How To Start A Blog – Blogging Guide For Beginners

Are you planning to start a blog but have no idea about where, to begin with? You need not worry. Here, you will get a detailed guide about how to start writing a blog .

We, Gizmofacts, will help you to follow your passion for writing and make a career out of the same while guiding you on how to start your own blog and be a successful blogger.

While learning to start a blog, people tend to spend a lot of time searching for and gathering information about the different processes involved and helpful guidance. This involves a lot of research-work and investment of time. With this guide, you can save yourself from both.

There are different reasons because of which people start a blog. Some of the most common ones are: Also there very common mistakes mainly a “newbie blogger” usually does and we can avoid that:

• To share their knowledge.
• To disseminate information.
• To document their thoughts.
• To share technical advice and guidance.
• To record and share their travel adventures.
• To review gadgets or other products.
• To follow their passion for writing.
• To earn money online.

Whatever your reason is, all you need is proper knowledge about blogging and thorough guidance about the step-by-step process that you need to follow for becoming a successful blogger.

• Step 1: Select the blog topic/niche
• Step 2: Choose the blogging platform
• Step 3: Pick a domain name for your blog.
• Step 4: Pick the hosting to start the blog.
• Step 5: Set up your blog.
• Step 6: Think and arrange the design of the blog.
• Step 7: Install the best WordPress plugins
• Step 8: Plan your content.
• Step 9: Write your first blog post
• Step 10: Add important pages to your blog.
• Step 11: Drive traffic and gain more exposure
• Step 12: Share your write-up with the world.

These are the twelve steps, which can help you to dive into the world of blogging and get to know about it. These steps are mentioned elaborately below, to help you to monetize your blog and get ready for setting it up.

Finding a niche for your blog is the first and foremost thing that you need to do. But the question that confuses many individuals is how to select a niche? To answer this, the first thing that you need to know is- what is a niche?

A niche is a broad topic or a section, which consists of several topics. This will be the topic or the focal point of your blog. Your writeups are going to concentrate on these topics or the area of specialization that you select as your niche. It is also a particular market that you will be targeting.

There are a large number of people, who plan to start a blog, end up writing about every other thing, and boom- they fail! Reason? Writing about every random thing doesn’t work in 2020.

People have become very selective about what they are going to read and they would prefer to read a blog only if it is focusing on one particular area.

Establishing authority on a specific niche is very important and thus, finding a niche is valuable and the foremost concern for every would-be blogger.

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After selecting the niche, you need to consider the platform where you will create your blog. It is called the blogging platform. There are many blogging platforms available online and different people have varied opinions about which one is the best out of them.

Out of the many blogging platforms, the extremely popular one is WordPress. Its easy-to-use and understand, which makes it a favorable one.

Around 37.5% of the websites in the world are powered by WordPress.

There are two platforms named “WordPress”- WordPress.org and WordPress.com, one need not get confused in these two.

WordPress.com is free and can be used for the starting period, but later, you should update and start using WordPress.org, which is often referred to as the self-hosted version.

Now, that we have covered the niche and blogging platform, you need to decide the domain name for your blog.

The domain name serves two core purposes:

• It’s the permanent address of your blog on the internet.
• It becomes your blog’s brand.

There are four rules that you should usually consider while picking up the domain name:

• It should be easy to type.
• It should be easy to remember.
• It should be easy to pronounce.
• It should be easy to brand.

There are three different methods that you can use to find a perfect domain name:

• Name The Audience- You can call out the audience in the domain name itself. Example- SmartBlogger.com, AFineParent.com, etc.
• Name The Topic- You can focus on the niche in your domain name and describe it in concise language. Example- ArtofManliness.com, PaleoHacks.com, etc.
• Name The Benefit- You can answer the benefit a person will get while they stick around to your blog. Example- BeABetterBlogger.com, MakeALivingWriting.com, etc.

While everybody will tell you what you need to do while selecting your domain name, the one thing that people will not share with you is the few things that you should avoid doing. Those are:

• Don’t use too long a domain name. It can hamper the chances of your blog getting a good audience and traffic. Try to keep it lower than 12 characters and that will help you to gain good exposure.
• Avoid using the domain names like .info, .net, and so on as it tends to rank poorly on the search engines. Using the domain name like .com and .org escalates your chances to reach heights in the market.

A web hosting is a place where all your blog-related files will be stored and it will show your blog live when someone tries to access it. This is a server, that stays online around-the-clock. It is the reason for which your blog will be up and running, all the time.

The good thing about web hosting is that it is affordable. There are plenty of web hosting options available for you, but the best option is Bluehost.

The features for which Bluehost can become your ideal web hosting partner are as follows:

• Unlimited bandwidth.
• Unlimited storage.
• Free domain name.
• Live chat support.
• Free SSL.
• It is cheaper than other hosting platforms.

Another best feature that you get through Bluehost web hosting, is it will automatically install the blog for you. You need to set up your WordPress blog for the first time, which makes your blog all set for a good start and branding as well.

For setting up your WordPress blog you need to follow the following steps:

• Log in to your WordPress account.
• Select the ‘start a website’ option.
• Click on the software you want to install on your blog.
• Fill up the login details about your website.
• Click on the ‘complete set up’ button.

Setting up the WordPress blog for the first time is crucial and can be time-consuming for many. Thus, we provide you with the right kind guidelines that will help you in the complete WordPress blog setup.

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The design of your blog is the most important thing that will attract your audience to your blogs. It creates the first impression of your blog and thus has to be crafted nicely and carefully.

WordPress offers the concept of themes, which are ready-made designs available for all types of blogs. You can take the help of these themes and design and plan your blog accordingly.

Good design helps to develop trust and attract a lot of traffic towards your blog. It is advisable to get a premium theme, which will prove to be a good investment for your blogging journey.

Learn more about how to install a WordPress theme.

Plugins are pieces of code that affect the way your blog looks and functions. It adds new functionalities to your blog and is very important to invest your time and money on it.

There are about thousands of WordPress plugins available out there. You can look for the best WordPress plugins list and learn more about each of them.

You need to ensure that you have all the basic plugins installed on your blog as it will help in your SEO, optimizing your content, and the speed of your blog as well.

Read the tutorial, how to install a WordPress plugin, and get ready for some DIY.

If you have followed all the above-mentioned steps properly, then your blog is all set for adding the content now. But, before writing or adding the content, you need to prepare a content plan for your blog.

You can use an excel sheet to plan for your content or you can use a Trello board for the same.

Write down all the content that you plan to write. This plan can be for daily, weekly, fortnightly, or monthly basis. You can also create an outline of the content if you want your plan to be detailed.

So, now you are all ready to write your first blog post.

Several guidelines should help you to decide what your first blog post should be all about.

Here are a few tips that can help you to write the first post:

• While writing, envision a person sitting next to you and you are trying to talk to that person. Prefer writing in the first person tone, it makes the reader feel comfortable.
• The content should be comprehensive and should cover all the aspects of the topic that you are writing about. You should not avoid writing long content if it is the requisite of the topic.
• Avoid using images from Google, you can rather use various sites to download free images.
• Adding videos from YouTube also helps your blog to attract huge traffic. You might need a tutorial on how to embed YouTube videos in your blog.
• Writing search-engine friendly content will help you to generate excessive traffic for your blog and also improves your ranking on the search engine.

While the topics that you choose for your blog is important, it is also advisable that you add important pages to the blog. You might not finish adding it in the first week, you can add them gradually. Some important pages that you can add to your blog include:

• About Us page- It contains the detail about your blog and of course about you too.
• Contact Us page– A page with contact form and details containing, mail id, office address, and contacting information.
• Media Kit Page– This page is not required at the initial phase of your blog, but you will need it in the future and thus you should know about it.
• Privacy Policy page
• Disclosure page
• Terms & Conditions page
• Disclaimer page

Everything is now ready for your blog and your blog is live too. People can read it. But, now you need to drive traffic to your blog. This will help your blog to be visible in the search engine result.

There are different techniques that you can use to attract traffic to your blog and to promote your blog efficiently.

Once, everything is settled, you need to start getting social now. To get social with your blog, you need to share it on a Facebook page, Twitter page, and other social media platforms.

You might need the following resources to learn more about how to get social:

• Create your Facebook Fan page
• Create a Twitter profile
• Form a community out of your blog

With everything done and ready, your blog is all set to earn you a passive income. Some popular ways through which you can earn money from blogging includes:

• Amazon affiliate program
• Affiliate marketing
• net
• Google AdSense
• Own digital contents
• Sponsored Content
• Direct Ad Sales

Achieving new heights and reaching the next level of blogging will require you to be informed thoroughly about:

• SEO to drive free traffic
• Driving organic traffic to your blog
• Turning one-time visitors into readers

• How do beginners make money?

Through networks like AdSense, Affiliate marketing, and Media.net.

• How many blog posts should be done daily?

The blog posting has to be regular. It need not be daily, but you need to fix the frequency of your post and has to be regular with that timeline.

• How many words should the content contain?

The content has to be explanative and hence if it requires, creating long-form content, then that is a great idea for your blog.

The world of blogging contains so much more.

Being a newbie, you will always come across some new information and we will always try to resolve your queries through our blogs.