I’ve been blogging for awhile now and it’s been a pretty fun experience for me so far. This hobby has allowed me to meet interesting people online which have continued into real friendships offline and encourage me to research all kinds of interesting financial topics that I would have otherwise not learn about. It also helps me flush out my ideas and shower-thoughts further by spelling them out into words. Some people have asked me how to go about creating their own piece of real estate on the internet so today I thought I’d share how to start a blog.
Reasons you may want to start a blog:
- To keep yourself accountable
- To write and learn about something you feel passionate about because you enjoy it
- To keep a record of your goals and accomplishment
- To compliment your career or other aspects of life
- To earn some side income
- To express yourself online using words, pictures, or video (ie: vlog)
My reasons for blogging today are the same as when I started 5 years ago; to track my progress to become financially independent and share my journey for anyone who wants to read it. So far it’s been a pretty enjoyable experience. 🙂
There are many ways to start a blog. If you just want to blog about your cat for your family and friends to see then you can use a service such as tumblr.com, weebly.com, blogspot.com, or wordpress.com. You’ve probably seen some of these sites around online. 🙂 These kinds of blogs take a few minutes to set up and are pretty straight forward. But if you want your blog to have a wider appeal, own your domain name, and have more customization options then you probably want to create a self hosted blog. This means it won’t be free, but you get to have complete control and ownership of the files on your blog, and instead of having a website like www.YourBlogName.blogspot.com, you will actually have www.YourBlogName.com, or whatever name you choose. This can be a little tricky to set up so let’s go over some key details.
Creating a Self Hosted Blog
Step 1: Register your domain name. There are many registrars out there, but hosting companies like bluehost.com will allow you to register a website as well as host all your site’s contents with them. I’m going to use Bluehost as an example. My blog is being hosted on their servers. There are a few different pricing options but it appears they currently have a deal going on right now.
After signing up for an account at Bluehost it’s time to register a domain name, which is your website’s url. You can either choose a new domain name, or transfer over an existing one if you already have one registered elsewhere. When creating your domain name I would try to keep it easy to remember, and not too long, and don’t add dashes “-” or other weird symbols. Also try to keep the name relevant to your blog’s purpose. For example if you enjoy blogging about vegan recipes or writing restaurant reviews you could try to register the domain: myveganfoodblog.com. After this step you will be taken to your site’s cpanel page. 
Step 2: Install a website builder. This allows you to manage your blog in a user friendly environment where the interface is easy to understand and you don’t have to know any HTML or CSS to make your blog look appealing. 🙂 I recommend WordPress just because it seems like everyone and their dog are using this platform. On your cpanel, click on Install WordPress. Then click the “Start” button for a brand new installation.
Make sure to manually fill in the spaces to configure your WordPress install. Create an easy to remember “Admin Username” for yourself. It doesn’t have to be an email address. But don’t use “Admin” or “Administrator.” And make up a strong “Admin Password,” including both letters and numbers for extra security.
Then click on “Install Now” and wait for WordPress to install about 50 megabytes of data. It shouldn’t take long.
Step 3: Once WordPress is installed you can go to your website and log in through the back end. To do this, start off by typing in your blog or site’s domain/url into your browser, and add /wp-admin at the end, eg: www.yourblogname.com/wp-admin. Enter the username and password you created in the previous step. Once logged in you will be taken to the WordPress dashboard.
Step 4: You are now ready to start blogging away. 😀 To create new posts just go to “New” and then “Post” on the top menu.
To change your blog’s theme to something more to your liking you can go to “Appearance” and then “Themes” to choose from many different free layouts or premium ones. By playing around with the settings in the Dashboard and third party plugins that can be installed, you can make your blog look and feel as unique as you want.
Blogs can be serious business or just for fun. They can be private where only a select number of people can visit, or public to the entire world. You can blog using your real identity or write anonymously like me. There’s no special requirement to becoming a blogger, other than you enjoy doing it. 🙂
Disclaimer: This post contains an affiliate link.
I’m thinking of swapping over to self-hosted and using WP so thanks for the information. I had a few concerns that probably could have been resolved with a little bit of Googling but this actually cleared up some info for me. Thanks.
The good thing is you’ve already been blogging for awhile so hopefully the transition will go smoothly. I think WP hits a good balance between customization and user friendliness. Of course there are tons of other platforms as well.
It is hard to make money unless you have a lot of affiliated links and products. Just by “hitting” it $6/1000 page view from google adsense. barely making even. 😛 but starting a blog for fun is great. $36/yr, cool beans!
Yeah, making money from a blog can be difficult. That’s why I’m just doing this as a hobby. I didn’t make any money during first 2 years of this blog. But in 2013 I broke even with some advertising income so since then my blog is basically paying for itself. I’ll probably make a small profit for this year, like a couple hundred dollars maybe, but it’s nothing to write home about. Making money online isn’t really my area of specialty heh.
You’re just a few weeks late for me! I’ve been reading your blog a long time now and actually decided to do something similar and include my travel stories and life stuff. I could have given you the affliate $ if you were just a week and a bit sooner!
Any tips on content creation is appreciated! Maybe a general outline of your posting process as your next blogging related post if you continue them?
Your new blog looks great. 🙂 I don’t really know much about content creation or blogging in general. My process is simply post a couple times a week about what’s on my mind. I try to just pace myself, don’t burn out, make it fun, and keep at it. I might write more blog related articles in the future to change things up again.
Thanks for this detailed information. I have been thinking to start my own blog in the future too.
Nice. I’ve learned so much already just by visiting other people’s blogs over the years.
Hey Liquid – I really like your blog – I find it easy to look at and therefore read. I actually have a blog myself on a completely unrelated topic, but don’t know how to do cool things like set up a blogroll, or tabs at the top like you have. Any suggestions on how to learn how to do that stuff. (my blog was built on wordpress). Thanks.
Hi Chris, congrats on creating your blog. The tabs I have at the top are just menu short-cuts to different pages I’ve created.
To do this first you need to create some pages. My blogroll page for example, is a page. In your WordPress Dashboard look at the left side of the screen and select Pages -> Add New to create a new page. You can publish as many pages as you like. Once your pages are created you’ll need to add them to a menu (tabs at the top) so people can easily find those pages when visiting your site.
To add the tabs, go back to the Dashboard and once again on the left side you can choose Appearance -> Menus. Then simply select any pages or posts you’ve published, and click “Add to Menu.” Good luck.
In my experience its much easier to start a blog than stick to it, I tried one for about 6 months but eventually got bored/lazy and gave up on it.
Yes, it can be difficult to stick with a schedule. I think most blogs don’t last for longer than a year. Most of them just become abandoned. Finding something you’re interested in to consistently write about rarely happens.
Nice and simple guide to starting a blog. It can be very difficult for some to get started, but this guide is good. I’m glad you told people to go self-hosted. There are so many opportunities with a self-hosted blog.
Agreed, for serious bloggers self hosted is the better way to go. 🙂