Guide To Blogging – All You Should Know to Start a Blog

Guide To Blogging is a comprehensive article that explains step-by-step on how to start a blog and make money online without much stress.

If you are new to blogging or trying to grow your blog then this article will be very helpful to you.

A blog is similar to an online journal where it is easy to digitally write out anything you feel like sharing for the public to read, and It can be your personal opinions, thoughts, and ideas.

As we all know one of the easiest ways to make money online is to Start a Blog.

Looking for information on How to start a blog and make money, then look no further because we have all the answers you need.

You are in the right place as I created this article to give beginners a guide on How to create, manage, and make money from their blogs right from their homes.

It can be a kind of “make money from home business” or even a part-time business.

This post explains the necessary steps in starting a good and successful blog with no technical experience required.

That is, you can start a blog today without having to learn HTML, and coding, or waste your time searching and reading long tutorials here and there.

This post on How to Start a Blog will take less than 20 minutes, to read and digest, so get your tea or juice, sit back, and enjoy.

NOTE: Remember that at any time if you get stuck or need questions the comment section is always available below.

Steps on How to Start and Monetize a Blog

1. Choose your Blog Niche
2. Choose your Blogging Platform
3. Pick a Domain Name and Host
4. Install WordPress/Design
5. Get Traffic to your Blog
6. Make Money from Your Blog

How to Choose Your Blog Niche

Choosing a niche is the first step to take in starting a blog. Niche is simply choosing the particular topic, or the area your blog will focus on.

A niche blog is a blog that revolves around a particular subject like education, tutorials, blogging tips, making money, Politics, entertainment, phones and computers, health and fitness, etc.

Before you start a blog you must first understand and consider what others will like to read and not what you have a passion to write about.

You mustn’t be the one writing, if the finance is available, you can hire writers.

Although blogging is about writing for others, you should also consider what you have passion and knowledge to write about.

Below are simple guides on choosing your own blog niche that will attract readers to your blog. I will not write much on them just a tip to choose your niche.

Tips for Choosing Blog Niche

1. Readers want to Solve Problems – Thank God for the internet as many people are searching for solutions on how to solve day-to-day problems in relationships, marriage, childbirth, computers, phones, and lots more.
2. Write to Entertain People – All work and no play make the job boring. So look for a way to write and entertain your readers.
3. People want to Learn New Things – Why not go ahead to write and teach them innovative things?
4. People want to Achieve a Goal – How did that fat lady now become slim, do you know why? Why not write about it so that many people who want to achieve that will read your blog (Health and Fitness)?
5. Readers want to know what is happening around them – Yes, even I who is writing this post need to know what is happening in Nigeria, the US, the UK, Hollywood, Nollywood, etc. what is happening to my celebrity actress and actor. Why not write about them?

As I said, I won’t write more about it, just think outside the box if you want to start a blog today.

How to Choose a Blogging Platform

The second step in starting a blog is to choose your blogging platform from the countless platforms online.

Blogger is also a good platform to start a blog but you don’t have full control over it.

If you want to take your blogging career seriously you need to use WordPress.org in creating your blog.

It doesn’t cost much. You can contact digitalwebplus.com to build a special WordPress blog for you.

WordPress is flexible and very easy to use in creating blogs even if you don’t have knowledge of HTML, it has lots of drag and drop features, making it very easy for those with zero coding knowledge.

Apart from the fact that over 75 million websites run on WordPress, they have plugins that will help you fix your site easily without writing a single code.

ADVICE: WordPress has 2 options which are:

• Hosted WordPress Blogs which is (WordPress.com)
• Self-hosted WordPress Blogs (WordPress.org) recommended

Self-hosted costs a little bit of money, but will give you much more control and flexibility, catchy domain name, instead of http://example.com.worpress.com, it will be http://example.com which is easy to remember and also looks professional.

How to Choose a Domain Name and Hosting

This is a very exciting stage in starting a blog as this stage may affect other things if chosen wrongly.

What is Domain? A Domain is an address that differentiates your site from others. It is simply a website address on the internet.

For example, the Facebook Domain is Facebook.com. While the site you are reading is radpointer.com.

What is Web Hosting? Just like having an address and building a house at that address. The domain name is the address, while the hosting is the house where the occupants of that address are staying.

Web hosting is the home of your blog address and content that you write and share on your blog. Without a hosting plan, you cannot use your domain.

How to Choose a Domain Name

• Choose a domain that is easy to remember.
• Choose a .com or .ng if possible, if you are in Nigeria and want to blog.
• Your Domain should be easy to pronounce and spell.
• Do not use hyphens, numbers, or confusing words.
• Not sure what to use? Use your name like Lindaikeji
• Be creative or combine two or more words but keep it simple.
• Read a detailed post on How to Choose a Good Domain Name.
  

In choosing a good host, only two things matter, they are:

• Page Speed – This is the average amount of time (in seconds) it takes your blog page to load.

• Uptime – Choose a host that is 99% online or possibly choose 100% if available.

Must-Read:  Web Hosting Service in Nigeria | Best Hosting Companies. For more information Read the Best Web Hosting in Nigeria to Choose.

 

How to Install WordPress Using Softaculous

After choosing a domain name and host, paying, and giving Cpanel login details, the next step is to install WordPress and start blogging.

Softaculous is a great addition to cPanel, which allows users to install the great open-source software with just a few clicks.

To install a script using Softaculous, please do the following:

• Open your Cpanel and Login
• Click on the Softaculous Icon.
• The Softaculous Panel will open on your end. To install WordPress click on the name of the application.
• On the new page, you need to fill in the installation details like domain name, installation directory, administrative login details, etc.

By default, Softaculous will select WP and it will attempt to install the application in a sub-folder instead of the main domain.

If you want the new installation to be on the main domain please leave the In Directory field blank.

Change the default login details to something else. This way you will be sure that a hacker cannot guess the login credentials easily. Please double-check all details and then proceed.

To install the script scroll down to the end of the page and click the Install button, Usually, this takes less than 5-20 seconds to finish installing all applications.

However, some of the apps are bigger and their installation may need some more time.

When everything is configured the Softaculous installer will display a page with links to your newly installed application.

Click them and you should see your new website and the administrative area of the software.

After the installation is completed, you will be sent an email with your login information, including an Admin URL.

To log in to your blog, just click the admin URL. In case you forget this URL, it is simply yourblog.com/wp-admin (where your blog is your domain name).

Understanding the WordPress Dashboard

• Dashboard – This shows you an at-a-glance look at your recent activity, including how many posts, comments, and pages you have. You can also write up a quick draft blog post here.
• Posts – This is where you will click if you want to add a new blog post or edit an existing one.

• Media – This is the library of all the pictures, videos, and audio files you’ve uploaded to the site. You can manage all of those items here.

• Pages – This is where you can add a new permanent page – like a service or contact me page (not a blog post!) and manage the pages you’ve already created.

• Comments – This is the place you will want to go to manage comments. You can see which comments are waiting for your approval, review comments you’ve approved, see which comments WordPress has labeled as spam, and delete comments you don’t want.

• Appearance – this is where you can edit your blog’s design and install new themes and layouts. I show you exactly how to do this a little later in the page.

• Plugins – This is where you’d click if you wanted to install a new plugin, like a photo gallery or SEO tool.

• Settings – This is the last section you need to know about. Here, you can change your site’s title and tagline, edit your email address and manage all of your site’s important settings.

How to Get Traffic to Your Blog

Now that everything has been set up, the next step is to start writing posts so as to get traffic to your blog.

There is no magic here, you have to be serious if you want to succeed in blogging, just keep writing and posting good content.

As we all know low website traffic is the most common challenge that webmasters, bloggers, or business owners complain about all the time.

The question is how do you drive traffic to your new blog? I will just give you a summary below:

• Optimize your Content – robot.txt, sitemap.xml, Fresh content, internal linking, etc
• Keyword Research
• Social Media Sharing
• Guest Posting
• Guest Posting
• Submitting your blog to webmasters and directories etc.

Read more on how to increase your blog traffic. Once you get good traffic you can start talking about monetizing your blog.

How to Make Money from Your Blog

The main reason that some people start a blog is to make money from it otherwise just a few people will waste time and resources sharing knowledge with you.

There are a number of ways to make money with your blog like advertising, reviews, Digital products, Affiliate marketing, etc.

Features of a Quality Blog

You can share virtually anything that will interest people to read. Your blog design, style, settings, and formats depend on how the user prefers it.

Very many blogs offer features such as straight text, hyperlinks, and pictures, among others. Some blogs allow users to put mp3s and videos on their blogs.

Some bloggers do prefer audio-friendly blogs rather than writing too much text. They make use of spoken word entries, which are also known as audio blogging.

1. Title – This is a critical feature of your blog, giving you the ability to label your post and easily differentiate your blog post.
2. Post body – This consists of well-written text conveying specific or categorized information for the benefit of users.
3. Post trackback – Post trackback is when other websites or blogs with similar content place your post link on their blog post redirecting permanently to your blog.
4. Blog Permanent link – When you publish a post, a URL will be generated automatically, which makes it possible for people to visit your post. The URL generated is known as a permanent blog link.
5. URL Comments – This is a contribution to the knowledge session on your post, that allows your readers to post their thoughts or experience via comments on your blog.

One major problem with blogging is the fact that they are made up of a few templates. Compared to other websites with lots of individual pages.

For this reason, blog users can easily create new blog pages due to the nature of their fixed settings such as Provided space for the title, the post body, post category, among others.

The above feature is useful for those new to blogging, as it is easy for them to start blogging right away.

They can easily choose from available blogging templates already prepared to ease blogging.

Whoever wants to blog does not need to go through the bottleneck of creating a website from the start; all that is required is to join a blogging site of their choice.

As a member, they have become part of the blogging community. They can visit the posts and pages of co-members but can’t edit their content, then link back other members’ posts to their blog. They also can post comments on fellow members’ blogs.

There are very many blogs on different niches like politics, social commentary, sports, philosophy, etc.

These blogs are built with a specific theme to suit their purpose. This way, blogging is a channel for sharing vital information, opinions, and knowledge concerning different topics and themes.

Blogs currently are now being used as a medium for advertising different goods and services. Some authors do use their blogs as a means of selling their books.

Several others see their blogs as a medium for sharing current news, recent trends, events, and catastrophes.

These days, blogs have a significant role in education. Professors from different institutions find it easy to save and share the lessons previously taught and discussed in a blog.

This way, information is readily available for researchers, students from other institutions as well and students who missed their lectures, this gives them the ability to catch up with what is taught, and the assignments are given.

Entrepreneurs use guides to blogging for beginners to establish specific blogs for promoting their business.

There are tons of people who visit the net daily; this makes blogging the most lucrative move for all entrepreneurs. Bloggers who are involved in different online businesses use their blogs as a medium to sell their services.

Some bloggers are professional advertisers, and they gain a huge profit from it through their blogs.

Following reports on the guide to blogging for beginners, blogs that have gone viral in recent times are those that take the form of a personal journal.

First-time bloggers are always a party to this. People also use blogs to document their daily lives, including their opinions, poems, struggles, and poems. Blogs also serve as a medium of expressing oneself to the globe.

Bloggers from different parts of the world, including those currently using guides to blogging for beginners, see themselves as one and often communicate among themselves.

This is one of the most significant advantages of blogging, as it creates a knowledge-based community of people ready to share comments, thoughts, and ideas among themselves.

Blogs are dynamic due to the various platforms, themes, set-ups, and topics they appear. Those who are interested in knowing the real essence of blogging are already on the right path for reading this guide to blogging for beginners.

Blogging in recent times has gained colossal recognition globally. The word “blog” is the short form of a weblog. There is no hard rule when blogging is concerned.

Bloggers are free to express how they feel whichever way they want to, and one fantastic thing about blogging is that you can get a good blogging platform to blog for free.

Guide to blogging for beginners will direct you to the numerous blogging platforms of websites you can choose from online.

This motivates first-time users to join any blogging community that best suits their interests.

If you take the time to search for different blog directories, you will find a long list of blogging platforms available on the web.

Searching for blog directories is not a difficult task because they are organized into different categories. Making it fast to get the exact platform you want.

Blogging is a career or hobby everyone should venture into. It’s simple, easy, and fun.

You can as well share your ideas with us and let us know what you think about this article or add your information through the comment session below for additional knowledge.

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