[Updated] How To Start A Blog In 2021 From Scratch [Step By Step Guide]

13 min readApr 23, 2020

Do you want to start a blog in 2021?

Great Decision,

In these tough times when everyone starting some new habits, learning new skills or even starting exploring some side income to live an easy life, your decision to start a blog shows you know the need of the hour.

Starting a blog is not complicated at all, but all you need some guidance, which helps you to start a blog in 2021.

Here are the seven easy steps to start your profitable blog without making a mistake and some bonus tips which help you to scale your new branded blog.

Let’s dive into it,

Step 1: Choose a Niche for your blog
Step 2: Choose a good domain for your blog
Step 3: Find a good WebHosting Provider and Domain
Step 4: Set up your Wordpress blog
Step 5: Choose an attention-grabbing theme for your blog
Step 6: Some Essential plugin for your blog.
Step 7: Write and publish your blog
Bonus: Some ways to make money from your blogs.

Before starting the full process for making a profitable blog,

Maybe some of you are thinking, why you should start a blog in 2021?

I always prefer to say that 2021 is the golden arena for starting a blog and grow it,

Because blogging is becoming tough day by day and if you started today, so you have more opportunities/chances, then others who will start later than you.

There are so many benefits if you start your blog and grow it, Here some Unforgettable Benefits of blogging which helps you :

Express Yourself — Blogging is the platform that allows you to express yourself by writing the content for your audience.
You can help others and gain fans — You can help the readers by writing the content on your blog, and by this, they will become your true fans which always there for your support.
Make Money Online — Yes, You can make money from your blog by doing Affiliate Marketing and Running Ads.

I think you got an idea about why you started and how blogging will help you

Let’s dive in,

Step 1: Choose a Right Niche for Your Blog (Crucial Step For Success)

This is the most important part, and many newbies are stuck at this point.

Did you know? That 99% of bloggers quit blogging in starting six months because they choose the niche which they don’t passionate about.

Niche is like a topic but not a simple topic because they have several topics in it.

Choosing a niche is the fastest way to lose a game in the beginning.

Are you still confused?

Let take an example about the niches –

Smart Passive Income — Patt Flynn started this blog named Smart Passive Income, where he shares strategies to grow your online business. Today Smart Passive Income is one of the most successful blogs which are making millions of dollars every day.

ShoutMeLoud: You all know ShoutMeLoud is one of the most significant websites which teaches about WordPress, SEO, Blogging, and Much more stuff related to blogging.

Don’t believe? See this –

This is the earning report of ShoutMeLoud, and you can see that they make $400+ at the beginning of there blog. This shows that choosing a profitable and interest-based niche helps your blog to scale.

There are many other blogs that I can show, but I think you got an exact idea of how niche is so essential for making a profitable blog.

Currently, there are many profitable niches in which you can start your blog, but I don’t suggest you go with these niches because you don’t have an interest in that, and If you start a blog on that niche, so will be bored and quit blogging for sure.

So, How you can find the perfect niche that Won’t regret later

Wait, let me tell you one Fail-Proof method to find out the profitable and interested based niche for you.

You have to focus on these two factors to find out the profitable niche for your blog.

Profitability

See that you can make money from that?
They have enough affiliate programs or not?
Is that niche is having a good volume of keywords or not?

Passionate

Are you interested in working on that niche?
Can you share the article of that niche?
Can you solve other problems with your writing on that niche?

I think now you can find the perfect niche after seeing the above part, and if you can’t figure out, then you can do this to find an ideal niche.

Take Paper & Pen
Write down your interest or which you are passionate about (Add three or more) on the list
Find the niche which you liked the most from the list
Also, find an affiliate of that niche
You are good to go

These are some steps to find a profitable niche for your new blog.

Step 2: Choose a Good Domain for Your Blog

Selecting the website domain is not very tough and you can easily select a perfect domain name for your new blog. If you decided your domain name so you can skip this part.

This for you If you haven’t selected the domain name till now –

When I started my blogging career, I don’t know how to choose a premium or brandable domain for my blog, and that’s why I wasted 10+ domains because I don’t like it also they don’t look brandable.

I think you don’t make a mistake like me?

If Yes! Here are four tips which help you to find your dream domain –

Keep it Short & Simple — Try to keep your domain as short, don’t make it too long because it’s not easy to pronounce and keep your domain name simply because it’s easy to remember. (Jon Morrow changed their domain name to BoostBlogTraffic to SmartBlogger, and their blog are getting millions of traffic because now his domain looks simple).
Use Keyword — You can use your main keyword in your domain, which helps you in SEO.
Don’t Use Numbers — You can’t use numbers in your domain because it’s not easy to remember the numbers
Always Use TLD Extension — I recommend you to use domain extension like .com because it’s for globally.

If you are still not able to figure out the domain for your blog, then you can find brandable domain name using one tool: LeanDomainSearch

Note: Which blogging platform should you choose?I am not going to much time to here explain to you which platform is best,There is a lot of blogging platform which you can use to make your blog, but I recommended you to go with WordPress.Why?Because in other platforms, you can’t have access to edit or customize everything, but WordPress gives you the freedom to make your blog as you can.In WordPress, you have many plugins and themes which you can use to make your blog Awesome!So I think you can get an idea of why WordPress is good.

Let’s dive in and let me tell you to steps create your blog.

Step 3: Choose a Good Hosting For Your Blog

For making a blog, you have to need web-hosting and domain,

I know you don’t know about both, but wait, let me guide you in this and tell you more about it.

Domain Name — The domain name is the name of the website which readers types in the browser.

Example Of Domain Name: https://www.becauselifeisonce.com/

HTTPS://(Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
www (the subdomain)
becauselifeisonce (Domain name)
.com(Top Level Domain).

Web Hosting — A web hosting is a place where all your files of your blog are stored and show your blog lives when someone tries to access that. Hosting is like the hard disk of the computer, which stored all your data (images, posts, pages, and many more) and kept your data secured.

Now, are you thinking which Wordpress hosting is best for you?

There are tons of web hosting which you can use to start your new blog. But I don’t recommend to you that because they are worthless.

WP Engine

WP Engine is no.1 hosting engine for both professionals sites and beginners. Some hosting engines may give you cheap hosting space but they will not provide you all features and speed which WP Engine is providing you.

WP Engine only offers managed WordPress hosting. There are five different plans available: Startup, Growth, Scale, Premium, and Enterprise.

All plans include unlimited data transfer. The plans differ based on:

number of WordPress installs
traffic volume (number of visits per month)
disk storage amount

Premium and Enterprise plans include custom server environments.

WP Engine includes some unique features for WordPress users that most hosts don’t offer, or charge extra for. These special features include:

Git version control
Staging: instantly create a copy of your site for testing
Easy transferable installs from free to paid accounts
Option to move to PHP 7, the latest version of PHP

In our WP Engine review, we found that WP Engine offers the most advanced and comprehensive managed WordPress hosting features.

If you go via our link, you will get a special discount of 3 months of free hosting.

If you have done with it then,

Congratulations! You have successfully purchased a hosting and domain for you. You have crossed the most prominent stop on your way to start your blog.

Let move on and see how to set up your blog.

Step 4: Set up your WordPress blog

Installing WordPress is not like rocket science,

The only thing is that we have a proper guide. Here in this part, I will how you can set up your WordPress site to make it live on the web.

Firstly, you have to go to your WP Engine account, If you already purchased it so you can see the similar interface after login to your account:

You have to select the start of a website option to make a brand new website. Then, you have to click on the software which you want to install your website.

2. Click on the WordPress software to install to your website. After that, you have to fill some login details about your website.

This information is essential, so I recommend you to write your password on dairy so if you forget so you can check there, After fill-out all the information,

Then you have to click on the big complete button to proceed with the process. It will take a few minutes to finish setting up your WordPress website.

Now, click on the proceed button to go on the customer area. Now, click on my account button on the menu and click on the installation tab.

Now, click on the Go to Admin Panel to visit your new blog admin dashboard.

Now, you will redirect to your WordPress dashboard after that enter your login details which you choose during the installation and click on the login button.

That’s it you just complete the setup fo your first WordPress website, Rember this URL, or bookmark it.

https://yourblog.com/wp-admin/

If, by chance, you forgot the URL so you can use the above URL structure to login to your dashboard (replace yourdomain.com name with your domain).

Step 5: Choose an Attention-Grabbing Theme

After installing WordPress, theme and blog looks is more important if you are just starting your new blog.

In blogging, the design of the blog matters because if you don’t have a great design, so you are losing a lot of traffic and audience. Good design helps to build more trust towards your readers.

In your WordPress inventory, there are a hell lot of free themes that are available for you, but I don’t recommend you go with that themes because these free themes are easy to hack, and by this, you will lose you all website data.

If you want to do blogging as a business, so invest in themes and plugins because of this the best investment on your blogging journey. I see many bloggers don’t invest in this type of thing and face many critical issues later.

So which theme is best for you?

I use StudioPress, which is the lightest theme and loads your website fast, and also I liked the design of this theme, and many pro bloggers are using it because it’s easy to design.

There are a few more themes which I can you suggest but before that let me tell you the Few things which you keep in your mind while purchasing a theme -

Make sure that premium themes which you are purchasing are lightweight and easy to use.
Check that the theme is compatible with your latest WordPress version.
Always check that the is must be responsive.
Support is the main thing, so try to find a theme that has excellent contact support (like StudioPress).

After picking one theme now it’s time to install that theme on your blog.

For installing any WordPress theme on your blog just follow these below steps:

First of all, you should be login on your WordPress dashboard ➡ appearance ➡ themes

1. In the themes section, you will find various free themes, but if you already have so, click on the add new button.

2. Click on the upload theme and upload your theme zip and activate that theme on your blog.

Finally, you installed and activate your preferred theme into your blog. Installing is a theme is an easy task, but the main and important task is to customize that theme.

So if you want to customize your theme, click on appearance ➡ customizes, and now you can able to customize your theme.

After making your theme responsive and optimized now, I will tell you some most essential plugin which almost every WordPress users install, and it’s also an important part to run your website on automation.

Step 7: Write Your First Stunning Post and Published It

Are you wondering about writing your first blog post?

So let me help you to write your first post on your blog. First of all, I want to congrats you that you have successfully set up your WordPress blog, and now it’s time to make some posts for your new blog.

For creating a blog post, you have to go: Dashboard → Post → Add New

After that, you will land on your post, and here you can start writing your first stunning post.

Now, Let me give you some tips that help you to make your first epic post:

If you are confused about finding the topic of your new post, so I recommended you do some keyword research around your niche, and by searching, you will find many awesome keywords that are easy to rank.

Pro Tip: I recommend you go with long-tail keywords because it’s easier to rank.

Always tries to make an awesome title of your blog post by using numbers and power words.
Make sure you should add some images for making your article more comprehensive; I strongly recommend you to make your article lengthy and more in detail, and by more detail post, you can make your reader your true fan.
I suggest you go through with the on-page guide so you can optimize your content easily.
Use words like I and You to more connect with your readers and try to don’t take copyright images from google. I recommend you always use copyright-free images.

I think these tips help you to create your first blog post,

Now, Let’s move on to the favorite of every blogger.

Step 8: Some Ways to Make Money from your Blog (Bonus)

This is the bonus part for you all, where I shared some ways which help you to make money from your blog.

Before starting, let me Congrats, you because you have published your first blog post on your blog.

Let dive into it,

There are several ways which you can use to make money from your blog. In this part, we will discuss some ideas which you can use to handsome money from your blog.

I have created a list of ways which helps you to make your first dollar online,

Are you excited enough like me?

If Yes, then let’s move on to the list:

Affiliate Marketing: This is one of the effective methods for making money online. In this, you have to promote other products on your blog, and if you get a sale of that product so then, you will get a commission from the product owner.

Advertising on your blog: Most of the common ways ever blogger uses this to monetize their traffic and make money handsome money out of it. Many bloggers are using it and making a decent amount of money.

Two leading websites — Adsense and Media.net, You can apply to there program and make money from there.

Offering Service: If you are an expert on anything like SEO so you can offer service to your reader, and they will directly pay you. This is one of the fastest ways to earn money from your blog.

Selling your course or product: If you know how to sell anything so you can create your path and sell to your readers, but before that, you have to build trust towards your audience if you already have an audience then you can sell them anything.

These are the ways that you can use to make money from your blog. But always remember that if you want to make money from your blog so you have to keep patience and do hard work on your blog, and you will see your massive growth.