How To Start a Blog – Beginner’s Guide for 2016

Things being what they are, you need to start a blog huh? Awesome thought!

Be that as it may, how the hell do you begin? There's such a great amount of information out there on the web, and everybody's instructing you to do diverse things. Who do you listen to? Where's the starting point?

Hell, possibly you ought to simply overlook it – it's excessively confounding!

All things considered, hold up. I used to be a blogging beginner as well. I had the same issues. I started my blog (BloggingBasics101.com) in 2006, and I knew not as much as nothing about blogging. Truth be told it was just the prior week I'd learnt what a blog was.

Presently I know a ton about them, and my blog's doing really well – I get more than 200,000 extraordinary guests for each month which makes me view myself as somebody you could listen to and gain from with regards to building your own particular blog. I'm not some kind of Guru, but rather I surely do know the nuts and bolts.

I guarantee it'll be basic, generally simple, and certainly straightforward (no moronic language). Sound great? Marvelous, how about we proceed owen.

Why you should create a blog and join the blogging community

So beneath, I'm going to diagram precisely what you have to do to begin and set up your very own blog. Before we make the plunge however, I truly need to discuss WHY you ought to fabricate a blog. 

Note: If you as of now have a strong thought of the whys, then skirt this and proceed ahead with the aide. 

Blogging has rapidly gotten to be a standout amongst the most prominent methods for imparting and spreading data and news. There are truly a huge number of blogs online (don't stress, you can make yours emerge and get took note!). 

It's an incredible approach to convey what needs be furthermore a fabulous approach to impart data to others. 

You improve as a man and a superior author. 

The best reason? You can profit doing it! 

I wager you definitely knew the greater part of that, yet it's decent to be reminded. 

One last thing before we begin:

The Steps Covered In This Blogging Guide

here's five principle steps you have to experience with a specific end goal to set up a blog. On the off chance that you take after this aide and the five stages, you'll have your own particular blog set up in 30 minutes or less. It's no place close as troublesome as setting up a site sans preparation (there's almost no specialized capacity required here). Truth be told, there's no coding required by you. Uplifting news, huh? 

The 5 Easy Steps to Starting a Blog: 

1=Pick your favored blogging stage 

2=Pick web facilitating for your blog 

3=Setting up a blog all alone area 

4=Outlining your blog (the fun bit!) 

5=Valuable assets for blogging 

In this way, we made it. Phew. Preferable late over never! In this way, instantly, we should hop into step 1.

Step 1 – Choose your preferred blogging platform

Picking where you need to fabricate blog is basically the first thing you need to do. I'm going to take a jump and expect you've known about WordPress, and this is the stage I advocate. It's monstrous. 

It's by a wide margin one of the greatest blogging stages on the planet, with endless plugins and additional items and verging on vast approaches to outline and design your blog. 

There are more than 82 million dynamic clients of WordPress = a great deal, fundamentally.

Super simple set-up and is allowed to utilize 

Huge amounts of free subjects and designs (I'm totally serious, there's gazillions). 

There's an enormous bolster gathering in the event that you get stuck (you won't, yet it's pleasant to have it there on the off chance that you require it). 

Your blog will be madly quick and it'll additionally look Functionality and structure – great! 

Individuals can communicate with you effortlessly. Your substance can be shared, remarked on, etc. 

Here's an article about distinctive blogging stages (counting WordPress), give it a read: How to Choose a Blogging Platform.

Step 2 – Self-hosting or a free alternative?

Whoa, slow down there! This is the biggest decision you’ll have to make before we go any further. You need to decide whether to pay for your blog or grab a free one.

WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger all offer free blogs for anyone. Awesome, right? It’s perfect for those of us who aren’t super serious about blogging. But it does have downsides:

1) You won’t be able to get your OWN domain name

On a free blog, your blog’s web address (your URL) will be butt-ugly. Like, really ugly. In short, create a free blog with any other the above free blog services and it’ll look like this:

• yourblog.wordpress.com
• yourblog.blogspot.com
• yourblog.tumblr.com

I know, ugly right?

2) Limits and more limits

There are some limits to free blogs. You can’t fully monetize it, and you don’t have the possibility to upload all those videos and images you want to show everyone – it’s all limited. Worse still, you won’t even have access to the  offered by WordPress.

Step 3 – Start a blog on your own domain (if you chose self-hosting and a custom domain)

I’m going to push ahead based on the premise you’ve chosen WordPress, and if you haven’t, you should. Seriously, it’s the best.

If you’re still a little confused by what a self-hosted blog is, allow me to explain and how you can go about setting one up for yourself.

You’ll need to come up with a domain name you like and also choose a hosting company that can host your blog.

• Domain: The domain is basically the URL of your website. Examples: google.com (Google.com is the domain), Facebook.com (Facebook.com is the domain). See? Simple!
• Hosting: Hosting is basically the company that puts your website up on the internet so everyone else can see it. Everything will be saved on there. Think of it as a computer hard-drive on the internet where your blog will be saved.

Personally, I use  (for my blog domain and hosting), and I’ve got nothing but good things to say about it. It’s probably one of the cheapest (less than $2.50 per month) hosting providers out there. A domain name will cost around $10-15 a year, but with iPage they throw that in for free :). Big smiles for that! They’re the providers I use for all of my blogs, including the one you’re reading right now.

If for any reason you don’t want to go with iPage, feel free to choose your own hosting company. Most, if not all of them, should have a “one-click” WordPress install solution on their admin panel.

That button will automatically install WordPress on your blog. Did I say it was simple or what?

All you need to do is  (or your chosen provider), choose your hosting plan and a domain name and look for the one-click WordPress install button on the admin panel.

WordPress essentials aren’t often needed, but I’d recommend whois privacy (that will keep all your personal details private) and definitely automated backups (this’ll save your website just in case anything fails or disappears, so you won’t lose any or very little of your blog).

Step 4 – Designing your WordPress blog

Now, the fun bit.

Let’s make your blog look exactly how you want it to. To choose a new theme, you can either head to Appearance > Themes and install a free WordPress theme or you can head to a premium theme website and buy a theme for around $40.

I usually choose something that looks professional and pretty easy to customise. WordPress also has this awesome feature that allows you to change themes with just a few clicks. So if you start getting tired of your current blog template, you can just switch to another one without losing any precious content or images.

Step 5 – Useful Resources For Beginner Bloggers

Now, the fun bit.

Let’s make your blog look exactly how you want it to. To choose a new theme, you can either head to Appearance > Themes and install a free WordPress theme or you can head to a premium theme website  buy a theme for around $40.

I usually choose something that looks professional and pretty easy to customise. WordPress also has this awesome feature that allows you to change themes with just a few clicks. So if you start getting tired of your current blog template, you can just switch to another one without losing any precious content or images.

kes – there’s always room for more learning and improvement, whether you’re a beginner or you’ve been blogging for years.

These articles may help you avoid some of the growing pains when it comes to your first blog – enjoy!:

And that’s it! I’m more than confident that your initial blog set up should now be finished and ready to go, and all that should have been really damn easy (unlike my first time, lucky you!). 

If by some unfortunate circumstance you get stuck or have any questions for me about how to create a blog, just  or leave a comment below. I’ll help you out with any problems.