How to Start a Blogging Website

start a blogging website

Are you fed up with your daily 9 -5 work routine? Do you love your current job? Or are you doing it just to earn a living? Are there any other ways you can make money? Are you young enough to change your career path? These are the exact questions which used to hover over my mind for days. Being a backpacker, I always wished to do something related to travel. Following various travel bloggers helped me a lot during my travels. If they could do it why not me? I thought why shouldn’t I start one of mine?

Start a blogging website

To start a blogging website is the simplest way to share ideas and showcase your prowess as a blogger. And if you want to, you can use it to build your career and make money. But remember blogging will not bring you millions overnight. Like any other business, it requires time, diligence, and commitment.

My readers often ask me how to start a blogging website and make money online. After explaining the process of starting a blog multiple times, I thought it would be much easier to document a step-by-step guide on how to become a blogger. Setting up a blog is cheap, and the steps are the same whether you are learning how to start a fashion, music, food, travel, business or lifestyle blog. So be wise in picking a niche.

With an increase in technology, creating a blogging website has become easy nowadays. No prior knowledge of HTML, coding or graphics design needed. It just takes half an hour of effort, and you can have your blog website up and be running.Woohoo!! So how to get started? Creating the blog of your dreams isn’t far away, so keep on reading to learn more.

Please note if you get stuck while making your blog, please feel free to get in touch via [email protected], and I’ll be glad to help you out for free.

1 – Choose a perfect name for your Blog

It’s the Game of the Name!!!  Finding the perfect name is arguably the hardest and most challenging aspect of starting a blog. It should be short, simple, easy to pronounce, easy to remember, easy to type, and easy to share. After weeks of brainstorming by writing down a bunch of words, I finally settled for On a Cheap Trip.

Few key things to remember while choosing your blog name and URL:

  • Avoid using common words related to your topic if you want to stand out from the crowd. For e.g.: if you are starting a travel blog; avoid using words like wanderlust, Nomad, backpacker, vagabond, travel as they have all been done to death.
  • Choose a name that will be long-lasting. Don’t pick names like “IndiaBackpacking” as you never know you might travel and write about other countries.
  • Select a name that best describes you and your niche. The reason I choose “On a Cheap Trip “because I wanted to change people’s perception of travel being expensive. I try my best to suggest people the cheapest way to travel to the place.
  • Prefer .com over the others because people are so used to websites ending with .com that they’ll likely forget any other domain extension.
  • Try to avoid two-word names, where the last and first letters of the words are the same — i.e. Travel Lovers – travellovers.com.
  • Check if the blog name is available on the social media especially Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube as you may want to keep it same everywhere.

Note: Most web hosting sites offer domain free if you are purchasing hosting from them.

2 – Choose Hosting for your Blog

Some of you might be thinking what the hell is Hosting? Whatever data (pics, text, videos, etc.) you put in your blog, it needs to be stored somewhere on the internet. So that whenever you type in a domain name, your data is displayed.  A web host provides space on its server so that other computers around the world can access your website with the help of a network or modem.

There are a lot of basic hosting companies out there – Bluehost, Hostgator, Siteground, Dreamhost, and Performance Foundry being the main players.

I recommend new bloggers to get hosting with Bluehost as it is quite affordable ($3.95 a month), their customer service is excellent and can usually fix issues within minutes, and also you’ll get a domain name for free.

Note: -If you are getting good deals on Hostgator, Siteground, Dreamhost, and  Performance Foundry you can opt to use their services.

Here’s a walkthrough of how to register your name with Bluehost:

Step 1: Click that green button that says “get started now.”

start a blogging website

Step 2: Choose a plan.

start a blogging website

As it’s just the start of your blogging, I would recommend the cheapest plan, for $3.95 per month as you are not sure of your site success at the early stages. You can anytime upgrade to higher plans when required. There’s no need for a big investment right now.

Step 3: Check to see if your blog name (domain name) is available. If not, go back to step 1 and re -brainstorm an alternative. Prefer a .com name over the others, and you want it to be something that people will remember.   

If you’ve already bought a domain name on another site, you can enter it in the other tab.

start a blogging website

Step 4: You’ll be taken to a page where you can decide on your package and some add-ons.Uncheck all the items in package information which you don’t need. I would suggest unchecking all.

Package information bluehost how to start travel blog

Wasn’t that easy? You’ve now set up your hosting and domain name.

Step 5: After you’ve registered your domain name and got your hosting package, the next thing you want to do is install WordPress. WordPress is what will run the website.

3 – Installing WordPress

Installing WordPress with your Bluehost Account is super easy. After you login to Bluehost, scroll down until you see the following box, then click on Install WordPress.

wordpress install bluehost how to start a blog

On the next page, click the green start button to install it on your site:

wordpess install bluehost how to start a blog

Next, select your domain name and click “check domain”:

wordpress install bluehost

Fill in your appropriate details on the next page and click install now.

Welcome to blogger world!!Now you can proudly say that you own a Blog!!!

Step 6: From there you will login to your blog from www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin

Type in your username and password, and you’re in!

wordpress login

4 – Choosing the appropriate Theme

What does the theme do? A “theme” determines the look and feel of your blog. Go to the Appearance tab; there you will find all the free WordPress themes. But, if you want to take blogging seriously and eventually make money with your blog, you should buy a premium design as they offer a bit more uniqueness, flexibility, and functionality. Premium themes can cost anywhere from $25-$300. There are lots of places online to buy premium themes. Here are a few places to try:

You may also want to have a cool logo created that can be done on  Fiverr. A professional logo makes your site stand out from the crowd.

theme wordpress start a blogging website

5 – Installing essential plugins

Another step when learning about how to start a blog is what plugins to use? Plugins are a great way to add additional features to a WordPress-powered site. You don’t want to have too many plugins as they can slow down your site.

Here’s my recommended list of plugins to install with your blog.

  • Akismet – Protects your blog from spammers leaving comments on your posts.
  • Yoast SEO – The best and the essential SEO plugin out there. Yoast SEO makes it easy to improve your rankings in Google with its provided features.
  • Contact Form 7 – It is by far one of the most popular WordPress plugins ever. It allows you to create multiple contact forms using nothing but simple HTML markup.
  • Google Analytics – Use Google Analytics on your WordPress site without touching any code, and view visitor reports right in your WordPress admin dashboard!
  • Instagram Feed – Display beautifully clean, customizable, and responsive Instagram feeds
  • Easy Facebook Likebox – It quickly displays Facebook like box fan page on your website using either widget or shortcode to increase Facebook fan page likes.plugin wordpress start a blogging website

6 – Create Post and Pages

Aren’t they same? Not at all!!! The difference between a page and a post is that a page is a static content that you can find in your header, but a post is a blog post that gets “buried” as you write more and more. This one which you are reading is a post.

To create these pages go to your WordPress left sidebar and click Pages —> Add New. For blog posts, Posts –> Add New.

Basic Pages for all blogging website:

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
  • Blog

You are done!! Wasn’t that easy!!! You’ve set up your primary website.

Now the Million Dollar Question. How to earn money from blogging?

Making money with your blog isn’t easy. It’s pretty damn hard. But it is certainly possible!!Just keep your focus on good content writing and wait for my blog on “How to make money with your Blog.”

Creating a successful blog won’t happen overnight! You have to be patient and patient. Rewards won’t be far away!!Happy Blogging!!!

Hope you would have enjoyed reading the article. To get regular updates on upcoming blog posts from On a Cheap Trip, please subscribe by entering your name and E-mail address in the Newsletter below. You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest as well as on Twitter.

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17 thoughts on “How to Start a Blogging Website

  1. Hi Abhishek
    Thanks for sharing so much for starting a blogging site. I am nature lover & photographer as a hobbyist. I have already registered with WordPress and started my site as http:\\awesoplaces.blog . But I could not add any plugins or modufy. I paid $100 for the Domain. Can you visit my site & guide me to improve.
    Mukund

  2. I randomly came through your blog on google.Once I started reading it,I couldn’t stop.Everything is explained so crisply and precisely.I love travelling so much and want to do it in budget.You’re my next travel blogger to follow. 🙂

    1. Thank you so much Pragati 🙂 Your comment made my day!! Ping me any time if you need help in planning an itinerary. Keep traveling. Cheers 🙂

  3. Hey abhi, your posts are just awesome and unique.
    For this post, I have a query , whether a domain and hosting purchased from godaddy , can make free website using wordpress. I downloaded the zip file from WordPress site, but they are asking for database details in a .php file.

    Appreciate your kind help bro.
    Cheers!

    1. Thank you so much!! Yes I have purchased the domain and hosting from Go-daddy. In go-daddy you can login to cpanel and directly install WordPress. Search for some YouTube video regarding this and you will get better understanding.

  4. Hi Abhishek,
    It’s nice reading your blogs. I am facing an issue in contact form 7 plugin. I have created a form for my website. When I try to submit information to the form, it flashes an error “There was an error trying to send your message. “. Can you help me with that? It would be really great.

    1. Thanks for reading Sugandh 🙂 I can help you with the same but will need to have look at the settings of your contact form. Also, did you tried Easy WP SMTP plugin?

  5. Hey, Indeed nice stuff on your blog. You are my next travel blogger to lookout for. Keep inspiring !

  6. Hey! That was a helpful article. But what about when I already have a free WordPress one and want to entwine the same with the paid Bluehost service? Would that be possible?

    1. Thanks for the appreciation priyanka 🙂 No issues if you have a free WordPress one.You can entirely transfer your blog/website from free wordpress hosting to a paid hosting.Let me know if you need help.

    1. Thanks for the appreciation.If you really looking for trustable service go for Bluehost though it is little expensive, but it’s all worth!!GoDaddy provides services at low cost and I am currently using their services.But I am not satisfied and will soon be changing my hosting provider.

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