How To Start A Blog In 2020 From Scratch [Step By Step Guide] August 10, 2020 by Umer Qureshi

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How To Start A Blog In 2020 From Scratch [Step By Step Guide]

August 10, 2020 by Umer Qureshi

Want to know how to start a blog in 2020?

Good decision, 

That’s the best decision I ever made in my life to start a blog,

Here is the deal;

Do you want to make passive income on autopilot through blogging, which helps you to live life like a boss? So starting a blog is the first and crucial step that leads you to success.

But, After reading this guide, you will start your blog today and make a path for your success.

Starting a blog is not complicated at all, but all you need some guidance, which helps you to start a blog in 2020.

Here are the seven easy steps to start your profitable blog without making a mistake and some bonus tips which help you to scale your new branded blog.

Let’s dive into it,

• Step 1: Choose a Niche For Your Blog
• Step 2: Choose a Good Domain For Your Blog
• Step 3: Find a Good Web Hosting Provider and Domain
• Step 4: Set Up Your WordPress Blog
• Step 5: Choose an Attention-Grabbing Theme For Your Blog
• Step 6: Some Essential Plugin For Your Blog
• Step 7: Write and Publish Your First Blog Post and Make It Live
• Bonus: Some Ways to Make Money From Your Blog

Before starting the full process for making a profitable blog,

Maybe some of you are thinking, why you should start a blog in 2020?

I always prefer to say that 2020 is the golden arena for starting a blog and grow it,

Because blogging is becoming tough day by day and if you started today, so you have more opportunities/chances, then others who will start later than you.

There are so many benefits if you start your blog and grow it, Here some Unforgettable Benefits of blogging which helps you :

• Express Yourself – Blogging is the platform that allows you to express yourself by writing the content for your audience. 
• You can help others and gain fans – You can help the readers by writing the content on your blog, and by this, they will become your true fans which always there for your support.
• Make Money Online – Yes, You can make money from your blog by doing Affiliate Marketing and Running Ads.

I think you got an idea about why you started and how blogging will help you

Let’s dive in,

Step 1: Choose a Right Niche for Your Blog (Crucial Step For Success)

This is the most important part, and many newbies are stuck at this point.

Did you know? That 99% of bloggers quit blogging in starting six months because they choose the niche which they don’t passionate about.

Niche is like a topic but not a simple topic because they have several topics in it.

Choosing a niche is the fastest way to lose a game in the beginning.

Are you still confused?

Let take an example about the niches – 

Smart Passive Income – Patt Flynn started this blog named Smart Passive Income, where he shares strategies to grow your online business. Today Smart Passive Income is one of the most successful blogs which are making millions of dollars every day.

ShoutMeLoud: You all know ShoutMeLoud is one of the most significant websites which teaches about WordPress, SEO, Blogging, and Much more stuff related to blogging. 

Dont believe it? See this –

This is the earning report of ShoutMeLoud, and you can see that they make $400+ at the beginning of there blog. This shows that choosing a profitable and interest-based niche helps your blog to scale.

There are many other blogs that I can show, but I think you got an exact idea of how niche is so essential for making a profitable blog.

Currently, there are many profitable niches in which you can start your blog, but I don't suggest you go with these niches because you don't have an interest in that, and If you start a blog on that niche, so will be bored and quit blogging for sure.

So, How you can find the perfect niche that you won’t regret later

Wait, let me tell you one Fail-Proof method to find out the profitable and interested based niche for you.

You have to focus on these two factors to find out the profitable niche for your blog.

Profitability

• See that you can make money from that?
• They have enough affiliate programs or not?
• Is that niche is having a good volume of keywords or not?

Passionate

• Are you interested in working on that niche?
• Can you share the article of that niche?
• Can you solve other problems with your writing on that niche?

I think now you can find the perfect niche after seeing the above part, and if you can’t figure out, then you can do this to find an ideal niche.

• Take Paper & Pen
• Write down your interest or which you are passionate about (Add three or more) on the list
• Find the niche which you liked the most from the list
• Also, find an affiliate of that niche
• You are good to go

These are some steps to find a profitable niche for your new blog.

Step 2: Choose a Good Domain for Your Blog

Selecting the website domain is not very tough and you can easily select a perfect domain name for your new blog. If you decided your domain name so you can skip this part. 

This for you If you haven’t selected the domain name till now –

When I started my blogging career, I don’t know how to choose a premium or brandable domain for my blog, and that’s why I wasted 10+ domains because I don’t like it also they don’t look brandable.

I think you don’t make a mistake like me?

If Yes! Here are four tips which help you to find your dream domain –  

• Keep it Short & Simple – Try to keep your domain as short, don’t make it too long because it’s not easy to pronounce and keep your domain name simply because it’s easy to remember. (Jon Morrow changed their domain name to BoostBlogTraffic to SmartBlogger, and their blog are getting millions of traffic because now his domain looks simple).
• Use Keyword – You can use your main keyword in your domain, which helps you in SEO.
• Don’t Use Numbers – You can’t use numbers in your domain because it’s not easy to remember the numbers
• Always Use TLD Extension – I recommend you to use domain extension like .com because it’s for globally.

If you are still not able to figure out the domain for your blog, then you can find brandable domain name using one tool: LeanDomainSearch

Note: Which blogging platform should you choose?

I am not going to take much time here to explain to you which platform is best,

There is a lot of blogging platform which you can use to make your blog, but I recommended you to go with WordPress.

Why?

Because in other platforms, you can’t have access to edit or customize everything, but WordPress gives you the freedom to make your blog as you can.

In WordPress, you have many plugins and themes which you can use to make your blog Awesome! 

So I think you can get an idea of why WordPress is good,

Let’s dive in and let me tell you to steps create your blog.

Step 3: Choose a Good Hosting For Your Blog

For making a blog, you have to need web-hosting and domain,

I know you don’t know about both, but wait, let me guide you in this and tell you more about it.

Domain  Name –  The domain name is the name of the website which readers types in the browser.

Example Of Domain Name :

1. HTTPS://(Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
2. www (the subdomain)
3. GuideBlogging (Domain name)
4. .com(Top Level Domain).

Web Hosting – A web hosting is a place where all your files of your blog are stored and show your blog lives when someone tries to access that. Hosting is like the hard disk of the computer, which stored all your data (images, posts, pages, and many more) and kept your data secured.

Now, are you thinking which wordpress hosting is best for you?

There are tons of web hosting which you can use to start your new blog. But I don’t recommend to you that because they are worthless.

So instead of giving you the ton of hosting list, I recommended you to go with the siteground.

Because

Siteground is the no.1 hosting for beginners, and honestly there support and service are fantastic and very reliable; it’s also not very costly like another hosting.

So, are you excited to start your business? 

If Yes, then lets dive into it,

When I started blogging, I tried every cheap hosting but the load time is awful

Then, I came to know about Siteground hosting and after purchasing it,

The load time of my blog decreased dramatically.

But WAIT! don't take my word here, SEE THE PROOF,

BEFORE Siteground,

These results are as expected because, at that, I'm using cheap hosting.

BOOM! You can see after migrating to Siteground the load time is decreased by 85%

WAIT, But don't take my word here; There are some of the latest REAL reviews about Siteground.

Syed Balkhi

WPBeginner

SiteGround is one of the most popular and highest rated hosting providers in the WordPress community. They provide unique in-house WordPress speed and security solutions to make your site as fast and secure as possible.

Brad Smith

HostingFacts

SiteGround has delivered reliable uptime for a few years now. And their uptime guarantee makes sure that you’ll probably never have any significant downtime issues.

So, Let's move on and,

In this part, I will guide you how you can purchase the domain and host from Siteground,

You can also choose any other hosting you want. Still, I highly recommend you to go with Siteground because it's affordable and reliable for beginners who want to do blogging like a business.

Follow these steps to purchase hosting and domain for your first blog:

1. Click On This Special Link to start your first blog.

Grab 70% OFF On SiteGround

I recommend you to go with a startup plan because it has more features.

2. Choose Your Favorite Domain

Pick your domain name, which is easy to understand. Let example, if you are interested in opening a food blog and you decide the blog name is food bazar so you can go with foodbazar.com.

If you haven’t chosen the domain name yet, so I suggested you read the domain section of this blog to get more ideas about it. After reading that, you got many names for your domain.

3. Fill Your Account Information

You have to fill your information for your account.

4. Enter Your Credit/Debit Card Information

You have to fill your credit/debit card details to purchase domain and hosting

5. Confirm The Conditions And Let Get Started

You have to confirm there terms and conditions, 

After that, you have to click on the check-out button. It will take a few minutes to the siteground to proceed with the details.

Wait a few minutes, then check your email for important details related to your account.

And you’re done.

Congratulations! You have successfully purchased a hosting and domain for you. You have crossed the most prominent stop on your way to start your blog.

Let move on and see how to setup your blog.

Step 4: Set up your WordPress blog

Installing WordPress is not like rocket science,

The only thing is that we have a proper guide. Here in this part, I will how you can set up your WordPress site to make it live on the web.

Firstly, you have to go to your siteground account, If you already purchased it so you can see the similar interface after login to your account:

You have to select the start of a website option to make a brand new website.

Then, you have to click on the software which you want to install your website,

Click on the WordPress software to install to your website. After that you have to fill some login details about your website:

This information is essential, so I recommend you to write your password on dairy so if you forget so you can check there,

After fill-out all the information,

Then you have to click on the big complete button to proceed with the process.

It will take a few minutes to finish setting up your WordPress website.

Now, click on the proceed button to go on customer area:

Now, click on my account button on the menu and click on the installation tab:

Now, click on the Go to Admin Panel to visit your new blog admin dashboard:

Now, you will redirect to your WordPress dashboard after that enter your login details which you choose during the installation and click on the login button:

That’s it you just complete the setup fo your first WordPress website, Remember this URL or bookmark it:

https://yourblog.com/wp-admin/

If, by chance, you forgot the URL so you can use the above URL structure to login to your dashboard (replace yourdomain.com name with your domain).

Step 5: Choose an Attention Grabbing Theme

After installing wordpress, theme and blog looks is more important if you are just starting your new blog. 

In blogging, the design of the blog matters because if you don’t have a great design, so you are losing a lot of traffic and audience. Good design helps to build more trust towards your readers.

In your WordPress inventory, there are a hell lot of free themes that are available for you, but I don’t recommend you to go with that themes because these free themes are easy to hack, and by this, you will lose you all website data.

If you are using free or nulled themes is like Architecting your own Destruction.

If you want to do blogging as a business, so invest in themes and plugins because of this the best investment on your blogging journey. I see many bloggers don’t invest in this type of thing and face many critical issues later.

So which theme is best for you?

I use GeneratePress, which is the lightest theme (under 50KB), and loads your website fast, and also I liked the design of this theme, and many pro bloggers are using it because it’s easy to design.

There are a few more themes which I can you suggest but before that let me tell you the Few things which you keep in your mind while purchasing a theme - 

• Make sure that premium themes which you are purchasing are lightweight and easy to use.
• Check that the theme is compatible with your latest WordPress version.
• Always check that the theme is responsive or not
• Support is the main thing, so try to find a theme that has excellent contact support (like Generatepress and Themeshop).

Now let me tell some of my favorite paid themes that I am currently using on my other blogs.

Some of my Favorite Themes (Personally Used)

Astra Pro – Astra Pro is lightweight and easy to customize the theme. This theme is like a generatepress, but they have a lot of features which doesn’t available in generatepress, and You can make your homepage attractive and responsive too with using elementor with that.

Focus Theme By Thrive Themes – Focus theme is the most powerful theme which has all necessary options like email opt-in, shortcodes, and many more. This theme is fully responsive and easy to customize. If you are an Affiliate Marketer so this theme is like gold for you because it’s conversion optimized. There are more features that help you to make your website more powerful.

Schema Theme – Schema theme is crafted by mythemeshop, and the best part of this theme that’s this is search engine optimized. It’s also the fastest theme as well.

GeneratePress – GeneratePress is the theme that I am currently using in my this blog, and for me, it’s work good so far because this theme is easy to customize so anyone newbie can customize it. The support of this theme is amazing. If I want to choose themes from all the above, I choose generatepress because of their stunning looks

After picking one theme now it’s time to install that theme on your blog.

For installing any WordPress theme on your blog just follow these below steps:

First of all, you should be login on your WordPress dashboard ➡ appearance ➡ themes

1. In the themes section, you will find various free themes, but if you already have so, click on the add new button.

2. Click on the upload theme and upload your theme zip and activate that theme on your blog. 

Finally, you installed and activate your preferred theme into your blog. Installing is a theme is an easy task, but the main and important task is to customize that theme.

So if you want to customize your theme, click on appearance ➡ customizes, and now you can able to customize your theme.

After making your theme responsive and optimized now, I will tell you some most essential plugin which almost every WordPress users install, and it’s also an important part to run your website on automation.

Step 6: Some Essential Plugins for WordPress

WordPress without plugins is nothing because plugins are necessary to (Optimize your content, for SEO, Speed, and many more). There are lots of plugins on WordPress, but there are some plugins that I am currently using and making such things on autopilot.

Want to know the list of my favorite plugin?

So, here is the list of my plugins which I am personally using almost in all my website – 

Elementor or Thrive Architect – These are the page builders for designing any page. These plugins allow you to create your dream landing page by just drag and drop. I used both, and they are very lightweight to use and helps me to create a stunning page.

Rank Mathe SEO – SEO is important to rank and drive a lot of traffic. Rank math is the new SEO plugin that becomes a favorite for every blogger now. Many bloggers suggest you go with Yoast, but I don’t recommend that because they don’t have lots of features like that. For information, you can read the review on my blog.

WP Rocket – You already know that speed is one factor to rank on google. So wp rocket is the plugin, which helps you to optimize your full website and make it faster. I strongly recommend you to buy this plugin if you are looking for an alternative to this so you can go with autoptimize. 

Thrive Leads – If you want to collect emails of your readers so you can try to thrive leads which helps you to make popup lightbox, sticky ribbon, screen filler overlay, content lock, and more.

iThemes Security – Security is the no.1 priority; many times, somebody tries to hack your website, so this plugin helps you to secure your entire website. Using the security plugin is essential to keep your blog safe.

UpdraftPlus – Backup of your website is necessary, although your siteground keeps website backup daily. But for more security, I used this plugin to backup my website daily. This plugin helps you to backup your full website, and you can restore that data whenever you need it.

Anti-Spam – Many times, someone makes spam comments on your blog. This plugin helps you that if someone comment on your blog and comment looks like spam, so this plugin automatically removes it.

Resmush.it – If you are writing an informative article which has a lot of image in it so this plugin tries to optimize your images and by this your website load fast.

Social Snap Pro – Social snap is a social sharing plugin, But I like this plugin so much because they help to drive traffic from mediums like – Facebook, Twitter, and many more platforms.

These are the top plugins which I almost used in my all website to run them properly.

I don’t recommend you to go with nulled or cracked plugins because these types of plugins are easy to hack by the hacker, and by this, you lose all your website data.

If you want to do professional blogging and make money out of it, I highly recommend you keep the investment mindset and treat your blog like a business.

If you are wondering how to install the plugin? Let me help with you that,

1. Go to your WordPress dashboard
2. Then go to Plugins → Add New
3. Then upload your plugin zip file and click on the “install now” button.
4. After installing, click on the “activate button” to install that particular plugin.

Now let move on to other topics,

Step 7: Write Your First Stunning Post and Published It

Are you wondering about writing your first blog post?

So let me help you to write your first post on your blog. First of all, I want to congrats you that you have successfully set up your WordPress blog, and now it’s time to make some posts for your new blog.

For creating a blog post, you have to go: Dashboard → Post → Add New

After that, you will land on your post, and here you can start writing your first stunning post.

Now, Let me give you some tips that help you to make your first epic post:

• If you are confused about finding the topic of your new post, so I recommended you to do some keyword research around your niche, and by searching, you will find many awesome keywords that are easy to rank.

Pro Tip: I recommend you go with long-tail keywords because it’s easier to rank.

•  Always tries to make an awesome title of your blog post by using numbers and power words.
•  Make sure you should add some images for making your article more comprehensive; I strongly recommend you to make your article lengthy and more in detail, and by more detail post, you can make your reader your true fan.
•  I suggest you go through with the on-page guide so you can optimize your content easily.
• Use words like I and You to more connect with your readers and try to don’t take copyright images from google. I recommend you always to use copyright-free images.

I think these tips help you to create your first blog post, 

Now, Let’s move on to the favorite of every blogger.

Step 8: Some Ways to Make Money from your Blog (Bonus)

This is the bonus part for you all, where I shared some ways which help you to make money from your blog.

Before starting, let me Congrats, you because you have published your first blog post on your blog. 

Let dive into it,

There are several ways which you can use to make money from your blog. In this part, we will discuss some ideas which you can use to handsome money from your blog.

I have created a list of ways which helps you to make your first dollar online,

Are you excited enough like me? 

If Yes, then let’s move on to the list:

Affiliate Marketing: This is one of the effective methods for making money online. In this, you have to promote other products on your blog, and if you get a sale of that product so then, you will get a commission from the product owner.

Advertising on your blog: Most of the common ways ever blogger uses this to monetize their traffic and make money handsome money out of it. Many bloggers are using it and making a decent amount of money. 

Two leading websites – Adsense and Media.net, You can apply to there program and make money from there.

Offering Service: If you are an expert on anything like SEO so you can offer service to your reader, and they will directly pay you. This is one of the fastest ways to earn money from your blog.

Selling your course or product: If you know how to sell anything so you can create your path and sell to your readers, but before that, you have to build trust towards your audience if you already have an audience then you can sell them anything.

These are the ways that you can use to make money from your blog. But always remember that if you want to make money from your blog so you have to keep patience and do hard work on your blog, and you will see your massive growth.

FAQ Related To How To Start A Blog In 2020

Q.1 How much does it cost to Start a Blog?

For starting a blog it cost you around 3.50$ a month from the siteground but I recommend you to go with one year plan to get a special discount.

Q.2 How to start a blog and get paid?

In this guide, we already tell you how to start a blog in 2020 and for getting paid from your new website you can use Google Adsense, Affiliate marketing and many more earning methods.

Q.3 How to start a blog business?

For making a blog you can read this comprehensive guide and also you can make your blog for only business purposes.

Q.4 I started my blog but how can I get traffic?

Traffic works like a motivation for newbie bloggers so if you are confused about how you can get traffic, Here is a full guide about it – Increase Website Traffic Fast.

Q.5 Is starting a blog in 2020 still worth it?

Yes! and The reason why you here because you also want to start your blog in 2020 and If you are taking Blogging as a business then it’s still worth it

Q.6 Can I start a blog for free?

Yes, you can start your blog for a free using platform like Blogger but I don’t recommend you to do that because if you want to make real money from your blog so you need to understand the power of an investment. I recommend you that don’t go with free and purchased hosting and start your new blog today.

Wrapping Up and Now What Next?

Congratulation! You Have Created Your First Blog In 2020

But What Next?

This is not an end, but I think this is the beginning of your journey, and you have to learn many things like SEO, Affiliate Marketing, and Many More things. 

For being a successful blogger, you have to learn many things and implement all things to your blog to see the results. I recommend you to create the habit of learning and always learn new things by reading the blog and much more stuff.

I hope you like this article, and maybe this helps you to create your new successful empire today.

I also recommend you to join our Free Blogging Community to stay updated with new stuff. I too very active in my group, so if you have any doubts, I will personally help you and clear you're every doubt.

Every single share counts for us! I appreciate your effort. 

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