How to Start a Blog That Makes Money 2025
How to start a blog is a common question I received from those who are interested in creating a blog to start monetizing blogging.
I always enjoy explaining the ways to start a blog, however, it seems there are still many people coming and asking me this question again, how to start a blog? I thought that why don’t make a complete guide on how to start a blog to help save time for both. That’s why I created this post to help them easily start a blog themselves. So, if you want to start a blog for yourself too, just follow this guide to get started now.
Learn how to start a blog in 7 steps, and then you will easy make a blog for yourself.
In this guide on how to start a blog, I’m going to begin at the very basic to help you easy to start a blog yourself. Yes, it’s that easy. Just follow these 7 given steps, and you can make your first blog in just several minutes.
Step 1 to Start a Blog : Deciding on Your Blog Niche
There are more than one hundred million active blogs on the web nowadays. That’s why to attract readers and monetize your blog, you have to stand out from the crowd. To do that, the first thing you have to follow is choosing your blog niche – that’s your topic choice. Don’t skip this step, your blog will be meaningless without it.
Popular Blog Niches
Personal Finance.
Health & Wellness.
Travel.
Technology.
Personal Development.
Food & Cooking.
Parenting & Family
How to choose the right niche yourself?
There’s a lot of advice out there on how to choose the niche. Someone tell you to choose the niches that people spend money in, someone else tell you that money doesn’t matter, it’s all about how much you care about that topic. So, which is better?
You should know there are many ways to make money from a blog. Most of us can monetizing blogging with any topic. However, we couldn’t make money from our blog if we didn’t create valued. And to create value, we must have real passion on topic we’re talking about. So, the better is to choose a topic that you are really passionate about or a topic that you have lots of experience with.
Step 2 to Start a Blog: Building Your Plan
Building a plan is an essential condition to get success in blogging. However, most of the new bloggers ignore this step. You know, I took almost two years to realize the value of planning in building a successful blog. I will definitely not skip this step when I’m going to build a new blog and I strongly recommend you do it too. This is the secret of successful bloggers.
The plan will help us save time, work scientifically and avoid confusion. It’s a road map to establish how the blog will operate, its goals and how to make your blog achieve goals. A blog plan is necessary if you want to build a successful blog, but I’m sure that you’ve never seen any guide on “how to start a blog” reminding you about this step before. That’s why many people failed at the first time joining the blogosphere.
Remember, failing to plan is planning to fail. A plan is the blueprint for your blog and it will help you grow your blog faster, longer and more profitable than any other single thing you could do.
Draw your blog plan before read the rest of this guide. This is the most important step to start a successful blog. You shouldn’t skip this step unless your goal is blogging for fun.
Step 3 to Start a Blog : Register a Domain Name
Your blog need a domain name – it is the web address or URL that you type into your web browser to navigate to your blog. And it’s the first thing people remember about a blog like remembering the name of a person. So choose a domain name is very important to Start a Blog . It is like naming your son. It will be the brand that represents your blog. Therefore you should register your blog domain name to start your blog.
How to Choose a Right Domain Name to Start a Blog?
Because your domain is important so you have to choose it carefully before you go to buy for yourself. These are 3 tips that you should use to choose a domain name for your blog.
1. Keep it as short as possible: Your domain name should be as short as possible because a short URL is easier to remember, easier to type in the address and less likely to be misspelled than a long one.
2. Domain Meaningful: When choosing a domain name, you should consider carefully the words that you will be selected to use, those words must evoke for the reader to know that your website talking about something that no need visit to site.
3. Insert Keyword Into Domain Name: You should insert keyword into your domain name choice. It will make your blog get high-ranking when searching for keywords contained in the domain. Of course, that means your blog will draw more traffic from search engines.
How to Register a Domain Name?
There are many places to purchase a blog domain name, however, I recommend you go to Godaddy to buy a domain name for your blog because it’s the best and most reliable domain registrar in the world (as I did all times). You can easily buy a domain name under $12 and your domain names are fully secured with them.
Here are some of screenshots showing you step by step how to buy a domain name at Godaddy.com
2) If your domain is available, click on Add button to add this domain name to your cart, and click Continue to Registration.
3) After hit the Continue to Registration, you will then be taken through a registration process that is quite simple to follow. Just follow and when you see the screenshot like this picture, click on Continue to Checkout, choose payment methods and complete your order.
That’s it, congratulations! You got a new domain name for your blog.
Tip to buy a domain name for lower cost: How to buy a domain name at Godaddy for $7.99 instead of $12? Simple, just follow this link to get SPECIAL OFFER! .COM JUST $7.99* PER YEAR! Register for multiple years! You’ll see massive $11.99 for .com domain (sometimes different number but never $7.99). Don’t worry. The price will change before you confirm the purchase.
Step 4 to Start a Blog : Host Your Blog
To complete control your blog, you need to host your blog. That’s why hosting is one of two things you need to have before you’re going to start a blog . You need to choose a reliable and affordable hosting provider right now. If you don’t have experience, choosing Web Hosting is not easy. So I think it would be better to tell you exactly what is the best hosting provider than tell you how to choose a good hosting provider.
I highly recommend Hostgator. I used this hosting provider for over 3 years and don’t have any complaint about the quality. They have the best customer service.
Their customer support is available online 24/7 and you can talk with them about your issue any time you need. Any problem you have will be solved very quickly. Their service is designed for both beginners and professionals. All of their hosting plans include a 99.9% up-time guarantee, 24/7 customer and technical support and 45-day money back guarantee.
How to Set Up a Web Host Account with Hostgator?
1) First you need to visit the Hostgator home page by clicking on to this link: http://www.hostgator.com. When you stay at their site, click on ‘View Web Hosting Plans’ button
2) In the next page, choose your hosting plan, and then hit Order Now!
3) Enter your domain name and click on Continue To Step 2 to make the payment and complete your purchase.
Hostgator Coupon: The default coupons only help you get 20% discount off, you want to get more, so just replace it by coupon MAKEABLOG25OFF to get 25% off. If you want to pay by month, using coupon MAKEABLOG1CENT you will only pay $0.01 for the first month.
Step 5 to Start a Blog : Point Your Domain To Your Web Host
After you have purchased Web Hosting Account, you have to connect your domain to your web host before you can set up your first blog. To do that, you have to know your Web host name server.
1) Go to your mail inbox to check your hosting account information that your web hosting provider sent you.
Your may be difference. This is just an example, you just need find your web host name server and go to step 2.
2) Go back to Godaddy and log in with your account information, put your mouse over the Domains tab and go to an option on top menu name Domain Management.
3) Click on your domain name for which you want to chance name server and you will be taken to a new page where you can configure everything about your domain, including the scary name servers!
Click on Set NameServers to start chancing your nameserver and a new window will pop up.
4) Select ‘I have specific nameservers for my domains’ and type in the information you were given upon registering your web hosting plan for both Nameserver 1 and Nameserver 2 (as I did).
Click OK to confirm. Changes will usually take 2 hours to take effect.
5) You’re done!
Congratulations – you have just successfully connected your GoDaddy domain to your Hostgator hosting account! Note that the change might take some time to become effective.
Step 6 to Start a Blog: Set Up Your Blog
I will show you how to install a WordPress blog in about 30 seconds using Fantastico, not all hosting providers have Cpanel and Fantastico sofware but if you are using HostGator like I recommended, they do!
I will show you how to install a WordPress blog in about 30 seconds using Fantastico, not all hosting providers have Cpanel and Fantastico sofware but if you are using HostGator like I recommended, they do!
So to start, first you go to YourDomain.com:2082 and login to your hosting account with the admin details your host provided, scroll to the bottom, find and click on Fantastico DeLuxe icon.
And on Fantastico page, you will see an option named WordPress under the option “Blogs”. Click on WordPress and then click on the link nameNew Installation that appears thereafter.
And on next page, choose your domain name on which you want to install your WordPress blog and enter some strong password, your email and other requested details there. After all, click on “Install WordPress” button to get the final page.
Finally click on Finish Installation button and your WordPress blog will be completely installed on your domain. Congratulations, you have just started a blog, go to yourdomain.com to check your blog now.
Step 7 to Start a Blog: Choosing Your Blog Design to Make Your Blog Go Professional
After installing your WordPress blog, you should chance your default WordPress theme to make your blog goes professional.
According to research of the experts, each website or blog only has 10 seconds to make customers/readers deciding to keep staying on their site or not. A good design is the element will impress visitors and makes them stay in the site longer, thus your business will get more opportunities to increase income. That’s why many companies spent so much money to hire the designer to make their website look more professional. That also is the reason I recommended you to choose a good WordPress theme to impress your readers. So if you agree with me, now is the time to change your default WordPress theme.
Step 1: Choosing an awesome WordPress theme and download it from the source to your computer: Of course, to make your blog goes professional you must have a great WordPress theme first. I recommended you go to ElegantThemes to choose a great premium WordPress theme for your blog.
Step 2: Install Your WordPress Theme: Now go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin to login to your WordPress admin panel => Move your mouse on Appearance menu at left sidebar (#1) => Click on Themes tag (#2) => Click on Install Themes (#3) => Click on Upload (#4) => Click Browse to find on the location where you put your WordPress theme (#5) => Click on Install Now button (#6)
Step 3: Finally, just click on the Activate WordPress theme link like we did below.
Done, congrats – you have just installed a new WordPress theme for your blog, go to check your new blog interface now.
A good blog design can help you increasing reliability to customers. So you need to change your default WordPress theme by using a premium WordPress theme.
That is every thing you need to start a blog with WordPress from scratch. I hope this detailed guide will easy help you learn how to start a blog to create a professional blog for yourself today.
If you have any question, feel free to ask me your questions on the comment form bellow, I’ll answer you as soon as possible to help you know more about how to start a blog.