Everything You Need to Know About Starting a Blog

If you’re a woman ready to start a blog, then bravo! You’re taking the first step towards owning your very own business and financial freedom. Blogging is something that has not only changed my life, but countless others’ as well. Once I started my blog it changed my life and made it so much richer is many ways.

Nowadays, you can start a blog on nearly any subject and find a way to make it profitable. Today many women are finding success as bloggers all around the world and they are creating their own futures. Subjects like fashion, beauty, nutrition, and health for women are all now very popular topics to create a blog around.

Now, is blogging a get-rich-quick scheme? Absolutely not! Blogging can be extremely profitable in the long run, but make no mistake: it takes a lot of up-front effort to see a return on your investment.

Here is how to start a profitable blog today!

Find a Blogging Topic

The best idea for a blog is one you are passionate about. When it comes to blogging, you’ll never succeed unless you write articles and post them consistently and it’s easiest to keep a steady writing flow about a topic you are passionate for.

When choosing a topic, it’s helpful to think about the following:

• What am I good at? 
• What do I enjoy? 
• What do I want to learn better?

Each of these topics could be a great starting place for your blog.

Eventually, you will want to establish yourself as the “expert” in this field, but don’t worry if you’re not right now. Many people love reading about the journey to expertise in a certain subject, too!

Profitable Blog Niches

• Health
• Nutrition
• Fashion
• Travel
• Beauty
• Parenting / Mom or Dad
• Fitness / Bodybuilding
• Personal Development
• Professional Development
• Life Hacks
• Religion
• Culture
• Relationship Advice

Start Writing

I recommend writing the first 10 articles of your blog before you even set up your site. This is good for a few reasons:

1. You can see just how passionate you are about a topic, and how much you really have to say.
2. It will help you come up with names for your blog.
3. You will realize if there are any other topics you want to cover that you may not have thought of originally, and it may shift the direction of your blog!

When I started my blog, I had no clue which way I was going to go. I always loved fashion and beauty, but I also loved fitness and nutrition. I ultimately chose fashion because it was something I was passionate about and had knowledge in that niche.

Choose a Name

Once you’ve written the first few articles of your blog, you’ll need to choose a brand name. Maybe you even thought of one as you were writing your articles! Whatever you choose, the name should be short, catchy, and easily memorable. Be sure to verify your name is available as a domain before settling on it!

Purchase Your Domain & Hosting

If you’re serious about blogging, then a custom domain name and web host are a must.

Using a free Blogspot blog or WordPress.com blog domain isn’t professional and won’t allow you to work with a lot of the major advertising networks and affiliate marketing networks (where the big bucks are made). Furthermore, you technically don’t own your blog when you host it with a free blog provider like Wix, Blogspot, and WordPress.com. These companies can shut your blog down on a whim! I started with GoDaddy and once I realized this, I switched over to Bluehost.

You’ll want to invest in a web host to store all the files, images and text associated with your blog in one place. The good thing is that hosting is the only major expense you’ll have when starting a blog! And honestly, it’s only a small monthly fee and you pay it annually. I started my blog up for around $60.

Many hosting providers offer free domain names when you purchase your first hosting plan like Bluehost. If you’re a first-time blogger, then this is a great deal! I highly recommend Bluehost, not only is the price a great deal – they are there 24/7 to answer any questions and helped me get up and running. I have had questions from time to time and they have been instrumental in helping me “learn” WordPress.

As mentioned above, the purpose of a host is to securely store your blog files. They serve these files as necessary to your website visitors from their servers as quickly as possible. Good hosts will back up these files regularly so you don’t lose all the work you’ve put into your blog in the event of a hack!

Hosting really isn’t that expensive. It can be as cheap as $3 per month! That being said, you want to choose a host that is reliable and helpful. That’s why I recommend hosting with Bluehost if you are a brand new blogger, since you will receive your domain name free of charge with a 12-month plan. Bluehost is based in Utah and is the first web host recommended by WordPress itself.

While it’s possible to run a casual blog with a custom domain using a free service like Blogspot or WordPress.com, I highly recommend against it if you are serious about creating a profitable blog. You may get by for the first few months, but after your blog takes off, you’ll wish you had set up a self-hosted blog in the first place!

Visit Bluehost and click Get Started Now to begin.

From there, I recommend choosing the Basic plan. You can always upgrade later if you need to!

As far as the length of your hosting plan, I recommend choosing 12 months or longer. Blogging is something you need to dedicate yourself to for at least one year. If you don’t think you can commit to blogging for that amount of time, I don’t recommend getting started at all because it simply won’t be a good investment for you.

WordPress.com is for free blogs hosted on WordPress servers. These blogs typically have WordPress.com attached to the end of them (sampleblog.wordpress.com). WordPress.com is meant for casual bloggers who don’t want to make a profit with their blog.

WordPress.org is a self-hosted, content management platform for publishers and serious bloggers who want to turn a profit. It’s a backend content management system that allows you to easily control the content put forth on your blog.

WordPress.org is the golden standard when it comes to blogging. In fact, it currently powers around a third of the entire web!

I highly recommend WordPress due to their numerous integrations, plugins, and advanced features. Plugins are essentially add-ons created by thousands of developers that improve your blog in a simple, easy way. If you want your blog to do ___, then there’s probably a plugin for that!

WordPress is totally free to use on the majority of web hosts, too. It’s so popular that you can most likely log in to your hosting admin panel and have WordPress installed for you automatically. With Bluehost, this is automatically done – which I liked! A sample picture of WordPress is below.

Choose A Theme

A blogging “theme” is just a set of files which make your blog look pretty and easy to navigate! The theme determines how information is presented to your readers on the front-end portion of your blog. There are themes that are better for visual content, and other themes which are better for written content. Most themes are pretty good at managing both, of course!

There are many great themes you can get for free through WordPress and various developer websites. An example of picking your themes is below.

To add a theme to your website, click over to Appearance on the black lefthand admin panel. From there, you can either upload a theme, or search for one that exists in the WordPress repository.

Start Posting Your Articles

Once your theme is installed, it’s time to start creating your posts! You can do this by clicking the “+New” button on the top navigation bar, or from the lefthand admin panel, you can mouse over “Posts” and then select “Add New.” Start writing, or if you have already written “posts” in Word (for example), you can copy and paste it into the body. An example is below.

Before hitting “Publish,” you will want to assign the article a Category and a Featured Image.

Categories are basically sections where groups of articles are filed within your blog. Here are a few examples of Categories and the articles that might be filed under them for a beauty blog:

Category: Makeup

• 10 Best Waterproof Mascaras
• How to Apply Foundation
• Why I Stopped Using Concealer

Category: Haircare

• The One Dry Shampoo You Need
• Aveda Deep Conditioner Review
• Hair Masks: Do They Really Work?

Category: Skincare

• 10 Best Moisturizers for Oily Skin
• Skincare Products Older Women Swear By
• How to Get Rid of Crows Feet

As you can see, Categories are broad topics which can hold a variety of blog posts. You may only have 1-2 categories at the beginning of your blog, but over time you can add more.

As for the Featured Image, this is one image assigned to your post that provides the reader with context as to what your post is all about. It usually appears in a few places around your website, like the home page, depending on your theme. Sometimes it appears within the blog post itself, and other times you may wish to manually add it within the text yourself.

I use Canva and always use the Social Media templates.

You can shoot quality images yourself with a smartphone camera, but if you’re not able to shoot the images yourself then you can find a variety of free, non-copyrighted images from websites like Pixabay and Unsplash.

Drive Traffic

Once your blog is set up you’ll need to find a way to get people to visit your site! There are many ways to drive traffic to your site including:

• Writing guest posts for other blogs
• Leaving comments on other blogs
• Sharing your posts on social media
• Improving your Google Search presence
• Optimizing your content for Pinterest

The last method is my favorite, believe it or not, Pinterest is a HUGE referral source for many bloggers – use it to your advantage!

Develop a Monetization Strategy

Once you’ve got your blog set up, and a few posts published, you should start thinking about how your blog will earn income and developing a monetization strategy.

There are a few key ways to monetize a blog. Depending on your audience, you’ll need to figure out the best way for you to make money. Is your blog product-focused, or more informational?

The easiest way to start making money with informational blogs is often by using display ads. Google’s AdSense program is an easy way for new bloggers who want to put ads on their site and start earning some money.

If you write about products, then you should probably monetize with Affiliate Marketing, a strategy where bloggers link to products they love and earn a commission when a reader makes a purchase.

Personally, ads and affiliate marketing are where I’ve found the most success on my journey to make money blogging!

Beyond ads and affiliate marketing, you could also pitch yourself as a freelance writer to larger publications, sell products like ebooks and courses, or offer consulting services to your readers around your blog’s topic.

These tend to be monetization strategies for more experienced bloggers but it’s great to keep them in mind even during the beginning stages so you can start brainstorming about products you can sell in the future!

I hope this post has been helpful to anyone who wants to start a profitable blog. Making money from your blog may seem like a dream.

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