Today I will show you how to start a blog in less than an hour and start growing it immediately and for Free. Follow the exact step-by-step instructions I used when starting and growing my own blogs. Get it running fast and start and lets see How to start a blog and grow fast and free.
I am helping people and companies to implement their most unrealistic dreams in the Internet. More than 15 years spent creating blogs, eCommerce, Funnels and other great stuff.
How To Start a Blog in 5 Easy Steps
- Find the best hosting and great domain name
- Create the WordPress Site
- Choose the best theme for your Blog
- Start Blogging with keyword optimized content
- Promote your blog!
This is very simple and this is exactly how I am starting every one of my blogs and websites.
You may be asking yourself – how to start a blog for free? Honestly, I am never using a free hosting, for the reason that It is unreliable, blogs looks unprofessional, you can’t have domain name, and finally free service providers can close your blog without a notice. Just think about it! You may loose everything overnight… Not the best scenario. So my advice is go get your own hosting and domain name. Get the best best WordPress hosting provider you can find. Because this is the only way to be safe and make money from blogging.
Never use a free blog hosting
Step 1. Find the Best Hosting and Good Domain Name
There are many hosting providers in the internet. They may look similar at the beginning, so it may be very difficult to choose the right one.
Some of them are better, some worse, I will do review of them another day.
But for this blog I decided to use Bluehost. So I will show you how to get Bluehost account, how to setup WordPress and finally how to start blogging.
I am using Bluehost a lot, cause It’s cheap and reliable hosting provider. Furthermore the company behind Bluehost is long time in business and doing well. This is very important and helps you feel safe and not to worry. Hence for a couple of years it is my first choice web hosting provider.
Bluehost offers a paid web and blog hosting services. The good news is “it is the only time you need to buy something for your blog”.
To make starting easier, I got a special deal for my blog readers only.
For this special price $3.95/month you will get:
- FREE Domain Name Registration (normally
$15) - FREE SSL Certificate Included
- One Click WordPress Install
- 24/7 Support
- 30-Day money back guarantee
- And if you register via the form bellow you will get FREE guide “How To Start Blogging in 2019”
How to Setup Bluehost Account
First of all you need to choose a Bluehost hosting plan. There are 3 options available.
The $3.95 plan is perfect for new bloggers and is most affordable plan online today. It offers all that you may need to start blogging and earn money online.
Which Plan to Choose?
I personally would suggest going with the $5.95 plan. This is the most cost effective plan today! For only $2 more you get unlimited websites. You can buy one Bluehost subscription and have multiple bogs.
But if you are on a very tight budget, go get $3.95 its great.
Choose Domain Name
Your domain name is very important part of your blog. Even more is not only the name of your blog, but also your identity, and address on the web. For example, this blog’s domain name is www.fulllifelabs.com.
Your domain name creates a first impression for your visitor.
If you are doing a blog for your existing business, choose a domain name related to your business. The best domain name is the name of your company or brand.
If you are doing a blog for yourself, or your future business, and are ready to deliver quality content, dreaming of huge amounts of traffic and monetization, choose something that people will remember, something that can be branded when you are ready for it.
Think for a while about the domain name: once its chosen and your blog is live it’s not so easy to change the name, trust me 🙂
It may be very difficult to choose domain name. Sometimes it may be more than difficult, the real challenge. Probably the best domain names are already taken, and you need to be creative. It’s quite easy to get caught in downward spiral of analysis paralysis. The never ending search for non existing perfect name.
Luckily there are tools that can help you. I use https://www.namemesh.com/, there are many more just google for “domain name generator”.
Domain name makes huge impact to your blog, but don’t spend too much time on it. Just choose one and go on. Above all you want to start blogging, you haven’t too much time for search of a perfect domain name.
Go back to Bluehost and choose the plan if you haven’t done it yet.
How to Create Bluehost account
After you chosen Bluehost plan, you will be redirected to the domain section.
Here you may enter your new domain and check if it is still available. If you already have domain name, and want to use it within Bluehost, there is a special section for you. Or if you are not ready yet to choose domain name, just skip for now with domain and continue registration.
Once you are done with a domain name, you will redirected to the account information form. And asked to enter your address, payment details and choose some available options.
Package information is presented bellow the account information form. There you can see and change your subscription period, FREE SSL and some available extras to choose.
Extras are of course optional but I usually choose SiteLock Security. It helps to protect your blog from hackers, accelerate performance and boost conversions.
Another option to consider is the Office 365 Email Essentials, it helps a lot if you are want to have email box with your blog name.
But once again, extras are nice to have, but they are not necessary for you to start blogging online.
And finally just enter your CC data and you are good to go.
Easy Peasy 🙂 No complicate things at all and with just a few clicks you got really good deal on Bluehost hosting.
If you still haven’t registered go check it. Click here to get a special deal and take advantage of discounted hosting.
You are almost done it. Just few more easy steps.
Step 2. Create the WordPress Site
Now you will install WordPress, which is free.
“Install?” what**? Don’t worry, because Bluehost will do all the work for you.
Just create a password (think something difficult to guess) and click Next.
After you are done with password, you’ll be directed to a Log In screen. Click “Log In”
Now you’ll be shown several themes to choose from. These themes are great, but there are many more themes inside. You can choose one here but I recommend to scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Skip This Step”, because you will have much bigger selection of themes later.
Congratulations you just installed the WordPress server! Seems like soon you will be ready to teach your colleagues how to blog on WordPress 🙂 Maybe this is the idea for your first blog post, or small side hustle?
Step 3. Choose the best WordPress theme for your Blog
A theme allows you to easily design your blog exactly how you want it to look. Therefore there is no need for coding or design expertise, no need for hiring expensive coder. A theme makes the design work a million times easier and cheaper.
So why we skipped the theme in the previous step? It is for a reason.
Now go to my.bluehost.com, enter your new domain, username and password and click “submit”, you will be forwarded to WordPress Dashboard. From here, go to “My Sites” and click on “Log in to WordPress”.
Then, in WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Themes:
From there you can browse Premium Themes, Free WordPress.org Themes, or Upload your own custom theme.
If you feel that you need something exceptional, I recommend taking a look at Elegant Themes. In my opinion they have the best WordPress themes and the best blog templates.
Elegant themes has a collection of 87 handcrafted and customisable Premium WordPress themes. Most noteworthy their Divi theme is really exceptional.
Finally you are done with theme selection, and you just need to launch the blog.
Go to Bluehost > Home and click Launch and follow instructions.
Congratulations, you just installed your first WordPress powered website and you are ready to start blogging and earn money online.
With Bluehost it was not so difficult yes?
I personally would suggest going with the $5.95 plan. This is the most cost effective plan today! For just $2 more you get unlimited websites. You can buy one Bluehost subscription and have multiple bogs.
Step 4. Start Blogging with keyword optimized content
You are done with setup now and you should be ready to start your first blog post.
But before jumping straight into the writing, spend some time thinking about your niche and about your reader. What problems and needs do your reader has? Can you help him or her to solve his problems or needs. Or even better can you teach him something, so he won’t need a help anymore? How you will do this?
Every blog needs readers, because the more readers you have the more successful your blog is, and of course it is much easier to monetize a successful blog. Finally you earn more from your blog.
How to get more the readers? It’s simple and difficult at the same time. There are many bloggers in the web, and all of them compete for the same reader.
Seams like the simple option is to buy advertisement from Google, Facebook or Instagram. But advertisement is expensive, because there are many sellers and there are not enough place for advertisement. Finally users tend to skip your ads and never click on them. Probably 90% of my friends are using Adblock so they never see ads at all.
Another more difficult but better option is invest into SEO. The geeky word means Search Engine Optimization. It’s difficult and everyday changing science. But if made right it will give you long term results. Also keep in mind that SEO depends from search engines a lot. For example Google changed Search Engine Algorithm couple of weeks ago, so all SEO now will need to be updated.
Long-tail keywords
Luckily we know simple technique that requires no expensive ads, no black hat SEO, and just some small tweaks in your blog post.
First of all learn you reader, then write about things that your niche is interested about, finally help your readers solve their problems. But remember that’s not enough, because everyone is doing this, so you need to offer something more and to target more precisely.
When writing articles most bloggers want to target a specific keyword, so they usually stick with one keyword only. They believe in get quick rich schemes and want quick results. Almost certainly they will fail.
And this is good for you!
Remember, do not stick with one specific keyword and don’t be lazy. Choose multiple long tail keywords and distribute them in your blog post. Because short specific keywords do not work. Period!
Using long tail keywords may bring you a lot of FREE traffic!
What the hack is long tail keyword? Simply said, It is a longer keyword with small monthly search volume. For example the next 3 bullets are a long tail keywords:
- how to start a blog and earn money
- the best blogging site, and
- how to start a blog business.
Let assume there are 300 – 500 monthly searches for one long tail keyword, not much yea? But because you will be using multiple long tail keywords in your writing, therefore your blog will get really solid amount of visitors. As a result you will get more conversions and your blog will be more successful.
Step 5. Promote your blog!
First of all if you want to build really solid blogging business, it’s not enough to focus on one traffic source only. Because you don’t want all your eggs in one basket.
You need to investigate and use multiple traffic sources:
- Participate in your niche related forums;
- Find your niche related questions in Quora and answer them;
- Find your niche related blogs and comment them. Use google to search for a new blog posts in your niche;
- If you don’t afraid of a camera, start answering niche related questions in YouTube;
- Find partners in your niche and write Guest posts on their blogs;
- Use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and be active in your niche related groups. I am using Pinterest a lot, because it works great for some niches;
- And the last but not least “Start building your email list”.
I will stop here, but it will be updates on this topic soon. So please subscribe to my list bellow, to get up to date updates from Full Life Labs.
The Site where We try to Create the Full Life 🙂
Recap
- Choose domain name for your awesome blog, then
- Get reliable hosting and I recommend Bluehost.
- Install WordPress (Bluehost will do all the work for you)
- Get the best WordPress Theme. I love Elegant Themes.
- Start blogging and remember to use long tail keywords.
- Start promoting and advertising your blog
- Don’t forget to register on my list, and you will get all the hosting benefits, outlines, and the latest updates from us.
Good luck in your adventure!