How to start a blog in 5 easy steps!

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How to Start a Successful Blog in 5 Easy Steps

If you’ve made it here, you’ve probably thought about starting a blog.  When I decided to start a blog, it was mostly just a fun hobby and a way to promote my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I had been thinking about starting a blog for years, but didn’t know where to start and feeled a bit overwhelmed by the task.

While I was on maternity leave I had a little extra time while my sweet baby was sleeping (in 20 minute increments). I did tons of research about blogging. I stumbled upon tons of bloggers who had made this their career, pulling in thousands of dollars every month. Wow! I was blown away.  I’m hoping I’ll have a similar story to tell in the future. I wanted to write this post at the beginning of my blog journey while everything is still fresh in my mind.  You’ll read tons of posts about how to start a blog, but most of those bloggers are experienced and do it full time. Not me. I’m a complete newbie, just learning the ropes. But I’d like to share with you how easy it is to start your own blog. Whether it’s to monetize or just as a hobby, blogging is a great outlet for creative minds. 

1. Choose a niche.

What do you want to blog about?  This is the foundation of your blog. To help you find a niche, write down a few things that really interest you. If you’re not interested in the topics you blog about, your writing will be flat and be of little interest to your readers. I knew I wanted to write about teaching topics, because I’m a teacher,  but as I started to write, I found lots of teacher topics that I had no interest in. I’ve found my main focus to be about behavior management and I LOVE writing about it. There are TONS of different topics to blog about, from parenting to fashion and everything in between.   

2. Pick a domain name

Now that you’ve found your niche, it’s time to pick a name.  Try to come up with something simple and catchy.  When you come up with a name you like, you can check here on Bigscoots to see if it’s available.  If the name you wanted is taken, be creative.  Switch up some of the wording or use synonyms.

3. Find a host

When I first started blogging, I had no idea what hosting was.  Hosting is like purchasing a spot on the vast internet for your blog to live.  Just like a physical store needs a location, so does your blog.  There are quite a few hosting sites, but after tons of research and reading testimonials, I believe BigScoots is the best and I’ve had a wonderful experience with them so far.  Let me explain why BigScoots is the way to go.

• The monthly payment plan.  For me, I was unsure if blogging was going to work out for me and didn’t want to invest in a whole year of hosting, which most shared hosting sites require.  I chose the 155cc plan and the $8.95 per month wasn’t a huge investment for me.  Use my code G1TVI7HTHE8M to get $5 off! 

• The dashboard is user friendly and easy to navigate. 
• Reliability.  BigScoots is know for its reliability.  If any issues come up, BigScoots is quick to respond.
• Network.  BigScoots has a fast network with high speeds.

To read more about BigScoots reviews, click here.

4. Install WordPress and design your blog

After you purchase your hosting, you’ll go to the Services tab on the left hand side of your dashboard.  Once there, you’ll select Control Panel.

Once you’re in the control panel, scroll to the bottom and find Softaculous App Installer.  This is where you’ll install WordPress and start designing your blog.  Congratulations on making it this far!  Now for the fun part!  There are hundreds of themes to choose from.  Find one you like and start customizing it.

5. Start writing

Once you’ve chosen your WordPress theme, create an About Me page and a Contact page.  You can also add any other pages you’d like.  When you’re ready to start writing your first blog post, there’s a few things to keep in mind.

• Use lots of white space.  It’s hard to read a post thats one big long paragraph and it doesn’t look pretty.
• Use lots of images.  I creat images for my posts on www.canva.com  Their site is easy to use and I’ve created tons of great looking images.  Try to create at least 2-3 images for each post.
• Use headings and subheadings to break up content.
• Proofread your material.  I also use Grammarly to proofread my content before I post it.
• Add tags to your posts.
• Make sure your posts is between 700-1500 words long.  For the most part, the longer the better (to an extent)

So what are you waiting for?! Get started!