How to start a blog for beginners

If you like writing, reviewing things or helping people by sharing your stories you may or may not have though about starting a blog. With all those platforms out there deciding on the right one might be a hard task. Going self hosted or just get a domain? Sharing a post every day?

I’ve got a lot of questions at the beginning too and that’s why, after almost a year of being a better blogger I’ve decided to share some tips with you.

1. CHOOSING THE PLATFORM

When it comes to the platform you want to host your blog you have a few to choose from. For me, it has always been WordPress. A few years ago, when I literally made a new blog every month I tried the one from Google named Blogger and also one that wasn’t that known back then called Wix. One of the things that made me stick with WordPress was the fact that they had an app and the interface was also really simple. Yes, Wix may give you more design options if you chose the free plan but I somehow didn’t like it.

The WordPress app was great for writing blog posts when I was on the go and I could also read my favorite bloggers posts. So, if you want something simple and easy to use at the beginning I strongly suggest WordPress. You can easily register here.

2. GOING SELF HOSTED, BUYING ONLY A DOMAIN OR STAYING WITH THE FREE PLAN?

If you are first starting out I would suggest choosing the free plan. You blog address will be something like blogname.wordpress.com and you will get free themes and plugins but you will not be able so incorporate script widgets (like the ones from google ads). If you don’t plan to invest time in your blog you don’t have to start paying at the beginning for a lot of features that you will not use.

After I made my blog I stayed with the free plan for about 6 months before going self hosted. In that time I took my time to see if anyone is going to read and enjoy my blog, to see if I spend time writing and enjoying it. Going self hosted might be a big step especially if you are a student like me and you don’t have a lot of money to begin with.

After deciding that I am going to be serious about this, I put aside some money and went self hosted. You can read my experience here. I am not using SiteGround anymore and I switched to Lyrical Host . I will talk more about how and why I moved it a feature post so stay tuned.

If you don’t want to go self hosted (having your blog hosted on another platform and having the option to customize everything) you can only buy a domain. By doing this your blog address will look like this blogname.com or blogname.net or any other combination. There are different prices for .com / .net / .co so you can look into that to see what suits you better. You can chose from Lyrical Host, Siteground or Bluehost who can provide you with only a domain.

One thing I noticed is that sadly brands are more willing to work with you if you have a domain so if this is one of your goals you should take this also into consideration when deciding on going self hosted / owning a domain.

3. HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU POST

I’ve stressed about this at the beginning a lot because I saw others posting 3-4 / times a week and I somehow felt preasurred to do the same. Trust me, you don’t have to! Stressing about this can led to you not enjoying this whole experience. I started with posting every time I felt liked it and ended up posting one post every Tuesday and an extra one mostly on Friday. Those posted on Friday came from collaborations so I didn’t had to work on them that much. Being a full time student didn’t let me with a lot of time in my hands so I had to find the right way to make everything work.

Chose you own schedule, even if you are going to post less and make your experience great!

4. SHOULD YOU STICK WITH ONLY ONE TOPIC?

I struggled with this a bit as well because most of the bloggers that I followed already had their niche. I started by posting recipes and health related post but ended up with a lot more categories on my blog. The thing is that I like to write about other things too and I have decided that I didn’t have to restrict myself. I wanted to continue to share my recipes but also review makeup products or different gadgets and that is what I did. I’ve decided that this is my space and that I can arrange it however I want. People will come back for you and for who you are in the end.

5. ENGLISH IS NOT MY NATIVE LANGUAGE. SHOULD I STILL WRITE IN ENGLISH?

I saw this question a while ago on a forum and that’s why I have decided to include this topic too. English is not my native language either and that didn’t stop me. I might have made some writing mistakes in the past, or even now but that don’t define me. I consider it to be a big step for me and a new way to improve my writing. If you want to have a blog in English and also in your native language you can do this by using this Plugin.

6. GROW YOUR AUDIENCE & MONETIZE YOUR BLOG

Ok so you have a blog now, you write and you enjoy it. Then next thing you have to do is to grow your audience. I’ve explained everything about growing your audience here and I also talked about monetizing your blog here so check them both out for more informations.

I really hope that you found this post useful and please comment with your new blog if you do decided to make one after reading my post!