and one of the most important things that you need to do. Decide what you are going to create the blog. This changes everything.
For example, if you are going to start a personal blog – your requirements will be different than those who want to start a marketing blog or a tattoo studio blog.
It is all up to you to choose which niche you can create your blog. But choose only those topics in which you are an expert. Also, make sure to check whether or not those topics are worth investing time in. These so-called topics are known as niches in blogging.
You can target one or more niches on your blog. Choosing more than one niche is always recommended.
I recommend taking three major niches and multiple minor niches in mind.
Major Niche vs Minor Niche
A major niche is something that will be getting the most attention from you. Major niches will be the highest-earning keywords and you will be known after those. On the other hand, minor niches can be keywords or topics that will potentially lead you to more traffic but much conversion/revenue.
These are technically called Macro-niche and Micro-niche. But I will keep calling these Majors and Minors in this whole guide.
You will see that most of the bloggers have two or three major niches. They write regularly on these topics. However, they also have some specific keywords from which they can grab some potential traffic.
As a case study, I am taking Anil Agarwal as an example. Anil is one of the best bloggers in India (and possibly amongst the bests in the world as well).
For him, Digital Marketing, SEO and Blogging are the major niches – on which his blog Bloggers Passion is built upon.
But you will also find several product reviews, black friday deals etc. as minor niches which don't only aid his main niche but also help him get more traffic from search engines.
During specific events, like Black Friday, these micro-niches may help you earn more.
You can't go selecting topics or niches at your own will. You should also consider the growth possibilities. Take as an example a niche X.
You love X and you know a lot about it. But that is not sufficient.
X must be commercially viable for you. People lie when they say they are blogging for passion and not money. Everyone does everything for money. The path to that can be different but the ultimate goal is always money.
Here are three points that you must consider before selecting X as your niche:
It has enough searches on Google.
There are plenty of sub-topics under this that can be worked on.
If X satisfies these criteria, you can continue writing about X on your blog. Similarly choose other Y and Z niches using the same formula.
Find the perfect domain for your blog
Once you have decided the niche you will be targeting, you will need a domain. Try thinking of a domain name that tells your blog's story. You can use online domain or business name generators to generate domain names for your blog.
Once you have decided on your domain name, the next step is to check if that is available and can be booked.
Hosting companies like Bluehost provide one free domain name with the purchase of yearly hosting plans. But you can buy domain names from other services too.
You will see Get Started on the homepage. Click on it and you will be directed to their pricing plans.
There are three plans for bloggers, and I suggest going for the Choice Plus Plan. It comes with unlimited domain support. But if you are willing to go with just one domain, for the time being, you can choose the Basic Plan as well.
These plans offer everything you will need to create a blog, business website or portfolio. So be worry-free. Bluehost also provides 30-days money-back guarantee.
How to get a Free Domain Name on Bluehost?
Once you click Buy Now on the pricing page, you will have the option to choose a free domain name.
Bluehost offers various domain extensions and you can always get a free domain name if you buy an annual plan or larger.
Choose a plan, enter your details, and payment information and book the hosting plan you want.
Once everything succeeds, you will be welcomed with your control panel, now known as Account in Bluehost.
Most of the time Bluehost automatically redirects you to the control panel after a successful purchase but if it doesn’t you can log in to Bluehost by visiting bluehost.in or bluehost.com and clicking on the Login menu.
Install WordPress
You can install WordPress on Bluehost using their simple onboarding experience.
Here is how the account/control panel looks.
Log into your account (if you are logged out).
Look for My Sites
Click on Add Site or Manage Site as per your needs. Add Site option adds new WordPress website or blog into your hosting account.
Once you click on it, you will be prompted to set up WordPress using an onboarding screen.
Depending on your experience using the options or you can totally skip all steps and do it yourself using cPanel.
Here are the steps involved:
Step 1
How much help do you want from this onboarding process? Choose A little help if you are totally new to this thing.
Step 2
Tell it what kind of site you are creating. Choose Blog, as we are creating a Blog website.
Step 3
Tell Bluehost how comfortable you are with creating websites. Choose the correct level to get a more personalized site creation experience.
Step 4
Tell the type of blog you are creating and for whom the blog is. Fill in the required details like Site title, descriptions, username, user email and passwords etc.
Step 5
Choose a WordPress theme. Any will suffice. We will change this in an upcoming step.
Step 6
Done. Your blog is ready!
Your WordPress dashboard will be available on your domain's name followed by /wp-admin/. Say, if your domain name is gauravtiwari.org, your WordPress dashboard will be on gauravtiwari.org/wp-admin/, if everything is set up correctly.
Dashboard is Your Blog's Backend
This WordPress dashboard, a.k.a. "wp-admin" is where you will do almost everything related to your blog – to customize, write, edit and do more. I will tell you more about this in the next section.
For now, you don't need to keep Bluehost Control Panel open. Close it.
Open your /wp-admin/ and log in using the username and password that you chose in step 4 above. You will see a screen like this:
This is a customized WordPress Dashboard tailored to your experience by Bluehost. It has some plugins and default themes pre-installed so that you don't have to ponder much about those.
A more simplistic and original WordPress dashboard actually looks like this:
Understanding WordPress Dashboard
Let me tell you how WordPress works.
As I told you, you have a site URL (domain) and a dashboard URL (/wp-admin).
Site URL is what your visitors and you will see on the front end. This is what Google will index (if you allow) and this is where people will read your blog articles, make purchases, do comments and more.
The dashboard is like the control panel. Here you can write posts, approve comments, change the design using WordPress themes, and add functionalities using WordPress plugins.
The things may be different for different installations but more or less it is the same.
The first thing that you need is to customize your site. To do that you will have to install a Quality WordPress theme. If you are satisfied with the theme that you installed in step 5 above, you can skip the next section entirely. But if you want to do more, I suggest you go for a theme that suits your niche.
