Updated on December 30th, 2023 at 01:35 pm

One of the foundations of Digital Dollar$$ is to help our readers learn how to make a full-time income online.

And learning to start a blog business is by far the best way anyone can make a full-time income from the comfort of their home.

Blogging offers you the flexibility to be able to work on your own terms and from literally anywhere in the world.

And if you are anything like me and have an entrepreneurial mind, starting and building an online blog business from the ground up can be one of the most exciting, profitable, and fulfilling projects you could ever tackle.

But with so many blogs out there and so much competition, learning how to start a blog the right way can be a daunting task.

In this blog post, I’ll walk you through the simple step-by-step process that I used to start my own blog and make money from it.

By following this guide, you’ll be able to set the foundations for your blog and launch your new exciting blogging journey in about 15-30 minutes.

Let’s get started.

What Is A Blog?

Basically, a blog is a regularly updated website where new content is posted frequently to gain and maintain an audience.

Bloggers generally write in a conversational format to engage with their readers with the goal of generating online income through various monetization methods. (More on these later)

For example, you are now reading this post on my blog, and this guide here will help you learn how to start your own from scratch.

Should You Start A Blog In 2024?

Absolutely!

If you are wondering if starting a money-making blog in 2024 is worth it, then let me put your mind at ease right now.

YES, starting a blog is totally worth it.

Besides being able to make a shit ton of money from your blog, there are other reasons why blogging is an excellent online business for you to consider starting.

Running a blog allows you the flexibility to be your own boss and set your own hours. You can work whenever you want and however much you want. It is also an excellent way to gain more freedom and live life on your own terms!

And the best part?

You can do it from anywhere in the world, you won’t need a degree or any specialized knowledge, and you won’t need any coding or developer skills whatsoever.

You can start blogging as a complete beginner (just like I was when I started) and build a profitable online business that pays out for years to come.

Now, is starting a blog going to be easy?

Yes, starting a blog is quite easy.

But… starting a blog is perhaps the easiest part about blogging.

Let’s make something clear, running a blog business is no get-rich-quick scheme. Blogs require a whole lot of work, determination, and persistence before they can grow into lucrative online businesses.

If you are looking for an easy way to make money, I suggest you look at these ideas.

If you are going to start a blog, on the other hand, it’s best to understand early that a blog is a business and businesses take time and work before they can start generating revenue.

The good thing about blogging however is that it’s not very easy to screw up. As long as you have a sincere passion to provide valuable content that solves reader’s problems, you will, in the long run, gain traffic to your blog and make a lot of money from your business.

So, should you start a blog in 2024?

Totally, blogging is very profitable in 2024.

You’ll just need to have the right mindset and be ready to invest your time, a little bit of money, and a whole lot of consistency in order to build and grow a successful blog business.

Alright. Now that I’ve given you the scoop on what blogging looks like. Let’s now actually see how to start a blog that makes money.

How To Start A Blog In 7 Simple Steps

Here are the simple steps to starting a profitable online blog business. Feel free to use the links below to navigate the process.

• Step 1: Pick A Blogging Niche
• Step 2: Come Up With A Relevant Domain Name
• Step 3: Choose A Blogging Platform
• Step 4: Get Hosting For Your Blog
• Step 5: Design Your WordPress Blog
• Step 6: Write Your First Blog Post
• Step 7: Promote Your Content To Get Readers And Traffic

1. Pick A Blogging Niche

What’s a blogging niche?

A niche is the main topic of your blog. It’s what your blog will be about. For instance, my blog here is in the personal finance/work-from-home niche.

For you to start a successful blog, the very first thing you’ll need to do is decide on what your blog will be about.

Now, I’ve seen blogs out there (and you may have too) that write about everything. Education, sports, health, fitness, business… everything all under one roof.

This approach to blogging is not very advisable and I’ll tell you why.

Blogging about a range of unrelated topics can greatly affect your chances of establishing yourself as an authority.

If you have one main topic for your blog, on the other hand, you can easily assert yourself as an authority in your field. This would result in more people trusting what you have to say because you have proven expertise in your topic.

Also… website authority, expertise and trustworthiness are very important Google ranking factors. Without them, it will not be easy for your new blog to rank high on search results and attract organic traffic.

This is why it’s crucial to decide on ONE main topic for your blog.

The good thing about most blogging niches is that they have multiple sub-niches and micro-niches under their umbrella. And therefore you can virtually be able to create unlimited content in whatever niche you choose.

To help you get started, here is a list of the most profitable blogging niches in 2023;

Health and Fitness
Food
Finance
Personal Development
Love & Relationships
Pets
Gadgets and Technology

You however don’t need to start a blog in any of these niches, you can blog about pretty much anything you like.

The important thing when choosing a niche is to make sure that first, it’s something you are passionate about (or interested in learning) so that you won’t lose interest and quit. And second, it needs to be a topic that has a sizable local or international audience.

You don’t want to choose a topic that is so unique that you are virtually the only person interested in it. If you do that, you won’t be able to make money blogging.

2. Come Up With A Relevant Domain Name

Okay. Now that you have decided what your new blog will be about, the next step is to come up with a relevant domain name.

A domain name is the address of your website on the internet. It’s what people will be able to type into a browser in order to land on your site.

For instance, here is my domain name.

Your domain name is among the first things that a user will see so it’s important to pick a good one.

Don’t stress too much over the name of your site, however, because what you name your blog will not be the most important thing in the long run.

The most important thing will be the value you provide to your readers, so according to me, stressing over what name to use is not something you should do.

Not at this point.

Also, you can always change your domain name later if you need to.

Here are some helpful tips for selecting a good domain name;

Make it short and easy to remember
Use Keywords related to your niche
Use your name (if you’d like to)

To get your domain name right now, go to InstantDomainSearch and start brainstorming some ideas. On that site, if the name you type comes up in green, that means the domain name is available. Otherwise, it’s already taken and you should try another one.

You can also ask ChatGPT to come up with domain name suggestions for the blogging niche you’ve chosen. The AI will give you some neat suggestions that you can consider for your new domain name.

3. Choose A Blogging Platform

After coming up with a cool name for your new blog, the next step is to choose a blogging platform.

Basically, a blogging platform is an online service that allows you to create, publish and customize your content on the web.

When it comes to blogging platforms, you have two options available.

You can choose a free blogging platform, or you can opt for a self-hosted blogging platform.

If you are not completely sure about blogging yet and would like to give it a try first without investing, I really suggest you consider a free blogging platform first.

A site like Medium allows users to create amazing blogs, and without spending a penny. You can literally have your blog up and running in five minutes and start publishing your posts immediately.

There are also other free blogging platforms that you can try like WordPress.com and Blogger.

The only problem with using free blogging platforms is that you WILL NOT be able to make money. Not as much as you could with a self-owned website.

Since this post is about how to start a blog and make money, we won’t focus too much on free blogging platforms. We’ll instead concentrate on platforms where you can actually monetize your content and make good money from your business.

What is the best blogging platform?

The absolute best blogging platform where you can create, publish, customize, and monetize your content is WordPress.

Now, there are two types of WordPress. There’s WordPress.com and there’s WordPress.org

I’m talking about WordPress.org. The self-hosted one.

WordPress is the biggest and most trusted blogging platform on the internet. In 2024, a whopping 43.2% of all websites on the internet use WordPress.

And yes, that’s including mine.

WordPress.org is the best of the best, and it’s the one I’d highly recommend you use if you want to make money blogging in 2024.

4. Get Hosting For Your Blog

Alright, having decided on WordPress, the next step in learning to start a blog is to purchase website hosting.

In order for your new blog to actually get online, it will need a ‘host’.

Think of website hosting as the ‘home’ where your site will be available online.

A web host provides safe storage for your website files on their secure servers, ensuring that your site stays online and therefore can be accessed by people who visit it.

Is website hosting expensive?

No. Website hosting is quite cheap. Most hosting plans start for as low as $3/month.

What’s the best web hosting service to use?

The best web host and our top recommendation for your new blog is Bluehost.

Bluehost has been in the web hosting industry for a long time and in that period has grown a reputation as one of the best hosting platforms, that’s recommended by WordPress.org.

It’s the one I personally use for all my websites, and I’ll now take you step-by-step on how to host your new blog on Bluehost.

This is quite a simple process. Once you follow it, your new blog will be up and running in a few minutes from now.

Okay, let’s get started.

First, you’ll need to follow the link below, head over to Bluehost and click on the ‘Get Started‘ button.

Step 1. Choose Your Plan

Once you’ve hit ‘Get Started‘, the first thing you’ll need is to choose your hosting plan. There are three plans. You can either go with Basic, Choice Plus, Online Store, or PRO.

My recommendation?

Go with Choice Plus.

For only $5 a month, it will allow you to create unlimited websites. Choice Plus also comes with domain privacy enabled.

Domain privacy will make sure your personal details like name, email, and address don’t get published online on the WHOIS database where anyone can see and obtain access to them.

Go ahead and hit ‘Select’ to start the process of getting hosting for your new blog.

Step 2: Set Up Your Domain

Next, it’s time to set up your domain name.

Remember that cool domain name you decided on for your blog, it’s now time to set it up.

The good thing with Bluehost is that it offers FREE domain registration for all new users. You won’t need to pay a single penny for your domain for the first full year.

How cool is that?

To get your domain name set up, enter it into the box that says “Create a new domain“

💡 Note: Be careful to ensure that the domain extension that’s selected is the one you want to use. There are many domain extensions but .com is the most common and the one you should consider using.

Step 3: Create Your Bluehost Account and Checkout

Next, the system will inform you that the domain name you entered is available.

After that, you’ll need to enter your personal information in the form in order to create your Bluehost account and get started.

You’ll enter your full name, address, business name, country, and email address into the form.

The next thing after that will be to select the payment term for your plan. The platform allows you to pay either 12 months or 36 months in advance. Whichever plan you want here will be up to you.

My recommendation is to pay for 12 months first as you are just getting started.

Next, the system will ask you if you’d like to add some extras to your package. These include things like backups, Yoast Premium, Google Workspace, and Sitelock.

My recommendation here is to skip all of them. They are not necessary. There are lots of free alternatives for those services so you won’t be needing any of those.

And that’s it.

The next thing now will be to enter your payment information, accept the Bluehost terms, and then hit the green SUBMIT button to purchase hosting for your new blog.

Yay! Time for a little celebration.

Once you’ve done that. You have now completed the most important step in order to start a blog.

Once your payment goes through, the system will guide you through the rest of the getting started process and open your Bluehost cpanel where you’ll be able to actually start creating your new website.

Your cpanel should look something a bit like this.

Except that yours won’t have any sites on it, seeing as you haven’t created any yet. But don’t worry, we’ll be changing that in a few minutes.

To get started creating your website, just navigate to ‘My Sites‘ on your dashboard and hit Add Site » Create New Site.

The process here will be super simple to get your site up and running. Bluehost has a simple and very intuitive interface + wizard that will help you to automatically install WordPress and launch your new site.

Here are some of the things the wizard will ask you to enter;

Your Site’s Name
Your Site’s Tagline (think slogan)

Once you enter them, the next screen will ask you to select your domain name from the drop-down menu on your top left.

As for the free plugins offered there, just select all of them and then hit NEXT.

Once you do that, the system will automatically install WordPress and launch your new website.

Woooh! Time for another celebration.

In a minute or two, your new site should be set up and you’ll automatically be logged into your WordPress admin dashboard. Which looks a little something like this.

5. Design Your WordPress Blog

Alright. Now that you are logged in as admin on your new website, it’s time to familiarize yourself with the dashboard you’re seeing.

As a blogger, you’ll be spending a lot of time on that dashboard. It’s a good idea to start snooping around and checking everything out because you’ll be working with everything there.

If you are a complete beginner like I was, the WP admin dashboard may look a bit scary at first because you literally have no idea what anything is. Don’t worry though, with some time, you’ll get acquainted with what everything is and how it all works.

To help you get started, I wrote an amazing blog post that guides you through the essential steps to take immediately after installing WordPress on your new blog. The guide will help you set up important WordPress settings and install essential plugins that you’ll be using on your new site.

Here Is The Guide

6. Write Your First Blog Post

Already done setting up and designing your blog?

It’s time to write your first blog post!

Don’t know where to get started? Bookmark this ultimate guide to writing an excellent blog post so that you can study it later.

The most important thing to remember when you start writing your blog posts is that you want to provide value.

Make sure that a reader can get tangible value from every single blog post you’ve written and you will become a successful blogger.

Also, learn a lot. As a new blogger, it’s super important to keep learning and sharpening your skills so that your writing level and the quality of your content keep getting better and better.

So read more, and check out what other successful bloggers do in order to up your own game and get better.

How Many Blog Posts Before You Launch?

Before you hit that launch button and bring your website online, it’s recommended that you have about 5-10 high-quality blog posts published on your site.

This will make sure that when someone visits your site, they won’t find it empty with only like one post published. That wouldn’t provide a great experience, now would it?

In addition to 5-10 blog posts, you should also have the important pages talked about in my guide here. Those include a contact page, an about page, a privacy policy page, and an affiliate disclosure/disclaimer page.

Once you have all of these prepared and ready, your new blog will finally be ready for launch into the online world!

Related: 10 Amazing Blogging Tools You Need To Know About

7. Promote Your Content To Get Readers and Traffic

Okay.

If you want to make money from your new blog, just writing and publishing high-quality blog posts won’t cut it.

You need to promote your content.

Promote! Promote! Promote!

Especially in the beginning when you’ve just gotten started, pushing your content out will be the only way to get any actual people onto your site.

The good news?

There are numerous avenues you can use to promote your content and get readers to your site. Here are some of the most common;

Use Social Media – To get readers on your site, you will need to create social media accounts for your new business. Don’t be tempted to use all social media platforms at once though, that never works. Instead, choose only two and focus all your energies to growing them. This will help you reach users faster and in a more sure way without getting overwhelmed.
Leverage Paid Ads – Remember how we said blogging is a business? Well, businesses need monetary investment to kick them off. One of the easiest and most common ways to get traffic to your content is to run ads. You can run ads on social media platforms, Google searches, and even YouTube.
Optimize for SEO – Generally, traffic from Google takes a while to kick in. But, it’s still one of the best sources for free traffic to your blog. This is why it’s absolutely crucial to make sure your website and blog posts are fully optimized for SEO. If you haven’t yet, go here to install Rank Math and start optimizing your site for SEO immediately.
Start Building An Email List – Use opt-in forms on your site to collect emails and build your email list. Having a list of email subscribers is one of the best ways to promote your content to your loyal readers and increase traffic to your blog. Go here to register for a free Getresponse account and start building your email list!

And that’s it!

Those are the seven steps to help you learn how to start a blog. Just to recap, they are;

• 1. Pick A Blogging Niche
• 2. Come Up With A Relevant Domain Name
• 3. Choose A Blogging Platform
• 4. Get Hosting For Your Blog
• 5. Design Your WordPress Blog
• 6. Write Your First Blog Post
• 7. Promote Your Content To Get Readers And Traffic

Now, the only thing we haven’t talked about is…

Yep, you guessed it.

How To Make Money Blogging

Let’s now take a quick overview of how to make money with your new blog.

Blogs make money in a ton of different ways. Here is a list of the most common and actionable ways to make money blogging in 2024;

Sell advertising space on your blog
Promote Affiliate products and programs for commissions
Sell your own products and services
Create and Sell online courses
Create and Sell printables and digital products

Over To You

Blogging is the best work-from-home business that anyone from anywhere can start and make money from the comfort of their home.

To start a blog, you need to decide what your blog will be about, register a domain name, and buy hosting. The rest of the journey is up to you to keep building and elevating your business day after day.

I hope that my guide on how to start a blog in 2024 has given you a basic framework you can start with.

Have any questions about blogging, domain names, web hosting, or anything else really? Remember to leave them in the comments below. I’d love to help you out wherever I can.

I wish you success in your new blogging venture!

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