Start a Successful Blog in 2024 – Beginners Guide to Blogging

How to Start a Successful Blog

Blogging in 2024 has evolved. It is a great way to start a passive income.

Apart from giving you financial independence, Starting a Successful Blog 

  • It gives you a platform to publish your thoughts, ideas and enlighten people. 
  • It helps you gain professional recognition, and build a personal brand.
  • Encourages to share expertise with other people and allowing them to grow

Out of over 2 billion websites that are live on the internet today, there are more than 600 million blogs.

As per the Ahrefs SEO tool, the Google search for the phrase – ‘how to start a blog’ is searched almost 120k times a month.

Due to the enormous opportunity Blogging provides, Blogging has turned into a full-time profession for many people.

Thus, you can imagine starting a successful blog is a popular activity. However, Blogging requires passion.

One needs to be regular with adding content in the Blog. Consequently, only those blogs that are consistent with quality content win the race. 

This free and easy guide will now teach you How to start a successful blog that makes money up to 1000 $ per month!

First Thing first – Let’s define a Blog.

What is a Blog?

A Blog is an online notebook located on a website and hosted on the Internet. It can be created by anyone using step by step guide below

What does a Blog Contain?

A Blog contains text, images, videos, and many such media that can be created digitally and hosted on the internet.

In this guide, we will share essential steps one needs to follow to Start a Successful Blog that ranks at the top in google. This Guide will help you choose Cheap WordPress hosting, buy a domain, get Cheap SEO Tools and improve SEO to ensure you get free traffic on your Blog

How to Start a Successful Blog that Ranks in Google and Makes Money

  1. Step 1: Choose your Blogging Platform that everyone loves

  2. Step 2: Select a profitable industry and then pick a topic for your blog – Your Blogging Niche

  3. Step 3: Buy a Domain Name and Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider so that you don’t face downtime

  4. Step 4: Set up your Blog with a Bang 

  5. Step 5: Start adding Content and Publish your Blog

  6. Step 6: Implement this SEO Checklist to get free Traffic from your Niche and dominate it. Keep working on SEO continuously

  7. Step 7: Use Social Media Marketing of your Blog Posts to Build Brand Awareness on Social Media Platforms

  8. Step 8: Invest in Free Social Media marketing with creating Posts and Building Online Communities

  9. Step 9: Monetize your Blog

  10. Step 10: Explore the list of 40+ Blogging Tools to find a better Blogging tool

How to Start a Successful Blog that Makes Money?

Let’s look at a detailed step by step guide on How to start a Blog that ranks in Google

Where to Start a Successful Blog – Choose Blogging Platform

Where to start a thriving blog is a question asked by many. Today, there are many blogging platforms where one can start a successful blog.

A blogging platform or Content Management System (C.M.S) allows you to create and manage content digitally.

Many Content management systems allow you to start a successful blog for free and a few C.M.S are paid platforms.

Comparison of Free Blogging Platforms

We made a quick comparison of the free Blogging Platforms for you to ensure you can choose the right platform for the success of your blog. We have compared them on features like –

  • Price, hosting, Custom domain
  • Content Editor
  • Design and Usability
  • Integration and Support
Free Blogging Platform Comparisons
Famous Blogging Platform Comparisons – Zoom In for Clarity

Use WordPress to Start a successful blog

For Beginners and Businesses, we recommend using WordPress to Start a Successful Blog. WordPress.Org is a famous name in the CMS world, and due to the flexibility WordPress provides, it is one of the best blogging platforms that exist today.

For small and medium businesses, personal branding websites, agency sites, we would strongly recommend WordPress as the turnaround time is very less i.e, you can create a website in less than an Hour!

Choose Your Blogging Niche

Blogging can be fun if you are blogging about something you like to talk about. Your blog should be able to provide an answer to the problem a visitor is hunting for.

You solve People’s problems; you will be appreciated!

How to Choose a Good Blogging Niche

Profitable Blogging Niche that makes Money

To help you give an idea of How to Start a Successful Blog, we have created this list. Go ahead and explore this list. Check if you are interested in any one of them and start your blogging journey now!

  • If you are a geek and like to review Tech devices, then a technology blog might be a good start for you
  • Finance Blogs or Stock Markets are always a hit 
  • Beauty and Fashion is another good Blog niche that makes money
  • Sports, Health, and Lifestyle blogs are favored amongst readers of all age and hence you might obtain a good reader base
  • Gaming Blogs
  • Food Blogs with culinary experiences and recipes is everyone is excited to read
  • News Blogs are instant hits. A news blog can contain Hollywood or Bollywood news, Political Opinions, Regional News, etc
  • Baby Products and Toys are always fun to blog about
  • Home Decor, Clothing, Furniture, Gardening are another blogging niche one can choose
  • Women health, Pregnancy, and Mensuration hygiene Blogs are always informative and have a good reader base
  • Books and Technology Blogs – an All-Time favorite amongst a wide section of society
  • Travel, Flights, Hotels can be a great Blogging niche to make money if crafted with love

You can also choose a micro-niche for Blogging. For example, 

  1. You can have a region-specific blog – eg: a Blog that talks or showcases New Delhi or London or Santorini in Greece
  2. A Personal Blog on Coding or personal Blog Life Lessons
  3. You can have a blog on Refurbished Tech Products
  4. You can create Blog for Leather Products or Fur based Products and target a specific gender or region

Buy Domain Name

What is domain vs. hosting?

Any website contains data stored in the form of files. These files of a website need to be stored in a centralized place so that people across the world can access the website.  

  • Hosting is the server resource where your website files are located or hosted in a centralized place
  • A domain is the address of your blog or website on the Internet in a human-readable form and can be accessed via the browser. This Domain eventually resolves to the server resource that houses the files of the website and directs people to the website. 

Consider this example. 

I have invited my friend to my Studio Apartment that is located in 1020 Broadway, New York for a Dinner party

Thus – My Studio Apartment, located in 1020 Broadway New York is Web Hosting because this place hosts my home.

For my friend to reach my home, I need to provide her an address that she can read – this becomes Domain Name

To have a website live on the internet, you will need both web hosting and a domain name.

For example, in the URL – https://www.digitalmarketinglane.com/5-easy-steps-to-create-wordpress-website-an-ultimate-beginners-guide/

The domain name is: digitalmarketinglane.com

Tip Every website requires a domain name to be found on the internet. You can either buy a new domain name from a domain registrar or buy an expired domain name.

How to choose a good domain name

Buy Cheap Domain

Type the domain name you want to buy and see if it is available. In case available, go ahead and make your first purchase. Click on the button below!

Buy Cheap WordPress Website Hosting

After you have purchased your domain, it’s time now to buy a Web Host so that your blog gets hosted on the internet and is available to all. But before that, let’s try to understand Web hosting in detail.

What is meant by Web hosting?

Web Hosting is a service that provides technology and support to host your website on the Internet. Websites are hosted on cloud servers and are made available as a service to people across the world

Why Web Hosting is Required? 

Website Hosting plays an essential role in ensuring that your website visitors have a great landing and reading experience. Reliable hosting means a reliable site in terms of uptime and security.

As per WordPress, for a strong WordPress website hosting provider, the hosting provider must support

  • PHP 7.3 and above
  • My SQL 
  • HTTPS

If you want your Blog to live on the internet so that people all over the world can find and access your blog, you will have to Host your Blog on Servers

Read our Web Hosting Guide for WordPress website to understand the different hosting terminologies used, Shared vs Managed WordPress Hosting differences, and to select the cheap and best WordPress hosting for you.

How to host your Blog?

For Shared WordPress Hosting, We recommend GreenGeeks Cheap WordPress Hosting because of the eco-friendly and cheap pricing it provides to WordPress users.

Additionally, GreenGeeks offers a FREE Domain for 1 year and FREE SSL and CDN to provide a secure and fast website loading experience to your visitors.

GreenGeeks also has fantastic customer support to help you with technical or WordPress-related queries for your blog.

For Managed WordPress hosting, we recommend Kinsta Managed WordPress Hosting because of the strong and high-security hosting infrastructure it provides in Google Cloud Servers.  Kinsta has a custom MyKinsta Dashboard that offers better user navigation and insights.

Kinsta has a knowledgeable and fantastic Customer support and also gives a Hack Fix Guarantee!

Setting up your WordPress Blog

Once you have purchased GreenGeeks hosting login to your dashboard, the next step is to set up the Blog and get it started. 

The first thing that needs to be done is to install WordPress to your domain. Open your GreenGeeks login and set up WordPress with a couple of easy clicks.

If you have purchased Kinsta Hosting, check out this detailed Kinsta Review Guide we have created to set up your WordPress blog in no time.

After setting up your WordPress and Hosting Accounts, the next step is to add a WordPress theme.

Best Free WordPress Themes for Blogs

We recommend Astra WordPress theme – the fastest WordPress theme

Astra WordPress theme is a powerful WordPress theme that fully integrates with the Elementor page builder and allows you to customize every aspect of your website. Astra is one of the best Elementor themes

  • It gives you detailed layout controls for every single post, page, or custom post type at your site.
  • Astra is packed with predesigned starter sites that save a lot of time when you do not want to create a website from scratch
  • Astra’s dashboard is highly user-friendly optimized for performance and speed

While it is good to use a Free WordPress theme, we do recommend getting a paid version of the WordPress theme as it helps improve rankings on Google SERPs and makes your website super light. A light website means an improved loading speed.

Astra WordPress theme
Astra is a super fast and light WordPress theme that offers a wide array of functionality

For each custom post or content, you can:

  • Set Global defaults
  • Vary the width of your content
  • Disable or Add sidebars
  • Disable your post title, header, and/or footer

Now, when you are done with adding a Theme, it’s Time to get into action by Securing your WordPress Blog and Installing Mandatory WordPress plugins for a good start. 

WordPress offers an array of plugins that add tremendous value to your Blog. Ranging from free Page builders to Security Plugins, SEO, and sitemaps there are many. 

Once you have set up your Blog it is now important to secure your WordPress Blog. 

This WordPress Website Security Guide will help you understand- 

  • Why security is essential for a Website
  • Best WordPress Plugins to improve Website Security

Add Content and Publish your WordPress Blog

Gone are the days when Blogs used to have direct and constant content to spread the information. Today is an era of interactive and compelling content that can engage the visitors and add a personal touch. This is now a must nail activity to start a successful blog

In other words, you have to showcase your specialty and form a level of trust by creating powerful content so that the visitor can link with your content

Creating Valuable Content

A Blog with valuable content drives traffic and more traffic means you will have more avenues to make money by starting a successful blog.

You might want to learn Content marketing and use SEMrush Content Marketing Toolkit to improve your Content marketing efforts.

On a WordPress Blog, Content is created majorly in the form of Post vs Page

Post vs Page in WordPress

Posts are pieces of content that cover more dynamic information while Pages contain information that doesn’t change frequently.

  • For example, while creating a website for the burger chain, I will create an ‘About Page’ that will talk about my business, menu, franchise options, etc
  • For the same burger website, I will create individual posts that talk about the recipe of various burgers, reviews of my customers, etc. 

Check out this comprehensive Guide on Post vs Page in WordPress will give you quick insights into

  1. Comparison of Post vs Page in WordPress
  2. When to Create Post vs Page
  3. Popular Page Builders like Elementor

Now go ahead and add your first blog post. Make it short and simple.

While we are discussing content, it is important to explore Page Builders that can help create awesome landing pages for your Blog and help you increase sales and capture leads

We highly recommend Elementor Page Builder over others since it is very easy to use. A mandatory read for you is this Guide on Elementor Page Builder will help you create Landing pages for Free. 

  • Elementor is free to use. You can easily get a pro version in case you are not satisfied with the free offerings. 

So far, you have done the basics. Now it is time to up the game.

Professional Bloggers should go ahead and implement subsequent steps.

Implement SEO to get Free Traffic

SEO is Search Engine Optimisation i.e you optimize your blog posts and pages as per the user’s search intent so that Google can find your content and suggest it to the user

Starting Steps for SEO

While you start to focus on SEO, start with completing the following 4 steps – 

  1. Generate XML Sitemaps
  2. Connect your Blog with Google Search Console 
  3. Check ROBOTS.txt file
  4. Connect your blog with Google Analytics

After completing the above 4 steps, Start with basic Keyword Research

Cheap SEO Tools

Free SEMrush Academy, SEMrush Knowledge Base, and Moz’s Beginners Guide to SEO  are very good starting points for you to learn SEO best practices for keyword research, backlinks, and technical SEO

Check out Cheap SEO Tools to get SEO tools at less price. SEM Rush or Ahrefs are better options for competitive advantage and larger websites. 

Try using SEMrush by firing a few keywords or domains for analysis and the results will amaze you for sure.

This useful video series below will give you a great start on Keyword Research for your new blog or website. This video uses Semrush for Keyword research.

Contact us if you need any help with the process

Build Brand Awareness on Social Media Platforms

Social media can give a major boost to your Blog’s online presence.

Use the right Social Media Platforms for Online Advertising

Build Online Communities

Check our  FacebookInstagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter channels to see how we have been doing. 

You need not create a new WordPress post every day to post on Social Media channels. You can create Twitter Polls, use Instagram stories, Facebook Quiz, go Facebook Live, Have Q& A session to engage with your audience. This will ceratainly help you to ensure that you are maintaining a Blog that makes money for you

DigitalMarketingLane

You can also share good posts from high-authority websites in your niche. 

Creating Online Communities to Interact and engage with your visitors is an effective social media marketing strategy. You can be at the top of your Social media game by creating online communities. 

This Blog Post from HubSpot will give you a clear understanding of Online Communities and How one can benefit from them.

Join Facebook Groups and Forums to join and get to know what people are doing in Blogging

For the next 6-8 months, keep working on steps 5-8 and see your Traffic Roaring!

Monetize your Blog

A Blog is a wonderful platform that can help you earn dollars. There is no limit to it. 

Once your audience is growing due to SEO + Social media marketing efforts, you should go for Affiliate marketing, Advertising, and Writing Promoted Posts amongst many.

Read more – Monetize your Blog

FAQs on How to Start a Successful Blog

Do I need a business license to start a successful blog?

No, You do not need a license to start a Successful Blog

Do I need to pay to start a blog?

Yes – the minimum you need to buy a Domain and Hosting. However, it is strongly advised to opt for WordPress as CMS and Paid Themes like Astra or GeneratePress due to the SEO benefits it provides.

Is Blogging a good career? 

If you Love Writing or creating good content, Interacting and Communicating with this World, and Sharing your thoughts and ideas, then positively, Blogging is a good career and can be pursued full time. Many have made a mark using Blogging as a career.

Can I Convert my Blog into a Big Company?

Many times, Blogs that started as a hobby were converted into million-dollar companies. One such example is HARO – Help a reporter which started as a Facebook group, and today it connects thousands of journalists and helps them get answers from everyone on the internet

Is blogging easy? 

Blogging is easy. Yes, it is given you have the right guidance to develop and market your Brand and enough passion for keeping running it before it starts generating profit for you.

Closing Thoughts on How to Start a Successful Blog

With this blog post, we have tried to give you a directional start on How to start a Successful Blog and monetize the blog

This post is unique in terms of the coverage it gives to dimensions like SEO, Social Media marketing using free tools and focuses on Creating Online Communities.

Do let us know what you think of this post. In case you have any questions, please contact us and we will get back to you as soon as possible. In case you face any issues with setting up your blog, feel free to connect with us.

If you love this Content, then please share this post amongst your friends and peers and enable them to launch their dream blog today.

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