Blogging is one of the most popular at-home business choices that has been gaining a ton of traction in recent years. When everyone stayed inside back in 2020, I personally noticed an explosion of blogs all over the internet and everyone wanted to learn how to start a blog. Now, although we’ve long gone back to normal life, blogging is still a great choice if you want to start a side-hustle and it’s one of the most open ones out there, with tons of choices out there for blogging niches and more. Today, I’ll be going through how you can start your own blog step-by-step and why you should still consider starting one, even in 2024!
(affiliate disclaimer: some of the links in this post are affiliate links which means that I earn a small commission at no additional cost to you when you purchase something through my links)
Why Should You Start a Blog?
A blog is honestly one of the best business options to start from the comfort of your own home. The neat thing about blogging is also that you’re basically not tied down to a single location. You can have a home office where you blog from, but you can write blogs on a train, in a cafe, or wherever you find that your inspiration is at its peak.
When I was a student at university, I used to write blog posts in my lectures because I was never going to pay attention, so I would just spend those few hours writing my blog posts. I would also write up my books (Soldat, Book 2 of my series, was written mostly in school). Still, blogging is accessible and portable and easier than other forms of online businesses.
However, don’t let that mislead you: Blogging is time-consuming, difficult, and requires a lot of work, effort, and patience. You have to have a long fuse because if you’re not patient, you may tap out before your blog is about to see real success.
Is Blogging Right For You?
The first thing you should ask yourself is if you’ll actually be happy blogging. Blogging can be a lot of fun and it can be really rewarding, but it will require quite a lot of work that may make it complicated and it certainly isn’t for everyone.
Blogging is a commitment and it will require you to write consistently with a lot of posts every month. If you want fast growth, you’ll end up spending hours upon hours just writing posts and figuring out SEO practices and more.
If you have a passion and it’s something that you can spend hours upon hours just talking about, then you can turn that into writing and blog posts. If that sounds like you, then blogging is probably something that you’ll find rewarding. However, if you’re looking for instant gratification, blogging is going to be a rough time.
How to Start Your Own Blog
Step 1: Pick a Niche
When you go to blog, before you even pick a domain or web hosting or whatever, you’ll need to pick a niche.
A niche is basically a specific topic that you will be covering on your blog and it can be something a bit broad or very narrow, this ultimately depends on you as a person and what your preferences are. You basically want your niche to be something that you actually like, enjoy, have a passion for, and are willing to talk about for a long time without basically running out of ideas.
There are many niches you can pick from, like food, makeup, skincare, being an expat, knitting, opinion pieces, video games, books, etc… The below diagram should give you some ideas on what niches you can pick:
As you can see, some of these are really broad and others are really specific and niched down. It’s fine to be broad, but try to find something that you can specialize in within that broad category.
Step 2: Buy a Domain
The next step in building a blog is to actually buy your domain. The domain is basically like where your website is located on the broad internet. For instance, the domain of my website is www.zainahyousef.com and it is how you can get to my website. A domain can be bought at a number of places, but the best domain site I personally recommend is Namecheap. They’re super easy, provide tons of discounts, and you can do a lot with Namecheap’s services. I’ve opened a lot of websites before and I’ve had good experiences with Namecheap.
Namecheap also frequently runs promotions for newcomers and you can get a domain for your first year at a super awesome discount. After that, you need to renew your domain every year, but it’s a small fee to pay and you can always sell your domain if you don’t want it anymore.
Step 3: Web Hosting
To ensure that your blog is viewed as credible and is actually owned by you, you want to acquire web hosting. Web hosting is basically a way for you to actually use your domain and build your website. It’s sort of like renting out a space in the search engine for your website.
Web hosting comes in many different forms and many companies offer it. Namecheap does have web hosting that’s very affordable as well, so if you’re interested in Namecheap, you should definitely look into their web hosting solutions.
There’s also getting an SSL certificate which lets your website have encryption and is what makes your website have that little https in front of the domain name. It’s a really important thing to include when it comes to your website because without it, your domain is not secure for your viewers. You can get an SSLs certificate at SSLs or Namecheap.
Step 4: Install WordPress
The next thing you want to do is to get WordPress, which is where you’ll actually build your entire website. Once you’ve added your domain to your web hosting provider, you’ll install WordPress to it and then actually get started with this part.
In your web hosting platform, you should see a place to add your domain and if your web hoster is familiar with WordPress, it will ask you if you want to install WordPress. Although WordPress is complicated at first to learn, it’s probably the best way to actually build your website. Sure, you can use something like Weebly, but WordPress tends to be the best and most customizable. It takes time, but it’s not impossible to learn.
Step 5: Design Your Website
Once you’ve installed WordPress and have gotten it up and running, you want to now actually design your website. This is going to be a bit of a lengthy process, but there are plenty of themes on WordPress that are free and give you pretty much anything you need at the beginning. There’s also other designing website services like Elementor, but if you aren’t super apt on paying, then you can just pick a free theme from WordPress.
Have fun with designing your website and make it personalized to fit your style and preferences. However, if you do feel overwhelmed with designing, you can always hire someone to help you with the work.
Step 6: Write Your First Blog Post
Now that everything is all set and ready to go, you want to actually write your first blog post! When it comes to your first post, don’t make it something like “welcome to my blog.” Nobody really knows your blog exists yet, so head right into the content that you actually want to write about so that when readers search up topics, you can actually show up in their results. Remember that a search engine crawling your website will take time so be prepared for that. You may not see immediate results, but if your blogging is consistent, you’ll eventually make it!
Step 7: Promotion, Promotion, Promotion!
One of the best things you can do for your blog aside from just posting content is to also work on your social media presence if you find that you’re apt with social media apps. However, do note that having social media followers may not necessarily translate to blog clicks. You want to grow a social media in the same niche you are blogging about. You want to reach out to your target audience and you can’t really do that if you’re not blogging about the same thing that your social media audience followed you for in the first place.
There are a lot of big social media pages for blogging, but one of the biggest and most popular has to be Pinterest. You can check out my guide on how to use Pinterest to grow. Instagram is also another big one for businesses, and you can check out my guide on that!
Step 8: Stay Consistent
I know I’ve said this a few times already, but it’s seriously really important for you to stay consistent when you’re blogging. A blog is not something that you can just occasionally post on and hope that you get readers. Remember, you are one of many blogs that may all be answering the same questions or covering the same topics as you, so you need to be unique, stand out, and actually remain consistent. Consistency is really a big deal when it comes to posting on the internet.
Before you head on out, be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so you can get updates on all my latest posts, WIPs, book releases and more!