10 min read

Are you interested in understanding how to start a blog? Perfect! You have landed in the right place. In this guide, you will learn how to create a new blog (with step by step guide) – from start to finish.

I know you can do it; in fact, anyone can do it from scratch without having any technological knowledge. You can easily start your blog and set it as a full-time job and earn an attractive number of profits.

Let’s see what you are going to find in this guide:

Why Should You Start a Blog?

Blogs can be the perfect medium to share your thoughts and activities. Creating good content and promoting your blog can make an online community around your shared interests. Most people earn an additional income; others even generate more revenue than people who work full-time, thanks to their blogs.

Maybe you want to make a small blog: many people create their first blog when they move or go on a long trip (or without a return date) to share photos and stories with the family.

As I mentioned, it is not only used to share your own personal or family-related things, but you can also share:

• Stories and photos
• Knowledge and opinions
• Art
• Business
• Hobbies
• Recipes
• Entrepreneurship
• Travel experiences
• Tutorials or DIY projects
• Fashion or lifestyle
• Favorite Products

However, blogging can be a great marketing tool to increase your ROI if you sell a product or service. You can start a blog for professional purposes or to share:

• Your resume & portfolio
• News & Updates
• Business Details
• Content related to your products or services

In short, you can start your blog about whatever you want it to be.

That is the beauty of blogging!

Whether your blog concept fits into one of the categories listed above or you have a completely different idea, this guide will help you get started.

Free vs Paid Blog

I am going directly to the question that everyone interested in starting blogging asks:

Should you start with a free blog or pay for premium options?

The quick answer is that a free service might be fine if you want to share your trips with family or school projects with a teacher or other students.

Anyway, I am going to explain the pros and cons of both.

Free Blog

Nowadays, you will see different options to start free blogging, but it comes with the following pros and cons:

Advantages of a Free Blog:

• It’s free!
• Easy to set up

Disadvantages of Creating a Free Blog:

• Your blog’s web address will be long and difficult to remember (e.g., http://YourBlogName.FreeBlogProvider.com). Unless you pay for a domain name or buy a Premium option from them.
• It comes with limited features and asks for payment to use additional or required features.
• Your website could disappear entirely, or they can remove its content with little or no warning.
• You have a limited design (default or provided themes) for your blog offered by the platform unless you know how to code.
• The platform can place ads on your blog, even if you don’t want to, and they will keep the revenue from that advertising.

Paid Blog

Paid platforms offer you all the premium features to start your blog as you want. If your idea is to make money with your blog, I recommend investing in registering your domain name and hosting from the beginning.

If you create a popular page that attracts constant search engine traffic, one that looks professional and/or adapts to you as your blog grows, a paid platform is your best option. Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of the paid blog:

Advantages of a Paid Blog:

• They are cheap and hosting plans start from $0.5 per month. (If you go with Temok)
• Very easy to set up (if you follow the guide given below).
• Your blog will have a domain name of your choice (http://YourBlogName.com).
• The blog can grow with you. If your traffic is growing like crazy, you can upgrade to a better hosting plan. If you need fancy features, you can find a plugin or pay a developer to include this functionality in the blog.
• You’ll have a ton of themes (or blog layouts) to choose from. You will find excellent free themes to install, or you can also pay for a Premium theme (they have more remarkable designs and are quite affordable – and easy to set up) or hire a designer to make a custom theme for you.
• If you want ads on your site or not, the decision is yours. If you decide to place ads on your website, the money is for you.
• In short, you are in charge of your website.

Disadvantages of Paid Blog:

You have to pay for the domain and hosting, but as you saw in the first point, it is quite inexpensive if you buy both of them from Temok.

Summary:

If you want to create an awesome blog that people love to visit, I recommend you go with premium (paid) blogging. By that, I mean you should set up a self-hosted WordPress blog.

Self-hosted means that you are in charge of hosting your blog rather than allowing one of the free providers to host it for you. A self-hosted WordPress blog means that you are hosting your blog and running a WordPress Content Management System (which is open source and free) on it.

The terms are a bit confusing here because WordPress CMS is not the same as the free blogging platform.

WordPress CMS is the industry standard for blogging and is free to use. Temok also uses it to run this blog and 60 million other people (based on WordPress data). WordPress CMS is constantly updated to improve features and security. It is the best!

Simple Steps To Start Your Blog

These are the basic steps to creating a self-hosted WordPress blog today. Completing steps one through four takes just 30 minutes, and then we’ll move on to the customization fun stuff!

If you follow the steps discussed here, your blog will have its custom domain name and its own unique and distinctive look when we’re done.

To give you an idea, let’s see how the following points are made step by step:

Name Your Blog And Buy a Matching Domain Name

Domain names are short, easy to remember, and usually end in .com (yourblogname.com).

Cost: Get a Free Domain from Temok with every Web Hosting Plan.

Find a Good Web Host

A web server stores your website data and makes it accessible on the Internet. Your website “lives” on the servers of your web host.

Cost: Starting From $0.5 per month.

Install WordPress

As I’ve already explained, WordPress is a top-of-the-line industry standard blogging CMS. Here is a step-by-step guide to install your WordPress.

Install a WordPress Theme

Your WordPress theme will determine the look, feel, and functionality of your blog.

Cost: Free up to $140 (or more). A good theme – nice and easy – usually costs about $45, and you can build as many blogs as you want (as many times as you wish).

Install WordPress Plugins

WordPress plugins extend WordPress functionality in certain areas. For example, one of my recommended WordPress plugins is a button to share on social networks easily.

Cost: generally free.

Install Google Tools

Google offers useful tools and services like Google Analytics, which will tell you how many people visit your blog. It’s free! However, you can also use Google Keyword Planner to check the keywords and their search volume.

Start Blogging

Now you can start posting amazing and interesting content on your new blog.

Cost: Hard work!

Step-by-step Detailed Guide on How To Create a Blog

Let’s now see the step-by-step guide to creating a blog. You can do it here and now as you read it. If you need more information to get started or help choose a concept/name, you can read this article on how to create a blog from scratch.

Name Your Blog (and buy a domain)

I hope you have already chosen the perfect name for your blog! It took me a long time to land on mine.

Not sure what to call your new blog?

Try to list a few words describing your future content or your interests, lifestyle, background, etc. Then look at those words and list some adjectives for each one. Do any of those words go well together?

You can also try writing a short mission statement and see if you can come up with the name. It might be helpful to share words with a friend and/or think of the names of your favorite blogs. There are still a lot of great blog names yet to come up with, I promise.

Try to find a few names that you like, as not all of them may be available.

An ideal blog name is:

• Memorable
• Descriptive
• Short
• Easy to spell
• Unique and available as a domain name ending in .com (Avoid using hyphens to make it work!)

Once you have some ideas you like, you will need to make sure no one else has used them.

Here’s a useful domain name-checking tool from Temok. Enter the desired domain name, press “Search Domain,” and it will tell you if your domain name is available.

You better buy it now before someone else comes up with your idea!

Once you’ve chosen your perfect domain name, you can get it for free with your Temok hosting plan (I’ll talk about Temok in the next section).

Find a Good Web Host

You’ll want to start with an affordable shared hosting plan – and one that offers one-click WordPress installation. Do not be alarmed or collapse; once you choose a hosting and install WordPress, you will not have to mess with the hosting again for a long time.

The best web host for new blogs in my experience is Temok; let me explain why.

Temok Web Hosting

Temok is affordable, reliable, easy to set up, and offers 24/7 customer support.

Temok’s “Baby” plan is as cheap as hosting and has everything you need to get started. You can get a complete web hosting plan by paying only $0.5 per month and getting your free domain name.

With Temok, like all other cheap hostings, you will pay for your shared plan in advance. However, don’t worry. If you’re unhappy with Temok and want to switch to a different host later, Temok will refund you. Excluding the domain name fee – this is paid in full.

Install WordPress

Easy! Since you purchased a shared hosting account, Temok will help you to install WordPress. However, you can also install WordPress with one click in the control panel.

Login To WordPress

Welcome to your new blog! Before you freak out, let’s fix a little thing (you’ll thank me later).

1. Look in the sidebar for “Settings.”
2. Hover over “Settings” and click “Permalink Settings.”
3. Change your permalink structure to “Post Name.”
4. Click on “Save Changes.”

Go ahead! Click and explore your new blog. If you click on the name of your new blog in the upper left corner (next to the little home icon), you can see how your blog looks so far.

Install a WordPress Theme

Now we get to the fun part. Your new blog already uses the default WordPress theme. A theme determines the appearance of your site, so you can choose a different one if you are not satisfied with the default.

You can also start with a different free theme.

What To Consider For a WordPress Theme

Here are the factors you should consider before buying a WordPress theme:

Easy To Use

Find one that offers built-in design options, so it’s easy to change basic elements like your logo, color scheme, and more.

Responsive

Responsive layouts are resized to provide an optimal viewing experience for your visitors, whether they’re watching from their computer, phone, or tablet. That means your visitors won’t have to pinch and zoom to read your posts; the text will already be legible in size.

With Technical Support

When you experience technical problems, a fast-responding support team and/or community forums can be very helpful.

Well Designed

Your theme should fit your style and offer the features you want. The topic must also be coded by someone who knows what they are doing.

Optimized For Search Results

This goes along with the last couple of points because a well-designed site will naturally rank higher in search results than a full of coding errors.

Recommended Premium WordPress Themes

From the beginning, you don’t want to complicate your life technologically speaking, so you can buy a WordPress theme. Over the years, you can change the design once or twice as per your needs to offer a design more in line with your personality or business nature, but always buy a Premium WordPress theme for about $50.

With a redesigned website that is “responsive.” With a theme that adapts to the pc or mobile format, your website can grow much more significantly and faster.

I advise you to take a look at:

• Studiopress
• Theme Forest

How To Install a WordPress Theme

Look in the sidebar for “Appearance,” hover it and click “Themes.” Here, you can see some theme options that WordPress has already installed on your blog. They are free to use.

If you are browsing free WordPress themes and see one you would like to install, hover over it and click “Install.”

If you have downloaded a theme in another place/website, you can click on the “Upload” option. You will then see an option to ‘Choose file.’ Click and find the file on your computer. Then click “Install Now.”

Finally, go back to the “Themes” settings and click “Activate” to update the new theme.

Install WordPress Plugins

Each of these plugins that I will mention provides valuable features that might not be automatically included with your theme. You can take care of most of these later.

However, I recommend installing Yoast SEO (listed last) right away, as it will make the next step easier for you.

Recommended WordPress Plugins

• Akismet: filter spam comments without the need for CAPTCHA because nobody likes CAPTCHAs.

• JQuery Pin It Button for Images: If your blog has many images and you are hoping to get traffic from Pinterest, try this plugin. It makes it easy for your visitors to pin their images by adding a “Pin It” button as a hover effect. It is very easy to configure!

• Social Bookmarking Plugin – Since my share buttons are personalized, I cannot keep up with the latest options. Just be sure to use a plugin like this to make your posts easy to share.

• Yoast SEO – SEO is tricky, and this plugin will help you make sure you’ve covered the necessary bases. You should take the time to follow all the steps and configure them correctly. Make sure to use it to configure Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. It will be worth the effort!

How to install a WordPress plugin

Look in the sidebar for “Add-ons,” hover it, and click on the “Add New” option.

Now you have a couple of options. You can use the “Search Plugins” field and search for one of the plugins by name. When you find it, click “Install Now.” Also, upload a plugin that you downloaded elsewhere by clicking “Upload Plugin.”

Finally, click on “Activate,” which will appear in the same place as “Install Now.” You may need to configure some settings below (see the plugin’s instructions if you’re not sure).

Also Read: What to do After Installing WordPress

Configure Google Tools

You can use an existing Google / Gmail account or create a new account for your blog if you prefer. I prefer to keep my personal and blog email accounts separate, so I made a new account for my blog.

You can create a new Gmail account here (it’s free).

Once you have a Google account, sign in and configure the following:

• Google Analytics: helps you track blog traffic. (Note: Please install the tracking code in Yoast SEO plugin settings).

• Google Search Console – makes sure your website is up and running. (Note: Please install the tracking code in Yoast SEO plugin settings).

Start Writing a Blog

Now you are ready to start publishing posts.

To create a new post, look in the sidebar for “Posts,” hover it, and click on the “Add New” option.

This is where you can start writing. The formatting options here remind me of Microsoft Word, so I hope they are familiar to you as well.

If you want to upload a photo, click “Add Media.” When you are ready to publish the article, click on “Publish.”

If you love this article, then share your thoughts in the comment section below.