A blog site is a great way to express your opinion on topics that you are passionate about, and share value you have to offer. It is also an excellent way for you to tell your story. But in recent times, it has also become a great way to earn money. A blog can help you earn money through affiliates, running ads or partnered product promotions.
In the past, building a blog website was a significant undertaking. However, now there are several CMS platforms that make it as easy as pie. Bloggers can easily use the platform to build a blog site and start blogging as soon as they wish. There are many benefits to using a CMS platform for your website. For one thing, you don’t have to program anything- all of the necessary coding work has been done for you. You can focus on what you do best: writing content!
However, out of these platforms, WordPress is certainly the most popular one. This is because it is by far the most feature-rich and customizable CMS ever built.
In this article, I will guide you on how to start a free WordPress blog. But first, let’s get to know why I’m terming WordPress as the best CMS to build a blog site.
Why WordPress is the Best CMS System Available Today
WordPress is a free and open-source CMS that was developed by the WordPress Foundation. It is one of the most popular content management systems in the world and powers more than forty percent of websites.
The first reason why WordPress is better than any other CMS is that it has a large community. The larger community means more developers and designers who are constantly contributing to making WordPress better in terms of design, features, and security.
This also means that there are a lot of plugins available in the WordPress directory which can help WordPress users perform tasks much more efficiently than they could do before.
Another reason why WordPress is better than any other CMS is that it has a large array of themes that can suit any type of business or blog – from personal blogs to niche-based professional ones.
With the help of these plugins, themes and top-of-the-line features, WordPress has certainly become the best choice for building a blog site.
How to Start a Free WordPress Blog in 6 Steps
Now that I went through the reason behind choosing WordPress to build a blog, let’s show you how to start a free WordPress blog step by step. It is extremely easy and terrifically customizable.
Step 1 – Choose the Right Domain Name
A domain name is a unique string of characters that identifies your site. It’s the first thing people see about your site. If you’re creating a new blog, choosing a good domain name is important because it’s a way for people to easily remember your website and find it again in the future.
You need something that expresses what you do or who you are, but nothing too long or difficult to remember. Some people suggest using words that describe what your site will be about (like “digital marketing guru”), while others say using your name on the domain is the best way to build trust with your audience.
A great domain name should be memorable, easy to spell and easy to remember. It should also be short and catchy, with no special characters.
When you’re starting a blog, it’s important to start by choosing a great domain name. The right domain name will help you stand out from the crowd, attract visitors and make it easier for people to find your site.
You can purchase a domain name from many websites, but Namecheap and Hostgator are two of my favourites.
Step 2 – Choose the Right Hosting to Speed Up Your Website
When a blogger starts a website, the next step to choosing a domain name involves choosing the right hosting service provider. There are various factors to consider while choosing the best web hosting company for your domain.
The first step is to make sure that you are aware of the costs associated with various types of hosting plans.
Remember to choose a host that provides great uptime to ensure your blog is online all the time. Furthermore, Check how much data transfer they allow per month because this is an important parameter for any site owner who gets traffic from search engines or social media sites.
Finally, choose the plan that suits your needs and offers the best value for money.
For managed WordPress hosting, Kinsta, Bluehost, and Cloudways have been exemplary. However, you can also look into the pricing plan of shared WordPress hosting provided by Namecheap, HostGator, and SiteGround as well to find out if the pricing point matches your budget and need.
Step 3 – Set up WordPress on cPanel
Your hosting should give you quick access to cPanel, where you can easily install WordPress. You can set up WordPress by following the below steps.
Step 1: Log in to your cPanel account. (You can just type in cpanel.yourdomain.com to access the page or access it from your hosting provider’s dashboard)
Step 2: Navigate to cPanel’s Site Software interface (cPanel >> Home >> Software >> Site Software).
Step 3: Click WordPress.
Step 4: Fill up all the necessary information.
Step 5: To install WordPress directly into a domain’s document root, leave the installation URL’s path blank. This may overwrite any files already in the document root.
Step 6: Click Install.
(When the WordPress installation finishes, use your web browser to view the location that you entered in Step 4. For example, if you installed WordPress in the http://example.com/wordpress/ directory, browse to the http://example.com/wordpress/ URL)
And you’re done. Wasn’t that easy?
Step 4 – Installing a WordPress Theme
Themes are crucial in the process to design and create a WordPress blog. When you are using WordPress as your content management system, it can be difficult to decide which themes to use for your blog. This is because of the thousands of different themes on the market. It’s a blessing in disguise, one might say.
Now some of the themes are very easy to use while others can be more difficult. So choosing the right theme is important because it will make it easier for you to create a site that is engaging and informative.
You will want to choose a theme that has a responsive layout so that people can read your blog on all types of devices without having problems. Additionally, you want something that is lightweight so people don’t have any issues loading your pages. The theme also has to be SEO-friendly.
When you compile the above requirements, there are only a couple of themes that match the criteria the best. From theme WP Astra, GeneratePress, KadenceWP, Neve, and Blocksy are some of the most popular ones.
After purchasing your favourite theme. You can install it from your WordPress Admin Dashboard by navigating to Themes > Add New > Upload.
Step 5 – Installing Necessary Plugins
As WordPress is a popular blogging platform, it accommodates all kinds of blogs from personal blogs to company blogs. With the growing popularity of WordPress, there are hundreds of plugins available for users to choose from. Among them, some of the WordPress plugins are a must to make your life easier.
They are –
- A Security Plugin – You must have a security plugin installed on your blog website to protect it from unprecedented danger.
Some of the best security plugins include – Wordfence Security, Sucuri, and Malcare.
- SEO Plugin – The SEO plugins make sure your content is highly optimized for better SEO performance. Thus you should have one SEO tool in this category.
There are two highly popular SEO plugins that I recommend. They are RankMath and Yoast SEO. - Performance – To make your website more user-centric, some plugins can help a lot. I like WP Rocket, W3 Super Cache, and Litespeed Cache the most when it comes to plugins in this category.
- Backup and Restore – Backing up a website is a must because of the data loss risk that every website has. My favourite backup plugins are UpdraftPlus & Duplicator.
All of the plugins above can be found on the WordPress.org repository. You can install the plugin from the repository by navigating to WordPress Admin Dashboard > Plugins > Add New and then searching for the plugin. You can then install and activate the plugin, once you find it.
The premium plugins can be installed by navigating to WordPress Admin Dashboard > Plugins > Add New and clicking on the Upload button. Similarly to the free plugin, then you have to install and activate the plugin.
Step 6 – Launch and Promote Your Blog
Finally, it is time to launch your blog and start your journey to become a professional writer. All your tiresome tasks are finished, but is it?
Honestly, the job doesn’t end there for your WordPress blog creation. Once you launch your blog site, it’s time to think about how you’re going to attract visitors. You can not expect to rank on Google and get visitors overnight. So it is good to start by doing some promotion. There are a number of ways to promote your blog:
- Social Media – Create a social media page for your website on all of the top social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
- Link building – This involves submitting links back to your site from other websites or directories, which increases the chances that people will see them and potentially click through them (which could lead them over to your site). This strategy works best when the link-building sites are relevant in some way – for example if they have a large audience themselves or have been around for a while. It will also build your domain authority and help rank more of your blogs on the search engine result page.
- Guest blogging – Guest blogging involves writing articles for other websites on topics related to your own blog; as long as they’ve made an effort to connect to your blogs.
- Blog advertising – This involves placing ads on other websites that have a similar readership as yours. The advantage here is that it’s relatively cheap and easy to do, but there’s also the possibility of not getting much traffic at all if the sites don’t fit with your niche or aren’t related enough to your content.
However, these are all promotions that will help you boost your site’s progress. But at the end of the day, you have to make your site stand out using the quality of your content and following the good principles of SEO optimization. So get ready for your first blog post and make it a good one!
Start Your WordPress-Powered Blog Today
If you are someone who likes expressing themselves through writing, starting a blog can be a great idea to earn from. But building a blog site requires you to know how to code or involves a big sum of money if you want to build it from freelancers or agencies.
But there is another way. In this detailed tutorial, I showed you how to start a free WordPress blog in minutes.
All thanks to WordPress for making it extremely easy to build a blog site. It makes it possible for you to publish your thoughts on the internet without any coding knowledge. What’s more, you don’t even have to pay any monthly or annual fees to use the WordPress platform.
So is there any more excuse not to start a WordPress-powered blog? So start today, and I’m here if you need any help on the process of how to create a blog for free and make money.
