I want to make sure we’re on the same wavelength here before we start…Starting a blog in 2019 is different than starting a blog in 2005 for instance.
How you ask?
Well for starters, in 2005 if you created a blog, it was probably to let your friends and network know what you were up to (not considering how MASSIVELY a minority you were at the blogging vanguard):
- You might have written some articles about the hip new food you came across.
- You might have written about the trials and tribulations of precious little kitty cat, “Dr. Hemingsly” and his adventures in Colombia, Missouri.
- You might even have written about how cool it was to just type some words and have it published on the world wide web for the entire world to see — even though your mother was the only one reading.
Heck, Facebook wasn’t even what it is now. And Facebook is probably the biggest reason we’ve seen the monumental change in what a blog is today.
Your friends are constantly seeing what you are up to thanks to social media — a blog needed to take on a different form. Once social media came into the fold, the blogging allure kind of took a back seat in terms of interest on the web. Fast forward to 2019 and now so many people want to get in on this gold mine that is growing at an astounding rate.
Consider some of these statistics regarding the growth of blogs:
- Blogs have been rated as the 5th most trusted source for accurate online information (source)
- Blogging grew from 14 million blogs in 2005 to roughly 152 million in 2013 (source)
- The number of bloggers who updated their blog at least once per month in 2014 was 27.4 million. This compares to 31.2 million in 2019 (source)
- Marketers who have prioritized blogging (related to content) are 13 times more likely to enjoy positive ROI (source)
- The more an individual visits a specific blog, the more likely they are to take action or purchase (source)
To put all of this plain and simply for you…
Blogging isn’t going anywhere — in fact it’s growing and with that the opportunity to cash in is better thanever.
The evidence is clear that starting a blog comes with insurmountable advantages. But before we get into how to start a blog, let’s unravel why you specifically should start a blog…
Why should You start ablog?
There are a multitude of reasons you should start a blog. Perhaps you fall under only some of these reasons. Perhaps you fall under all of these reasons. Perhaps you don’t fall under any of these reasons.
1. You know you were meant for something more:
Probably the most spiritual and personally charged reason for needing to start a blog. A lot of people start a blog because they want to start making money on the side. Then things start to blossom and they quit their jobs and they are making a full-time income by working from home.
In fact, with blogging, you can work anywhere you want and make some money. If I could make it so everyone (but I’ll settle for 1 million to start) in the world could work from wherever they want I would make it happen in a heartbeat.
Nothing beats it.
2. You heard it’s beneficial for marketing
Blogging can help you build a loyal tribe (audience) and when you open yourself up to that, many positive things follow. If you write a book and are approached by a publisher, getting a max deal is much more within reach when you already have a viable audience to market to. If you want to get more speaking gigs, there’s no better way of gaining exposure than through a blog. If you want to expand your coaching business with webinars, blogging is an optimal tool to scale your business.
Blogging allows you to meet and come in contact with thousands, if not millions, of people you wouldn’t be able to connect with otherwise.
3. You want to speak yourmind
Like I stated earlier, the original incarnation of blogging was to talk about what was important to you and let your friends and network know what you were up to.
Blogs are still used for that today so if there is something on your mind that you are dying to get out into the world, then a blog is for you. You have to be careful, though. If you want to create a blog for your business or one that is meant for making money with a new business you might not want to do too much ranting on your blog. You can always set up a secondary blog for such things — think of it like an online journal. A journal where you create art.
Cool, now that we understand the reasons for starting a blog, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how to start a blog that can help you leave that soul-sucking job.
The steps to starting ablog
Photo by Daria Nepriakhina
When looking at this from 30,000 feet, there aren’t really that many steps. The steps you’re going to go over are:
- Decide on a topic
- Choose a blogging platform
- Pick a domain
- Find a web host
- Install WordPress
- Start blogging
Yeah… it’s going to be that simple.
6 steps to starting a money-making blogtoday
Like I said, we are building this blog from an altitude pretty high up. It’s going to feel like once you get all the steps done, the money is going to be flowing in.
While that’s probably not going to happen — we all need to start somewhere.
Step 1: Choose a topic to start bloggingabout
I know the temptation is there to spill all the brilliant and bright ideas that are careening around in your brain.
But the truth of the matter in building a money-making blog is that you need strategy and focus in order to do so.
There is no point in getting everything setup if you write about everything under the sun — or worse, don’t know what to write about at all…
SPOLIER ALERT: you cannot just blog about yourself all the time. For one, no one really cares that much. Two, your main focus should be how your reader can benefit from the content you’re pushing out. The reader is always thinking, “How do I get from [HERE] to [THERE]?” so help them solve that question!
Your blog needs to become the go-to place for “X” and “X” is the topic you’ve chosen to write about.
So, how do you choose a topic to blog about?
- You need to enjoy it. Don’t pick something that you will hate writing about after the first month. If you don’t enjoy it, don’t bother with it. Please note, this might be different than following your passion.
- You need to either have knowledge about the topic or go through the process of attaining knowledge about the topic. You don’t have to blog about things that you are only an expert at, you can blog about things that you are in the process of learning.
- You need to write about stuff that people want to discuss. People like to talk and so you want to write about topics that leave room for discussion. People are selfish and if you aren’t offering them something they want, then they won’t bother reading.
The end goal is to have your blog become known as an authority site on a topic.
Step 2: Choose a bloggingplatform
I have to be honest here…
I recently converted to the “WordPress Cult” (just kidding but seriously). For my first 2 years blogging I was an avid Squarespace user and rightfully so. Well actually my first ever site was with Wix but we won’t even go there…
Squarespace prides themselves on being the easy-to-use platform that allows anyone who isn’t a programmer to build his or her own website with a few clicks of a button.
While some of that may be true in comparison to the ease of WordPress (WP), once you really start to uncover the abilities of the two there really isn’t a comparison.
It’s almost like Squarespace has the abilities of the printing press whereas WordPress has the abilities of an iPhone.
But I digress…
So with this guide, let’s assume you’re using WordPress for your platform.
WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world as it powers 25% of the sites on the web! That’s an incredible percentage to say the least.
2.2 The two faces of WordPress
When starting off with WordPress you may get confused because there are two different types: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. For our purposes, we’re going to focus on WordPress.org (self-hosted WordPress). What’s the difference? Well it’s a LOT to unravel — I’m not going to include it all in this guide. However, for further reading, check out this resource.
With self-hosted WP, you’re going to need a web host to host the WP software for you. Think of a web host as a launchpad for your rocket (WP).
Don’t get overwhelmed here… more on web hosts a bit later…
Step 3. Choosing adomain
This is one of the hardest and most intimate parts of the guide. A domain in the 21st century is pretty tightly tied to your brand. I own a handful of domains. Whenever I can’t sleep at night and have a great idea for a domain, I generally gobble it up. Heck, they’re only about $20 a pop.
BONUS: Whether for personal blogging or just overall life strategy, if you can purchase your first and last name in a domain, I would HIGHLY recommend it. I own jonbrosio.com and have big plans for it in the future. I just firmly believe that the more interconnected the world becomes on the web, the more advantageous it would be to own yourname.com, ya dig?
What I recommend with choosing your domain name for your money-making blog is to choose something that has to do with your niche at hand. For me, tribeloyal.com is directly tied to my mission of educating the world on building a loyal tribe for their entrepreneurial endeavors.
Once you know what you want, I would search it in your web host — many of the webhosts out there are brokers for domains.
Alas! Which so effortlessly brings us back to web hosts…
Step 4: Finding and selecting your webhost
Photo by WillO
In order to get an audience to actually visit your blog, you’re going to need a utility to host the site.
Enter your web host.
At times, finding and selecting a web host can be a daunting task — mainly because there are so many out there.
For me, I use Bluehost.
Why?
Well for one — they’re the TOP DAWG. Consider me “Old Fashioned”, but in a few areas of my life, I go with the number one’s of the world. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Chicago when Michael Jordan and the Bulls were on top of the world, I like going with the winners: Nike, Coca-Cola, Bluehost etc…
Second, they have THE BEST customer service I’ve ever dealt with — really! So remember how I said I recently merged from Squarespace to WordPress? Well my experience was tough to say the least. To put it succinctly for you, I needed to transfer the domain “tribeloyal.com” that I owned from Squarespace to Bluehost. I already own the domain. I made a costly mistake during the transfer from one host to another and it put my site in limbo for almost two weeks.
When I needed help from Squarespace, what did I do? Well for starters, they don’t have a phone number you can call. When I wrote them a lengthy email illustrating my problem, I got back a cookie-cutter response that had nothing to do with my issue.
Bluehost on the other hand… their phone doesn’t even ring twice before someone answers. Their staff is super knowledgeable and I felt like their only customer every time I called (no joke…I called maybe 10 times and spoke with 10 different reps all knowing and helping me along with my issues).
“Thanks again guys!”
Anyway… I’m blabbering at this point…
This isn’t to discredit any of the other web hosts out there: Siteground and HostGator just to name a couple. I can’t speak on their excellence because I’ve never worked with them. My roommate has worked with HostGator and speaks highly of them if it’s any consolation.
All in all, choosing a web host is a necessary step before installing your self-hosted WP site.
Once you have that, we can move on…
Step 5: Installing you WordPress site
Most web hosts make it really easy to install WP — generally these are 1-click setup installs.
“So easy a caveman can do it…”
This is another reason I chose Bluehost — once you get your host up, the 1-click install is right in front of you.
If your web host doesn’t provide an easy way to install WordPress then don’t sweat it because WordPress is still pretty easy to install. What you’ll need to do is get the FTP credentials for your account, download the WordPress package from WordPress.org, and upload the unzipped filed to your site’s public folder.
From there you should be able to hit up your site and WordPress will walk you through the installation.
Step 6: StartBlogging
Now you’re all set!
Now you have a blog just waiting for you to share your awesomeness with the world. You can (and I suggest) taking things to the next level by installing a theme and the various beneficial plugins at your disposal.
Remember my iPhone analogy? Once you start messing around with plugins, you’ll really understand what I mean here…
Even though I showed you step-by-step what it takes to go from zero voice on the web to getting your money-making blog up and running, it probably still seems like there’s more to the story, no?
And you’re right — we level up tremendously from just a basic WordPress blog. Don’t worry though, leveling up isn’t that hard, it just takes some more time.
