Learn how you can start starting a blog in less than an hour. Follow the step-by-step guidelines that we used to begin our successful blog, which now has already reached more than 20 million people and provides been highlighted in the brand new York Times, TIME magazine, on the TODAY show and.
How to Start a Blog page in Five Steps:
1.Select your running a blog domain and platform.
2.Design your blog using a simple theme.
3.Modify your blog to define your look.
4.Select the best plugins for your site.
5.Write compelling content material, start blogging.
Starting a Blog page: Step-by-Step Instructions
So you’re thinking about starting a blog, but you don’t have any basic idea the place to start, right? Guess what-neither do we. We were clueless. When this weblog was created by us a few years ago, we had no idea how to start a weblog or how to be a blogger. Heck, we could hardly spell HTML, let alone build a blog.
But good news: it’s easier than you imagine. We’ve learned a huge amount of lessons during our ascent to reaching over 20 million people. And now you can study from our pain and suffering to circumvent a lot of the tedium involved with setting up a blog.
Here’s how we started our blog, step by step, accompanied by an instructional video, and also extra rationale and insights:
1.Choose your blogging platform and domain. The first thing we do when starting our blog was head to Bluehost and register our domain. We didn’t actually need to setup WordPress, which may be the platform we use, since Bluehost will all that for you personally. Bluehost’s basic price is certainly $2.75 a month, which works for 99% of individuals (head to this link to receive a 50% low cost off the monthly cost and a free domain). Then, a straightforward was done by us, free, “one-click” install of WordPress through Bluehost. When we had queries we could actually speak to the “live chat” people at Bluehost for free. They pointed us in the right direction and made starting our own blog super easy.
2.Design your blog utilizing a simple theme. A good theme gives you the look and feel you wish for your blog, allowing you to make a weblog that looks specifically how it is wanted by you to look. If you’re not really a coder (we certainly weren’t), a theme makes the design work a million moments easier. Plus, once you purchase a theme, which are inexpensive for the right time they save you, you own it for life. The Minimalists uses the stunning “tru” theme by SPYR, which is offered by BYLT. Head on to BYLT, browse their collection of styles, and find the design that’s correct for you.
3.Modify your weblog to define your look. Once we had our domain, blog hosting, WordPress, and theme, we spent considerable time tweaking the theme to obtain the appear and feel we needed (i.e., making our vision a reality). Then we spent a lot more time tinkering with the theme and arguing about any of it and tweaking it some more. Once we had developed our blog, we setup a free Feedburner account therefore people could subscribe to our site via email and RSS subscriptions. And then we set up a free Google Analytics account to monitor our stats. Feedburner and Google Analytics were both simple to sign up for, both today and we still use.
4.Select the best plugins for your site. We use only a few plugins on our site, including “Google Analytics for WordPress” and “Yoast SEO”. They take just a few seconds (literally a couple of seconds, it’s simply a click of a button) to set up once you’ve began your blog. And if you want to play around with some cool plugins really, check out WPBeginner’s Best WordPress Plugins.
5.Write compelling content. Last, via WordPress, we started writing and uploading this content for our webpages: About Page, Contact Page, Start Here Page, Books Page, Tour Web page, Archives Web page, etc. Next, we designed our logo using free images we found online and text message from a regular word-processing program. After that we put an image of ourselves in the header (this is essential because people identify with people, not logos). Finally we began writing new blog articles and publishing them regularly (at least once a week), accompanied by free photos from Unsplash, Pexels, and the Library of Congress. And the rest is history.
How to Create a Blog: Video
Watch our step-by-stage instructional video, which includes screenshots of the whole starting-a-blog process:
But good news: it’s easier than you imagine. We’ve learned a huge amount of lessons during our ascent to reaching over 20 million people. And now you can study from our pain and suffering to circumvent a lot of the tedium involved with setting up a blog.
Here’s how we started our blog, step by step, accompanied by an instructional video, and also extra rationale and insights:
1.Choose your blogging platform and domain. The first thing we do when starting our blog was head to Bluehost and register our domain. We didn’t actually need to setup WordPress, which may be the platform we use, since Bluehost will all that for you personally. Bluehost’s basic price is certainly $2.75 a month, which works for 99% of individuals (head to this link to receive a 50% low cost off the monthly cost and a free domain). Then, a straightforward was done by us, free, “one-click” install of WordPress through Bluehost. When we had queries we could actually speak to the “live chat” people at Bluehost for free. They pointed us in the right direction and made starting our own blog super easy.
2.Design your blog utilizing a simple theme. A good theme gives you the look and feel you wish for your blog, allowing you to make a weblog that looks specifically how it is wanted by you to look. If you’re not really a coder (we certainly weren’t), a theme makes the design work a million moments easier. Plus, once you purchase a theme, which are inexpensive for the right time they save you, you own it for life. The Minimalists uses the stunning “tru” theme by SPYR, which is offered by BYLT. Head on to BYLT, browse their collection of styles, and find the design that’s correct for you.
3.Modify your weblog to define your look. Once we had our domain, blog hosting, WordPress, and theme, we spent considerable time tweaking the theme to obtain the appear and feel we needed (i.e., making our vision a reality). Then we spent a lot more time tinkering with the theme and arguing about any of it and tweaking it some more. Once we had developed our blog, we setup a free Feedburner account therefore people could subscribe to our site via email and RSS subscriptions. And then we set up a free Google Analytics account to monitor our stats. Feedburner and Google Analytics were both simple to sign up for, both today and we still use.
4.Select the best plugins for your site. We use only a few plugins on our site, including “Google Analytics for WordPress” and “Yoast SEO”. They take just a few seconds (literally a couple of seconds, it’s simply a click of a button) to set up once you’ve began your blog. And if you want to play around with some cool plugins really, check out WPBeginner’s Best WordPress Plugins.
5.Write compelling content. Last, via WordPress, we started writing and uploading this content for our webpages: About Page, Contact Page, Start Here Page, Books Page, Tour Web page, Archives Web page, etc. Next, we designed our logo using free images we found online and text message from a regular word-processing program. After that we put an image of ourselves in the header (this is essential because people identify with people, not logos). Finally we began writing new blog articles and publishing them regularly (at least once a week), accompanied by free photos from Unsplash, Pexels, and the Library of Congress. And the rest is history.
How to Create a Blog: Video
Watch our step-by-stage instructional video, which includes screenshots of the whole starting-a-blog process:
15 Reasons You Should Start a Blog
We were inspired to analyze and write this essay after reading Joshua Becker’s 15 Factors I BELIEVE You Should Blog, in which he discusses 15 great reasons why you should start a blog. Why being the main element word here. Put simply, he talks about the objective of blogging, not how to start a weblog just. That’s what all these other weblogs about blogging appear to miss; they skip the purpose-the why behind starting a blog.
3 Reasons You Should Not Start a Blog
So you have 15 reasons why you should start a weblog now, and we’ve demonstrated you how to begin a blog, step-by-step, based on our personal experience. But after giving you those detailed instructions, that could save you the hundreds of hours of wasted time, we also want to give you some good reasons why you should not start a blog. (Keep in mind that these reasons are simply our views, and we usually do not pretend to offer them up as some sort of assortment of empirical blogging maxims.)
1.Money. You ought not to start a blog to make money. We need to get that taken care of first. If most of your objective is to replace your full-time income from blogging, just forget about it. It doesn’t work that way. Do that Jimi is thought by you Hendrix picked up his first guitar so he could “health supplement his income”? No, he didn’t. Rather, he achieved it for the love of it, for the pleasure and fulfillment he received, and the income arrived thereafter, much later actually.
2.Notoriety. Don’t anticipate getting “Internet famous” immediately. Don't assume all site grows as fast as ours do, but that’s totally Okay. The truth is that we kind of got lucky. We got an excellent domain name, we cobbled together a logo and site design that people really liked, we write fairly well, and our content material connects with people in a distinctive way. We didn’t start this site to be “well-known” though. That’d be ridiculous. Our notoriety and quick rise to “fame” came as a shock to us, and was a complete result of a little luck and a lot of hard, passionate work.
3.Traffic. Not absolutely all traffic is great traffic, therefore don’t worry about getting a large number of readers right away.
The funny thing is that these things can occur. You will make a full-time income from creating a blog. We do it, Corbett Barr does it, and so do many others. And you could become Internet well-known like Leo Babauta or Chris Brogan. But if these are the sole explanations why you start running a blog, you’ll be miserable, because it will appear like a job, and if it feels as though employment you won’t be passionate about it, and so you’ll either (a) hate it, (b) fall smooth on your encounter, or (c) hate it and fall flat on your face.
Instead, compose because you’re passionate about it…
20 Recommendations for Your Blog
We receive plenty of emails requesting advice about beginning a blog, about how exactly to blog, about blog topics, and about creating meaningful content-even a few pre-determined questions about whether we wear boxers or briefs. These are the answers and recommendations we tend to give.
1.Find Your Specific niche market. You needn’t possess a niche, but it assists. When learning how exactly to be considered a blogger, it’s vital that you ask yourself what you’re passionate about. Running? Cooking? Being a parent? Have you found your enthusiasm? If therefore, whatever it is, write about that. If not, you then must first find your passion. (Note: We generally recommend that people don’t start a weblog about minimalism or the paleo diet plan or any various other heavily saturated subject. But what we really mean when we say this is: don’t make a weblog about something if you don't have a distinctive perspective. If you’ve embraced simple living and also have a unique perspective, then by all means have at it. Enjoy yourself.)
2.Establish Your Ideal Readers. Once you’ve found your niche, you should know who'll be reading your site. For example, we blog about living intentionally. Thus, our ideal readers are those who are interested in exploring minimalism to allow them to clear the path toward more meaningful lives. If you want to create about your newborn growing up, that’s fantastic: your ideal readers are probably friends and family and family. If you want to create about restoring classic vehicles, that’s cool, as well. Tailor your writing to your visitors (whether it’s your family or neighborhood or whoever else will browse your blog).
3.Add Value. Your blog must add value to its readers’ lives. This is the only way you will get Great Quality Visitors to your internet site (and keep them returning). Adding value is the only way to get long-term buy-in someone’s. Both of us learned this after ten years of managing and leading people in the organization world.
4.Be Original. Yes, there are other blogs out there a comparable thing you wish to write about. Query: Why is your blog different? Answer: Because of you. You are why is your weblog different. It’s about your perspective, your creativity, the value that you add.
5.Be Interesting. Write epic, amazing content. Especially if you want people to share it with others.
6.Be Yourself. Part to be interesting is telling your story. Everyone is unique, and your story is an essential one. The important part of storytelling, however, is normally removing the superfluous details that produce the story uninteresting. A great storyteller removes 99% of what actually happens-the absorptive details-and leaves the interesting 1% for the reader.
7.Be Honest. Your weblog needs to be authentic-it needs to feel real-if you wish people to read it. You may be your blog, or your blog could be you. That is, perform you embody the stuff you reveal really? If not, people will dsicover through you. “Be the change you would like to see in the world,” may be the famous Gandhi quote. Perhaps bloggers should build the blog they want to write for the global world.
8.Transparency. Being transparent is different from being honest. You needn’t share every fine detail about your life just for the sake to be honest. Be honest always, and be transparent when it provides value to what you’re composing. (You won’t ever see pictures of us using the restroom on our site, because that’s just not relevant.)
9.Time. Once you’ve learned how to begin a blog, you’ll learn that blogging takes a lot of time, particularly if you’re as neurotic as we are (we spent over 10 hours assessment the fonts on this site). And discover those Twitter and Facebook icons in the header? We spent hours on those, deciding that which was right for all of us). That said, once you have your design set up, don’t tweak it an excessive amount of. Instead, spend the proper time on your own writing.
10.Vision. The reason why our site design looks good is basically because we have an excellent host, we have an excellent theme, and most important, we had a vision of how we wanted our weblog to look. After we had the vision, we worked well hard to make that vision possible. (Note: neither folks had any design experience just before starting a blog.) It’s hard to create a beautiful weblog if you don’t know what it is wanted by you to look like.
11.Find Your Voice. Over time, good authors discover their voice and their writing tends to develop a certain aesthetic, one that is attractive to their readers. Finding your voice makes your composing feel more alive, more real, more urgent. For additional reading, check out our essay about Getting Your Voice.
12.We of You Instead. Utilize the first-person plural when feasible. Statements of we and our are more powerful than you and your, when discussing negative behaviors or tendencies especially. The first person comes off as much less accusatory. Think about it in this manner: we’re writing peer-to-peer-we are not gods.
13.When to Post. Question: When is the best day time and time to create a blog post? Answer: It doesn’t really matter. We don’t stick to a particular schedule. Some full weeks we post one essay; sometimes we post three. Yes, it consistently is important to write, but you needn’t get too bogged down in the facts.
14.Social Press. Yes, we Twitter recommend using, Facebook, and Instagram to greatly help connect with your audience and additional bloggers, but don’t get too caught up in it. Focus on the composing first, cultural media thereafter.
15.Ignore Bad Criticism and Stupidity. Sure, we get a lot of unfavorable comments and stupid queries from ignorant people who aren’t actually our readers (e.g., adverse comments like “You’re not real minimalists” and stupid questions like “Are you guys gay?”). We call these folks seagulls: they fly in, crap on your own site, and fly away. But we pay them no mind, because we didn’t start our weblog for them. Delete their comment and move on.
16.Research. Spend period researching what you’re writing about. The reason why we're able to use therefore many helpful, relevant links in our essays is because we put in enough time to analyze our topics.
17.Keep It Basic. This is where minimalism can end up being put on starting any blog, regardless of its genre. You don't need to place superfluous widgets or advertisements all over your site. Stick to the fundamentals and remove whatever you don’t need. Remove anything that doesn’t add value.
18.Picture. Put an image of yourself on your blog. People determine with other people. If two goofy guys from Ohio aren’t too scared to place their pictures on their site, you have nothing to worry about then.
19.Comments. If you’re likely to have comments on your site, then browse the Five Phrases That Kill Your Blog by Scott Stratten.
20.Live Your Existence. You’re blogging about your life (or about certain elements of your daily life, at least), so you still need to live your life. There are things that we always put before writing: workout, health, relationships, experiences, personal growth, contribution.
We were inspired to analyze and write this essay after reading Joshua Becker’s 15 Factors I BELIEVE You Should Blog, in which he discusses 15 great reasons why you should start a blog. Why being the main element word here. Put simply, he talks about the objective of blogging, not how to start a weblog just. That’s what all these other weblogs about blogging appear to miss; they skip the purpose-the why behind starting a blog.
3 Reasons You Should Not Start a Blog
So you have 15 reasons why you should start a weblog now, and we’ve demonstrated you how to begin a blog, step-by-step, based on our personal experience. But after giving you those detailed instructions, that could save you the hundreds of hours of wasted time, we also want to give you some good reasons why you should not start a blog. (Keep in mind that these reasons are simply our views, and we usually do not pretend to offer them up as some sort of assortment of empirical blogging maxims.)
1.Money. You ought not to start a blog to make money. We need to get that taken care of first. If most of your objective is to replace your full-time income from blogging, just forget about it. It doesn’t work that way. Do that Jimi is thought by you Hendrix picked up his first guitar so he could “health supplement his income”? No, he didn’t. Rather, he achieved it for the love of it, for the pleasure and fulfillment he received, and the income arrived thereafter, much later actually.
2.Notoriety. Don’t anticipate getting “Internet famous” immediately. Don't assume all site grows as fast as ours do, but that’s totally Okay. The truth is that we kind of got lucky. We got an excellent domain name, we cobbled together a logo and site design that people really liked, we write fairly well, and our content material connects with people in a distinctive way. We didn’t start this site to be “well-known” though. That’d be ridiculous. Our notoriety and quick rise to “fame” came as a shock to us, and was a complete result of a little luck and a lot of hard, passionate work.
3.Traffic. Not absolutely all traffic is great traffic, therefore don’t worry about getting a large number of readers right away.
The funny thing is that these things can occur. You will make a full-time income from creating a blog. We do it, Corbett Barr does it, and so do many others. And you could become Internet well-known like Leo Babauta or Chris Brogan. But if these are the sole explanations why you start running a blog, you’ll be miserable, because it will appear like a job, and if it feels as though employment you won’t be passionate about it, and so you’ll either (a) hate it, (b) fall smooth on your encounter, or (c) hate it and fall flat on your face.
Instead, compose because you’re passionate about it…
20 Recommendations for Your Blog
We receive plenty of emails requesting advice about beginning a blog, about how exactly to blog, about blog topics, and about creating meaningful content-even a few pre-determined questions about whether we wear boxers or briefs. These are the answers and recommendations we tend to give.
1.Find Your Specific niche market. You needn’t possess a niche, but it assists. When learning how exactly to be considered a blogger, it’s vital that you ask yourself what you’re passionate about. Running? Cooking? Being a parent? Have you found your enthusiasm? If therefore, whatever it is, write about that. If not, you then must first find your passion. (Note: We generally recommend that people don’t start a weblog about minimalism or the paleo diet plan or any various other heavily saturated subject. But what we really mean when we say this is: don’t make a weblog about something if you don't have a distinctive perspective. If you’ve embraced simple living and also have a unique perspective, then by all means have at it. Enjoy yourself.)
2.Establish Your Ideal Readers. Once you’ve found your niche, you should know who'll be reading your site. For example, we blog about living intentionally. Thus, our ideal readers are those who are interested in exploring minimalism to allow them to clear the path toward more meaningful lives. If you want to create about your newborn growing up, that’s fantastic: your ideal readers are probably friends and family and family. If you want to create about restoring classic vehicles, that’s cool, as well. Tailor your writing to your visitors (whether it’s your family or neighborhood or whoever else will browse your blog).
3.Add Value. Your blog must add value to its readers’ lives. This is the only way you will get Great Quality Visitors to your internet site (and keep them returning). Adding value is the only way to get long-term buy-in someone’s. Both of us learned this after ten years of managing and leading people in the organization world.
4.Be Original. Yes, there are other blogs out there a comparable thing you wish to write about. Query: Why is your blog different? Answer: Because of you. You are why is your weblog different. It’s about your perspective, your creativity, the value that you add.
5.Be Interesting. Write epic, amazing content. Especially if you want people to share it with others.
6.Be Yourself. Part to be interesting is telling your story. Everyone is unique, and your story is an essential one. The important part of storytelling, however, is normally removing the superfluous details that produce the story uninteresting. A great storyteller removes 99% of what actually happens-the absorptive details-and leaves the interesting 1% for the reader.
7.Be Honest. Your weblog needs to be authentic-it needs to feel real-if you wish people to read it. You may be your blog, or your blog could be you. That is, perform you embody the stuff you reveal really? If not, people will dsicover through you. “Be the change you would like to see in the world,” may be the famous Gandhi quote. Perhaps bloggers should build the blog they want to write for the global world.
8.Transparency. Being transparent is different from being honest. You needn’t share every fine detail about your life just for the sake to be honest. Be honest always, and be transparent when it provides value to what you’re composing. (You won’t ever see pictures of us using the restroom on our site, because that’s just not relevant.)
9.Time. Once you’ve learned how to begin a blog, you’ll learn that blogging takes a lot of time, particularly if you’re as neurotic as we are (we spent over 10 hours assessment the fonts on this site). And discover those Twitter and Facebook icons in the header? We spent hours on those, deciding that which was right for all of us). That said, once you have your design set up, don’t tweak it an excessive amount of. Instead, spend the proper time on your own writing.
10.Vision. The reason why our site design looks good is basically because we have an excellent host, we have an excellent theme, and most important, we had a vision of how we wanted our weblog to look. After we had the vision, we worked well hard to make that vision possible. (Note: neither folks had any design experience just before starting a blog.) It’s hard to create a beautiful weblog if you don’t know what it is wanted by you to look like.
11.Find Your Voice. Over time, good authors discover their voice and their writing tends to develop a certain aesthetic, one that is attractive to their readers. Finding your voice makes your composing feel more alive, more real, more urgent. For additional reading, check out our essay about Getting Your Voice.
12.We of You Instead. Utilize the first-person plural when feasible. Statements of we and our are more powerful than you and your, when discussing negative behaviors or tendencies especially. The first person comes off as much less accusatory. Think about it in this manner: we’re writing peer-to-peer-we are not gods.
13.When to Post. Question: When is the best day time and time to create a blog post? Answer: It doesn’t really matter. We don’t stick to a particular schedule. Some full weeks we post one essay; sometimes we post three. Yes, it consistently is important to write, but you needn’t get too bogged down in the facts.
14.Social Press. Yes, we Twitter recommend using, Facebook, and Instagram to greatly help connect with your audience and additional bloggers, but don’t get too caught up in it. Focus on the composing first, cultural media thereafter.
15.Ignore Bad Criticism and Stupidity. Sure, we get a lot of unfavorable comments and stupid queries from ignorant people who aren’t actually our readers (e.g., adverse comments like “You’re not real minimalists” and stupid questions like “Are you guys gay?”). We call these folks seagulls: they fly in, crap on your own site, and fly away. But we pay them no mind, because we didn’t start our weblog for them. Delete their comment and move on.
16.Research. Spend period researching what you’re writing about. The reason why we're able to use therefore many helpful, relevant links in our essays is because we put in enough time to analyze our topics.
17.Keep It Basic. This is where minimalism can end up being put on starting any blog, regardless of its genre. You don't need to place superfluous widgets or advertisements all over your site. Stick to the fundamentals and remove whatever you don’t need. Remove anything that doesn’t add value.
18.Picture. Put an image of yourself on your blog. People determine with other people. If two goofy guys from Ohio aren’t too scared to place their pictures on their site, you have nothing to worry about then.
19.Comments. If you’re likely to have comments on your site, then browse the Five Phrases That Kill Your Blog by Scott Stratten.
20.Live Your Existence. You’re blogging about your life (or about certain elements of your daily life, at least), so you still need to live your life. There are things that we always put before writing: workout, health, relationships, experiences, personal growth, contribution.
I’m currently experimenting with INK FOR ALL. Yoast keeps dinging me for stuff that is clearly there. I’m over it.
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