How to Start Your Own Blog

There are a lot of steps involved in starting your own blog. A lot of people ask me how I did it, and how I became so successful with my blog Raising an Extraordinary Person.

Luckily, when I started blogging, I had someone explain all the ins and outs of how to begin. But – I also made a lot of mistakes that I spent hours fixing. Plus, a lot has changed in the blogging world over the years.

I am going to explain to you, step-by-step, how to start your own blog. You will be able to read this guide and follow the directions from start to finish. When you’re done – you’ll be ready to start writing your own blog posts.

So, I’m about to walk you through this step-by-step. This guide is based on the assumption that your goal is to turn your blog into a source of income and want to know how to streamline that process.

Step 1: Planning

Do not skip this crucial step. I literally re-designed my blog 6 or 7 times because I would do things impulsively the second I had an idea, rather than taking the time to do it right.

Choose Your Niche

First of all, determine what you’re going to blog about. I recommend choosing a more narrow topic, rather than having a broad spectrum of topics.

Why?

Because you need to know your target audience.

If you blog about college, make-up, parenting, and investing – your audience is not targeted enough to develop long-term loyal readers, and those readers are the most valuable.

They’re the ones who are going to buy your digital products, subscribe to your newsletter, come to your blog, again and again, generating revenue for you.

So, what is something that matters to you?

Choose something you are passionate about. Something you won’t get tired of writing about.

Make sure the topic is also something you’re knowledgeable in, but also willing to keep learning about. You need to be able to create stand-out content that will differentiate you from others in your niche.

Example:

Let’s say you love to cook, so you want to start a food blog. Rather than just sharing everything – narrow it down. What kind of food blogger will you be? Keto recipes? Family-friendly meals? Budget meals? Vegetarian? Whole food? Mediterranian cuisine?

When you have that more specific topic, it’ll be easier to zero in on your loyal audience and reach people through search engines like Google.

Get Hosting & Domain Name

I’m grouping this part of the planning together because you’ll be able to sign up for both at the same time.

Choosing a Domain Name

Your domain name is the URL to your website, the www.YourDomainName.com. This is an important decision to make because you’ll be known by this name and it’s not so simple to change it later.

• Keep it simple: Limit your name to two or three words. Keep it simple and easy for others to remember.
• Make sure it relates to your niche: People should be able to make an educated guess on what your blog is about based on your domain name. For example “www.DinnerOnADime.com”, you can probably guess is about cheap dinner ideas.
• If possible, avoid hyphens: If you’re dead set on a name and it’s only available hyphenated, that’s not a deal-breaker. But it’s easier to remember. People may try to return to your site and type in the other version, landing on someone else’s website.
• Research the domain name: Google your domain name before you make your purchase. Make sure there are no trademarks on the phrase you’re choosing. Also, look at similar websites – the last thing you need is a variation of the spelling of your site to have porn or something else inappropriate on it as it could tarnish your brand.

Web Hosting

Your web host is the service provider who stores your website on a server and provides you with support. I’m currently with lyrical host and I highly recommend them. I’ll explain why in a minute, but first – a little hosting horror story.

I was with a different host, before switching to lyrical host. I started out on a cheap plan, it was like three bucks per month. I went with the cheapest I could find because I was clueless.

I started getting some traffic, and my cheap hosting plan couldn’t handle it. So I upgraded to their bigger plan. This one was maybe $11? I’m not completely sure.

Anyway, all was well until traffic picked up again and I realized my website was sooooooooo slow. So, I wanted to upgrade to their “cloud hosting”, which they claimed was “the best” for around $20/month.

What happened was a month-long clusterf*&# with my site being down, being double billed and then billed again a 3rd time when I tried to get a refund. I literally lost hundreds of dollars, their customer service was a nightmare. I still shudder at the sound of their name.

Why Choose Lyrical Host?

First of all, their customer service is hands down the best there is. I’m not just saying that … I mean bar none.

I can mess up my site – because I do that some times – and I know Joe will fix it for me. I probably drive him crazy sometimes. But day or night, I submit a support ticket and Joe answers it. I swear he doesn’t sleep.

Plus he’s not just a customer service rep. He actually knows what he is doing!

Being part of lyrical host is also like having a close-knit group of blogging friends to talk to whenever you want. Their Facebook group is a great resource for anyone whether you’re new to blogging or a pro. The owners are active in the group and super helpful.

That experience is what sold me.

But – on top of that – their biggest hosting plan, which is $36/month CAD, has unlimited everything.

I don’t have to upgrade as my traffic grows. My site doesn’t slow down if a post goes viral. They just take care of it all. I don’t and won’t have to worry about it ever again.

They also provide you with free resources like stock photos, printable planners, blog post ideas, Instagram story templates, affiliate marketing guides, etc.

Decide on Branding

Branding is super important.

In order to be recognizable, you’ve got to use consistent branding.

In my early blogging days, I used whatever I thought “looked pretty” at the time. Even though I did have someone tell me how important it was to be consistent.

I didn’t think it would really matter that much. However, when I went back and re-did a lot of my work more consistently, my blog started gaining more and more traffic.

Choose:

• Four brand colors – ensure one of your colors can work as an “accent color” that will help make text pop out when you need them to.
• Two or three fonts – All need to be legible. But as a rule of thumb, have a basic body font that you’ll use most of the time, and a decorative font that you’ll use in social media posts. You may want a third font (like I do) for headers on your blog posts.

If you’re looking for some inspiration for your blog’s color scheme, check out these 50 ideas.

Design Your Logo

Probably one of the most difficult yet important parts of planning is designing your logo.

You don’t need to be a graphic design pro to create your own logo.

In fact, with a free Canva account, you can choose from hundreds of free logo templates.

When creating your logo, remember to use your brand colors and fonts. You want your logo and brand to be highly recognizable.

---

Okay, so…

If you’ve chosen a niche, a domain name, signed up for web hosting, decided on branding colors, and a logo … you’re ready to move on to step two – set up.

Install Your WordPress Theme

Now we’re getting into the fun stuff – at least for me anyway. This is one of my favorite parts of blogging. Customizing the appearance of your WordPress site.

From the admin panel of your blog (which will be www.YourDomainName.com/wp-admin) you can change the theme of your blog by clicking on appearance.

There are tons of free themes available directly from there. Feel free to test them out and you’ll start getting an idea of how you want your blog to look.

Free themes can be great, especially as a new blogger. But, they usually don’t have very many options for customization. You should be able to change your font color and typeface (hint: change them to your branding choices from step 1).

Eventually, or perhaps right away, you’ll want to switch over to a professional (paid version) of a theme. This will give you the creative freedom and features you need to take your blog to the next level.

I’ve been using Blossom Themes for the last couple of years. There are free and pro versions for all of their themes. I’m currently using and loving the newest theme available from Blossom Themes – Vilva Pro.

If you need help installing your WordPress theme, check out the video tutorial from Lyrical Host here.

By the way – when you purchase a theme, you do not need to pay extra money for the installation and set up. This can be done yourself and the lyrical host team will assist you if necessary.

Install Plug-Ins

Plugins are basically like apps that you add onto your blog and they add features and/or functionality to your blog.

It’s important to not use too many plug-ins because they’ll slow down your website. You need the best, most efficient plug-ins possible to meet your needs.

To add plug-ins, click on “plugins” in your admin dashboard, and click “add new”

Here are a few must-haves:

• Yoast SEO – Very important for helping you with search engine optimization. It’ll assess the readability of your posts and help you plan keywords you want to rank for in Google.
• Social Warfare – This adds share buttons to your blog so people can share your posts on social media. There are hundreds of sharing plug-ins out there, some better than others. This one is my fave. Another great option is Sassy Social Share, which has more options in their free version but isn’t quite as fast.
• Health Check & Trouble Shooting – This checks the health of your WordPress site and will give you recommendations if there are any issues.
• Autoptimize – Optimizes your website’s speed
• Site Kit – This plug-in is developed by Google and offers you insights on your blog’s traffic, page speed, search rankings, etc.

Configure Google Analytics & Search Console

As long as you’ve installed the Site Kit theme, this step is super easy and I wish this plug-in existed in my early blogging days because it wasn’t this simple before.

From your admin dashboard, you’ll be able to click over to “Site Kit” once the plugin is installed and activated. From there, all you’ll have to do is complete the set-up wizard and you’ll be good to go!

You’ll be able to see some cool charts like this in your dashboard:

Social Media Accounts

You’re going to need some new social media accounts for your blog.

Sign up for Business accounts so you can get detailed stats about your soon-to-be followers. Remember to use your branding colors!

• Create a Facebook Page
• Create an Instagram Account – On Instagram, you can sign up as either a business or a creator. Creator accounts are optimized for people who will be working with brands as a social media influencer. This is probably the best option for most bloggers – unless you’re going to be selling products and want a business page to promote those products.
• Create a Pinterest Account – Your Pinterest Business account is going to be one of your most important tools for driving traffic to your blog.

Right away, spend some time finding people in your niche on all these social media platforms and follow them. Begin engaging with their content and their followers.

It can be hard to create and implement a successful social media strategy but start with those following now and we’ll get into the more complicated stuff later.

Step 3: Start Creating Content

Congratulations, you’ve successfully created your blog, your brand, and the foundation of your website. Great work.

Now you’re ready to start creating content.

My advice is to dive right in. Focus on creating quality posts that offer valuable information to your audience.

We’ll get into detail about how to create amazing content later, as well as how to optimize your posts for monetization. For now, you should focus on getting some high-quality posts on your blog.

Here are some best practices as you get started. And this is all stuff that I didn’t know as a new blogger and eventually had to go back and edit my blog posts.

• Clearly state the topic of your blog post in the introduction paragraph. When people are searching for something online they’re not carefully reading each line – they’re scanning the page to see if it contains the information they need. So state the topic and make it bold.
  
  
• Keep your posts focused on a single topic. Think about when you’re searching for an answer to something with Google – you want to find that answer and find it quick. Bigger pages with more information can be useful for directing traffic but for the most part, keep it focused.
  
  For example, instead of doing a single, super long blog post about “ways to cook potatoes”, you can write multiple blog posts – how to make mashed potatoes, how to make scalloped potatoes, how to make twice-baked potatoes, how to make potato salad, etc.
  
  This allows you to create more content which is important in the beginning, while also making sure your visitors get to the information that they need. Then, you may want to go back and make a post about “ways to cook potatoes” which would link back to all of these other posts you’ve written.
  
  
• Keep paragraphs shorts – 2 to 3 sentences max. If you’re all about being grammatically correct, this might drive you crazy at first. But, you’ll get used to it.
  
  This is not about being correct – it’s about how large paragraphs of text look on a small phone screen. They’re hard to read.
  
  It’s much easier to read and scan through smaller broken up paragraphs. It’s also going to help you out down the road when you’re ready to monetize your blog and begin earning ad revenue.
  
  
• Make sure all your posts have a featured image. This is for aesthetics. When people scroll down the blog page
  
  
• Make sure all your posts are assigned a category. This becomes really important for letting search engines know what your post is about, and for the user experience. Your readers should be able to find your content based on a category they want to read.
  
  
• Don’t go crazy with tags. Adding tags to your posts isn’t the same as adding hashtags on Instagram. You don’t need 30 of them. That doesn’t benefit you in any way. Tags are just another way of sorting content, similar to categories. If someone is reading one of your posts and clicks on a tag, it’s going to take them to a list of all blog posts containing that tag. So anything that you aren’t going to use more than once, is basically pointless.

---

There are a lot of other things you still need to learn. From creating images for social media – including tips & what dimensions to use, to search engine optimization, monetization, affiliate marketing and more.

Focus on getting 10 solid posts published. Now, sit on those until they’re 100% ready to start sharing and promoting.

I will start getting into social media strategy and amplification next.