Starting a blog is not a hefty task nowadays, in fact, anyone can start a blog from their comfort nowadays.
Unlike the olden days, we used to hard code to build a website or even a small blog.
Well, This is not the case today, Today we have Content management systems designed specifically for building a great blog.
Most popular CMS being WordPress.org and Google’s Blogger.
So today I want to share with you How To Start a Blog in 2020 in just under 30 minutes.
Anyone can start a blog in 8 Steps mentioned below
So let’s get into the detail of each of the steps mentioned above.
Choose a Niche For Your Blog
Niche is the topic or subtopic about which you will write in your blog.
For example:
If someone writes about Health and fitness on his blog then it will be called a fitness blog.
If someone writes about Technology on his blog then it will be called a technology blog.
So choose your blog’s Niche and then start writing blog posts in that niche, that’s the idea.
And you shouldn’t post anything that goes beyond the scope of your niche or outside the niche of your blog.
some tips for choosing your blog niche
Below are some of the Proven tips that will help you choose a perfect niche for your blog.
Choose a niche about which you can write about
Selecting a Niche is the most important thing you should keep in mind while choosing a niche.
Because if you choose a niche about which you are not passionate about, then you will lose your interest, and you will quit soon.
So choose a niche that you’re interested in and can write about.
Choose a niche which has some commercial intent
You want to make money from your blog right?
Here commercial intent will play the most important factor because no one wants to start a blog that doesn’t generate revenue.
Commercial intent Niche means a niche whose audience buys something.
For example:
let’s say you have a blog about fashion, and you write about fashion and different fashion trends on your blog.
So it’s obvious that people who are reading your Articles buy products related to fashion, that’s why they are reading your content right?
So you can write a review about a product or a service related to fashion and put your affiliate links for that product in your article.
So whenever someone makes a purchase from the link in given your article, you will be rewarded a handsome commission.
That’s what I mean by commercial intent Niche. And the earning potential of these commercial intent niches is also high.
- Figure out all the niches that have commercial intent
- Check whether you’re passionate about writing on that niche.
- Finalize your favorite niche and start working on that niche
- Check if there are enough products that you can promote on that niche.
- Check the competition
- check the earning potential in that niche
Some niches are hard to generate revenue from.
Like in Quotes or Shayari niche, no one buys anything on that niche, no one bothers to spend money for some SMS or quotes, so it will be hard for you to monetize such type of niches, and the only monetization option in such blogs is AdSense.
So choose your blog’s niche which has multiple revenue source potential.
Start a blog in a niche which solves people’s problems
Imagine you started a blog, you wrote content, started promoting your articles and then no one reads it, your blog dies, This happens when you start a blog on a niche that has no demand
So to avoid this thing happening with your blog, you need to write on things that people search for.
Pro tip: Always start your blog in Entertainment, money, problem–solving, Health, Passion related Niches or sub Niches, Micro niches.
Because these are the things about which people are most worried about.
- Entertainment – people spend money on entertainment, that’s why people buy Netflix.
- Money – People want to make money, that’s why they consume information about making money, sell them information products
- Problem Solving – People want to Get out of depression, and buys Ebooks solving their problems.
- Health – people want to stay healthy, and they buy health supplements online.
- Passion – people want to learn a new hobby, whether it be learning to play the guitar or any other passion for that matter.
So as you can see, the above markets have a lot of possibilities, choose your niche that falls under any of the markets as mentioned above, because these are the things about which people care.
You can further dig down deep into demands by doing keywords research and trends research, which we will discuss later in this blog post.
So start a blog that solves someone’s problem and about which people are interested in, solve a real-life problem through your blog.
Bonus tip for finding the Niche for your Blog
Check all the marketplaces including Amazon, Flipkart, forums, Quora, Reddit, Affiliate marketplaces.
Check for all the categories they have, what are the products they are selling, see if you can start a blog about those categories.
Doing this small homework, you will get the idea about what products exists for what niche and you will also determine the demand for a specific niche.
Also Read: How to Find a Profitable Niche For Your Blog (Proven Method)
Come up with a name for your blog
the next step is to come up with a Good name for your blog, This will also be the domain name of your blog or your website’s address.
Example: yourwebsitename.com
Some tips for Coming up with a Good name for your blog
- come up with a short, easy to remember the name for your blog.
- That name should be unique
- The name should somewhat relatable to your niche, for example: if my blog is in Tech niche then I would have named it like technocruze.com or something like that.
- so as you can see that the domain name somewhat matches with the niche, and anyone will be able to tell that it is a tech blog, so name your blog accordingly
- Your name should be under 12 characters, this will help us in getting shorter domain name example: technocruze is 12 characters long and is short as well, a d it is also easy to remember.
- Check the availability of that name in social media and also check the availability of the TLD of the domain name like .com is available or not or .in is available or not of that name etc.
- You can also name your blog as your name, but here the problem that may arise is, sometimes the TLD of the name is already taken, and social media handles are already taken.
Precaution: whatever the name you finalize for your blog, after finalizing check if the TLD (.com) domain name extension is available or not, and social media handles are available or not using namechk.com
PRO TIP: don’t be too hard on finding names, don’t stress this process too much because it’s not about the name, it’s all about the work you will do on your blog.
Because you’re the reader of BloggingPal we want to offer you Two more PRO TIPS that’s super awesome and something which is going to blow your mind.
Are you ready for those PRO TIPS?
PRO TIP 1: Check the name that you have selected for your blog in Namechk.com, This tool will allow you to find all the available domain names extensions and social media handles related to the name that you searched for.
PRO TIP 2: if you’re having trouble with finding a name for your blog then go to Leandomainsearch.com, here you can enter the keyword that you want to name your blog with and it will show you all of the different Name suggestions that you can name for your blog.
And yes after you got a cool Name from LeanDomainSearch.com for your blog then you can use namechk.com to check whether that domain name and the social media handles for that name are available or not.
Did you like this tip? C’MON I know you loved this tip.
Ok so now let’s move on to our next step.
Get a Domain Name and Hosting For Your Blog
A domain name and hosting are the two most important elements of your blog.
And these are the two things that virtually guarantee the success of your blog.
Choose a crappy hosting and your website speed and experience will suffer.
Choose a crappy domain name and your visitors will have a hard time remembering your domain name and your brand name.
So What exactly is the domain name and hosting?
A domain name is the web address of your blog.
For example https://twinstrata.com is the Address of my blog.
So https://twinstrata.com is my domain name here.
And that .com behind my blog’s name is the TLD domain extension.
And you should always aim to get the .com extension for your domain name, because it is widely being used and trusted worldwide.
When you tell your brand’s name to a new person they automatically tend to assume that your website or blog will be yourdomainname.com.
So you can guess out how important it is to get a .com domain name and the popularity of .com domain extension.
And Hosting is a computer that will host all your website files.
Whenever someone types in your domain name at their search bar of the browser, it will send a request to your Website’s hosting server for accessing the blogs files.
Only after that your blog gets visible to the reader.
So this is the reason the speed of a blog is largely dependent on hosting.
So Choose a Hosting that’s Good enough.
I prefer to use Siteground Hosting on all the blogs and Websites I create for my clients and me.
And Siteground is the best Hosting company out there I’ve ever used.
How to choose a domain name?
Choosing the domain name is the same as choosing a name for your website.
Whatever the name you have chosen for your blog in the above step, you have to register that name TLD domain name.
Like for example you selected your blog’s name as technocruze, now you have to go to any domain registrar, and register that domain name.
Precaution: whatever the name you finalize for your blog, after finalizing check if the TLD (.com) domain name extension is available or not, and social media handles are available or not using namechk.com
How to choose a Hosting Server?
Choosing a Good Hosting service is the most important step in starting a blog.
If you choose the wrong hosting for your blog then your blog will suffer.
- Your blogs speed will be worse
- Your blogs user experience will be worse
- You will never rank in search engines, as Google and other search engines prefer to show Good Websites only in their search results.
- And there are a lot of other Problems with crappy hosting services.
So which hosting service provider to go with?
I recommend Siteground Hosting for hosting any website or blog.
I have been in the blogging business for quite some time now and have tested numerous hosting servers over a while.
And I can say that Siteground Hosting stands out as the best hosting service among all the Hosting’s I used.
Why I recommend SiteGround Hosting over Other Hosting Providers
So below I’m gonna give my genuine Reviews on Why I recommend SIteground Hosting over other Hosting Providers.
and Yeah this will be my Unbiased opinion.
- Customer Support is Top Notch
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- Fast Loading websites
- Easy to use Interface
- Trusted by Clients and Industry experts all around the globe
- Officially Recommended by WordPress.org for Hosting Websites
- Secure than most of the hosting providers
Here’s some proof That Will Make you Trust SIteground Hosting Even More.
Here’s How to buy the domain name and hosting from Siteground
Step 1: Click Here to get 70% Discount on SIteground Hosting.
Step 2: You will land on the siteground’s Official Website which will look like the screenshot attached below
Step 3: Select Managed WordPress Hosting (Highlighted with red color in the screenshot) because we’re going to create a WordPress blog, and click on Get Started Button, and you will land on the pricing table of WordPress Hosting Plans like the Screenshot attached Below.
Step 4: Select your preferred pricing plan, I will recommend you to Select the Grow Big Plan as you can host multiple websites in that hosting plan, and if you go with the Starter plan then you can only host one website, so choose your hosting plan accordingly.
Step 5: Whatever Plan You’ve selected, Click on Get Plan Button, and you’ll be taken to the next page, where you can either register a new domain name for your blog or you can enter a domain name if you already have one. the page will look like the screenshot attached below.
Step 6: Next you will be taken to the checkout page containing details of the hosting plan that you have selected and the cost of a domain name, and your billing information, Fill in all the fields with correct information.
Step 7: Confirm all the conditions and recheck all the fields if it’s filled with the correct information and click on the Pay Now Button.
Step 8: After that, you will be taken to a new page after a successful transaction, Simply proceed to the customer area from there (Screenshot attached below)
Step 9: It will take you to another page, from where you can set your WordPress blog (Screenshot attached Below)
Step 10: Now Simply Follow along all the screenshots provided below to install and access your WordPress dashboard.
Step 11: By now you should have received an email from Siteground to confirm your account, be sure to confirm your account because they may even cancel your account if you don’t confirm it, they do this to verify that you are a real human (Screenshot of emails attached below)
Step 12: Ok Now let’s continue installing WordPress and Accessing our WordPress dashboard, Follow along the screenshots provided below to install and access your WordPress dashboard.
Install Word Press
If You’re Confused on how to install WordPress then Here’s a short video explaining how you can install WordPress on your hosting easily.
Now Do some basic WordPress Settings
After Installing WordPress some basic settings need to be done, for the proper functioning of your WordPress Website.
So here’s what you need to do.
- Set your permalink structure.
- Set your user profiles
- delete all the preinstalled unnecessary plugins, pages, and posts.
- Set your WordPress Title and Tagline in the Settings.
Also Read: What to do After Installing WordPress
Choose a Good theme For your WordPress blog
Choosing a Good theme is essential for your WordPress Blog because Theme plays a huge role in the user interface as well as your Blog’s whole looks.
So choosing a good theme is essential.
While there are lots of FREE as well as a paid theme out there for WordPress Blogs, The One theme that I use on all of my blogs is the GeneratePress theme.
Generatepress theme is a Fast Loading SEO friendly theme that is easy to customize and is well suited for Bloggers and Affiliate Marketers.
I Use Generatepress Themes on all of my Blogs and Websites to ensure that my blogs are Fast loading, SEO optimized and User Experience doesn’t get compromised.
In fact, The blog you are reading right now is also using Generatepress Themes.
Also Read: Our Honest Review about GeneratePress Theme.
Customize your Blog’s Theme
Usually, a blog has these Following sections and you should customize your blog accordingly.
- Header
- Navigation Menu
- Content Body
- Sidebar
- Footer Menu
- Copyright Text
Install Essential Plugins For Your WordPress Blog
Plugins help to Extend the functionality of our WordPress websites, below are some of the important plugins that every WordPress Blog/Website Owner should install on their website.
- Really Simple SSL
- Akismet Anti Spam
- Contact Form 7
- WP-Optimize
- WProcket Caching Plugin
- UpdraftPlus
- Social Snap
- Social icons by Wzoom
- RankMath SEO
- OneSignal Push Notifications
- iThemes Security
- Easy Table of Contents
- Jetpack by WordPress.com
Also read: Most important WordPress plugins for WordPress blogs
Write Your First Blog Post
So now that you have created your awesome blog, now it’s time to start writing your blog posts and make it live to the world.
Login to your WordPress dashboard and start writing your blog post.
Remember, no matter how good your blog looks or how good plugins you have, the only thing that matters is the content on your blog and the value that your readers will get after reading your blog.
So focus or creating Valuable content for your readers at the initial level, and you will succeed and build a massive community.
BONUS: How to Make Money From your Blog
Now here comes the most interesting part, Making Money From Blog.
Without money coming in from your blogging efforts, I’m sure you wouldn’t continue to blog.
So for us to continue blogging we must fuel our blogging efforts with some revenue.
So how to make money from your Blog?
Well, there are a lot of ways to make money from your blog, let me list down all the ways that you can make money from your blog.
- FreeLancing (Designing, Content Writing and SEO)
- Blogging
- Affiliate Marketing
- AdSense
- Membership Site
- Training and Workshops
- Consultation
- Selling Online Course
- Selling Ebooks
- Paid Webinar
- Selling physical Products
- Sponsored Posts
- Selling ad space on your blog to advertisers
so I mentioned all the methods of earning money through your blog above.
But remember you should create your blog valuable by your valuable content, and money starts to flow in only if your blog provides some value to its readers.
Without value, your blog will never earn a single dollar.
Conclusion
So now that you have learned How To Start A Blog in 2020, now it’s your turn to go out start your Blog and make things happen.
Go ahead and start your blog right now, and share it with the world, Make this world a better place with your valuable content.
BONUS TIPS: What to do next?
It feels good after starting a blog, but starting a blog and writing posts isn’t enough.
There are some other skills that you need to hone as a blogger to succeed in blogging.
I’m listing below some of the key important things that you need to do after starting your blog.
- Add Google Analytics to your website
- Add your Website to Google search console
- Start building a network with other bloggers and influencers in your niche.
- Learn keyword research (create content people need)
- Learn to write different types of blog posts.
- Do guest blogging every once in a while
- Build a funnel for your blog
- Improve site structure and navigation regularly
- Regularly update your old blog posts
- Make a list of your all the Competitors
- Learn to write better content
- SET blogging goals
- Create all social profiles
- Collect leads, emails at your blog, create lead magnets
- Create silo structures for your content
- Improve your content writing
- Learn to market your blog posts
- Create all the necessary pages
- Install an SEO plugin
- Join all the affiliate programs after writing at least 20+ posts
- Get your logo created or create yourself
- Learn SEO
- Master off pages SEO and link building
- Build a content strategy
- Avoid some common mistakes
- Have an eye on your competitors
- know what content is popular on your Niche
- Start getting traffic
- Determine your primary traffic source for your blog
- Start taking massive action
FAQs Related to Starting a Blog in 2020
Most of the Beginner Blogger Bloggers make Money through Displaying Adsense Ads on their Blogs, But I don’t recommend to use Adsense for Monetization of any Blog, Instead, I always Recommend Affiliate Marketing For Earning Money Through your blog.
Yes you can absolutely start a Blog for FREE with the help of Blogging Platforms like Blogger, Tumblr, Wix, etc, but I will always recommend you to start a blog in WordPress because all those FREE platforms are suitable for only small blogs and resume type blogs, and you will ultimately end up switching to WordPress so Just Start from WordPress instead.
This depends on your Interest and your willingness to write on a topic, if you feel that you can write Good on a particular topic, just go with that topic or niche.
Yes, WordPress is definitely better than blogger, WordPress gives us so much flexibility to customize the look and feel of our blog that Google’s Blogger will never allow.
Getting traffic is an art you must master it in order to get traffic to your blog, but let me give you an overview.
you should ON page SEO optimize your blog Posts, Learn to make quality backlinks and help other peoples on Question and Answer forums.
$100 is more than enough for starting a blog.
There are people making 6 – 7 figures every single month from blogging, and some even make millions from their blogs, it will all depend upon how much hard work you are willing to put in and how much dedicated you are towards your blog.
Currently I am on blogger and moving to wordpress soon.
Very detailed guide.
Especially harsh agrawal example motivated me a lot.
Hey Deepak Sahani
Thank you for going through the article brother, and I feel very glad to know that you enjoyed reading this article and found it useful.
And I would suggest you to Move to WordPress as soon as possible because you will get much more flexibility on WordPress than blogger.
Regards
Aishwar Babber
Hey
Thank You so much For this Blog.
I have changed my hosting to Siteground.
this blog helped me to move my website.
thanks for the deep knowledge
Hey Siddhesh Glad to know that this article was helpful to you.
Good to see you work. This is excellent article.
Hey Rahul Bhichher
Happy to see you brother. I feel very glad that you liked my work.
Hello Tarun,
Great Guide How to Start a blog. Thank you So Much Great Article.
Keep the article website Always.
Thanks for going through the article buddy
Wow such an informative post
Thanks for going through the article buddy
Hello Sir,
This is very detail and indepth article i learn alot from this article as i am new blogger
I want to thanku for writing such an outstanding post..
Hey, buddy Thanks for going through the article, and I’m very glad that this article helped you.
Hey,
I came across your blog and it is very useful and informative, I have to tell you that your content is absolutely top-notch.
Hey Surya
Glad to know that you found it informative and useful.
Thanks for appreciating it.
Such a nice article Tarun,
I have gone through your article and I must say you have written good quality article that help newbie to start their own blog in 2021.
Thanks for going through the article buddy 🙂
Hello Tarun,
Thanks for the detailed guide to start a blog.
Can we start our full-time blogging using WordPress.com which offers free hosting?
Also Google’s free blogging platform also allows us to blogging without spending money.
Can we do it for a long-term blogging?
I have read this complete article to start a blog and it is really helpful for the beginners.
Thanks
Hello Saran
Thanks for going through the article, really appreciate it.
Now coming back to your question.
Yes it’s definitely possible to start a blog using free blog content management systems like WordPress.com and blogger.com, infact most beginners start from there.
As long as someone is doing blogging for hobby and doesn’t care much about monetization, then Free platforms wouldn’t be of any problem for them, because all they will care about is writing more content on their blog.
But the problem with FREE Blogging platforms is that they offer very limited resources and customisations capabilities, like we cannot add 3rd party themes and plugins in WordPress.com and there are many more limitations in FREE platforms. And blogger.com is also somewhat similiar, it offer you Free hosting, and that’s good, I agree and also both blogger.com and WordPress.com offer custom domain names to be used but they are not good for long term blogging or blogging for business.
For long term blogging, I only suggest WordPress.org self hosted platform, because people who started from either blogger or WordPress.com will ultimately shift to WordPress.org self hosted platform sooner or later when they will realise that WordPress.org is just better.
So for serious bloggers, who want to take Blogging as a long time career, for them I only suggest WordPress.org self hosted platform. Even the biggest names in the blogging field like Neil Patel uses WordPress.org for blogging.
So it’s always a wise decision to start directly from WordPress.org, although it costs a little extra including domain name costs and hosting costs but ultimately you will get more reliability and customizability in self hosted WordPress blogs.
I hope I was able to answer your question and make my point clear.
Regards
Aishwar Babber
Hi Tarun,
I must say you have written an amazing article that covers everything in detailed about “how to start a blog”. Keep up the amazing spirit bro.
Regards
Sagar
Ok
Awesome Post, thanks for sharing useful information….\
Thanks for going through the article buddy
Nice but you know something extra about this so check the website also
ok
Hello Aishwar Babber,
Income report increases (Neil’s) confident that we can surely make money from blogging.
Thanks for this step by step procedure to start a blog easily.
Thanks
Yea buddy income report of Neil Patel help newbies to understand that there’s lot of potential in Blogging.
Thank you for this Amazing information.
I am a huge fan of your website.
You have explained everything in a very easy way. I loved it.
I think every newbie blogger should read this article.
It’s a fully value-pack article!
Thanks
Hey buddy thank you for going through the article, and I feel very glad to know that you like my work.
Stay tuned for more value packed informational articles.
Regards
Aishwar Babber
Thank you for sharing a valuable topic. i am glad to found your post using google search.
I found one successful example of this truth through this blog. I am going to use such information now.
Thank you very much for this great post. It’s really helpful for a newbie blogger to start their journey of blogging.
What method you apply for your blog promotion? My blog is ready but getting difficulty in blog promotion.
Thank you
There are a lot of Blog Promotion tactics that I Use for promoting the content of my blog, Here I’ve listed out some of those strategies – https://www.twinstrata.com/how-to-promote-your-blog-for-free/
First of all, Thank you so much for sharing such useful information with us, You don’t know but it’s really helpful for me. I have been struggling for a very long time and now I’m here.
I’m really glad that I found your blog and now finally I can start a blog easily. No doubt.
Thanks to you. 🙂
Hello,
This is the best article I have ever found on the Internet. Keep teaching us! You are sharing very detailed and valuable information.