How to start a profitable blog in a few steps
Do you wanna start a blog but don’t know where to begin?
Starting a blog is actually easy. But making it successful, well, it’s not that easy. Anyway, do not worry, I am here to help you start a successful blog.
For a few couple of years, there have been talks about blogging being dead, but is it? Of course not! Blogging is doing absolutely well even in 2024.
Many people may think that AI is replacing blogging, right? Well, that’s not true. AI is simply just a tool to assist human writers, but it can’t completely replace them. Don’t view AI as a rival but as an assistant. AI has helped many writers make huge amounts of money.
Blogging is one of the easiest ways to make money online but just know that it’s not a get rich quick scheme. It may take months or even years to make money from it. In fact, it takes around 20 months to start making money from a blog. But do not despair, it’s possible to monetize your blog in less than that.
The steps involved in starting a blog are very important. In this blogpost, we’ll get to discover each one of them.
Are you ready to become a successful blogger? Well then, let’s begin.
Here are 7 easy steps to start a successful blog:
These 7 steps will be enough to get you off to a good start as a blogger. Make sure you follow through as I discuss each step.
#1. Pick the right niche
Picking the right blogging niche is very important. I’d advise you to have a niche-specific blog rather than a general one. Why? for one, it helps you make valuable and relevant content that may build you a following from people who are interested in that niche.
Choosing a niche that you’re passionate about will also help you create amazing content and make your journey enjoyable.
There are so many niches you could choose from; however the ugly truth is that most of them are saturated. That means that starting a blog about these niches may not be profitable at all.
However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful in those niches. It only means that it will be very hard to beat other blogs that have the same content. However, it’s all possible especially if you’re content is high quality. So, if you think you’re up for it, then go for it.
Here are some of the most profitable blogging niches:
- Personal finance
- Travel
- Health & Fitness
- Blogging
- Lifestyle
- Food &recipes
- Fashion
- Personal development
- Making money
- Entertainment
However, if you wanna go for the less competitive niches, I still gotcha. Here are some of the low competition blogging niches:
- Urban gardening
- Solar technology
- Pets
- Self-care products
- Gaming trends
- Business automation
- Special needs parenting
- Digital wellness
- Space exploration
Once you choose a niche, make sure you are very comfortable with it. You don’t want to have trouble creating content for it. Also select one that has the potential of getting you a good audience. You can use tools like GoogleTrends, Ahrefs and Semrush to find the search volumes of keywords related to your niche.
Ater this step, you need to find a good blogging platform. Let’s know more about this.
#2. Finding a good blogging platform
This is also quite important. As a blogger, you wouldn’t want to have a blog with annoying downtimes. You’ll want a blog with a strong online presence.
This step will go a long way in determining the success of your blog. When choosing the right platform, they are a number of factors to consider. These include ease of use, customization, monetization ability, speed, and SEO capability just to mention a few.
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Personally, I would recommend WordPress, but if you want more platforms to choose from, then click the above link to view other amazing platforms. Even free platforms can be good especially for beginners as you can move your site to a paid platform later if you want to.
In this guide, I will use WordPress as an example going forward, specifically, WordPress.org. Stay away from WordPress.com. First of all, WordPress.org is free unlike WordPress.com. Moreover, WordPress.com has too many limited features which you’ll have to pay to use.
The good thing about WordPress.org is that you get full control of your site. However, it has a steep learning curve, but it only takes a short time to get comfortable with it. Besides, you can learn as you use it.
Your site will also need a domain name. Let’s discover more about this.
#3. Pick a hosting platform
Since we’re using WordPress as our example, we’ll have to get our blog hosted.
A few other blogging platforms don’t require this as they will host your site themselves. However, that still comes with extra charges, so it’s not so different from what we’re doing. If you want to consider such blogging platforms, check this out:
When choosing a good hosting company, you have to consider some factors like pricing, support, uptime, security, server speed, backups among others.
Since this a such a huge topic, I have prepared another article dedicated to choosing the right hosting platforms. If you’re interested, check it this out:
Oh, and there are also free hosting platforms. They are also in the above article so, if you can, just check it out.
Oh, I almost forgot. Avoid the big hosting companies namely BlueHost, GoDddy and HostGator. The reason why you see them everywhere is because they pay big bucks for people to recommend them. Many people who choose them end up regretting. You can check out some of these reviews on TrustPilot.
I would recommend these hosting platforms:
Since we are using WordPress as our blogging platform, then you can just install it from your cPanel. You will get a cPanel after purchasing your hosting. This will save you much time than if you were to install WordPress by yourself.
#4. Getting a domain name
A domain name is part of the site address that people would use to find your website.
It should look like this: www.yourblogname.com. The name between the periods is for you to decide but it must not yet exist on the internet. That means that there can’t be another site with the same name.
I would recommend that you get your domain name and hosting from different companies. This will enable you to choose the best company for each.
Some blogging platforms offer free subdomains, so you don’t have to purchase a custom domain name. However, it is advisable to use subdomains. They may hurt your site’s SEO and can make your site seem unprofessional. So, for your site’s sake, just purchase a domain.
Here are some of the best domain registrars:
After purchasing a domain name, you can connect it to your blog, whether it’s on WordPress or not. The blogging platform you choose should have its specific instructions on how to do this. It shouldn’t be hard at all.
Hope you’re still with me. Let’s get to the next step.
#5. Setting up your blog
Now that you have everything you need, you can begin by designing your blog.
I won’t say much about this, only design your blog according to your liking. Make sure it’s attractive to readers and also user friendly. This will help you maintain your visitors and even attract more.
You can start by choosing a good template or a theme. Some blogging platforms do not have this option therefore you will be limited when it comes to customizing your blog. That is why I decided to use WordPress as an example. With WordPress, you can design your site however you like.
When setting up your blog, you can also create the pages you want to appear on it. You can also make different categories for your blog which you will use to group your content.
After you’re done customizing your blog, you need to start thinking about your first post.
Let’s get to that now.
#6. Creating your first post
You need to make sure that your posts are well optimized for SEO. There are many ways to do this.
First of all, you need to do keyword research. Since your blog is new, I would suggest you target low difficulty keywords first. Going for high difficulty keywords might take very long to bring you results.
You should also look for keywords with high search volume to ensure your blog gets a good amount of traffic. For this, you can use these tools: Ahrefs, Semrush, Google Trends and UberSuggest.
Additionally, you should insert images into your posts. Posts with images do much better than those without mainly because images strengthen the readers’ impression of the post. You can use your own images or stock photos from sites like Pexels and Pixabay. Just make sure you don’t use copyrighted images. This could bring you a lot of trouble.
Moreover, you need to write high quality content. Do enough research before you start writing. Make sure your post answers peoples’ questions as this will make Google improve your search rankings.
Your post must also be of good length. Aim for at least 1500 words. Studies show that longer posts perform better on Google, specifically between 2500 and 3000 words.
Another thing you could do is to link your posts internally. This will help Google index your blog faster and also improves your site’s SEO.
Once you are done writing your high-quality article, you can publish it and wait for the magic to work. Make sure you have a schedule for publishing your articles. Google loves sites that are consistent with their content.
If you need some help making a schedule, then use this:
- Monday – 11 am (for high traffic)
- Thursday – 7 am (for high sharing)
- Saturday – 9 am (for high engagement)
Monday and Thursday are usually the best days to post on a blog.
If you want to see results quickly, then I suggest you post 2-3 times a week. You don’t have to post every day to be successful.
#7. Promoting your blog
Before you start promoting your blog, you should have already published a few blogposts.
Promoting your blog is very easy and can be done in a number of ways.
First, you can use Google AdSense which will bring you traffic from other sites. This method requires you to pay and it can be very effective.
You can also opt for the free method which is sharing on social media. Platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram bring bloggers a lot of traffic. When you use this method, make sure you give the people a good enough reason to click on your link and read your post.
For WordPress users, you can use auto share plugins that share your posts for you saving you a lot of time. I would recommend the WP to Buffer plugin. It has a good free plan, is very easy to use and has no limitations unlike other plugins.
Once you do this, just wait for the visitors to come.
Do not undermine the potential of social media sharing. In fact, it is the only sure way for your blog to get traffic. Depending on organic traffic may never get you any results.
Google has been putting AI content from CoPilot and Gemini at the top of results and this is hurting many blogs. That doesn’t mean you won’t get any organic traffic; it will just be harder than it was before. This is another reason why you should ensure your content is of high quality.
#8. Monetize your blog
Obviously, the end game is to monetize your blog.
This can be done in many ways like affiliate marketing, ads, selling your own products, sponsored content and subscriptions. Yeah, you don’t have to depend only on ads to make money from your blog.
You can put affiliate links in your post but it’s always good to inform your readers that your post has these links.
If you want to display ads, you can apply to programs like AdSense and Mediavine. These programs have specific requirements that a blog must meet before it can be accepted. You can check the specific requirements from their website.
Conclusion
And that’s it from me.
This guide is all you need to start your blog.
Make sure you’re passionate about blogging and you have enough time before you start. Blogging takes time before you can accomplish anything. Also, if you don’t like it, please don’t do it. You don’t wanna do all this work, then give up all of a sudden.
All the best!
