Learn how to start a blog in 2024, step-by-step. I'll show you the same process that I've used to start many blogs of my own.
Use my proven tech stack that is scalable and performs under pressure.
Learn how to do research and select a blogging niche for your site.
The process of actually setting up and building a blog.
Learn what pages to set up, and how, once you have built and launched a blog.
Have you ever wanted to build a blog but don’t know how to get it off the ground? Then you’ve come to the right place.
If you’re like most potential bloggers, you’re probably overwhelmed with just how many factors go into launching one.
But let me tell you that it’s actually not as hard as you might think it is. With a little bit of patience and an open mind, you, too, can learn how to start a blog.
I’ve been starting blogs and authority websites for over a decade. I’m now sharing the exact process that I’ve personally used – time and time again – to do so.
When it comes down to it, starting a successful blog only involves eight simple steps:
This is the same exact method that I use on every authority site in my own portfolio. I have used it repeatedly to achieve results like this:
As you can see, the process works—and it works well. And by the end of the guide, you’ll have a fully functioning blog that you can take to the next level.
Each step can be as simple or as difficult as you want it to be, as you’ll learn with time. My suggestion is to take it slow and enjoy the process.
So now let’s jump into what you came here for – how to start a blog.
The actual process of building a blog is not that hard to do. In fact, I’d argue that there’s no better time than now to build one because of just how easy it really is.
I’ve built a portfolio of websites from nothing to millions of unique users per month – with nothing but my own skill set, a handful of blogging platforms and tools, and occasional outsourcing to third-party contractors.
You, too, can start a blog with very little investment and achieve incredible results. But… the trick is to build on the right blogging platform, backed by the right tools – from day one.
There are many different blogging platforms to choose from, both free and paid. Depending on whether you choose a free or paid option depends on what you’ll need to set it up.
Typically, if you’re using a free blogging platform like LinkedIn or Medium, all you have to do is sign up and start creating right away.
The ease of use sounds good, but I HIGHLY suggest avoiding the free options, as they have more downsides than upsides.
For example, you don’t own the platform, you can’t customize the design of your blog, and you usually can’t monetize your writing once you write it.
I suggest disregarding all the blogging platforms you see and jumping straight to WordPress, the world’s most popular content management system (CMS).
Over 40% of the world’s websites are built using WordPress. As a result, there are many tools, resources, and developers that make building a blog incredibly simple.
When building on WordPress, you need just four things to start your blog:
Don’t worry, I’ll show you which tools to select and how to set them up, every step of the way.
Tip: We’ve built a free course on how to use WordPress, step-by-step. If you get stuck along the way, check that out to clear up the confusion.
I’ve spent the past ten years building blogs and websites full-time.
During that time, I’ve had the opportunity to try almost every popular content management system, host, theme, plugin, and digital marketing tool on the market.
Through a TON of trial and error, I’ve assembled a list of items to power my blog that has proven to be reliable, secure, and scalable, yet still easy to use.
This is the same list of items that I use on almost every website I run, including bloggingtips.com. I trust them with my sites and use them every day.
Unlike the large majority of other people who sell blogging-related courses online, I am not just promoting the tools that give me the highest commissions.
I’m also not showing you the cheapest way to build a blog, either (though I do promise that it will still be affordable – with budget options for each recommendation I provide).
However…
… I am showing you the easiest, quickest, and most scalable way to build a blog quickly and efficiently.
It’s important to remember that we’re building a blog the right way from day one. This will save you a lot of wasted time and headaches in the future, including those I’ve personally experienced.
If you’re looking for the easiest way to start a blog, sign up for WP Engine hosting.
WP Engine is a type of host known as a “managed host”, a type of hosting that is specifically optimized for WordPress sites to make them very fast and secure.
These hosting plans come standard with features like daily backups, free SSL certificates, threat detection, and staging/development/production environments.
WP Engine is a little bit more expensive than shared hosts like Bluehost (my budget pick below), but offers a FAR superior experience.
In fact, it is is so simple to use that you really don’t even need to know much about technology to use it. I’ve written about this in detail in my WP Engine review.
You simply click a couple of buttons and WordPress goes live. From there, WP Engine handles the complicated tech stuff like performance, security, and keeping your site live.
The best part about paying a little extra for hosting is that when you do need help, they have a great support team to help you out. They’ll literally help you fix your site if you break it.
I suggest selecting the “Essential” plan. It comes with everything you’ll need. You can always upgrade later if necessary.
For those looking for the cheapest way to start a blog, sign up for Bluehost.
Bluehost is what is known as a “shared host” which means that your blog will share resources with a bunch of other websites, making it very cheap to get.
For example, you can sign up for a shared hosting plan for $2.95/mo. For slightly more, you can upgrade your resources to allow for more websites and additional storage:
If you’re on a budget, you can get a blog off the ground with Bluehost. However, I encourage you to think twice before you do.
Why I Choose WP Engine Over Bluehost
Many bloggers build on Bluehost’s shared hosting because it is super cheap, but they don’t realize that this actually comes at the cost of performance, reliability, and ease of use.
I made this mistake when I first started blogging. I signed up for the cheapest options possible, and ended up spending a lot longer trying to figure out how it all worked.
I then spent even longer trying to fix things when they went wrong (which happens a lot while blogging).
A few key differences to think about:
In short, Bluehost’s shared hosting is much more difficult and complicated to use than a managed host like WP Engine.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with choosing a Bluehost shared hosting plan, but I would highly recommend trying to find room in your budget and allocate a little more for higher-quality hosting from the start.
If you choose Bluehost and want to migrate to WP Engine later, that’s super simply to do with their free website migration tool and service.
Regardless of which host you choose, the goal is to simply choose one and keep making progress.
Once you sign up for a hosting account, you’ll need to install WordPress on the account in order to make our blog actually function.
Remember, WordPress is the content management system that allows us to manage our content, site design, and files. Once installed, we will be able to design our blog and start creating content.
Both hosting services make this process very simple, but actually doing so is a slightly different process depending on which host you choose.
Installing WordPress on WP Engine is as simple as a few button clicks.
First, click the “Add site” button within your customer dashboard.
Decide who will own the site. Unless you’re building a site for somebody else that you plan to transfer to them later, select the “This site is mine” option.
From there, start with a blank site. This will install WordPress on a blank site that you can build your blog on.
The process will take roughly 5-10 minutes to complete. Once the site is built, you’ll receive a notification via email that the site is ready.
The email will include the site URL, the login details, and a link that allows you to set a fresh password for the site.
That is literally all that you have to do to launch WordPress on WP Engine.
Installing WordPress on Bluehost is also a pretty streamlined process.
The first thing you’ll want to do is to log into your Bluehost account and click the “Hosting” tab.
From there, select the “Add Site” button. This will allow you to initiate a WordPress addition to the account.
Select “Install WordPress” and then hit the “Continue” button.
Choose the site title.
This can be anything, but I prefer to have the title be descriptive so that I know exactly which site is which within my account.
Once named, select the “Continue” button.
From there, you will need to connect a domain. We haven’t named our blog yet, so I suggest using a temporary domain.
Once we go through the process of naming the blog in the next step, we’ll add that later. Right now, however, a temporary domain that we can build on will allow us to get the blog live.
The system will take a few minutes to install WordPress. Give it 5-10 minutes for it to finish the process.
Once installed, you will see an intermodal box pop up that gives a link to the site.
That’s it. You’ve successfully installed WordPress and you’re ready to move onto the next step – selecting a niche and naming the blog.
Once you install WordPress on your host, there is nothing left to do at this point.
While I do suggest familiarizing yourself with your host’s dashboard and the features it offers, at this point, we won’t need to do anything with the host until later when we register a domain.
Now that we’ve installed WordPress, we just need to install a theme – the part of the blog that makes things look nice.
There are tons of different WordPress themes that you can use. If you start looking around, you’ll notice that there is a WordPress theme for pretty much every use case in existence.
Do not be fooled. Some themes are far better than others.
That’s why I highly recommend GeneratePress Premium, the same theme and framework that nearly every site I own is built on.
First, GeneratePress Premium offers an extensive site library of premade themes. There’s a very wide variety of themes available. If you have a design in mind, they probably have it.
But these themes not only look great. They’re also very easy to modify and customize as well.
The block-themed design means that you can simply click on most elements and modify them individually without breaking things.
But the design doesn’t come at the cost of performance. GeneratePress is designed for speed and efficiency, improving both user experience and SEO with high PageSpeed scores.
In fact, this is one of the only themes I’ve ever used that has allowed me to get nearly perfect Pagespeed Insights scores.
When stacked with WP Engine hosting, WP Rocket for performance, and Imagify for image compress, I am able to get nearly perfect scores across every one of the websites in my portfolio.
GenatePress is also compatible with most of the popular plugins and integrations that you’ll find online. I have almost never run into compatibility issues while using the theme.
Lastly, the company offers incredibly fast and responsive support if there is an issue. The team provides quick solutions, backed by detailed documentation.
I subscribe to the Premium service, so I almost always receive replies from support within the same day.
It’s not uncommon for me to submit a support ticket, and then have my issue resolved less than 30 minutes later.
In short, you can build on whatever theme you want. But if you want more scalability and fewer headaches, skip the other themes and choose GeneratePress.
How to Install GeneratePress
Installing GeneratePress is simple and takes no more than a few steps to complete.
First, subscribe to GeneratePress Premium and unlock the advanced features that make building a blog easy – like the theme builder, Site Library, additional styling controls, and more.
Once subscribed, log into your account and navigate to the “Downloads” section.
You should see two downloads—the GeneratePress theme and the GP Premium plugin. You’ll need them both, as the two work together.
The theme is the framework that makes everything work as it should, and the plugin unlocks the extra Premium features that will make our job easier.
Keep this tab open, because we’ll need to first install the free GeneratePress theme before we can move on.
Now, head back to your WordPress install and log into the Dashboard.
First, install and activate the GeneratePress theme.
You can do this by navigating to “Appearance > Themes” in the left hand menu. Then in the “Search Themes” box, type “generatepress”.
Install the theme and activate it. You will have the base theme on the site.
Next, we need to head back to the GeneratePress account tab that we kept open. Download the Premium plugin and copy the license key.
Now, head back to your WordPress dashboard and select “Plugins > Add New Plugin” from the lefthand menu.
Upload and activate the GP Premium plugin.
Once that is activated, paste your license key into the plugin settings in WordPress at “Appearance > GeneratePress > License Key”.
Once complete, you should see a green notification that indicates “Receiving premium updates”. Once you see that, you’re good to go and you can start building your blog.
Once WordPress and GeneratePress are installed on your host, we’ll need to activate the features that come with Premium, which are referred to as “Modules”.
To do so, simply navigate to “Appearance > GeneratePress” within the WordPress Dashboard – the same place where you entered your license key above.
Activate the “Copyright,” “Disable Elements,” “Elements,” “Site Library,” and “Spacing” Modules.
You don’t need to worry about what these do at this point, but you will need them later once you actually install a theme and start configuring it.
Once that is done, you can proceed to the second most important step in starting a blog: selecting a niche and a name.
Once your blog is live, you should select a niche and a blog name.
The niche will guide the direction of your blog, and the name will guide the brand. Both elements will work together to bring your authority site to life.
A blog niche is the central theme and main focus on a blog. This theme guides the overall direction of the blog and aligns with what type of content that you write about and cover.
Typically, blogs have very engaged and specific audiences in which readers are very passionate about the niche.
For example, a niche website that writes about electric vehicles will have a large audience of people who either own, or are just interested in, electric vehicles.
Or, in the case of BloggingTips, blogging. When you come to the website’s homepage, it is immediately clear which niche we’ve chosen to focus on:
We take that one step further and incorporate that theme directly into our name, providing very little confusion about what we offer readers (more about that in a bit).
As you can see, each blog has a very specific focus, and it’s not hard to imagine why people might choose to follow the expert advice from these blogs.
Let me first start by saying that choosing a blog niche is not something that you should rush through. Taking time to think through your niche initially will save you headaches in the future.
First, without a clear niche, content can become disjointed and unfocused, confusing readers and making it hard to build a loyal audience.
Next, without a niche, it’s harder to rank in search engines, as your blog lacks topical authority and clear keywords to target.
It is also hard to demonstrate E-E-A-T, a huge factor in ranking content on Google (and growing more important every day).
Lastly, monetizing a blog is more challenging when the audience is not well-defined. Advertisers and affiliates prefer to invest in blogs with a targeted, engaged audience.
I’ve made this mistake far too many times in the past and have spread myself too thin in the process.
It’s MUCH easier to define the niche and direction from the start than it is to try to focus the blog, delete unrelated content, and do the extra work later.
How to Identify & Choose a Blog Niche
Selecting a blog niche may seem overwhelming, but it really just comes down to a handful of steps:
Again, take your time and don’t rush the process. Take your time with each step and really think through each one as you go.
Choose a niche that aligns with your passions or professional skills. This makes it easier to sustain your interest over time and provide valuable insights to your readers.
Your expertise and passion for a niche will show in your writing. If you don’t really understand a niche, you probably shouldn’t be trying to create a blog in that niche.
Trust me, I’ve made this mistake before. I once owned a website in the beauty niche – one that I know absolutely nothing about.
That website fell flat on its face because I had no idea what I was talking about and no idea how to engage with the audience.
I am know a lot about digital marketing and I’m also passionate about helping others start an online business, you can probably tell in my writing that I know what I’m doing.
Despite what other “experts” will tell you, there’s no such thing as quick money online. You’ll have to prove yourself as an expert, put in the work, and the rewards will come with time.
Next, it is important to select an evergreen niche that will be around in the future.
Explore if there is a readership for your chosen topic. Use tools like Google Trends or social media platforms to gauge interest levels and see what related topics people are discussing.
Look at other blogs in your potential niche. Identify what they do well and where there might be gaps you can fill. This can also help you find a unique angle for your blog.
Select a niche that you can see yourself writing about for years to come and that has the potential for ongoing relevance. Avoid overly trendy topics that might not have staying power.
Align your niche with the objectives you have for your blog. If it’s a business blog, your niche should be closely related to your products or services to attract the right audience.
Once you have a niche, you’ll then need a name. I suggest not rushing this part of the process either.
Select a name that matches the aesthetic of your blog and sets the desired mood for readers, ensuring it reflects the type of content you plan to publish.
Consider who your readers are and how they might change over time. Choose a name that will continue to appeal to your audience as it evolves.
Think about what you want to communicate through your blog both now and in the future. Ensure the name remains relevant as your content and brand evolve.
Choose a name that is flexible enough to accommodate potential future expansion of your blog’s topics without becoming restrictive or misleading.
List relevant keywords that capture the essence of your niche. Consider your blog’s main topics, your target audience, and the unique angle you offer. Words that evoke emotions or vivid images can be particularly powerful.
Analyze prominent blogs in your industry to understand branding strategies and audience preferences. Ensure your chosen name isn’t already in use, and check domain availability.
Utilize blog name generators with your keywords to spark ideas and help in brainstorming potential names.
Opt for a name that is easy to remember, pronounce, and spell. This increases the likelihood that readers will recall your blog and return to it. Avoid using jargon unless it’s common within your target audience.
Play with word combinations, use puns, alliterations, or metaphors to come up with something unique and catchy. This can set you apart from competitors and make your blog name stick in readers’ minds.
Once you have a few potential names, check if the corresponding domain names are available. Also, look up the availability of these names on social media platforms. This consistency across platforms helps in building a strong, recognizable brand.
Make sure your chosen blog name isn’t trademarked or in use by another business in your sector. This can prevent legal issues down the road.
Link the blog name to your overall brand, using similar fonts, colors, and styles to maintain brand identity across all platforms.
Opt for a name that is easy to say, spell, and remember to prevent confusion and enhance recall among readers.
These steps aim to ensure that the blog name not only reflects the blog’s purpose and niche but also has the flexibility to grow with the brand and remain appealing and relevant to the audience over time.
Share your top choices with friends, family, or potential readers. Getting external feedback can help you understand how your blog name might be perceived and which options have the most appeal.
Once you have a niche and a blog name, the next step is to register a domain.
By this point, you should have done all the research you need, so this should be as simple as visiting Namecheap and registering a domain.
This is a simple process. You simply need to type your desired domain into the search box and you’ll see whether or not the domain is taken.
If it is, keep searching until you find one that you like and that is not taken.
Like I’ve mentioned so many times above, don’t rush the process. You can always change the domain in the future, but it’s a lot easier to find one you love at this point than to change it later.
Next up comes the design of the blog. We’ll make this quick and efficient by installing one of the pre-made themes from the GeneratePress Premium site library.
To install a theme, head to “Appearance > GeneratePress” in the WordPress dashboard. Then scroll down to “Modules”.
Within the “Site Library” module, you’ll see an option to open the site library. Select this.
An index of the site library will pop up. This should be nearly identical to the site library on the GeneratePress website.
Tip: If you don’t know which option you’d like to install yet, I suggest heading back to the Site Library on the company’s website to preview the different options.
It is a lot easier to preview them there than it is within the installer.
Select the option that you’d like to install and it should open in a new window, with an option to install it.
Select the “Get Started” button, which will then prompt you for what you want to import:
I usually import both the theme options and the demo content. This sets up the entire site that you can later modify. I’d rather delete the extra content that I don’t need than have to add it in later.
Start the import. This should take around 3-5 minutes to complete. Once it does, simply select the “Visit Site” button and you’ll see your live site.
Now that your site is imported, you can modify it however you want.
I have a few additional steps that I’ll link to in the homework below, but by all rights, congratulations, you now have a fully functioning WordPress blog that you’re free to build on.
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