Even if you are not tech-savvy, now is the time for you to start a blog and make it profitable. With some basic resources and very little guidance, you will be able to create your very own professional or personal blog, which will be published within an hour once you go through this entire article. Make sure you do not rush it as we will show you how to create a blog with an easy step by step guide along with the pictures.
How to Create a Blog with Minimum Investment
Before proceeding further and diving in, let’s first get to know what actually is a blog. A blog is a URL or a type of website that primarily targets and includes the written content once you have selected your topic. The content written in the URL or link or a website is known as the blog posts. Bloggers put the comments section in their blog to make it more interactive with the readers. It also lets them share the reader’s feedback with other like-minded people which further helps you to improve on something you lack.
Significance of Creating a Blog
And the other common question that is stuck inside many people’s minds is that why should you start a blog? One of the common misconceptions about creating and publishing a blog is that you need to be a formal and professional writer if you want to start it. But which is absolutely not true. Instead of that, you should write it informally and in a conversational style that connects you with readers. You need not be an expert on the topic you are writing on. For all those people who are perusing their day job and not happy with their current job full-time involvement, have the right time and opportunity to navigate the tricky world of web development and blogging for full-time. So if you do not want to invest much into a business and want to earn a considerable income, it’s the right time for you to start a blog. Not just because of the income, but there are an array of factors that will signify and persuade you to start your blog journey-
You will get an opportunity to share your expertise, knowledge, and experience. It will enhance your writing skills as well as the thought process. You can grow your network and connections through social media, email, or the comments section mentioned in the blog posts. You can make a full-time passive income if you find the right niche. A high traffic blog makes superlative addition to your resume. You can motivate or inspire the readers through your blog. You can even promote your own service or business through blogging.
Creating blogs is a robust tool to achieve your goals and for your overall growth in your career.
Free Blog vs Self Hosted Blog
Now, as you want to create a blog with minimum investment and start your journey, the first thing to know is whether you should start with a free blog or a self-hosted blog. A blog can be created free of cost or by paying a 100$ fee for a domain name and hosting. However, there are many limitations to creating a blog for free, although there are some platforms such as Wix.com, Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, etc. that facilitate you in proceeding with starting it for free. These platforms are not bad if you want to solidify and test some content or blogs related ideas. There are many reasons due to which it is always recommended not to opt for a free option to create your blog which is listed below-
- Buying a paid domain name will look like ‘YourDomainName.com’. Whereas, if you get your domain name for free, let us say you will get it from wordpress.com, then the domain name will look like ‘YourDomainNama.wordpress.com’. This will make it too lengthy and will lower down the reader’s impact. Even your clients and advertisers are not going to take you seriously with such a domain name.
- Free blogs service will not be featured with efficient monetization handling, which will affect your revenue adversely
- Incorporating the design changes to your blog will become quite difficult
- In the future, shifting from a free blog service to a paid one is not that easy. The entire process might make you lose some of the traffic and revenue.
- You do not have any control over your blog. In case of any unexpected error or anything wrong goes up with your blog, these platforms have the right to suspend your blog even without notifying you. As a result, very few people or we might say no one goes for the option to start a free blog. If you want to start a profitable and successful blog and you are thinking to make decent money through your blogs that you create, buying a self-hosted blog is a requisite. It would require you to pay 100$ which might be burdensome for you. But you do not need to worry as we will guide you on how to create it and start earning from it in less than 60$.
Process of Creating Your Blog
Now that you know the difference between a free vs self-hosted blog, let’s see how you can actually create a blog with minimum investment in 2021. The entire process, from taking a domain name to publishing it, is not difficult, and you will find it very easy and interesting to how to perform the tasks related to setting up your blog. Let’s dig in the steps that are mentioned below-
1. Pick a Blog Name or Topic
The first thing before you go ahead with writing any blog is to choose the topic on which you have decided to write on based on your life experiences, hobbies, and passions, or could be a personal blog that describes you. The only thing that you need to consider is that an ideal blog title is always descriptive.
2. Choosing an appropriate CMS
The CMS is the content management system, where you put all your blogging files in. Some of the CMS examples are Joomla, WordPress, Wix, Typepad, Drupal, etc. Out of all the CMS, WordPress is the most renowned platform for creating and publishing blogs. A survey is conducted, and the results declare that currently, more than 90% of the bloggers are using WordPress.
3. Get a domain name
A domain name is the web address for your blog (for example- www.DomainName.com). Domain name reflects your blog niche, so this step is very crucial. You have to choose an ideal domain name that justifies the topic of your blog. You should always try choosing the ‘.com’ extension rather than going for a ‘.org’ or ‘.info’ or ‘.net’. It is because .com is easier to remember and pronounce among the users. And never go for dash or any number in the domain. Also Read: 14 Ways to Earn Money from Facebook
4. Signing Up with Web Hosting Provider
Whatever CMS you have chosen, selecting the best web hosting provider is imperative. Through web hosting, you are going to host your blog. And hosting your blog means storing all the content of your blog at places like text files, images, videos, CSS files, etc. that makes it accessible for all the users over the internet. There are many web hosting service providers that are available, but ‘Bluehost’ is one of the best providers that give its customers a free domain name for the first year of their web hosting address. Moreover, it is reliable, fast, and streamline your blogging experience much better as compared to the other web hosting providers. It has many other additional features due to which are pre-dominantly used especially by first-time bloggers. Some of its other benefits are that it offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, free SSL certificate, exceptional 24/7 live support customer care and that is the reason it is used by more than 2 lakhs websites all over the world. It also makes it very easy to launch your blog as it offers a one-click install.
5. Select your plan and create a password for your account
Once you have chosen the web hosting provider, the next step is to select the web hosting plan and finish your registration. It is also important to know that web hosting includes an SSL certificate as it will ensure and keep all the visitor’s information safe and secure. We will recommend you to choose the BlueHost ‘Prime’ plan as it comes with a free SSL certificate from ‘Let’s Encrypt‘. It also helps in improving your engagement and facilitate earning a few points with Google. However, there are other plans Basic, Plus, and Choice Plus from which you can choose as per your requirement and budget. Listed below is the screenshot showing all the price plans offered in BlueHost. It is always recommended to go for the long term subscription if you are seriously considering the blog platform as your source of income. Bluehost or opting for any other web hosting plan will be costlier if you go for monthly, quarterly, semi-yearly, or yearly packages. Opting for 36 months package will offer the lowest amount of subscription out of all the plans. You can also call for a refund anytime in case you want to cancel the subscription. Once you have selected the plan as per your requirement, you can complete your registration process and check out using PayPal, internet banking, debit or credit card. After finishing off your registration, the next step is to creating and setting up the password for your account as shown in the picture below- You can select a basic template for your blog temporarily which you can easily change later as per your needs by creating an administrator account once your registration is completed. Not only the template but any theme, plugins, pages, categories, posts, and users can be changed by creating an administrator account. You just need to make sure that that your admin username and password is very strong. And also that you do not write or approve any comment through the admin account and publish any page or post through the admin account. It is always suggested to do perform these tasks with your editor account. You can create an editor account by:
Click Users –> Add New. Enter a username, email, First name & Last name of a new user. The CMS you have chosen, let’s say you have opted for WordPress will suggest a robust password. Either go for this or create your own password. Choose the role as ‘Editor’ from the drop-down. Click Add New User.
Now, your blog is ready, but isn’t it very basic? In order to look it eerie, let’s dive in to know how its customization and designing can be done. Also Read: How to Start Affiliate Marketing Business in India
6. Customize and Design your blog
Customizing and designing includes some parameters that have to be taken care of after creating your blog- a) Manage your blog posts and pages You might want to edit or add some content to your first blog post which you can do once you navigate Dashboard>Posts>Add NewEnter You can add or edit the content from your blog as shown below- You can add various types of content blocks into the editor after clicking on the ‘Add Block’ icon through the Gutenberg editor. Apart from the blocks, you can also add some captivating visual flair for the readers. For this, you need to click on the ‘Featured Image’ tab which would be visible on the right-hand side of the screen, upload and save the image. In order to add a Welcome Page on your website homepage, you need to navigate Pages and click on ‘Add New’, and then add the title of the blog. For adding further pages to your blog, repeat the same process, and hit the tab publish after adding every page. b) Choose a Theme or Layout You need to navigate your website’s dashboard and go to Appearance>Themes, then click on Add New from the top, to install a new theme as shown below: You can check out each theme by clicking on Live Preview to get you an idea of how it will look on your blog. You can use the feature filter option to find more themes such as the Latest themes, Popular themes, featured themes, etc. Once you have got what you are looking for, you can activate it by clicking on the ‘Activate’ button. Once it is activated, it will be installed on your site. c) Install Useful Plugins and Customize your blog Adding and Installing plugins is one of the best ways to enhance your website functionality and generating higher profit revenue each month by increasing the traffic on your website. There are ample free plugins and libraries available on many CMS, including WordPress and other external sites. As we have assumed that you are using WordPress, visit its dashboard, click on Plugins> Add New to install plugins. To know more about the plugins you can click on ‘More Details’ and click on the ‘Install Now’ tab. Once it is installed, you need to click on the ‘Activate’ button. There is a huge list of plugins available, but some of the best plugins are Contact Form 7, Akismet, Yoast SEO, Classic Editor, Smush Image Compression, Jetpack, and WP Super Cache. Supposing that you have chosen to install the Contact Form 7 plugin from WordPress. Once this plugin is activated, you get a new menu in the dashboard which is called ‘Contact’. This plugin will generate a few contact forms you need to access and then click on ‘Contact Form 1’ from the list to edit the new form. Once you do this, the next thing is to ensure that you receive all the emails sent from the form and the mail template is properly functioning. To ensure this, visit the ‘Mail’ tab and change the email address that is the ‘T’ option where it is sent. The next step is to copy the ‘shortcode’ which you could see under the contact form’s name which looks similar to this- contactform-7 id=”25″ title=”Contact form 1″ Then you need to copy this shortcode and paste it once you create a new page which would be named as ‘Contact us’ page. However, you should always remember that customizing your blog is very important. For this, you need to download more than 1 plugin as it will allow you to change your website’s fonts. Once you have downloaded the required plugins for performing the changes, go to the theme customizer. For your reference, one of the best plugins for customization is ‘Easy Google Fonts’. It will enable you to customize your theme and preview it in real-time. The customizer will give you full access to change your site identity, menus, widgets, colors, additional CSS, and even homepage settings of your website. You could also see a new option under Easy Google Fonts, which is the Customizer: Typography. It facilitates changing the fonts and also grants you full command over your website’s exquisite.
7. Publish! Publish! Publish!
Google will rank your blogs as per the traffic on your posts. To attain a good ranking, you need to write and publish at least 2 to 3 blogs every week. If you write useful posts with original ideas, it will attract more readers and increase traffic. Your first blog post should not be tedious or not even terse. It should be between 500 to 1000 words depending upon the topic you choose. To publish your blog, go to ‘Posts’ and click on ‘Add New’ to add your first blog. Then click on the ‘Add Title’ section and paste your post in the text area. Then simply click on the ‘Publish’ button and it will be published. Congratulations!
8. Promote Your Blog
Promoting your first blog is imperative because it is your first blog. Readers would have to know about it until they read it. You would need some time to spend it, especially when it is the first time you have created a blog. Once you are done with the customization and your blog is published, your blog is ready to be shared on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. You could also search for a plugin by putting keywords ‘Social Share’ in the plugin search page and download the most relevant one that strikes your fancy and is as per your needs. You can also go for email marketing which will ensure whether your current readers are coming back or not. Collecting the readers’ email addresses and notifying all of them as soon as you post your new blog. Recommended: How to Make Money Blogging in 2020 (10 Legit Ways) We hope that this article has cleared all your questions and doubts regarding how to create a blog with minimum investment. You can email us at the below mentioned email id in case you get stuck or for any other doubts related to creating or publishing your blog post. Now you are all set to own and create your blog post. What are you waiting for? Just go for it!
