How To Start A Blog in 2023 (Free Ultimate Guide)

Before you decide to start a blog, You need to learn How To Start A Blog and Earn money from blogging? This article will help you to start your blog from scratch.

If you want to make real, life-changing money from a new blog this year read this post till the end, and I will guide you step by step on How to start a blog and make money online.

Blogging is more competitive now than ever. Some claim blogging is too crowded, or it’s too late to make money. But it’s not correct you can start blogging now and make significant money in months, not years.

This article will cover how to choose the right niche, generate traffic, and monetize your site in the fastest time frame possible.

Let’s get started. (How To Start A Blog)

Disclaimer: Please note that the article includes affiliate links that provide a commission to me at no cost to you. These links are for the best software and tools you need to start a successful blog.

1. Choose Your Blog’s Niche

We all know that you need a niche to start a blog and this is the first and crucial thing that you need to start a blog – Whether it’s marketing, vegan, cooking whatever you are passionate about, there are endless amounts of things to blog.

Most bloggers tells you to start with something that you are passionate about just because it helps you to maintain consistent writing and push through the hard time when things get complicated.

They will also tell you to choose a niche at the intersection of passion, skills, and experience:

I believe that with a blog, money drive passion more than passion drives money.

Most of you are taking this standard advice and choosing the niche about your blog based on passion, skills, and experience.

In this example, your passion is fitness, and your skill is helping people gain weight.

So you decide to start a blog in fitness specifically designed to help people to gain weight.

• Write 25 blog posts
• Incorporate workout videos
• Create a YouTube channel and Instagram account
• Build necessary pages like About Me, Contact Us, Privacy Policy and FAQ to tell your story
• Add affiliate links to of fitness products
• Build your email list with your lead magnet – Top 20 workouts to Gain 5 Pounds in 7 Days

When someone signs up for the email list, they receive an email of 7 days of free online personal training consultation, with the end goal of having them become a recurring monthly customer.

This sounds very exciting. However, I can almost guarantee that this blog will fail.

Why?

This niche is going to take years to monetize. When thing takes years to monetize, the likelihood of quitting is exponentially higher.

Because that’s the myth, it takes a year to make money from a blog.

There’s is another problem with this strategy, and it comes with our nature: our desire for significance

Imagine you are writing about something you are passionate about for months, and still, you have no following, no traffic, and not a single dime for your efforts.

I could blog about my passion and experience for a while, but if I didn’t get money from that blog, I’d quit 100% of the time.

That’s why 95% of bloggers fail – they start with their passion, but don’t know how to treat it like a business from the first day.

They write for years, and when they don’t see results, they will quit.

So we are going to start a blog like a business from the very beginning.

To do this, we will choose a niche based on primary factors: audience revenue potential and keyword research.

To check all their things, you can use a tool called SemRush, although this is a paid tool.

But,

You are exclusive so you will get seven days of the free trial of this tool. Go to Semrush 7 Days Free Trial

2. Pick A Domain Name

The domain is the second thing that you need. If you want to start a blog in the simple word if you want to earn money from your business, then you need a good business name.

It’s not very tough to pick the Website domain, and you can easily select a perfect domain name for your new blog if you’ve decided on your domain so you can skip this part.

This is for you If you haven’t selected the domain name till now –

When I started my blogging career, I don’t know how to choose a premium or brandable domain for my blog, and that’s why I wasted 10+ domains because I don’t like it also they don’t look brandable.

I don’t think you make the same mistake as me?

If Yes! Here are four tips which help you to find your dream domain –

• Keep it Short & Simple – Try to keep your domain short, don’t make it too long because it’s not easy to pronounce, and keep your domain name simply because it’s easy to remember.
• Use Keyword – You can use your main keyword in your domain, which helps you in SEO. (keyword related to your niche. Many peoples like to buy a domain from their name I didn’t do that if you choose a domain with a keyword, it’s easy to rank on Google searches.)
• Don’t Use Numbers – Don’t use numbers in your domain because it’s not easy to remember.
• Always Use Top TLD Extension – I recommend you to use a domain extensions like .com because it’s for globally ranking. (If you didn’t get a domain with a .com domain try to choose another domain name or you will go with .net, .org and .co domain extensions.)

If you are still not able to figure out the domain for your blog, then you can find a brandable domain name using one tool: LeanDomainSearch this tool helps you to find domain names related to your keywords.

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3. Choose the Best Web Hosting

If you are going to start a blog, then finding the best web hosting company is hard. The thing is why this is hard because there are too many companies in the market, providing hosting.

Most of the new bloggers make a mistake here they can choose the wrong hosting and lose the chance to rank in google search results.

Here is some example of bad hosting.

Some persons on Facebook groups or any other social media platforms said they would provide you hosting at low prices like they will give you hosting for $0.2/month or less.

They are not the company that will buy reseller hosting and sells hosting to you, and this hosting does not provide good speed or too much downtime, and it’s awful for your site.

Even if you start a blog, that blog never got traffic if your website speed is not useful or your site is going down again and again.

So this is the reason why I am telling you to go with good hosting. I use some companies that I mentioned in this article for my lots of websites so if you want to start a blog to make money online, then never go with free or worst hosting.

So which hosting you can choose?

I will tell you four hosting companies that provide excellent hosting, and most of the well-known bloggers are using these hosting also I am using the hosting of these companies.

• ChemiCloud (Checkout Chemicloud Review)
• A2Hosting
• Namecheap
• GreenGeeks (Checkout GreenGeeks Review)
• WPX Hosting

All about web hosting companies are well-known hosting companies. You can choose either one of those depending on your budget or requirements.

4.WordPress Installation

We are talking about starting a blog, so I want to tell you WordPress is not the only cms that you can use to build your website there are many other CMS available on the market. But I prefer WordPress.

Now the question is why I am telling you to use WordPress?

There is a strong reason behind this, and the reason is WordPress is straightforward to use also this the most popular and most used CMS in the world is we talk about the number of websites that built on WordPress then Almost 59.4% of websites are using WordPress in this world.

WordPress installation is not complicated; it’s a straightforward process; also, it will take only 10-15 minutes only.

So let’s begin the process,

• First of all login into your Cpanel (You will get Cpanel login details from your hosting provider through E-mail)

• Go To Softaculous App Installer option

• Here select WordPress Option

• Now Click on Install Now Option

• Enter some basic information about your blog

• In the Admin account area fill your WordPress Login details and click on the install button

• Done your WordPress installation is complete

You can log in to your WordPress Admin area use ( your domain/wp-admin)

5. Pick The Right Theme For Your Blog

As we know a lot of WordPress themes are available, some of them are free, and some of them are paid. Also, some websites provide nulled themes.

First of all, we can talk about nulled themes that you can easily get on the internet. But never think to use those themes.

Why?

There are many reasons why every blogger tells you to stay away from cracked or nulled themes.

• Nulled themes increase the load time of your blog, and due to this, you can lose your ranking in search engines.
• Your whole data of the blog will be deleted or corrupted by these types of themes.
• These themes are easily hackable or if you don’t know if you blog hacked google deindex your blog, and you lose all your ranking and traffic.
• They can use your data without your permission.

What about free themes?

Same issue with free themes. Free themes are also easily hackable and increase the load time of your blog which affects your ranking in the wrong way. So don’t use free themes.

My recommendation to you is making a budget to get a premium WordPress theme for your blog. 

After installing the WordPress theme and your blog look is very important if you are starting a new blog.

Now is the time to choose a theme for your blog.

So which theme is best for you?

I will recommend you the themes that I use on my all blogs.

I use two themes Astra and GeneratePress. These are the two lightest themes (under 50-100kb)

I like the design of these themes, and many pro bloggers use these themes. These themes are easily customizable; also, you don’t need any coding knowledge to customize these themes.

So you can use anyone of these themes according to your requirements Astra or GeneratePress.

How to upload themes in WordPress?

After choosing the right theme, it’s time to install that theme,

To install that theme follow below steps:-

First of all, log in to your WordPress dashboard > Appearance > themes.

1.  In the theme, section click on add new button.
2.  Click on the upload theme and upload your theme zip and activate that theme on your blog.

You installed and activated your preferred theme in your blog. Installing a theme is an easy task but customizing that theme is the main and essential task.

So if you want to customize your theme, click on appearance ➡ customizes, and now you can able to customize your theme. Now you can customize the theme according to you.

6. Attention Grabbing Blog Design

In blogging, Design is also a crucial factor if you don’t have attention-grabbing you are losing a lot of traffic and audience. 

So attention-grabbing Design is very important because your blog looks attract readers and built more trust with them.

You need to think to design an attention-grabbing blog first is a theme that you choose in the above step. Again I want to tell you don’t use free themes they can’t give you many customization options.

After choosing theme now, you need a page builder plugin to design your pages and posts.

So the two most popular plugins available that you can use to design a fantastic page or blog post.

Elementor and Thrive Architect two are best page builder plugins for WordPress. Both plugins have unique features.

Elementor is a freemium WordPress page builder some features are available in the free version and some features are available in the pro version. If you start a blog, then the free version is enough for you.

Thrive Architect is a premium plugin that comes with fantastic design features, and many pre-made templates; also, this whole post is designed using Thrive Architect.

Look,

If you want to do blogging like a business, then invest in themes and plugins. I see that many bloggers don’t invest in this kind of stuff, and then face many critical issues.

So when you plan to start a blog with that plan, make a budget for some essential plugins and themes that help you to build a money-making blog.

7.Some Essential Plugins For Your Blog

We all want to make a blog that ranks on SERP, and we can make money from that blog. But to make a blog like this, we need some plugins that help us to make a profitable and successful blog.

The best thing about WordPress is it’s an open-source platform for blogging. You can customize your blog in an endless amount of ways, and it starts with WordPress plugins.

You can use plugins to add additional features to your site without any coding skills.

WordPress offers you thousands of plugins with different functionalities, including email marketing, Site speed increasing, and enhancing the SEO of your site.

I didn’t recommend you install hundreds of plugins because they slow down your site speed. Also, it’s quite complicated for website owners to choose plugins to enhance their site.

But don’t worry, I will help you in this I created a list of 5 best plugins for you that you should use on your blog.

If you use these plugins, you will see a boost in your site performance.

1. WordPress Seo Plugins

SEO is an essential part of blogging because SEO helps you to rank your website and drive a lot of traffic to your site.

To make SEO easy some plugins are available for WordPress, but you need to use only one plugin. There are two most popular WordPress SEO plugins Yoast SEO and Rank Math.

Both plugins are best in terms of SEO, but you need to choose one according to your needs. So for doing that we have already written an article on Yoast SEO vs Rank Math read this comparison post and choose the best plugin for your blog.

2. Plugins For Email Marketing

Email Marketing is a very effective way to get traffic to your blog. And the best thing is you get targeted traffic, or if you promote any affiliate product, you will get a high conversion rate on email clients. 

Also if you have any articles not ranked on google. Then you can transfer email traffic to that one to boost up ranking for that article.

Tools that I use for email marketing is Convertkit, and in my opinion, this is the best tool for email marketing. I used a lot of email marketing tools, but I didn’t get the result that I want.

Most of them send emails to Spam or promotion folder due to I didn’t get good traffic. Then one of my friends told me about convertkit.

Believe me

This is an impressive tool I get an 80-90% open rate and all emails that I sent to my subscriber are directly sent to their inbox.

So get free access to convertkit. This offer is only for our unique readers grab it now.

3. Plugin to speed up the blog

You already know that speed is one factor for your site to rank your blog in search engines and many plugins available that said they speed up your blog, but I use one plugin, and many other pro bloggers use the same plugin.

WP Rocket is a plugin that helps you optimize and make your website faster. I recommend you to use this plugin this is a paid plugin but if you are looking for an alternative to this so you can go with autoptimize plugin.

There are many other things you need to do. If you want to speed up your blog, so check out nine ways to speed up WordPress blog to increase your site speed.

4. Anti Spam Plugin

Many times, a lot of people make spam comments on your posts. So anti-spam plugin helps you if someone comment on your post and comment looks like Spam, so this plugin automatically removes it.

5. Social Sharing Plugin

You all know the importance of social media. You can get massive traffic from social media also when you start a blog. It helps you to drive traffic to your blog.

Social Snap is a social sharing plugin I like this plugin because this plugin helps you to drive traffic on your site from social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and many more. 

These are some plugins that I use to start a blog. All of these plugins are awesome and very important for a blog if you want to make a successful blog.

Never go with nulled or cracked plugins because these types of plugins are easy to hack by the hacker, and by this, you lose all your website data.

8. Setup Your Blog’s SEO

This is the main topic that helps us to rank our blog in search engines. One thing that I want to tell you this is 2023, and there are too many bloggers now.

So if you are thinking to start a blog and believe without doing SEO you can rank on Google or any search engine it’s not possible you need to do SEO if you want to earn from blogging or going to start a blog.

First thing in SEO is a permalink If you don’t know what is permalink have a look at the below image.

This is what a permalink looks like.

Permalinks are static links that will lead your audience to a specific web page.

By default, your permalink is set to “yourdomainname.com/postID.”

But, This not only looks unattractive also it’s not good from the SEO point of view as well.

So, before you start writing content for your blog, make sure to set an SEO-friendly permalink structure. To set an SEO friendly permalink follow the below steps –

Login to your WordPress Plugin goes to Settings ⇒ Permalinks.

You can choose any from a couple of options. But I will recommend going with the “Post name” structure because most high-ranking blogs follow this structure.

Once you leave the page, make sure you save the settings.

After that, make sure you set up Google Search Console and Google Analytics. These two tools are 100% necessary and can be easily integrated with the Rank Math SEO plugin.

SEO is not ending here. SEO is a vast topic that we can cover in our future posts on SEO.

9.Create Content For Your Blog

Here I will help you to create your first stunning blog post. Let’s Start,

To create a blog post, you have to go to WordPress dashboard ⇒ Post ⇒ Add New

Here you can start writing your first blog post

So let me give you some pro tips to make your first blog post awesome and SEO friendly.

• First of all, do some keyword research around your niche, and by searching, you will find many awesome keywords for your first post that are easy to rank.

Note:- Try to use long-tail keywords because they are easy to rank.

• Make a catchy eye title using that keyword you can use numbers and power words to make it awesome.
• You should add some images for making your article more attractive and easy to read; I strongly recommend you make your article lengthy and more in detail, write an article of at least 1200-1500 words.
• Use words like I and You to make connect with your readers and try to don’t take copyright images from google. I recommend you always use copyright-free photos. To use copyright images you can use the below website these websites provide you 100% copyright-free images.

List of websites that provide copyright-free images

• Pixabay
• Unsplash
• Free Images

You have successfully created your First Blog.

As you can see, learning how to start a blog is very easy, but you need to consider your options very carefully to turning your blog into a profitable money-making business.

Now it’s your turn

I told you how to start a blog from scratch, and I hope after reading this post, you can start a successful blog.

If you find this article useful share it with your friends and family, keep visiting Lit Blogging to learn more about Blogging, SEO, and Affiliate marketing.