How to Start a Blog from Scratch in 2021
Looking to start your own blog and make money online?
You’ve come to the right place! Today I’m going to show you the best way to create a blog and grow it to over 10,000 visitors!
I’ve built many successful blogs and websites in my career of over 10 years as a web developer & blogger.
In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to start a blog from scratch, choose a niche, get the right web hosting, setup a theme with plugins and how to publish your first blog post.
So let’s get into it!
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What Is A Niche & How To Choose One
The first question you need to ask yourself, what are you going to write about?
A niche is a focussed, targeted topic and very important, as it’s the main topic of your blog and you’ll need to feel confident about writing about it.
Many new bloggers fail because they had a lack of knowledge of their chosen topic, or didn’t have a passion for it.
I highly recommend you choose something you’re good at, or have a passion for, as this will help you when you’re struggling to write new content.
Once you have a niche in mind, always remember to check the competition, the volume of searches and how profitable this niche is.
High competition doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad niche to write about. High competition also means high volume of searches, therefore more potential for you to make money.
Choose A Domain Name For Your Blog
Starting Your Site With BlueHost
If you’re just starting out, most likley you want to keep costs down, especially if you’re on a tight budget.
You will need to buy some hosting to host your website online. Luckily, I’ve managed to get a great deal for you and a free domain name!
The domain is the name of your website, if you don’t yet already have one, these can be quite expensive, so I’ve saved you some money already…
To receive the best deal right now you can get my special deal here that’s going to be $3.95 a month.
Choosing The Right Plan And Domain
I would suggest going with the $3.95 plan, This is the more affordable plan online today!
BlueHost can do free migrations if you aren’t happy with your current host or looking for a change. The other plans do come with marketing extras. However, I don’t use them so I just go with the basic plan.
Give the domain some thought, once you get started it’s hard to go back, so don’t rush this step.
If you plan to grow your blog with a huge audience, a good tip would be to choose a brandable name, like I’ve done with Six Figure Elite. Something catchy and memorable.
BlueHost will take you to the domain section after you have chosen a plan. If you already have a domain name then you can transfer it quick and easy.
See if your domain name is free!
Once you’ve sorted the domain you will be asked to put in your personal and payment details.
The next stage will give you some options, the only option I go with is domain privacy. It’s not neccessary but I like to use it.
Was that easy enough? Your well under way now to getting your blog up and running!
I didn’t want to overcomplicate things for you, that’s why I simplified the process and gave just the one hosting platform to choose from, as from my experience, BlueHost are the best around.
Installing WordPress & Basic Settings
What’s another awesome thing about Bluehost? They install WordPress for you!
If you don’t know what WordPress is, it’s a free platform which gives you everything you need to create anything you want. It’s flexible, secure, and powerful, just like you want your blog to be.
The first thing you need to do is create a password.
Now you choose a theme for your website/blog.
Don’t worry you can change themes later, there are hundreds too chose from!
Once you have done that you’re done!
You will be taken to a screen that says “Start Building” Click that button.
You will end up here.
Now we just need to launch the website.
Follow the instructions in the picture below by clicking “BlueHost” then “Home” Then “Launch”.
Now all you need to do is name the blog and click “Next Step”
Congratulations! You have just created an amazing website where you can now start blogging!
Once this is done you will be taken to the admin panel which will look like this.
This is where you can manage your hosting setup and other options as you can see from the image above.
I love using BlueHost because they have the automatic wordpress install.
Other hosting providers make you install it yourself and it can be time consuming and confusing!
Now for the important bit, getting the traffic!
How To Get Traffic To Your Blog
This is the hardest part of building any blog or website and it’s the hurdle where most people fail.
But…
I’m going to show you all my PROVEN steps I implement across all my sites, to bring in large amounts of good engaging traffic.
All of these methods are FREE and won’t cost you a cent.
As a beginner you will no doubt learn that without traffic a website is pointless. However there is no need to stress, implementing the methods I’m going to share with you now are not difficult at all.
Ranking For The Small Volume Keywords
This step I cover first, because it’s the easy low hanging fruit to achieving good traffic results.
This method is often overlooked and personally, it’s one of the most important.
When writing articles most target a specific keyword and they usually stick with just the one keyword.
I choose multiple small volume keywords that will get me to the front page without any backlinks.
I choose keywords that have small search volume, something like 200-300 searches a month.
Why?
Let’s say I choose 5 of those keywords and write them in throughout my article.
If I get to the front page for those keywords and they have 200 searches a month each, then that adds up to 1000 searches a month.
So my article is now in front of 1000 potential readers a month and that’s just one article.
Multiply that by several articles, can you see the potential?
As you domain get’s stronger, your pages will rank higher and faster.
This is what I mean.
The site has nearly 4000 keywords showing up in Google and a large number of them are on the front page.
Even though the volume is small per keyword it all adds up.
Let’s say for example I’m on the front page for 100 keywords that have a search volume of 300 a month each. That comes to 30,000 searches a month and I’m somewhere on the front page for them.
I also show up for some large search terms but the point is you don’t need to target them, you can target smaller easier ones.
This is how you do it.
When you write an article head over to the Google Keyword Planner. You can find this by searching for it on Google.
There will be a section where you can put in a keyword. I put a keyword in about trout, the planner started spitting out trout keywords for me.
So now what I would do is mention those keywords in my trout article where they fit in the best. I would do each keyword 2 or 3 times depending on how long the article was.
Over time, Google will recognize your article and keep bumping you up. If you wrote a good article you will get to the front page for most of the small volume keywords you have chosen.
There is no time frame when this will happen but the stronger your website gets and the more articles you put out the faster it will happen in the long run.
Organic targeted traffic is the best traffic, it always has been.
Niche Related Comments
This is a slower traffic method, but any traffic all adds up in the end.
Comment on related blogs to build a nice consistent flow of traffic, the more you do the better.
Head over to Google and find some websites. I just do a basic search string.
Here’s a trick to increase traffic. Find articles that are new, so a week old and comment on those or even 24 hours old.
If the post gets very popular your comment will be at the top, you will get really good traffic if the post gets popular or they rank for some good keywords.
When you leave the comment there should be a section where you can put your website address. When people click on your name it will take them to your website or page you put in the website section.
Keep things natural, don’t just go around spamming.
Become Active On Niche Related Forums
Find forums about your niche topic then become active on them. Write engaging tutorials and reply to people on the forum.
It’s never a good idea to go around spamming your website on the forums so just enter it into the signature section.
The more active you are the more traffic you get. Try and use a username that’s related to your website or even the site name itself because people will search it in Google.
Answering Niche Related Questions
This is a great way to get traffic when starting a blog, I do this on my sites and YouTube Channel.
Head over to Quora and type in your keyword, find questions to answer.
In the picture below I found someone looking for free traffic methods so I would go in there and link them to this article.
I would explain to them why these methods would work then drop a link.
This is a very effective way of getting traffic to your blog when starting out. It will become a consistent flow of traffic forever since there is a good chance of the topics ranking in Google.
Niche Related Guest Post
This is where you get really good amounts of traffic and Google will start to love you.
Writing on other people’s pages will do just that.
Guest posting is when you write an article on another website then link back to yours. This will get you backlinks and traffic.
I did a guest post on Matthew Woodward’s website and it became popular with over 250 comments.
It gave me a large traffic boost.
To find guest post opportunities you can do that with Google by entering the search string from this image.
Most websites will have a section where you can submit a guest post or contact them to get more information.
This is still one of the strongest ways to grow a blog and will be for a long time.
Have you noticed a trend yet?
This is all niche related stuff, that’s the key here. Niche related traffic will be more engaged in your content.
Use The RIGHT Social Media Platforms
Everyone will tell you to use social media but what platform is best for you?
Find 1 or 2 platforms that fit your niche then work on those hard.
I used Twitter when I first started my blog, I worked on that hard and it brought in so much traffic.
Why Twitter?
Twitter fitted my niche the best since it was about making money and online marketing.
Here’s another great example…
Pinch of Yum is a food blog that was started by a teacher, she found that Pinterest is where her audience hands out. Pinterest now brings in a HUGE amount of traffic for her.
That’s nearly 55,000 pins, can you imagine how much traffic that brings to her blog? Ridiculous amounts.
She was smart and went with the right social media platform to promote her content then concentrated on that.
Posting On Facebook And Google+ Groups
I’ve kept this separate from the social media method above because that was more about building up your social media accounts.
This method is about becoming active in Groups.
On Facebook, there are groups for almost any topic and niche.
By using the search bar you can find groups to join, once you’re in the group become active by adding value. You will soon become a valued member then you can drop links to your articles.
Google+ works the same but it has communities you can join.
Click the home button to get started. This will bring up a page where you can search for communities to post in.
To post in the community just do a normal post then select the community from the drop down menu at the bottom of the post.
Growing An Email List
This is a must!
When you grow an email list you can then send out your new blog content, your returning visitors will share it. This will put the new content in front of new readers for you.
I use Get Response for my email list management. This method isn’t free I’ve added it as a bit of a bonus but Get Response is free for 30 days.
These are all potential return readers as it’s a must to build something like this when you make a blog so you can send out newsletters and let them know what’s going on.
To collect the emails you should create some sort of optin form or popup on your page. I use a plugin called Thrive Leads to do this. It’s a common plugin and you would have seen it around before on other blogs.
You can create good looking forms like this. (you have probably seen this before)
Final Words
I’m going to end it here because that’s all there really is to it, that’s my tutorial showing you how to start a blog. Anyone can try the methods above that’s how easy they are.
You can grow your blog to thousands of visits a month even if you’re just learning to create your own website.
You just need to be active in your niche and make sure you optimize those articles for a bunch of small volume keywords as well as any high volume ones you plan to target.
Sure… building up a blog with these tips will take time with these methods but as the old saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day and this also works great in 2019!