Ruling the world is awesome.
Well, I wouldn’t really know personally, but I hear it’s pretty awesome. And what better way to rule the world than starting with a blog? Yep, I’m pretty confident that step one to ruling the world is to start a blog.
Blogging is my life. I love every part of it. I love writing about things that interest me, I love reading comments, I love making friends, & I love making money while doing it. Granted, it took a good 4 years before I started to make money, but now I’m here, I love it all the more.
Today I’ve decided to share with you my tips on starting a blog. I started out doing everything wrong, and that is a big reason why it took me 4 years to learn how to make money while blogging. Hopefully my tips will help jump start some of you on your journey! Plus, it’ll just make you that much closer to ruling the world;)
How to Start a Blog (and rule the world)
Step One – Find your passion, then write about it.
This one might be hard for some people. For others, they may know exactly what they’re passionate about. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter what you are passionate about, just find something. A good way to find out what you’re passionate about is to ask yourself questions like, “What do I love to read about?” or “If money was no option, what hobby would I choose?” or “What is something I could talk about for hours?”
Each of these questions should lead you to your passion or close to it. I started my blog when we were living in a small home with a tiny backyard. I did love to read about health and nutrition, but I thought I’d only have a farm in my dreams. I decided to start a blog anyway and write about our journey to healing and eventually, we were able to buy a home with land and begin our farming adventures. Now I realize I could have started gardening and raising a few small animals in that small backyard:)
Step Two – Start with the RIGHT platform & hosting.
PLATFORM – When you start a blog, you’ll need a platform on which to write. The biggest thing I regret is starting to blog on the platform, Blogger. Because it’s so limiting, I decided to switch to WordPress about 6 months ago and boy howdy, was that mess. An expensive mess too. It cost me $2000 just to make the switch because I had to pay somebody to move over all my old blog posts. Yikes.
So, definitely, definitely, start a blog with WordPress. I love WordPress and it’s A MILLION times better than Blogger in so many ways. I have so many more options and ways to make my site amazing. WordPress has two different sites to start a blog, WordPress.org & WordPress.com. I recommend going with WordPress.org. This doesn’t mean your domain will have the ending “.org”, this is just where you will blog, not where you will purchase your domain.
Here’s the difference between the two. WordPress.com is a place to start a blog if you don’t ever plan on making it bigger. It’s simple and great for beginners, and the hosting is free. You also have limitations on how you can advertise on WordPress.com.
WordPress.org is a place to start a blog with big dreams for the future. Everything looks the same, but with WordPress.org, you can make more money & have more options. You do have to pay a separate service for hosting, but in my opinion, that’s not really a big deal, because your hosting fees in the beginning are cheap.
HOSTING – If you were to choose WordPress.com, they do all the hosting, and you don’t have to worry about it. It’s very similar to Blogger in that way. But, if you start a blog on WordPress.org, you’ll need to find a host. This is super easy. I’d recommend Flywheel. They are awesome! They’ll even migrate your site from a blogspot site to WordPress for FREE, if you started your blog on blogspot. BluHost is also another option for hosting. The main thing to know is that no matter who you start with, you can always move to a different host, and it’s not as tough as you think:)
HOSTING PRICES – Your price of hosting will correlate directly with your page views. So, if you have a lot of pageviews each month, your hosting rate will go up. Hosting starts at about $15/month and goes up as your page views increase.
Step Three – Think of a Stellar name (but don’t go crazy)
When thinking of a name for your blog, try to strike a balance between something clever but not too confusing. If you confuse your readers, they’ll leave and never come back. My blog title, Weed ’em & Reap is a bit confusing, and I find that I get a lot of people who think my blog is about growing weed & smokin’ it, haha. Oh well, live n’ learn, right? If you are set on a clever name that might confuse people, just be sure to make your tagline big & bold at the top of your blog and have it explain exactly what you blog about. This will help avoid confusion.
DOMAIN – You can purchase your domain from any other domain purchasing site (like BluHost )and switch to Fly Wheel at anytime as well. Domains cost around $10/year.
Step Four – Learn how to setup your Blog correctly, create stellar images, & grow your traffic.
When I started blogging, I had to wing it. I had to research articles online and figure how how to do all the above. Now, there’s an AMAZING service called, Food Blogger Pro. Now, although it’s called “Food Blogger Pro”, I’d easily call it “Blogger Pro”. Even if you don’t plan on posting one blog post about food, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND joining Food Blogger Pro. They are quite simply amazing. They show you simple organized videos on how to set up your blog correctly, create images, & grow traffic.
In fact, I’d recommend signing up with Food Blogger Pro as the very first step you take. They will even show you videos on how to purchase a domain, how to choose between WordPress.com & WordPress.org, and how to grow your traffic and make money.
I really can’t say enough good things about them. I only wish I would have known about them before I started my blog:)
Plus, the first month is only $1. So, yeah. It’s totally worth it.
Step Five – Start a’ Bloggin’!
This is the best part! This is where you get to create amazing articles and learn & grow as a blogger! Just remember to be yourself and don’t be afraid to say what you think:) Try to make friends with other bloggers and follow people you admire and learn from them.
Have fun writing about things that interest you and have fun creating amazing images that will grab your audience’s attention! (Psst, I use Picmonkey to design my images).
If you’re looking for a designer to design a logo, my absolute favorite is Blend Creations.
Step Six – Start making money…NOW!
Do you know what the FASTEST way to create passive income is? It’s called an e-book. And you’re gonna make one.
An e-book, even on a blog that has low traffic, can be an AMAZING source of passive income. Imagine making money while you sleep, while you’re playing outside with your kids, or while you’re on vacation.
That’s what an e-book does.
How it works is…
You create the document, then set up an automated system on your blog. That’s IT! Your blog will collect payment, then send your customer the e-book AUTOMATICALLY. You do nothing and it costs you nothing to send! Talk about easy income!
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