Have you ever wondered how to start a blog? Would it be easy? What would you need to consider? What are the best resources for getting started?

I have wondered about what it would take to start a blog for years. For years, I wanted to start a blog, but I never knew what I would write about or how much of a difference it would make in the world.

like my corporate job enough, but I still dreamed of something more. Somewhere I could contribute more to the world and maybe, just maybe start to monetize.

Honestly, I’ve always dreamed of something more. Of a lifestyle where I could have more free time at home. Maybe go down to part-time at work and use my creative side while also bringing more direct benefits to the world than what I feel I can give at my corporate job.

Research

I finally decided to start doing a little research into it during the summer of 2020. One of my high school friends had started a blog a few years ago and was hosting a little webinar with another blogger.

I decided to ask my husband for a few hours to myself downstairs without our daughter clinging to me to hear what it was all about.

There was so much more to starting a blog than I thought.

I was so grateful to them for sharing their knowledge. At the same time, it was completely overwhelming.

I put it aside and decided for the moment to just focus on writing my book.

But the blogging idea tugged constantly at the back of my mind. Finally, I decided to start doing more research to see if it was less overwhelming.

I found the free book and website “The Blog Starter”. This website laid out the way to start a blog in 7 easy steps.

I downloaded the e-book and it walked you right through how to set up the blog, which is fairly simple.

However, it doesn’t get into a lot of the details. Being a Questioner, I had to set out to learn more about each step.

The Blog Starter only recommends one hosting service – Bluehost. I wondered what else was out there and what other options are.

I went back to my notes from the original webinar I had taken on how to start a blog and found other options. Starting this research is where I learned the most about different blogging options.

Here are the items we’ll go over below in more detail since these are the ones that gave me the most trouble:

• Niche
• Website Builder Options
• Hosting Options
• SEO

How to Start a Blog

Finding a Niche

This is the step that probably gave me the most trouble. Every site I looked at recommends finding a small niche to focus on because that is where it is easier to gain an audience and monetize.

The trouble is, I wanted to touch on several topics. Some of the topics overlap a little bit, but others just didn’t.

I struggled with this for ages. Finally, I had discovered the “lifestyle” blog option. This option will be harder to monetize, but it did leave me feeling like I had the flexibility I wanted to write on the various topics that were close to me.

Considering Your Options

• Many of the websites I researched stated to start considering your hobbies as a place to start a blog. Here are some options to consider:
  • Traveling
  • Cooking
  • Crafts
  • Woodworking
  • Kayaking
• Consider items that you know a lot about and could be considered an “expert” in:
  • Finance
  • Budgeting
  • Fitness
  • Parenting
  • Pets

There are a ton of options and trying to pick one can be a bit overwhelming. This article from Create and Go goes into way more detail on picking your nice and is very helpful in narrowing your topic down.

Website Builder Options

The internet is full of options to use to build your website. Some are free, others are paid.

I’m a very money conscious person, so initially, I had planned on not spending a dime on creating my blog. I had the motto: Why pay for something when you can get the same service for free?

Want the answer? Because you can’t get the same service for free.

Upon doing more research, I found a ton of cons relating to using free services for your blog, whether it be with the website builder or the hosting service.

It was enough to make me nervous to go that route.

Here are some of the cons of a free service:

• Don’t have control over the ads on the website & can’t choose to run your own
• Not owning your domain name
• Less professional look to the website
• Slower speed
• Limited design options
• More difficult to monetize

Most of these cons came from my favorite source on how to start a blog, Create and Go.

Here are the Pros and Cons of Several Website Builder Options

Pros & Cons: Wix

Pros

• Easy to use with a drag & drop builder
• No code writing
• Nice app market
• Has a backup feature
• Has podcasting feature

Cons

• Pay for your domain
• No live support
• Recommended only for small sites
• The free option is slow and ad-supported

Pros & Cons: Squarespace

Pros

• Good support with live chat
• Easy domain transfer
• More structured and harder to mess up if you are a newbie
• Changes are published live

Cons

• Has a more restrictive design system
• App system is not as convenient as other options
• Can’t as easily edit items for SEO maximization

Pros & Cons: WordPress

Pros

• Higher ability to control the look of the website
• A large variety of templates and plug-ins
• Can have a storefront
• You are in full ownership of your website

Cons

• Tricky to install yourself, so get a hosting site that includes it
• Support is volunteer-based forums

If you want to read more details, here are all the sites I reviewed to gather the list of pros and cons:

https://www.websitetooltester.com/en/reviews/wix-review/

https://www.websitetooltester.com/en/website-with-wordpress/

https://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/wordpress/org-review/

https://www.wpbeginner.com/opinion/wix-vs-wordpress-which-one-is-better-pros-and-cons/

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/wordpresscom

https://www.capterra.com/content-management-software/compare/143461-131687/Squarespace-vs-WordPress

Hosting Options

Pros & Cons: Bluehost

Pros

• Free domain
• Easy to install WordPress
• More storage space
• Cheaper signup fee

Cons

• Monthly backups only

Pros & Cons: Lyrical Host

Pros

• Free daily backups
• Includes good privacy and malware services in the plan options
• Had better customer service reviews than Bluehost
• Easy to install WordPress
• Free migration from another hosting service

Cons

• Pay for domain
• Limits bandwidth on cheaper plans

Pros & Cons: Siteground

Pros

• Good support
• Backup on-demand service
• Unlimited email accounts
• Fast speed

Cons

• More expensive
• Less storage space
• Pay for domain
• More expensive

If you want to read more details, here are all the sites I reviewed to gather the list of pros and cons:

https://www.websitetooltester.com/en/blog/siteground-vs-bluehost/

What in the World is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In layman’s terms, it is the keywords used to get your website to show up when someone searches a keyword in a search engine.

If you properly put in keywords about your topic, the more likely it is to show up in a search engine and bring traffic to your website.

Having good SEO will increase your results of gaining organic traffic to your website.

Each search engine has an algorithm that decides how it will find different content. This means that depending on the way you want to gain traffic; you may need to slightly alter your keyword optimization.

For blogs, Pinterest is one of the best ways to gain traffic. That being said, being optimized for Google SEO can eventually bring you more regular traffic.

The main takeaway I have for SEO is to research your keywords and then make sure you insert them into your article.

Research Keywords

Here are the ways I have been researching keywords:

• Start typing the topic into Google and see what shows up in the drop-down
• Start typing the topic into Pinterest and see what shows up in the drop-down
• Use a keyword research tool: https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/
  • This keyword tool is free for a certain number of searches a day and then will prevent you from seeing results

The benefits of using a tool like this are that it can tell you how much traffic a keyword gets, the competition on each keyword, and similar keywords

Placing Keywords

Keyword placement throughout your article is also important.

For starters, include your keyword in your article Header.

You should place the keyword you are writing about within the first sentence of your article and possibly spread it throughout your article where applicable, but do not add it in unnecessarily.

Pictures on your website is another place keywords can be added. Include a good description as the picture file name when you upload it to your website.

You can also add in Alt text and Descriptions to the pictures on your website. This is another good spot to describe the picture and how it relates to your article.

A final location to place the keywords is in the slug on your website. For example, in the image below, my keyword of “Preparing your home for winter” is included right in my URL.

If you want to learn even more about SEO, here is a helpful guide I found on the topic.

Links

One other item that search engines tend to look for are links within your article.

Specifically, they like to know that you have done your research on the topics and have linked back to reliable sources, so include links back to experts where you can, but do not throw useless links in where you don’t need them.

Additionally, they also like it if you can link back to other articles within your website where you may have covered something in more detail.

Get Started on Your Blog

This is where the fun starts! Go out there and get creative on your blog. As a refresher, here are a couple of steps to get started on your blog:

• Select your Niche
• Choose your Website Design Service
• Choose your Hosting Site
• Start on Keyword Research

Then get writing! Best of luck with your blogging endeavors.

What are some things you struggled with when as you started blogging? Let me know in the comments below.