A Definitive Guide to Start Blogging in 2020 – The Beginners Guide

Starting your blog is super EASY!

It’s a magical moment in everyone’s life to start a business and taking it online.

At first, it might just seem like a daunting task. You’d find it difficult to figure the head and tail. But you’ll get the hang of it once you read my guide.

I mean if you want people to know what you can do and how you can solve problems then your blog may find good footing on the internet. It can even make you super-rich.

Okay great, let’s not get caught up with the shiny object syndrome with the phrase “super-rich”. Let’s slowly build your space on the world wide web and contribute to a multitude of evergreen content.

I started blogging with free platforms like blogger and posted my first post on 22nd July 2012. Then tested the water with WordPress.com in 2016.

It’s the year 2020 and every one of us have been exhausting the internet to know something that we didn’t know. There are so many blogs out there. While some websites are gigantic (Amazon.com) others are super strong within their niche (NationalGeographic.com).

So if you are running a business and need an online footprint. This is the ultimate foolproof guide that can help you get started with more opportunities.

Fear Ye Not. I’ve got your back. Let’s begin this journey together.

Why should YOU start a blog

The internet is full of webpages with information.

According to WordPress statistics every day there are more than 2.75 million blog posts are published daily. This puts the aggregate total to more than 70 million posts a month.

You too can be a part of this cult and make a valuable contribution towards knowledge sharing. Soon enough you’ll identify that you have access to a limitless market.

By any means, I’m not saying it’s a walk in the park to identify potential buyers. However, you have the reach that you never had before. All of it within a click of a button.

I’m eagerly expecting you ‘Yes, I mean you’ to share what you know with the world. Surely you know more of something that I wouldn’t know of.

There are so many of us out there who would type a search query on the Google search bar and look upon information that is relevant to the query.

Imagine!

Your domain popping as the first search result on Google.

If you’ve shared what you know and it’s relevant. Your audience will value your advice and may even be willing to pay for your products or services.

Similar to the blogs that currently exist on the internet you can also create one depending on the knowledge that you would like to share.

You can post on regular intervals and inform your audience in that particular niche.

So, what is a niche? Well, keep reading further. I’ve have explained the importance of niche-focused blogging.

How often should I blog

Blogging can be taken up as a hobby.

Or you can get more serious and hire a piece of real estate and start your blog with a little bit of professionalism. Either way is fine. All you need to maintain is consistency.

Frequency matters a lot.

You need to remain disciplined and maintain a zen-like schedule. Blogging consistently.

Some blogs publish contents daily, some bi-weekly, others weekly and a few of them do a post every month.

What is going to be your commitment? Unless you are sure and committed to putting in that extra effort. It’s fine to skip reading beyond this and switch to a different web page.

BUT

Suppose you are ready to commit yourself to regular blogging then you are going to do just fine. Nevertheless, you must not forget that to run a successful blog you need to post quality contents regularly.

Although I started blogging back in 2012 they were great for a starter. But did not offer me the amount of flexibility that I was expecting with a paid platform.

Blogger Starter Kit

It’s fine if you aren’t a tech geek. Blogging is for everyone.

Let’s take a look at what you need to cover to start hosting a successful blog even if you have no experience.

1. Choosing a suitable Blogging platform
2. Deciding on the Niche (what are you going to write about)
3. Choosing a domain name
4. Getting web hosting
5. Designing your Blog with a theme
6. Customizing your Blog
7. Setting up the YOAST plugin
8. Brainstorming your first masterpiece
9. Firing out your first blog post
10. Set up an editorial calendar
11. Monetize your Blog

1. Choosing a Suitable Blogging Platform

Let’s address the fundamentals.

Firstly, where are you going to create your Blog? If you’ve read this far. You already know that I have already spoken about my blogging experience with multiple platforms.

While there are many blogging platforms each of it has its pros and cons.

So you need to pick one wisely. As you’ll be writing on this hereafter. It’s your baby.

In 2020 over 455 million websites run on WordPress. That’s almost 35% of all websites on the internet.

I too run my website on WordPress.

Now, when you start a blog from scratch you shouldn’t get yourself confused with WordPress.com. Instead, you need to pick a self-hosted blog with WordPress.org.

2. Deciding on the Niche (what are you going to write about)

Pretty much self-explanatory.

You need to decide on what you are going to write about.

For example, look at my blog it’s focusing on a narrow niche of Travel and further narrowing to Sri Lankan Travel.

I just refrain from adding anything outside of my niche. I don’t want everyone visiting my blog. Instead, I want only people interested in travelling to Sri Lanka to visit my website.

If you are planning on writing about everything under the sky. You are going to have a tough time in the blogging sphere.

So just like in politics they “divide and rule”. You need to narrow down to a single niche. Then start blogging exclusively on that topic.

Here are 2 ways peel this mystery onion to figure out how to choose a topic.

#1 – Find birds of a feather

They flock together.

Not everyone is a fan of horror movies. This is a dark genre. Being that, there are so many out there who still crave to watch horror movies. Let alone, many even go through the reviews before watching a new movie.

Look what I did. For this simple reason, I just did a quick Google search on horror movies 2019. Holy Moly! did you just see how many search results it just brought up? Although, horror isn’t mainstream yet some still love watching this genre.

Are you good at reviewing horror movies? Great, there you go, you’ve picked your niche.

Let’s say you are going to write about finance. You may feel a little overwhelmed thinking if it’s kind of too broad to be picked as a niche.

Set sail from the broad category and switch to a narrow niche like personal finance or personal insurance.

#2 – Do you enjoy learning and teaching on a subject

What are you passionate about? Is there something that you would like to teach others about? Do you enjoy continuous learning on this subject?

Don’t be overwhelmed with an idea. All you need is passion and commitment to exceptional content delivery on this subject.

You don’t need a revolutionary idea to start a blog, instead, be focused on the subject matter.

3. Choosing a domain name

Very simple. It’s the most important step. All you need to know is these 4 things when choosing a domain name.

Okay, let’s begin with getting your creative juices flowing. So your domain name should be:

1. Something easy to remember. No fancy jargon is going to cut this. Unless location-specific pick a “.COM” domain. You may never be able to get a visitor returning to your blog if they cannot remember your domain name. Unless you run email marketing.
2. Easy to pronounce. Make it a one or two-letter word. Do not come up with a tongue twisters. You don’t want to be introducing your blog’s domain name repeating multiple times and then spelling it.
3. Easy to type. So that you can type in the keys without looking for numbers or hyphens in the middle of two words on your domain name.
4. No special characters like $%*>

4. Getting Web Hosting

What is web hosting?

Web hosting is simply renting your piece of cloud space on the internet server. Quite similar to renting your piece of real estate property in the physical world.

The web hosting partners will do a lot more background work on behalf of you which you do not have to worry about.

The thing about web hosting is, it’s quite cheap and anyone can afford it.

I’d recommend you select Bluehost for hosting solutions for your blog. Bluehost is the largest and the most well-known web hosting on the planet.

Their hosting solutions are excellent. They hardly have any downtime and have exemplary support services.

Here are a few features of Bluehost:

• Free domain registration for 1st year
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Free SSL
• Live chat support
• 30 days money-back guarantee

All it costs you is just $2.95 a month. You can upgrade once your blog starts growing. Till then you are fine to get started with this package

You can type your domain name below and select according to availability.

Now that you have completed the signup and purchase. Bluehost will install WordPress automatically for you.

You are ready to get started with blogging in the next 10 minutes.

5. Designing your Blog with a theme

To begin with, you may have to log in to your WordPress site.

Design of your blog is a critical element of your blog’s output. For now, you may have your default theme downloaded to your WordPress.

Now that you’ve logged in your dashboard will give you an overall picture of what you are going to be working with.

WordPress designs are called themes. To change your blog’s appearance, simply hover over ‘Appearance’ on the sidebar. Then click on ‘Themes’.

Now, it’s time to get some eye-catchy theme to get viewers to stick with the design of your blog. Click on the ‘Add New’ button on the top bar. You’ll get instant access to thousands of WordPress themes.

Now, you may find a page full of suggested themes. We may both like each other but our tastes might not be alike. Fortunately, you have the option of choosing a theme by selecting the ‘Feature Filter’ tab.

Under the feature filter, you can select the three categories listed. It’ll appear something like this.

After you click on ‘Apply Filter’ you’ll get a load of free themes that you can choose from. Also, there are free themes as well as paid themes.

You can whatever design you prefer and click on its thumbnail to get a preview of the design layout. That’s how your blog will look like.

I use the Astra Theme and it fits perfectly to my niche. The design development team continuously update the versions so it remains compatible with every plugin on WordPress.

By the way, the theme is so popular that it has been downloaded 1,000,000 times to websites since its launch 2 years to date.

However, do a quick check on multiple themes but remember that they should also be suitable for your niche. After narrowing down the themes. Pick your choice and click on ‘Install’.

Once the installation is complete. Click on the ‘Activate’ button.

Great!

Your blog has a new design that suits your niche. If you aren’t satisfied with any of the themes you can go ahead and buy a design.

6. Customizing your WordPress Blog

The foundation of your WordPress blog is now built. The next step that needs to be taken care of is customizing your blog.

Now you click on ‘Customize’ and navigate on customizing the blog.

You can customize the font, heading sizes, sidebar, menu options and many more. Each theme will have its variation. You can now check it around and pick something that pleases the eyes.

Again always think of your audience, So that visitors find it easy to navigate within your site.

Once you are done customizing go ahead and click in ‘Publish’.

Great!

Now that you know how to customize your Blog. You can do more changes later.

Time to visit your home page to sneak peek your blog.

7. Optimizing your Blog Search Engine Traffic

Now It’s time to get a crazy amount of visitors to know more about your blog.

Search Engine Optimization is a ballooning industry. Changing and shifting constantly. Yet there are few things that don’t change much.

This is why I picked WordPress for blogging. It makes things utterly easy to be listed on Google for certain search terms.

You too should know how to do it.

You can also rise through the ranks if you constantly post high-quality engaging content. Even this blog may very well be about your day job itself.

Suppose you are a Real Estate Broker and start blogging engaging content for your audience. You might as well start finding more newer prospects in your order pipeline.

Sounds crazy right!

Whatever your job may be. Blogging will definitely help you land new deals.

But, how is it possible? Here is a sure-fire way to succeed.

Let’s download the YOAST plugin to your WordPress Blog.

Hover over to the sidebar on to ‘Plugin’ and click on ‘Add New’.

Now you’ll see a screen full of suggested WordPress Plugins. Go to the search bar and search for the ‘YOAST SEO’ plugin.

It’ll show up in the result. Now click on ‘Install Now’ then click on ‘Activate’ button.

You can now return to your dashboard. Can you see Yoast plugin on the sidebar? There should also be the Yoast icon on top of your dashboard.

If you find both then your Yoast plugin is active. Now click on the ‘Yoast plugin’ on the the sidebar and click on ‘General’.

Then click ‘Webmaster Tools’ and click on the ‘Google Search Console’.

This action will direct you to your Google account. Now you can sign in to your Gmail account.

Then click on the ‘Alternate Method’ and select the ‘HTML Tag’. I already own this domain so I’m unable to show you a screenshot but on your screen, you keep following my methods.

You should now be able to see a drop-down menu. Keep following me carefully.

Subsequently, select and copy the alphanumeric string within the quotation marks.

Next, you need to paste it on to ‘Google Verification code’ on Yoast and click ‘save changes’.

Now return to the Google Account tab and click on ‘Verify’.

One final step before you move ahead from the Yoast Plugin. Return to ‘General’ on Yoast and click on ‘Dashboard’ and click the ‘Configuration Wizard’.

Start answering the next 10 questions to optimize your blog. Select the most relevant answers. These aren’t final answers in the event you wish to change something in the future, you can always come back and change them.

Leave everything else as they are for the time being. You can read also read the Yoast website and if there are any changes that you would like to make, then go ahead with it.

Setting up permalinks:

Permalinks are unique hyperlinks or unique series of codes that leads you to a blog or webpage. By default, WordPress will set up a permalinks for your blog.

The default permalink structure is kind of difficult to fathom what the webpage is about in a glance.

So, we need to set up something straight forward. You don’t have to beat around the bush to explain someone on the web what your webpage is about.

Now, hover over ‘Settings’ on the sidebar of your WordPress dashboard and click on ‘Permalinks’.

Now your webpage will show you multiple ways of permalink structures. What I use on my blog is “Post Name’.

I use this structure because it’s straightforward for my audience to understand what the blog page is about. Even though they have not yet read the entire blog post. There is no room for grey areas with this structure.

Once you select the ‘Post Name’ option click save changes.

Great. If you’ve been with me so far we’ve bought you a domain name, designed a fancy theme, set up SEO configuration and selected a permalink structure for your brand new BLOG.

Congratulation!

Well, we’ve got a little bit more to go. So stick around a bit. That’s the most important part of a successful blogging journey.

8. Brainstorming your first Masterpiece

Now that you’ve decided on a niche to write about. Let’s find out what to write about.

One fundamental piece of advice is ‘Always write a post that solves a problem’. This is the method to this madness to follow.

Readers seek clarity and engagement in your blog posts. Therefore, you must keep this in mind when writing your blog posts.

You can write about a positive, negatives or your own experience on overcoming challenges.

A good way to know what to blog is, find what people want to know about. You can visit Google Trends to figure this out.

If you have decided to write a blog on horror movies, you may find that usually, people search for things like:

• Best horror movies of 2019
• Highest-grossing horror movie of 2019
• Upcoming horror movies in 2020 Summer

It’s better to start by answering some questions of this nature. You can compile a list of 50 topics and pick the best topics and start analyzing what questions would they have and the best way to answer them.

Take a look at my blog post of ‘10 Best Places to Visit in Sri Lanka‘.

It’s one of the most searched queries on Google so I decided to write my list. In no way, I can say that it’s the best out of all. But, those with a genuine interest in visiting Sri Lanka will find this to be extremely useful.

There are 3 things to adhere when brainstorming your blog:

step#1 – Write what excites your audience

Example

• Salespeople love to know on tactics on how to grow their sales

Step#2 – What challenges do your readers face

Example

• Teach them how to overcome every rejection and tell them they’ll face a 100 No’s before a Yes!

Step#3 – Show them your level of competence

Example

• Tell them how you overcame every obstacle and teach them how to succeed.

9. Firing your first blog post

Like a cannonball let’s fire this one out.

First, let’s take a look at the steps on how to start writing on your WordPress blog.

You can start by hovering over the ‘Posts’ and click on ‘Add New’. This will open up a brand new blog post page.

WordPress will now take you on familiarisation tour with a series of tabs. It’ll teach you the methods of working on this platform. Soon, you’ll become an expert on WordPress blog posting.

Now start by typing your headline and include the key phrase by clicking on the ‘Yoast’ icon on the top of the right sidebar.

Further, work around with editing and adding images ad continue to explore other functionalities. Your blog post should consist of a head, body and a tail. In other words, you need an introduction, a body and finally a conclusion.

At the bottom, you’ll see the Yoast SEO bar on which you can edit the snippet of your blog post. It will show you a preview of your blog on how it’ll appear on Google itself.

On the right sidebar, you can set a ‘Featured Image’ and edit your ‘Permalink’ to a shorter one as Google reads them easily.

Lastly, check a ‘Preview’ and see if everything looks good. It doesn’t need to be the best article on the web at the moment. You can update your blog post continuously.

Finally, hit that sexy ‘Publish’ button and now your first blog goes live on the web.

Congratulation!

10. Setting up an editorial calendar

Writing a blog post is great. What’s important even more is continuing to post engaging content regularly.

Therefore, how do you create this habit of continuous posting?

That’s the reason I’m urging you to draw up an editorial calendar. This will help you say disciplined with blog postings and updating.

No one wants to read an outdated blog post. Even Google ranks posts that are continuously updated.

If you type a search query on any search engine most will show Wikipedia as the first result. The reason being is that it has multiple contributors who update the webpage continuously.

You don’t have to pay for an editorial calendar instead I just have a simple spreadsheet. So no matter what duty I have for the I just follow this to write new posts and update existing ones.

This is something that I have and the upcoming ones are listed below with the scheduled publishing dates.

Maintain your posting frequency is very important. I post weekly and there are other new bloggers who post every day or every other day.

I don’t want to be blogging every day which will quickly lead to burnout and make me quit blogging altogether.

Think what is best for you and stick to that schedule from day one. You won’t be able to conquer your niche overnight. Even your writing won’t be as other mature bloggers at first. But, eventually, you’ll become one of the best bloggers in your niche.

Set reminders so that you don’t go behind schedule. You can use Google calendar for this purpose.

11. Monetizing your Blog

Is there something that you can you think of something better than this as the final part?

Now that we have built a blog from scratch and come to the point of monetizing it. Let’s explore a few ways of doing it.

Generally, you can monetize your blog by selling physical, digital products and also by selling your services. Additionally, you can also sell ad space on your blog through Mediavine, Adsense, Propeller Ads etc.

These can generate a good number for you as a passive income.

Before focussing on the money try creating a community by producing high-quality engaging blogs. This will pave you the way to access the focus group to whom you can sell your products to.

Put your effort before the money. If you put in the right amount of effort then your dollar deals will surely follow.

Conclusion

Blogs can look effortless to create. By now you know it’s a lot of work. Anyway like there is light at the end of the tunnel. We’ve managed our way through the toughest part of getting you started.

Now, all that you have to do repeat the process mantra ‘write, publish, update and repeat‘.

Blogging can open up an array of opportunities. Furthermore, it is much more affordable than most other reach channels because your audience can be reached by their fingertips.

Be honest and transparent and uplift readers with your writing.

Don’t overthink about Google rankings and algorithms. But write for humans as they are ones who are going to read and take action to your calls.

Happy Blogging!

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