How to Start a Profitable WordPress Blog in 10 minutes
Today I’m going to explain how to create a profitable blog.
Blogging is one of the most popular ways of communicating and spreading information and news. And the best part, you can make money with it!
So, you want to start a blog huh? But…how do you get started?
Most people find it daunting to open a website, but I can tell you for sure, it’s not that complicated!
If you want to take a meaningful step towards making a change in your life, all you need to do is buy a domain, get a hosting account, and install WordPress.
I used to be a blogging newbie too. I started my blog years ago, and I knew less than nothing about blogging. Now I know a ton about it, and my blog’s doing pretty well.
So let’s dive in!
How to Start a Profitable WordPress Blog
Step 1: Choose a name
The first step is to choose a name for your blog. I know you can feel stuck on this stage because you want to find the best possible name that can be easily found, remembered, associated with your content. But don’t overcomplicate things!
Just keep in mind some guidelines when picking your name:
- Don’t be too specific: If you have a specific niche in mind, don’t choose a blog name that is too specific. For example, let’s say you want to start a blog about vintage fashion. You choose a cool blog name that includes the word ‘vintage’. But then you want to broaden your niche and write about contemporary fashion too. Your blog name then stops you from doing that. So, choose something that can be always applicable.
- Go for short and catchy: Go for a blog name that is short, catchy, and easy to remember and spell. Avoid special characters, hyphens, or dots if you can, as it might confuse people.
- Use a blog name generator or Thesaurus: These tools can help you find synonyms for words. This is super useful when trying to come up with a new name for your blog, as it helps you to think outside the box.
- Consider your “blog voice” and ideal audience: You need to think about what your style of writing is going to be like, and who your ideal audience is. Will your tone be humorous, relatable, inspirational? Is your target audience young or more mature? Your blog name should ideally reflect all those things.
- Write it down to see how it looks like in a domain: A super blog name can turn into a disaster when you join up separate words and inadvertently create the wrong words. Like “Therapistfinder.com” or “Wintersexpress.com”. You can also ask a friend for an opinion.
- Check the domain availability: As soon as you have a blog name in mind, it’s best to check if the domain is available. A good place to do this is Namecheap.com. If your chosen domain name is not available, they will spit out different alternatives.
- Use your name and surname
- Use Bluehost to check if the domain is available, or to find something similar that you might like.
Start a Profitable WordPress Blog Step 2: Register it on social media
Once you’ve chosen your blog name, before paying for the domain, you will have to make sure it’s available also on the social media platforms you use. It’s not essential but in this way, you keep your brand cohesive, and you won’t have a different name on your social media.
This makes it easier for potential followers who have navigated away from your blog to search for you on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
Purchase your domain & hosting
Many new bloggers make the mistake of buying hosting from unreliable companies, and they regret this misstep later. Impeccable and reliable hosting is the most crucial element when creating a blog. This is a step where it’s worth spending a little bit of money. If your hosting goes down, your entire business goes down. When it’s too slow, people will look elsewhere. If it doesn’t have the features you want, you’ll get stressed and frustrated.
So how do you choose the right hosting company for your blog?
Here’s what you want to look for in a good hosting company:
- Security: Website security is important, you don’t want to get hacked, and if you have a few customers, you certainly don’t want their information hacked. So check what kind of security features are offered.
- Backups: It is very important to backup your site regularly, so make sure your hosting provider gives you backup options.
- Customer service: When you open a blog, you’re going to have some issues, so it’s really important that the hosting company you choose has really good customer service to help you out in case of trouble or if you need help (a good hosting company provides 24/7 support).
- Reliability: You don’t want your site to be down, ever. So, the hosting company should keep downtimes to a minimum
With that in mind, I recommend you Bluehost. It’s the #1 recommended WordPress blog hosting service that is responsible for hosting more than 2 million websites all over the world and is one of the most popular and least expensive shared hosting services available.
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to start your blog with Bluehost:
- Go to Bluehost’s main page and click on the green “get started now” button. This will take you to a page with different hosting packages. I recommend going for the basic one as you can always upgrade it later on.
2. Connect the domain. With Bluehost, you get a free domain and save yourself the trouble of setting a DNS server.
- Enter your account information. Make sure you enter a valid email address because your receipt and other important information will be sent there.
- Enter your package information. The cheapest route to go is to pay for 36 months (3 years) up-front. You can also choose various extra options. These include things such as Domain Privacy, Site Backup, SiteLock Security, etc.
If you can afford it, I would recommend adding SiteLock. This will secure your contact data. Optionally you can add also Codeguard Basic for daily backups.
- Enter your billing information. Almost there! The last thing to do is to fill out the “Billing Information”. Skip any upgrades and continue with finalizing your order.
And… congratulations! You have successfully purchased hosting for your new blog.
With Bluehost, you get a one-click WordPress installation. So, log in to your Bluehost account and go through set up.
Pros of Bluehost: Impressive 24/7 chat support, inexpensive monthly plans, free domain name registration, free SSL certificate included and 1-Click WordPress Install!
Cons of Bluehost: the only thing I noticed is that it can become slow once you starting getting high volumes of traffic. By that I mean 100,000 monthly views so it’s not something you need to worry about just yet.
Start a Profitable WordPress Blog Step 4: Install WordPress
Lastly, you need to install WordPress on your site. I am talking about WordPress.org, which is different from the free platform, WordPress.com. But don’t worry, Bluehost makes it very easy to create a WordPress blog and it is FREE. To install WordPress follow the steps below:
- Check your welcome email from Bluehost and click on the link to login to cPanel (find and click on the image that says “One Click Install”)
- Then, on the next page find “Blogs” and click on the WordPress icon which looks like this:
- Click on the “Start” button. This will begin the installation.
- Now, from the drop-down menu choose your domain name as that’s where you want your WordPress to be installed
- Now, you should see “Advanced Options.” and at that step, you will be choosing your username and password for your website. NEVER EVER make your Admin Username be “admin”. This is the number one guess of a majority of hackers. Instead, make it something that is unique and that isn’t guessable. You will want to check “Automatically create a new database for this installation”
- Click “Install Now.”
- Once it is done you should see a “Success – Installation complete!” message. After it successfully installs, you’ll see a couple of URLs. The most important one is your “Login URL”. This is the URL that you will always go to log into WordPress. It can be found at http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin. Go to that URL and sign in with your WordPress credentials.
And that’s it! Once you have your domain and hosting sorted the hard technical part is over, you just need to get comfortable with WordPress to make your blog look like you want it to.
Not so bad, was it? Let me know your tips on how to Start a Profitable WordPress Blog in 10 minutes
If this post was helpful, please share it with your friends so they too can learn how to create a blog using Bluehost! Also, let me know how it went!
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