This post will go through everything you need to know about how to start a blog! Even if you have no experience with WordPress or website hosting whatsoever, you can still start a blog because I walk through every step in this guide. This is the guide I wish I had when I first started, so enjoy!! ❤
1. How Much It Costs
The first thing to know before you even start this process, is how much it’s going to cost. It cost me about $1,100 just to set up my blog, and going forward, it’s going to cost me about $500 a year to maintain it. For a full cost breakdown, I explain everything in the video below. ⬇️
2. Choose Your Host
Now that you know around how much it’s going to cost, the first step to starting a blog is to choose a host. There are a ton of hosting companies out there, but the one that I use and recommend is BigScoots. During the sign up process, they can help you get WordPress (which is what you will use to build your website), and create your domain (which is the url for your website). I walk through all of this in the video below ⬇️
3. Get Your Theme
After you choose your host, get WordPress, and create your domain, the next step is to choose your theme. Your theme is basically just the design of your website. 17th Avenue Designs makes really nice ones, and I use one of their themes for my blog. They can install it for you, and you don’t need to know WordPress or coding at all since they do all the work. I also walked through exactly how to get a theme from their website in the video above.
4. Edit The Homepage
After 17th Avenue installs your theme, you can edit your homepage. I walk through exactly how to do this in the video below. ⬇️
5. Connect Your Instagram
After you edit your homepage, you can connect your instagram to your blog. If you want to post instagram photos in your blog posts, there are a few things you need to do and I walk through every step in the video below. ⬇️
6. Edit Your About Page
After you connect your Instagram, and your homepage is all set up, the next thing to do is to edit your About page. This is your opportunity to tell your readers who you are and what your blog is all about. I walk through exactly how to edit your About page in the video below. ⬇️
7. Add Legal Pages
Before you write your first blog post, it’s a good idea to add some legal pages to your website. This is to protect you from people stealing your content, and many other important things like that. The legal pages that I added to my website are a Privacy Policy, a Terms and Conditions, and a Disclaimer page. There are a lot of lawyers out there who make templates of these pages, and you just fill in the blanks with your name and the name of your website. I bought my templates from Creative Contracts, and she includes a video showing you exactly how to fill it out. Specifically, the template that I got is called the “Website Legal Bundle”, which includes those 3 documents. Once you buy it and fill it out with your info, you can have 17th Avenue Designs add those documents to the footer of your website. I walk through all of this in the video below. ⬇️
- Creative Contracts Website (Get a discount if you use my affiliate link!)
- 17th Avenue Designs Website
8. Start Writing Posts
Yay! The fun part! Now that all the boring set up stuff is out of the way, now you can actually start writing posts! I walk through everything you need to know in the video below. ⬇️
9. Upload Images Correctly
It’s important to know that there is a correct way to upload images to your blog, and there is an incorrect way to upload images to your blog. I am going to make sure you upload images correctly, because if you don’t, your images will take forever to load, and they’ll take up a ton of storage (extra storage costs money so you don’t want that). I walk through exactly how to upload images to your blog the correct way in the video below. ⬇️
10. Upload Featured Images Correctly
The featured image is the main image for the blog post. If you want continuity on your blog, I’d recommend uploading all of your featured images the same way. If you don’t upload them all the same way, they’re gonna be all different sizes, and it’ll look bad. I walk through exactly how to do this in the video below. ⬇️
11. Remove Demo Content
Before you post your first blog post, you want to make sure all of the demo content is deleted from your website. Your theme most likely came with a few demo posts, so you’ll want to delete those so they don’t confuse anyone. I walk through how to delete them here ⬇️
12. Keep Your Blog Updated
Another VERY important thing to know is you NEED to keep your blog updated. This means making sure you have automatic back ups set up, and setting your plugins to auto-update. You should also make sure WordPress and your theme are updated, and I walk through exactly how to do these things in the video below. ⬇️
13. Set Up Google Analytics
After you post your first few blog posts, you should set up Google Analytics. This will help you keep track of things like how many people are reading your posts, which posts they’re reading the most, where your readers are from, etc. This is VERY important to set up, and I walk through exactly how in the video below. ⬇️
14. Watch My How To Start a Blog Series
Those were just the basics to get your blog up and running. There’s still a lot to know like how to make money from your blog, and I cover it all in my How To Start a Blog series here. ⬇️
And those are all of my tips for how to start a blog! Do you have any questions? Let me know in the comments!
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