The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Blog.
First off I want to apologize for not Writing much lately because I don’t even really have an excuse I’ve just been lazy on writing lately which is absolutely terrible, I know. To be honest I thought I was ahead on writing but I’ve been so behind its unreal and just haven’t made the exact time to just sit back and write some posts. So, here I am writing again FINALLY and the first thing I wanted to start back at is the ultimate guide to starting a blog!
Some of you might have just recently started a blog or just want to start one soon and I did write a post a while back on this but I just wanted to write this again but as a better revamped version of it because literally I learn something new every single day with blogging. Sometimes it’s frustrating and hard and you just feel like giving up but you just can’t! So now that I’m done rambling on about that, let’s start on the actual point of the post shall we?
1. Research, Research, and Research.
You might think this is dumb or that all you have to do is sign up for Blogger or WordPress and just start writing and posting. Nope. First of all, you have to make sure blogging is something you REALLY want to do or would like to do because it’s not just writing and making big money, no it’s not that simple. You have to actually do put a lot into a blog and setting it up because you don’t want it to look like a mess?! I remember when I started my blog it was just so small and set up by blogger and I had no clue about any of what I do now. I just wrote honestly all the time short little posts and it never got me anywhere. Once I started actually researching and learning a lot more about blogging, I actually started getting people to my site. That’s the thing it’s not as simple as just writing and posting. You have to do A LOT to get it to the point of being a good site for people to visit. If you’re in it just for the money, you might as well just back out now because you can’t only be into blogging just to make money trust me it takes a ton of time. I’ve just gotten to the point of making a few dollars off of my blog but not enough support just yet and I’ve had my blog for a little over a year. It takes time trust me, if you have patience though and can spend hours and hours just working on your site or catching up on posts and pictures then you’ve got this! Just do your research first because if you want it to look nice and people to come to your site, you have to look at the facts and see if it’s even possible that you could learn some of these things they can get pretty complicated if you want me to be honest!
2. Picking a Platform.
Now 99.9% of bloggers are going to tell you to go to WordPress, besides me! I have used both to experiment which one I liked most. WordPress is supposed to be better for making money and it’s supposed to be easier somehow. In my opinion and this is just mine, I LOVE Blogger. Blogger is much easier to use for me and everything I need for SEO is all in my sidebar so I don’t have to set up fancy plug-ins to use it. The thing with WordPress too, you have to actually pay for hosting and an actual site to even get somewhere for money reasons and SEO type things but with Blogger, you can just literally get your own domain (mine was $2 on GoDaddy.com) and then Blogger can host you for free which is really nice. It just depends on what type of person you are and how you feel like setting up your blog. Blogger is also ran directly by Google which I really like. People say they can randomly shut down your page for no reason what so ever but I’ve never had any problem with them at all about my blog! Honestly, both are great but if I had to pick which I have it’s definitely Blogger! Maybe one day I can learn to like WordPress but Blogger is forever my favorite and so easy to use and set up! They literally can guide you through everything (besides your template set up unless you want a plain one by Blogger) besides that though they are absolutely great! Love love love blogger. Once you pick out your platform you would like your blog to be on, just set up your account like you would with anything. I can’t remember how WordPress worked but Blogger you can just connect it to your Gmail account if you have one or just set one up!
3. Start Writing Posts.
One of the first things you want to do after you get your account set up is just start writing posts. You could use Word, Google Docs, or even just Blogger to write them in. My personal favorite is Word because it’s just easier to use and has a few more features than the other two and then Google Docs is also a great option I just don’t use the actual Blogger writing part because well, they don’t have many fonts and the small font is wayyyy too small for my format. Also, you should make sure you have a good format set out for your posts. Like the majority of mine are all numbered and lists so I obviously just write them like this! Just make sure they look great and you’ll be okay. Most people, and I, start off writing posts that are 600+ words some at 500 I used to make sure I at least wrote 600 words when I would write a post at first but now I write about 1,000+ that might seem intense but honestly it’s a good idea. Just get creative and write whatever you like that you think others might be interested in reading! One thing I like to still do is just write ahead and schedule posts so I don’t have to stress about writing every single day. Just write a ton of posts and then copy your favorite, on to the next step.
4. Pick Out Your Blog Title.
This is sometimes a tricky thing because it’s so hard to come up with a good name sometimes. Mine was simple just because my blog is literally about my life half of the time so I just came up with it. Just whatever comes to mind first and sounds the best to you! There are also some blog name generators out there too that you could find if you have trouble coming up with a good name.
5. Make Your First Post!
Yay, your first post! This was one of the most exciting parts for me just because it felt like the beginning for me. Take that post you copied from word or wherever you wrote it and then paste it into your new post box. Come up with a good creative title and go to Canva.com and make your Pinterest friendly image! Add all the images you would like that go great with the type of post your making and make sure you fill out the description box in the side bar because that’s how people are going to see what your post is about! Then once you’re finished either publish or schedule your post to come out whenever you would like and now you have your first post up or up and ready to go!
6. Set up Social Media Icons, Bio’s, etc.
Now I’m not going to tell you guys how to do all of this because this post would be wayyy too long which it kind of already is anyways but I will tell you how you can figure out how to do all of these things. All you have to do is just google how to set any of these things up, the social media icons, author bio, etc and you will find tons of resources. Some of them took me forever to actually figure out until I eventually got the idea on my own of how to but some were absolutely easy to find and set up! My template was actually the easiest surprisingly! If you want a good template like mine also go to the bottom of my blog and the credit is on my footer so you can go there and download your free template and they have tons of great templates you can use to set up your blog! It’s a little tricky to set up but I mean it’s free so no one can complain too much about it right? I love my template and where I got it I’ve had no trouble with it what so ever, I highly recommend them.
7. Now you have a blog!
Just remember it’s never perfect when you start off and it takes time to figure some things out and set it up 110%. I don’t think any blogger is ever done improving their blog because it’s just something that’s as important as us girls hair or something it’s literally something to always improve and work on! Our process is just like a vloggers except a little tougher to build up SEO on our sites.
I hope this guide helped you and you enjoyed reading it! Sorry this post was so long but I think you guys deserved a long post after I haven’t posted in so long! Thanks for reading as always. J
