How to Start a Blog in 10 minutes: a Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners. Start your blog and make money online!

How to Start a Blog in 10 minutes – 2024 Beginner Tutorial | Make Money Blogging

Anastasia Blogger Blogging 58 Comments

 


Thousands of articles on the Internet answer the question how to start a blog but most of them only speak about the very first steps, such as choosing a hosting or blogging platform, registering a domain name. It’s not just as simple as that.

Before starting a blog, you need to think about its blog topic, structure, monetization strategy, etc. And good news for you because in this guide, I tried to summarize my own experience and recommend to you those tactics and services that I personally used and trusted.

This guide might look quite extensive if you scroll down the blog page, so to make it easy, I first give you the plan below.

Want to know how much money you can make blogging before you start a blog?
Here is How I Made $15,355 Blogging in 6 Months. 

Made The entire process of starting a blog, described thoroughly in this post, took me 10 minutes, I guess it’s not too much time to get a life-changing opportunity!

This is part 1 of 4 of the Starting a Blog series.
1. How to Start a Blog in 10 Minutes

2. How to Choose a Domain Name 
3. Checklist for Starting a Blog on WordPress (10 essential details most newbies forget!)
4. How to Make Money Blogging

But before you start a successful blog, I want to talk about the basics—what a blog is, what makes a blog, how to start a blog, and finally, how to make money from your blog. 

Starting a blog: What is a blog?

Befdore you start a blog, it is important to know what a blog is first.

A blog is essentially a website where you can find several useful information in when doing a search on search engines. A blog is a type of online journal or information source that may be updated at any time. A blog is an excellent venue for writers to publish their work, as well as for business owners to market their products and services.

Just imagine, when you ask a question on search engines, it will give you a series of results that are actually blog posts or coming from blogs.

You can post almost anything in a blog post – images, gifs, videos, infographics, illustrations, and more! Since 2019, there have been over 600 million blogs from all over the world, with more than 31 million active bloggers writing at least once every month.

You might think that you have too many competitions if you start now but it is still better to start late than never! And trust me, you just need to follow the right blogging strategies and you can already rise up in search engines in no time! 

Why do you need to start a blog?

A blog’s general goal is for to give you a way to connect with your audience or consumers easily and in a more personal way. It acts as a platform for you to share information about yourself or your company.

For business purposes, starting a blog can help you communicate more information about your products and services with your audience and customers. It can also assist you to attract potential clients or leads to your main website, online course, online shop, and other of your businesses.

Blogging is an excellent tool for establishing a strong community and gaining the confidence of your readers. Consistent blogging and the development of high-quality content and blog posts will make your company appear more respectable, and people will begin to turn to your blog for advice, product/service suggestions, and more.

Generally, if you want to gain more brand awareness and brand recognition, then a blog is one thing to consider doing! 

Another advantage of starting a blog is that it allows you to create your online profile, particularly on Google search or other search engines. Once you’ve mastered SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and use the appropriate keywords (through keyword research) in your blog entries, you may find yourself on Google’s top page in no time.

Another great benefit of starting a blog for businesses, particularly those focused on products and services, is the ability to give more extensive instructions and how-tos for your items. You may also provide advice on how to use your items. Assume you are a fashion brand.

You may create blog entries with text and photographs describing different ways to design a certain piece of clothing.

And the best part of it all? You can make money just by starting a blog even while you are sleeping! We will get into that more later in this post.

HOW TO START A BLOG IN 10 MINUTES

Essential parts of a blog

I believe it is important to know the basic parts of a blog before starting a blog so you won’t encounter confusion whenever you point your audience to a specific place on your blog. It is also important to know the parts of a blog so you won’t have difficulty whenever you need to customize your WordPress theme or add/change codes to your blog. 

Listed below are the fundamental parts of a blog that every blogger should know about to deliver a seamless user experience. Do note that you can add or even remove some elements—it will all depend on your preference. However, if you do remove one of these elements, be sure that you are aware of its pros and cons. 

Homepage

The homepage is where your visitors will go to if they want a quick overview of what your blog is about and what kind of posts you are making. Your homepage should attract your visitors within the first few seconds. The home blog page should be visually attractive and user-friendly or else, your visitors will quickly leave as they do not know where and how to navigate. Your homepage should also clearly reflect what your blog and/or business is about.

Header 

Your blog’s header is found at the top of your blog and it is usually what your visitor first sees. Your header can either be your logo, your tagline, a text, or an image depending on what your branding is and what niche you are in. Of course, because the header is what your visitor sees, you better already tell them what your blog is about through your tagline. 

Along with this, your header can include a header menu that shows all other navigations of your blog, along with a search bar. 

Pages

Other pages can be found on your header menu. Pages are where you create additional important information regarding your blog or your business. Here are some of the most common pages that your blog should have:

  • About page –  The page where you can give a more in-depth introduction about you or your business. You can add here your history, your vision, why you started your blog, what your blog is about, and more. 
  • Categories – Your blog categories are where you classify what kind of posts you are making. It is essential to add Categories to your blog because it will help your readers to find related content that they are interested to read. Furthermore, by adding a category, you are helping your older posts be seen instead of it getting buried by hundreds of new posts.
  • Contact Page – This is where you will put your contact form, your email address, and/or your office address so your visitors can easily reach out to you.
  • Shop – If you are selling your own products, it is important to let your visitors know that they can easily shop through your blog. By adding a Shop page, you can conveniently showcase your products or you can redirect your visitors to any eCommerce site you are in. 
  • Courses/Services – This is somewhat similar to the Shop page. If you are selling online courses or any online services, it is best to let your audience know that immediately so they can browse through your selection.

Placing your pages on your header menu where it is quickly visibly seen is important as this is where your visitors will go to when they want to know more about you.

Blog Posts 

A blog post is can either be a text article, image, infographics, or set of videos that you post or publish on your blog. You can write your first blog post in the form of an introduction – who you are and what your blog is all about.

It is important to know that the more regular you update or publish, the better because this will make your visitors keep coming back to your blog. Of course, the content of your posts must be related to your brand.

If you are a fashion blog, it wouldn’t be ideal to suddenly make a post about cars or technology. No one will find you credible with that. You should only post about what you have expertise in and what you are comfortable talking about. 

Comments

Blog comments can be found within your blog posts. It will actually depend on you if you want to turn on your comments or not. But I just want you to know that the comments section is one of the top places in your blog wherein you can build a community and engage with your readers, so I do suggest turning them on.

You can always have the spam filter on or manually approve incoming comments so you can filter out what goes on in your comments section.

Opt-in form

An opt-in form is your subscription form for your email newsletter. This can either be in the form of a pop-up and/or a widget within your blog. I recommend collecting subscribers to your newsletter the moment you start your blog (even if you don’t send out newsletters yet!). You wouldn’t want to miss out on people who might just be your potential customers!

So once you do decide to send out your first newsletter, you will already have a significant amount of users to send it to. 

Footer

Your blog’s footer is found at the bottom part of your blog. The footer usually consists of your blog’s Privacy Policy page, Terms and Conditions, and even your social media icons. 

FAQ: How do you start your own blog for free?

Yes, it’s possible. If you are looking at starting a blog as a hobby, then you can start it for free on one of the platforms: WordPress, Ghost, Tumblr, Weebly, Medium, Wix, and others.

But imagine, even if you started it as a hobby and after a while, you realized this actually is your dream job and you want to start making money with your blog. If you started a blog on a free platform, your monetization (making money on a blog) options will be very limited.

Then you’ll need to move all the blog content, images, etc., everything that you built, to a paid platform, and you will definitely need some technical specialist to help you with this. So, you will have to pay for moving your site and all that you saved by starting a blog for free, plus much more will be spent on the switch.

1. How to start a blog on WordPress

The choice of blogging platform should be defined by your resources. If you are about to create a blog first time in your life, you probably need a platform, which is widely used, easy to maintain and has a large community of users around it, so when need help or advice, you can easily find other people who use the same platform.

If this all applies to you, WordPress.org is your best choice. And will hardly be replaced anytime soon because of the thousands of themes, widgets, marketing automation tools available for WordPress website owners.

When your blog gets bigger, probably you will need to find a professional to help you improve the site, with WordPress it will be easy and relatively cheap because there is a huge competition between technical experts who work with WordPress platform.

Another question is whether to use WordPress.com as a free hoster or pay for a self-hosted blog. If you create a blog just for fun, then the free WordPress.com web hosting will serve you fine. But if you are serious about starting a blog and see it as a potential source of income and passive income, you should consider a little of investment for web hosting.

You see, free stuff is great, but it always implies certain limitations. If you choose to host your blog for free on WordPress.com, you won’t be able to use display ads and some widgets. A blog on another free hosting – Blogger (belongs to Google), can run ads, but it will always earn less than a similar blog on a paid web hosting.

Some of you could think, not a big deal – I’ll start with a free blog, and when I see how it goes, I’ll switch to a paid platform. Well, to be honest, for you as a beginner, ensuring a simple transfer of all your content to another platform, can be quite a difficult task. As I said, if you are serious about creating a successful website, the best way is to start a self-hosted blog on the WordPress content management system.

 

2. Domain name check and registration

When you are thinking through some domain name ideas, it’s important to understand that there is no single recipe for success in websites naming. On the one hand, having a name that explains the purpose or the main blog topic of your site, is a common practice.

But what exactly is a domain name, you ask? A domain name is simply the name of your website. A domain name is supposed to be a distinct and easy-to-remember name that is used to visit a blog.

For instance, “facebook.com,” “youtube.com,” and others. In my situation, anastasiablogger.com is the domain name for my blog website.

On the other, sometimes choosing a weird or fun word can help a company to stand out against competitors, such as Apple with their fruity name among computer monsters like IBM or Microsoft, or like Google, which became, after all, an actual verb (“to google”).

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Why you should have a domain name

If you have a brand you want to establish, then having that brand name in your domain name is a very important step you must do. Before you write your first blog post, you will have to first think of the name of your blog.

If your website does not have a domain name, you and other users will have to key in the IP address, which is a sequence of digits, to access it. For instance, 192.168.1.1. And, let’s be honest, who has time to learn all of that?

How to choose the right domain name

Choosing a custom domain name is one of the most significant decisions you’ll make as a website owner. If you name your website incorrectly, your brand’s reputation may suffer. With that said, what aspects should you consider while selecting the best domain name for you and your company?

You can choose either of these strategies, just remember about a couple of additional tips:

  1. Pro tip: The golden rule of naming – make it as short as possible and easy to memorize.
  2. Domains in .com zone are always preferable because users automatically think of .com when they memorize domains.
  3. Don’t use numbers and hyphens in your domain, they are difficult to read and remember.

Domain name registration can be done separately from your web hosting. You can find some domain name registrars online and buy a domain from one of them. But you can also use a hosting + domain name package and purchase both things together from a web hosting company.

For example, Bluehost, my preferred web hosting to start a WordPress blog, offers a free domain name if you register web hosting.

You can use this handy Bluehost’s tool to check whether the domain you are thinking about is available.

3. Start Blogging: How to set up a web hosting on Bluehost

First, let me explain why I recommend Bluehost as a hoster for your brand new WordPress blog. From the step by step guide that follows, you’ll see that WordPress will be installed, and your site will start working so smoothly by just clicking on a few buttons in Bluehost’s interface, that you don’t need any technical skills to set it up.

Also, when choosing a hosting, it’s like trusting your child to a babysitter, you can’t compromise here, you have to choose from the best and most trustable hosters, and Bluehost is definitely the leader of its market. Why reliable hosting is so important?

Because the hoster is the keeper of all your website content, hours and hours of work and creativity invested into it, everything is entrusted to the hoster. So you want to make sure that the hosting company is big enough, has many years of strong history, and that customer support is always there for you in any urgent situation.

All of the above applies to Bluehost, in addition to very attractive (better than the average on the market) prices.

Enough talking, time to act! Let’s get it done; I’m sure you can’t wait to see your first blog post live!

1) Get to Bluehost through this link anastasiablogger.com/bluehost. If everything goes well, I might receive an affiliate commission for recommending you Bluehost, so thank you for support! But I honestly advocate for Bluehost, I use it for my own blog and their support is available 24 hours, they helped me a lot when I was at the start, just like you. 

If you sign up through my link, you’ll also get a FREE DOMAIN NAME (a $11-15 value, depending on how “beautiful” is your domain) with your hosting plan. It’s a nice bonus, isn’t it?

So if you made up your mind, just push the green “Get Started Now” button. Here’s a setup process you can easily follow:

2) Since you already know which domain you’d like to use, type it into the box “new domain” and follow to the next step.

3) Provide your contact info and create an account.

4) In the section that includes all the “package information,” you might prefer to select 36 months because this option offers you the best monthly payment. You will be charged for 36 months upfront but no worries about it, Bluehost has a refund policy. If you decide to give up their services before the 36 months were fully used, Bluehost will make a refund for the remaining months.

In my experience, having your hosting paid in advance is safer because if you forget to renew it at the end of every billing period, your blog will go offline and if you don’t act fast, the site it can be removed from the hosting permanently.
The form will offer you additional services and options, but for now, you don’t need to focus on them because they will always be available from the Bluehost’s account. If you are not sure whether you need these options or not, just uncheck them at this point.

Complete the payment, check the box of service agreements and click Next.

5) Hurrah! You just created your Bluehost user account, and now you need to set up your password for it. Make sure it’s a secure password because it’s the key to all your site’s content. And of course, don’t forget this password!


6) Keep calm, after I created the password, the page was loading for about 2 min until I saw the image below. Now you can log into your account for the first time!

7) Bluehost is offering you to choose one of these cute WordPress themes. Pick whichever you like for now, these are just examples and you can easily change the WordPress theme later.

7) Now you can go straight to setting up your site in WordPress

8) On the next step, you are offered to choose which type of site you are going to create – business or personal site.

9) Click Launch site, for now, if you need additional settings, you can do it later.

10) You are asked now to set up post Title and Description for your site. When you think of them, keep in mind that these two should include some keywords relevant to your niche. However, you don’t have to overthink this at the moment. You can edit and improve your title and description at any time later.

Bluehost - setting up site title and description

11) Basically, it’s all done! Congratulations! You have a site with a name, you can now start creating your first post!

4. Choose the Best WordPress Theme for your Blog

Before you start reading this part, take a little break, have a nice cup of coffee because you deserve it. Yes! You just did it!!! It may be your first time but you are finally here!

You’ve created a WordPress blog, and it’s time to think about its looks. What determines the looks of your site, is called THEME. If you are going to make money on your blog, you should seriously consider an investment into a premium theme. In my blog I’m currently using Divi Theme on one of my blogs and the X-Theme on the other.

Why would you pay for WordPress premium themes?

1) SEO: Google prefers sites on premium themes

The free blog templates, besides looking too basic, have another disadvantage that can affect your blog’s earning potential – Google doesn’t really appreciate blogs made on free themes as they usually look unprofessional and thus the sites made on them can’t compete against other websites. Sure, they can look nice the first time, but you will want to think of your long term plans.

SEO (search engine optimization) includes thousands of factors influencing your site’s rankings, and a premium theme is one of the positive signals for Google. Premium themes are designed to bring you income (or passive income).

If you struggle to understand the basics of SEO for Google, check this free training by Mike Pearson who has his Google SEO figured out and making over $10,000/mo with each of the two niche blogs he runs.

2) Premium WordPress themes are designed to bring you income

Besides that, many premium themes are created specifically for money-making blogs, so the pre-defined structure of the site makes it easier to start generating revenue from your content. Getting the most of your audience involves using social media, email marketing, sometimes e-commerce functionality – it all depends on your business model, and it’s impossible to get this with a free WordPress template.

In premium themes, you’ll have the most necessary functionality pre-installed, and for a beginner, it’s the best solution.

3) Mobile friendly (responsive design and layout)

Most of the premium themes nowadays are made with mobile users in mind. It means that your blog will look equally well and be easy to use on any device – desktop computer, tablet or a smartphone of any size and resolution.

I don’t have to explain to you how important is the mobile audience in 2024, right? Just check out your own online browsing habits, and you’ll notice that half of the time, if not most of the time, you go to the Internet via some kind of mobile device.

With free themes, you are never guaranteed to have the best quality on every device. The authors of free WordPress themes don’t get paid for extra efforts, so why would they worry about it?

4) You don’t need tech skills to create a pro-looking blog

It’s difficult enough learning dozens of tools and marketing strategies to monetize your blog, if you start digging the technical implementation on yourself, it will just take away all your enthusiasm at the very start of your marathon. I’ve been there, I know what I’m talking about.

For a price of 80-120 USD, you can get a premium theme and forget about all the technical stuff that you away wouldn’t be able to implement as professionally as the developers and designers who work on it from 9-6 every day

5) Support of theme developer and community

Most popular premium theme developers value their customers and provide support on their forums. For a beginner, it’s always important to have a place where someone can professionally reply to your questions. At least the companies I’d recommend you to work with – Elite Themes (Divi theme) and StudioPress – have very active support forums and communities.

How To Optimize Your Site For Conversion Before You Start Blogging

There is a very important part of your blog, which is seen very often. Even if a new user is reading one of your blog posts, many times they will click on the home page, because they want to see what your blog is about. The first thing they will see is the above-the-fold part of your home page.

Many people think that the design and layout of your home is all about making your blog pretty. However, there is a factor that is even more important. When someone lands on your home page, you want to channel them to do certain actions.

The primary reason many people start a blog is to get results. In order to achieve that goal, your blog needs to convert your visitors. You need to be able to

  • Sign them up for your email list
  • Sell them your products

If you are new to blogging, it’s virtually impossible for you to figure out the best layout on your own. Therefore you need an easy solution, based on the time-tested experience of other successful bloggers. Here is an example of how you could set up your home page if you wanted to collect email addresses and build a list as your primary action:

Do you see how it is all pre-made? All you need to do is replace the words, the photo, connect your email service.

This one example may not be the perfect solution for you because blogging can follow various strategies. Therefore the best thing for you to do is look at the demo of these different Thrive Themes.

In the top left area of the screen, you can select from 10 different themes and look at each one.

 If you have a smaller budget, you can get these themes individually. However, if you want to be strategic about your blog, you should plan ahead.

You will need other types of pages on your blog and unfortunately, you will run into the same problem: WordPress is not set up to build these and you don’t know the successful patterns.

Luckily the creators of Thrive Themes also came up with a plugin called Thrive Architect. Click on the link to see all the different conversion-optimized pages created by them. All you need to do is edit the text and your special page is ready to go.

The next thing your blog really needs is growing your email list, because that is a key way to generate earnings with your blog. If you want to achieve that goal, you need opt-in forms that are proven to convert, where you just need to edit the text and change the image.

Additionally, you need

  • a ribbon on the top of your blog
  • a sign-up form after each post
  • a sign-up widget in your sidebar
  • exit pop-ups for those that are about to close the page

You can achieve all this with the help of Thrive Leads.

Since the pricing of all these components can be a bit confusing, I wanted to explain it briefly.

1 plugin for 1 site = $67

1 plugin for 5 sites = $97

Thrive Membership (you can use all themes and WordPress plugins on 25 sites) = $228 with 1 year support and lifetime updates.

Thrive also has several other WordPress plugins, such as Thrive Apprentice, which is a way to build your online course on your own blog. If you want to do this somewhere down the road, you will be able to do this without having to pay for another plugin, it’s included in the membership.

The 10 individual themes are also included in the membership. Currently, these are not available for purchase separately, because Thrive Themes 2.0, the next generation visual theme builder is coming soon.

WordPress Genesis Framework and Child Themes

So, what could you start with? There is a platform highly appreciated by most of the bloggers, from beginners to professionals – it’s Genesis Framework. To explain to you what is it, I’ll use the analogy of a Barbie doll. Genesis framework is the plastic body of the toy – the foundation, and then you can choose any kind of clothes to make your doll look pretty – these are the Child Themes.

 The designers of Child Themes create templates for different types of sites, like a typical blog, an online magazine, an e-commerce site, etc. And they do the most time-consuming job of matching the colors with the blog topic and audience tastes, selecting the best fonts, defining the structure of the site, and so on.

As for you, all you need to do is to choose one of the themes available in the library, purchase it and download it. It will save you a lot of time and definitely keep you away from many technical details of building sites.

Genesis Framework was developed by a company called StudioPress, they also offer their own child themes, and if you like them, I can share with you a nice hack: when you buy themes in a pack with Genesis Framework, you get a good discount.

StudioPress Themes are categorized by topics so you can choose the perfect theme for your topic.

It’s important to understand that if you start your blog on Genesis Framework, this will make future design/theme changes so much easier! Like I said, you’re getting a Barbie doll, and all you have to do later is to put on her a new lovely dress.

Genesis Framework has an entire community behind it, so if you have any issues or questions, their support forums and tutorials will save you a lot of time!

Let’s look into the lovely dress (Child Theme) wardrobe 🙂 I really like Glam Pro Theme + Genesis Framework for $129.95. You will notice that the colors they use are similar to my blog, and I think they perfectly fit a female lifestyle blog.

I know that many of my favorite bloggers use Foodie Pro Theme that stands out with its minimalist approach and clean design aiming to give emphasis on images that you post.

To understand better what Genesis Framework does and how it works with Child themes, you can download this (FREE) PDF file The Genesis Guide for Absolute Beginners (PDF – 1.4 MB) from StudioPress.

FAQ: How do bloggers get paid?

Read my post about ways bloggers make money here. Don’t forget to read my list of things newbies always forget to set in their new blogs!

But if you want a quick overview,  here are some ways on how bloggers make money through their blog in 2024:

Display Ads or Promotional Ads

The simplest way to begin making money from your blog is to place display advertisements on it. For newbies, Google Adsense and Media.net are great places to start. However, keep in mind that they pay very little, so it will take some time for you to make a respectable living.

The worst thing you can do to make an additional buck a day on advertisements is to spam your WordPress blog with ad blocks and lose your audience’s trust. Because of all the advertisements, your website will load extremely slowly. Maintain a sense of balance and respect.

It’s something that people frequently question me about. Can you select which pages your display ads appear on and where you sell affiliate items or your own products if you have display ads on your site? The answer is YES – you may completely disable display advertisements on certain pages.

That’s what I did with all of my entries about blogging and Pinterest marketing. I’m either marketing affiliate items or selling my own course on all of them. So it makes no sense to show advertising and divert my traffic away from these pages in exchange for a few cents.

So, as a new blogger, I would strongly advise you to prioritize building a community and traffic generation. When you have enough traffic even if you are a new blogger, you may apply for higher-paying display advertising networks.

You can apply for MediaVine Publisher Network if you have 25,000 or more monthly sessions. If you hit 100,000 visits, you may apply to Adthrive, which guarantees that an average site would make three times more per page view with their advertisements.

Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Marketing

Many bloggers prefer affiliate marketing as a blogging monetization approach because of its simplicity and quick passive revenue. Simply defined, affiliate marketing is when you promote a product or service to your audience through the use of your own unique tracking links (also called affiliate links).

When a certain reader of yours purchase something through your affiliate link, then you will receive a commission

Some of the products or services I usually mention on my site are well-known to you; for example, I advise beginning bloggers to start with Bluehost web hosting service since they provide extremely low prices, 24-hour help through chat, and a free domain.

See what I did there? This is an example of affiliate marketing in action. I make money by promoting services and items that have worked successfully for me, and my audience saves money by clicking on my affiliate links.

And, to be absolutely honest, I didn’t use affiliate marketing or any affiliate program on my site to its full potential for a long time. I was so focused on talking about Pinterest and creating my own product and marketing channels for it that I completely overlooked the huge prospects available with affiliate marketing.

I’m just getting started looking around, and to my surprise, there are a lot of fantastic things that I’ve personally used or learnt from, and I’d be happy to suggest them to my audience since they helped me with my online company.

Products/Services

If you already have your own items or business, you may start selling through your site right away. As previously said, you can easily add a Shop page and sell products to your WordPress blog so that your readers can readily see what you have to offer.

You may sell either physical products or digital products such as ebooks, graphic design elements, music, photos, and so on. You may also provide online tutoring, web development, graphic design, and even blogging services as a service!

For example, I am currently giving 1:1 services related to Pinterest wherein I do a Pinterest account audit with 1 hour of coaching call. I used to give Pinterest management services in the past, and while businesses were willing to pay me a premium for my services, I had to quit since I still had 24 hours in a day and it was difficult to grow Pinterest management services beyond my working hours.

But still, my 1:1 service is still making me earn quite a huge amount for an extra income. 

Sponsors and Partnerships

This is where your Contact form on your WordPress blog will come in handy. Advertisers, such as corporations and business owners, will approach you via your blog’s contact form or email address (or even phone number) if they believe you are qualified to market their products or services.

You may set your own pricing for a blog article highlighting them with this. You may either wait for advertisers to approach you or do a comparative study of other bloggers’ advertisers and make them a sales pitch.

6. Don’t be shy, girl! 🙂

If you are still with me reading this page, you are already equipped with all the tools you need to start the blog of your dream! You have a domain name, you purchased web hosting, installed a cute theme, now it’s time to let your creative self go wild and start writing fantastic posts, taking photos and videos.

Don’t get intimidated in front of the technical part, just start a blog today and pass each test step by step. It’s impossible to know everything at the starting point where you are now, believe me, no one of those successful bloggers with 6-figure income knew everything from the beginning.

But you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you’ll see how exciting it’s to track your blog growing and bringing you to the desired financial level!

7. Start writing your blog posts

Before you start writing blog posts, you have to consider one important question: “What is your blog niche?” 

Choose a specialty or topic in which you have knowledge or a strong interest in. Think about what you want your blog to be about. You’re going to be doing this for the most of your time, so focus on something you like.

There are countless of topics you can get into but some of the most profitable niche and blog post ideas are:

  • Lifestyle & Travel
  • Beauty and Fashion
  • Career
  • Finance / Budgeting 
  • Food 
  • Health & Fitness
  • Tech

Or you can cover a multi-niche blog, like I do (lifestyle, career, self-help, blogging), or you can choose a more concentrated specialty, such as budget-friendly travel, organic recipe blog, DIY home decors, pet care, and so on. The possibilities are endless! You can also do keyword research for more niche ideas.

It is usually advised that you publish at least 10 articles before formally “launching” your blog to the public and beginning to promote your blog. Having a particular number of published posts will help you keep users because they have more content and articles to read.

To keep your subject ideas structured and organized, I recommend creating a content strategy or editorial calender. I use Google Sheets, which is both free and simple to use.

And do not worry about using fancy words. You are not writing for New York Times. As long as your blog post is understandable and authentic, then your readers will stay. 

You also have to make sure your blog post is keyword optimized. Do your keyword research.

A free WordPress plugin called Yoast SEO can help you with this. 

Lastly, make your blog post pretty by adding photos (or stock photos), videos, illustrations, and more! 

8. Write an About Me Page or Blog Post

You can never start a blog without an about me page. One of your blog posts could be an about me or an introductory blog post. Introduce yourself as well as your blog. Declare your goal and what you hope to give to your readers.

This is your chance to introduce yourself to your audience. Be kind, add some humor and sarcasm, or share your hardships and achievements. Keep it authentic and simply be yourself.

9. Promote your blog

The 80/20 rule is recommended by well-known successful bloggers. This means that you devote 20% of your time and efforts to creating quality content and 80% to promote your blog. Because, honestly, what’s the purpose of starting a blog and creating all this fantastic information if no one reads it and appreciates it?

Pinterest will be your closest buddy when you are just starting a blog. It is a free social media platform and functions as a search engine for online users. Email marketing can also be a great way to promote your blog content. 

Bloggers receive around 100,000+ monthly views only by marketing their blog content on Pinterest! Simply create a Pinterest business account, create aesthetically stunning vertical pins for your blogs with catchy titles, publish them to Pinterest, and watch your traffic rise!

How to Encourage Social Media Sharing of Your Blog Posts

We live in a social world where we get a lot of our news and updates from places like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

To increase your readership and website visitors and ensure that your blog posts receive the attention they deserve, encourage your existing readers to share what you’ve written on their favorite social networking platforms. This is a simple way of content marketing you can do as a beginner! 

When you want people to share your blog article on social media, you should make it as accessible and understandable as possible. The most popular social media sites are Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter.

Make sure you have one-click buttons for sharing the blog content on all of those sites. If you use WordPress for your blog, you should be able to locate a WordPress plugin to aid you with this.

You can place these social media sharing buttons at the end of your blog post or at the corner of your website.

And while buttons are great, sometimes a little additional push is required to persuade your readers to take action. Do not be hesitant to request a social media share.

Close your articles and blog posts with a phrase or two asking people to share the piece on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media platforms if they loved it. Remember to tell them how much you appreciate it when they share the love. And of  course, remember to say thanks for sharing!

How I Use Pinterest for My Own Online Business and my Results

My site is just a little over 1 year old, I started with a 0 following Pinterest account and by the 10th month blogging, I reached 172,000 monthly pageviews to my blog (according to Google analytics), with about 90% of traffic coming from Pinterest.

I started my second blog in Feb 2018, and the new blog momshealth.co already hit 74,000 monthly pageviews in less than 90 days! All thanks to my content strategy, hard work, and good luck!

Again, you can check these stats on Google Analytics.

And again, almost all the traffic comes from Pinterest. And if you do a simple google search on either Pinterest marketing, blogging, or recipes, you will see one of my blogs in the search engines! 

If you are interested in growing your Pinterest traffic fast, you can get yourself set up for success with my Pinterest SEO Traffic Secrets course. It’s over 6 hours of video training packed with my personal know-hows and Pinterest hacks.

I can guarantee that at least 50% of the Pinterest tips and tricks I share with you in the course, are absolutely exclusive and you will not find them in any other Pinterest course.

If you don’t need to grow fast and don’t mind working at your 9-5 job for a lot longer, you can totally keep reading my emails and posts because I also share tons of free advice. It’s just a matter of how FAST you want to grow your blog and income.

Starting a blog can be overwhelming at the start, but trust me, the rewards make it all worth it. Your hard work will pay off.

Good luck on starting a blog and your journey ahead!

 
How to Start a Blog in 10 minutes: a Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners. Start your blog and make money online!

How to Start a Blog in 10 minutes - 2024 Beginner Tutorial

Instructions

  1. How to start a blog on Wordpress
  2. Domain name check and registration
  3. How to set up a website hosting on Bluehost
  4. Choose the Best Wordpress Theme for your Blog
  5. How To Optimize Your Site For Conversion

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Comments 58

  1. Thank you for the information. I have been considering starting a blog for quite sometime and finally just took the leap! Everything seems very overwhelming at the moment, but hopefully it gets better with time. This information has already helped tremendously!

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      Author

      Hi Britney!
      Let me know if you have some specific questions. I am not the all-knowing and arrogant blogging expert, I have experience and would be glad to help you!

  2. thank you so much for this help! I’m just getting started and this was great!! Its definitely overwhelming….lol

  3. Pingback: The Blogger Recognition Award 2017 ! – Welcome to Seven Star

  4. Thanks for the great info. I’m just getting started creating a blog. It’s overwhelming but this definitely helped!

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      Author
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      Author
  5. This is an excellent blog. But I don’t think that I can do it within 10 minutes. I have zero knowledge on blog setup. I have recently started learning about making a blog from scratch. Thanks for sharing the hosting site. I want to create a blog for affiliate marketing. I am a housewife, so want to earn some money from home based work. I found blogging is perfect for me.

  6. Hi Anastasia,

    This is a great post, thanks for sharing.

    I totally agree with your advice about picking a premium theme. I’ve used free themes in the past, and while they’re OK, they did restrict me in the long term because of a few coding issues and the fact that the features were so limited. I now use Avada, which is similar to the Divi theme that you use as it includes a visual page builder – I’d recommend this for beginners because it cuts down on the amount of HTML/CSS coding massively.

    Thanks again,

    Jonathan

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      Author
  7. Thank you for all the useful info… I’ve been “trying” to start a blog for a long time. I just have words to speak, not products to sell. Is it possible to still be successful as a blogger without products or courses?

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      Author

      Hi, Maria!

      Yes, absolutely possible! Thanks to companies like Mediavine, you can get $10-$25 per thousand sessions on your site, which is multiple times better than people used to get with Google Adsense (in most cases, it’s 10 times better). Affiliate products are also a great option, depending on the niche of course. But in some niches, affiliate commissions are a lot higher than you could get with your own ebook or printable.

      Have you seen my post about the 20 bloggers who managed to get into Mediavine in 3-6 months with Pinterest traffic (free) and started making ad income really fast?

      By the way, even though I sell a course, about 70-80% (depending on the month) of my income comes from ads on the site. So it’s very much possible.

      Ah, and I didn’t mention Sponsorships – it’s a completely different area but I know lots of bloggers in the US charge over $500 for a sponsored post.

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  8. Anastasia is master for Pinterest traffic and I hope after this post anyone can start a blog. Once you create write your article then time to drive traffic through Pinterest.

    I really love your homepage, you’re great. Doing an excellent job!

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      Author
  9. it may be easy to start a blog but the issue is getting a niche or sub niche which is not saturated. How do do you navigate this?

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      Author

      I would suggest going as specific as you can in your topic if you want to target an unsaturated niche. For example, you are a lifestyle blogger and you talk about bags. You can go more in-depth in the type of bags you wish to talk about. You can simply specialize in leather bags, handmade bags, eco-friendly bags, etc.

  10. I love this Blog! You’re doing a realy great job with your blog! i can find so much knowlege fpor a good blogging. i was searching on google for pinterest tips. and i found your tips. really professionell! Greetings 🙂

  11. Thank You. In fact, by following the step-by-step instructions in this guide you will learn how to create a blog in less than no time (no technical skills needed).

  12. hey, Anastasia Blogger
    i am sagar gaikwad . i always follow your video on youtube . you are the best youtuber.
    i have a question for you?
    your website looking professional. and your youtube video always in hd.
    1) How you maked this website? i mean which language use (Html And css) or any other way to create website like you.?
    2)Which Software you used to create a youtube video?(Filmora, premere pro, pinnacle).?

    i am waiting for your replay. please replay me as soon as possible.
    i bookmarked this page.?

    1. Post
      Author

      Hi, Sagar!
      1. WordPress site on X-theme, heavily optimized CSS
      2. Premiere Pro
      Site design and editing is mostly done by my husband, as well as video editing.

  13. hi dear I’m a beginer and i have no idea how to do this n I’m also interested to buy your valuable course which course you recommend me .. thanks

  14. Hi, I just started my blog on Bluehost and would love some one on one advice on picking a good theme and I am interested in recipe blog, so I wanted to ask for advice on ranking it… thank you for this article..

  15. Hi Anastasia,
    Your step by step free guidelines here are with a lot of valuable information, especially for a beginner like me to start a blog site!

    You’ve broken it down into pieces to understand every detail.

    Thanks a bunch!

  16. Hello Ma’am, i am an aspiring blogger and i want to learn more from you. Please help me set up my own site by sending videos and/or tips. Thank you!

  17. Hello Anastasia,
    I recently subscribed to your youtube channel. From your YT channel, I came to this site. Thank you so much for sharing the valuable information. I learned one new thing from your blog about Thrive Leads.

  18. Anastasia is master for Pinterest traffic and I hope after this post anyone can start a blog. Once you create write your article then time to drive traffic through Pinterest.

    I really love your homepage, you’re great. Doing an excellent job!

  19. Thanks a lot, Anastasia blogger for bringing so much value to this post.I wanted to thank you also for all the videos on Pinterest strategies on Youtube which am a great fan and follower. Thanks a lot again. Keep up the good work.

  20. Hi, Anastasia! Great tutorial, I’ve just started blogging this year. I’ve found your YouTube channel first, and I love the way you explain, in a simple and happy way!

  21. Its useful to me, iwant to be a blogger.. Thanks for the idea.. I like Pinterest its interesting. Hope you help me soon. GOD BLESS!!

  22. Dear Anastasia,

    I am planning to start a blog in a couple of weeks and I would love to take your courses ( Pinterest course and Blog your way to 10k ). But, I have 2 questions- 1. If I buy those 2 courses, the price will be lower or not? 2. Is Blog your way to 10k for also a very new bloggers or not?
    Thank you so much,

    Kind regards,
    Andjela

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      Author

      Hi Andjela, sorry I just found your comment here but we already have everything sorted out through email 🙂

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