how to start a blog the easy way
Designing tools,  Entrepreneurship

How To Start A Blog The Easy Way PT 1

thinking of starting a blog you’re at the right place

(Note: bookmark this so, you can use it as a reference & guide when setting up your blog)

Glad you’re here and you’ve made a great decision 

There’s no right time but the present(excited for you :))

This topic is divide into 2 parts the technical, the how-to which is the first part

then the mindset part which is so crucial even more important than this

You need to read it once i publish it

I’m going to make this part easy for you so, you don’t have to look anywhere else and start taking action

this blog post is a complete guide to starting a blog using wordpress

It has everything you need without unnecessary information I include many options

and my personal recommendation to make it easier for you to make the decision about which to choose and to start building your blog/website

this’s blog post especially written for overthinker, women who indulge in confusion & overwhelm

It’s divided into 3 parts

-before starting up

-setting up your blog

-after setting up

Let’s begin

Before starting

basic marketing consideration you should make 

1- why do you want to start a blog?

It’s important to know your why because it’ll be your driver later on

Will talk more about it in part 2

for now Just answer the question

2-what do you want to blog about?

Here you need to choose the topic you want to talk about

Choose 1-3 topics or a theme for your blog

Example: for topic personal growth, productivity, manifestation

For a theme female entrepreneurs, athletes

3-who you want to talk to? 

Your ideal reader,ideal client,your avatar

Define this person,what they do?what do they do in a daily basise ,gnder,age

What is their problem,struggles

What’re their interests,goals

What they want to do in life

These questions to help you paint the pic to who you want to read your blog

Because you need to think of them because people won’t come if there isn’t anything for them

That’s human nature

how to start a blog the easy way

Setting up your blog

I want this to be so easy for you to take action on and do not fall into the cycle of confusion & overwhelm

1-set your WordPress blog

why? because WordPress is the most popular & you can find many assets & how-tos

2-choose a web host

if anything I’d suggest you invest in from the start would be this.

going self-hosted will make it easy to control & change your website/blog, sell and protect your blog

there’re too many options bluehost ,site ground, lyrical, hostgator

but I recommend Bluehost is reliable, it’s recommended by WordPress.org and it has a great deal for people who are starting out

here’s how to set up WordPress using Bluehost

3-choose the name and  buy a domain

you need to have a domain name. you have two choices here Either you name it your name or choose a name like I did

(fun fact: my website name is the translation of my name in English)

Choosing the a name can be easy if you let it be

give yourself a time limit (eg.1 hour) to decide because it’s easy for your mind to get confused, drag this task because of fear of what comes next & because of perfectionism

I’d recommend choosing your name if you don’t want to waste time & get started because you can change it later

4- choosing a theme, colors, fonts, and designing your logo

tip: if you find yourself at any point unable to make a decision. give yourself a time limit to make a decision and move on

colors and fonts

just decide on something don’t think much about it.

choose colours you like which is what I did because it’s the easiest.

you can always change it later. I don’t want you to waste a lot of time here because it’s 100% changeable

as for themes

there’re beautiful, chic options for free

here’re the names of these themes

or you can get a paid themes from these sites

the creative market

flo themes

pixelgrade

for this case it’s up to you to choose either one because you can have paid & beautiful one for cheap or stick to the free option

as for logo

you can get someone to design it for you on Fiverr or use a website like to get generated one for you here

or make your own for free using canva , pick monkey

I recommend making your own because you can make a new one later when you evolve

I made mine on canva.com and in the future I may change it.

it’s not that important at the beginning to waste so much time on when you can change when you upgrade (your website) later because that’s bound to happen anyway

5- blog design for maximum growth

what I mean here is the structure of your blog. pages, sections on each page links, etc.

-Pages to have in your blog

About me page

share your story & why you started your blog/business

Blog

where you share your posts

you can make your blog your main page if you don’t want to make the other pages yet. I did that

Work with me page

where you share your services & products later on

Start here page

it’s an intro page with links to places you want people to go to the moment they’re on your website

it can have your freebie, information about you ,testimonials.. 

6-setup Google Analytics

so you can see how your website/blog is doing later on and make improvements and changes

set it up here

7-setup Google Search Console

to help you see you site performance, help google index & make it eaiser to find your website in search results

se it up here

here’s a tutorial on how to set it up

8- plugins

Smush : improve performance

Social Warfare: share buttons to  drive traffic

Yoast SEO: to help you with SEO

WPForms: to help you create an easy contact form

Pretty Links:  to shrink & track your links

Akismet Anti-Spam: to stop spam comments which a pain if you ask me

legal

consult a legal personality because they know more than I do

But don’t stress about it from the start. do the other steps and leave it till the end

the important thing is terms, conditions & privacy policy

how to start a blog the easy way

After setting up

1-choosing how many times to post

-make a decision from the start on how many times to post and on which days

there’s no right or wrong answer. I suggest to choose something easy to stick to if you’re not sure

Example: posting once per week on Tuesday

2- content

-brainstorm 20 ideas ( create a bank of ideas to use for your next blog posts)

this will prevent you from wondering what to create next which could lead you to procrastinate or postpone writing your posts

3-writing your posts

  • Search for keywords using Ubersuggest
  • write an outline for the blog post
  • I write a draft using a timer because I don’t want it to take too long (here I write without correcting myself or caring if it’s coherent that’s done when I edit)
  • edit the draft( organize the post into intro, body(could be points,questions..etc) & conclusion

4- Marketing your blog to get visitors , readers

So, after setting your blog you need to drive people to read your blog so, you need to market your blog

The 3 marketing channel I recommend

1- SEO which is the bases of marketing anywhere .making your blog SEO friendly is important to get people to find your blog when searching on google

Mainly keywords (there’re other aspects but right now this is enough for a start) tip: focus on choosing keywords that have high search volume but low or no content 

2- Pinterest is the best for driving traffic to your blog. highly recommend working on it from the beginning

Create a business account, claim your website and social media then start making pins regularly daily which most preferable

3-social media is a great way to build your brand and build your business and gain awareness & visibility 

Choose one and master it before you jump into another

I use Instagram & Facebook to connect with people and build my brand 

here’s my Instagram & Facebook

4- email list

whenever you offer a freebie it’s a great opportunity to capture emails which will help you build connection, market your self to your list& sell to them later

first, choose a service provider. you can definitely start with free as many give you that opportunity

some give you Up to 1000 email subscribers for free before you pay to upgrade or you can then change your provider 

there’re Mailchimp convertkit (the free option is new) ,mailerlite

second, link to your site in the link below how you can set it up

I use MailChimp here’s how to set it up

don’t forget to make a professional email address here’s how

to connect & contact your readers, audience because you want to look professional from day one because you’re building a business from your blog (@gmail) doesn’t look professional

click here to know how

another tutorial here

Courses to help you star

these two have everything you could ever need to start your blog

that has comprehensive flow & organization

1- build your own brand by Pat Flynn

2- how to start a blog by Chelsey from herpaperroute.com

I’d love to hear from you if you have any question .

you can ask anything in the comments or email me at wafaa@loyaltyrain.com

let’s create our wildest dreams

Wafaa

how to start a blog the easy way

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *