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How to Start a Successful Blog : Making ($250k Per Month)

How to start a successful blog ? Yes! Yes Please! The truth is people are creating new blogs every day that won’t make them any money and I beg you not be like those people.

First things first, to become a successful blogger, there are some essential skills that you need to develop. Hard skills: SEO & Research, Writing – Grammar & Spelling, Marketing. Soft skills: Patience, Motivation, Communication, Organisational skills.

Both these hard and soft skills are particularly important for those of you who are planning to start making money out of your blogging career. You will need to ensure that your content is SEO-friendly and that you develop a marketing strategy and a clear brand image. It’s important to keep your content and communication consistent in order to develop a clear target audience.

Learning how to start a successful blog is the best decision I’ver ever made…

How to Become a Blogger in 5 Simple Steps

  1. Choose Your Blog’s Niche.
  2. Write Down Your Blog’s Goals.
  3. Pick a Domain Name.
  4. Choose a Web Hosting Plan and Register Your Domain.
  5. Install WordPress – Your Blogging Platform
  6. Pick the Right Theme.
  7. Install WordPress Plugins.
  8. Set Up Your Site’s SEO and Permalink Structure.
  9. Create Content for Your Blog.
  10. Create a Long Term Content Strategy.
  11. Perform Ongoing Guest Post Outreach And Link Building.
  12. How to Start a Blog [Infographic]

Maybe some of these will sound familiar? When I Start a Successful Blog was:

Starting a successful blog and making money blogging has allowed me to experience life from a fresh perspective where I was the KING of my time, decisions, and experiences.

But my purpose today is not to talk about me but to help you.

how to create a successful blog and make money
how to create a successful blog and make mone

I’ve now helped thousands of students just like you go from no blog or bad blogs to building successful blogs that earn them a full-time income!

After picking up a few useful blogging tips from UsEssayWriters.com experts, I wrote this free successful blogging guide to help you learn how to create a successful blog without any website coding skills or having to pay an expensive web developer to do it for you (because who has an extra $2,000 laying around?).

1. Get your Free Domain Name

It’s time to get your free domain name because as a new website owner or blogger you don’t have a domain name yet but remember the domain name creation process we talked about earlier on in the post, that should have helped you create a unique and powerful domain name.

If you already have a domain name and you aim to run away from your existing web hosting company and come into the warm embrace of Bluehost, all you have to do is enter your current domain name and click Next.

Troubleshooting: Sometimes your domain name would not be available, and you get something like “kudaxy.com is not available for registration.” Don’t panic, there’s a simple solution, enter another unique domain name below, and you should be good to go.

Create your Account

This step is the longest step, and we would take our time to go through everything section by section.

Google Sign-On process

Want a fast way of creating your account? Use google sign-on process which makes account creation more comfortable and faster.

Account Information

If you didn’t use the Google sign-in process, you need to fill out these details. Remember all fields are required except the Business Name but I advise you put in some features for that too.

Package Information

This is the most critical part of creating your hosting plan. You need to open your eyes very well when you get to this page. I advise you untick all additional services that are not free like Domain Privacy Protection, Site Backup Pro, Search Engine Jumpstart and SiteLock Security – Find unless you feel you are a veteran or you have done your extensive research, and you think you need it.

Payment Information

You can use either your credit card or PayPal account to pay for Bluehost web hosting plans.

Terms and Conditions

All that remains now is to accept Bluehost terms and conditions. Click on SUBMIT.

Creating your Secured Password

Once you clicked on submit, you would be automatically verified using your payment method and billed according to the web hosting plan you chose. After that, you would be asked to create your password then login.

Secure Password Hints

Log into your website or blog.

After successfully creating your secured password, click log in.

Be aware that sometimes we can be penalised for duplicate content so we recommend updating your content slightly if you are posting it elsewhere. Whether you decide to change some of the wording or take out some of the content, the freedom is yours but we recommend keeping it unique per site, it’s also important to add a canonical tag to republished content to ensure that Google reads yours as the original. The aim of crossposting should be to develop your brand image, show off your talents as a writer and to point readers in the direction of your website. Gaining backlinks on other websites will help you to rank better in Google and it also proves that other websites recommend and trust your content. Where and how you display your content can have a significant effect on your reputation as a writer/blogger, so be sure you follow our tips!

how to make a successful blog and make money
how to make a successful blog and make money

2. How to Install WordPress for Beginners

Luckily for you when you purchased your hosting plan, Bluehost made some improvements in late 2017 to get WordPress automatically installed for you, saving you a lot of time and stress.

Now is time for some WordPress actions such as picking your first theme.

Select a WordPress theme

For your first theme, choose a clean layout that you love, something that inspires you to want to write more and generate more content.

Then when you are ready to join the big boys by using a premium WordPress theme, I recommend GeneratePress. You can start with the free theme then you can scale up and purchase the premium version which gives you juicier, more robust features.

GeneratePress WordPress Theme Features

3. Quick WordPress Tutorial for New & Old Bloggers

After clicking “Start Building,” you would be taken to your brand new WordPress dashboard where all the magic happens. Welcome to WordPress, you will be asked to choose either a personal or business account, or maybe you don’t need any help.

Click Next Step then Launch your site.

Guess what? You just learned how to create a blog which with time, hard work and a good strategy would turn to a successful blog which pays for itself then becomes so big that it takes care of you too.

WordPress Tutorial Hard skills

I will give you a quick preview of the critical parts of WordPress, what you should change immediately and what you shouldn’t change.

List of Important WordPress Sections

Dashboard

This is the first page you will see when you log into your WordPress website or blog. On the dashboard, you get to look at everything going on with your site.

Posts

This is a significant WordPress section because it shows you all your blog posts, you can organize them, delete them or add new ones. You can also create new and organize categories and tags under posts. The most function under Posts is most likely the “Add New Posts” button which creates an original blog post, probably your first blog post like”gta 5 ppsspp iso download for android“, “Free Crunchyroll Premium Account“, “Best ppsspp iso Game For Android” or “The PS4 Official Emulator“! to start a successful blog.

Pages

To me, these belong to your dangerous pages like the About Us, Advertise, Contact Us, Hire Me, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and so on. Pages are essential to use because they boost the credibility of your website or blog and create an avenue for your customer or readers to get in contact with you via the contact page.

how to start a successful blog for free
how to start a successful blog for free

Media

This is where all your pictures, videos are stored. You can add, edit or delete media files also. All the images or videos used in your blog posts are stored here. Advanced features like image cropping, title and alt tags changing are also available.

Comments

These sections stores all the comment made on your website or blog either by your customer or reader or you when you respond to their comments.

Comments can be made on blog posts, pages, sections and you can also choose to disable comments on pages, and you can disable comments on your website or blog. I recommend turning on comments, so you enhance blog engagements on your website or blog.

Appearance

We have five significant sections under appearance. Themes, Customize, Widgets, Menus, and Editor.

Themes

You will see all the themes you used on your website or blog; it would also show you your active theme. I recommend you use GeneratePress WordPress theme most especially because it’s super lightweight, fast, responsive and great for SEO.

Customize

This is the real-time customization of your website or blog. Whatever changes you effect would change immediately right before your eyes. Customize is still a favourite theme customization tool that brings you immediate results.

Widgets

Widgets are used mostly on sidebars, footers depending on your theme. I use widgets on my right sidebar, and I use it to add favourite posts, featured posts, ad banners, and any other relevant information I want my readers to see.

Menus

I would advise you to have two menus; one can be called “NavMenu” while the other “TopMenu.” NavMenu shows your categories while TopMenu shows your pages.

Plugins

You only get access to this plugins page when you buy a web hosting plan, if you are running a free web hosting like .wordpress you can’t use plugins and plugins are so important because they add additional functionality to your website or blog.

Plugins are like apps, and they are over 15 million plugins out there, create to solve your problems.

Users

You can add more users to your WordPress site and give them roles to play with level restrictions. Their functions include subscriber, contributor, author,  editor, and administrator. Don’t give a stranger a purpose higher than a contributor, so your site doesn’t get hacked or stolen from you.

Tools

Simple section, what’s important here is to import and export tool which helps bring in data, theme customization and so on. You can also export your theme, your blog posts and entire WordPress site using the export function.

Settings

There are a lot of parameters to be done in this section, but something you should do right away is Change your Permalinks from the default one to POST NAME.

I was blogging for 2 years with the default permalink then I realized other blogs were doing better, one of the reasons was because of my permalinks, so I changed my permalinks after 2 years of blogging and of course my traffic took a hit and went straight to the ground but now it’s back up, better than ever.

Don’t make the same mistakes I did, change your permalink structure today.

4. Monetize your Blog (Your Money Making Blog Strategy)

From day 1, you need to start thinking about the various ways your blog can make money but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t produce good content and provide value first to people. The plan is hit the ground running.

You don’t wait before you start making money with your blog, you start making money before you open your blog through your ideas.

The ultimate monetization technique for most successful blogs is Google AdSense + Affiliate marketing + Sponsored posts + Propeller Ads.

Most bloggers start with Google AdSense has there first blog monetization technique but that’s wrong because the truth behind AdSense is that you need massive amounts of organic traffic coming to your blog and you have to hope that they click on your ads which is very unlikely.

For those new bloggers using AdSense to monetize their new blogs, you can’t expect to make so much money in your first 3 months because you are writing random posts hoping to get organic traffic and ad clicks which is never guaranteed.

My advice to you as a new blogger is don’t rely on Google AdSense alone, write some affiliate articles and product reviews and ultimately set up your blog for sponsored posts.

This is an in-depth article about how to start a successful blog from scratch. We are going to do this together by going through all the process involved in starting a blog in a step by step manner so we don’t miss out again also we would touch on a few how to make money blogging points and finally measure a blog to know if it’s successful.

To do that, we have set some success milestones which would easily indicate if your blog is a successful blog or not.

How to Start a Successful Blog from Scratch for free

But more importantly, what is a successful blog and how do you measure its success?

A successful blog is one that pays for itself. It’s different from a successful blog because you can make a little, medium or high profit but a successful blog pays for itself 100%. Who wouldn’t want to have a blog in 2018 that covers all its expenses you are running the blog at a profit and not at a loss?

PRO TIP: As a successful blogger you need to have a verified PayPal account.

It’s essential because as your blog or website becomes more successful businesses would want to seek advertising opportunities on your blog, and most of them would be international companies, so you need a secure way of receiving money online, and that’s why I recommend PayPal.

how to set up a successful blog
how to set up a successful blog

Another tip is receiving a steady stream of PayPal funds from different sources – may be through Affiliates, Writing fees, Sponsored posts charges and so on but the best way remains the process of getting free PayPal money instantly.

How do you measure a successful blog? You set milestones which can be in two parts; Personal & Business milestones and you check when your blog passes these milestones to measure success.

How to Start a Successful Blog Personal 

  1. How to set up your hosting plan
  2. How to Install WordPress for beginners
  3. Quick WordPress tutorial for new bloggers
  4. Monetize your Blog
  5. Define your blog’s purpose
  6. Create your domain name
  7. Select the best blogging platform
  8. Use the best hosting plan
  9. Success Milestones

5: Define your Blog’s purpose

There’s no success story without a purpose; success doesn’t get happen without any plan or purpose except you are the spiritual-miracle-depending-not-putting-in-hard-work type. What you don’t plan for you don’t achieve. That’s the strict basis of achievement.

It’s a good thing to have a purpose for your blog at this early stage because it puts you on the right track.

Ask yourself these three main questions to get the true purpose of your old or new blog.

Why does my blog exist?

This is similar to why am I starting a blog, but I prefer why does my blog exist because it gives you that sense of importance.

You need to have a solid foundation where serves as your backbone to why your blog exists because when you start a blog without any solid foundation or backbone, several months into blogging and especially during the hard trying months you start questioning yourself asking questions like “why am I blogging or why did I start blogging? All these questions came as a result of lack of proper blogging foundation or backbone.

Your solid foundation or backbone can be the main reason your log exists, and it can be;

Realistic Example/Experience

Let say you choose to make money online.

This becomes your main purpose or reason your blog exist because everything you do will revolve around making money because you would use engaged in money-making blog monetization programmes like Google Adsense, Affiliate marketing, of course, you would have an advertise with us page to drive home the fact that your blog is a business. Not an ordinary business but profitable business.

You can combine two foundations like make money + helping others or anything else. The combinations are endless but keep in mind that you only do the things you know you are capable of doing so you don’t burn yourself out and end up posting low-quality content derived from copy and paste.

Personally, I recommend combining make money online + helping others with the experience you have in any particular field because when you solve the problem of others, they would also solve your problems which means more income for you either by purchasing what you are selling or by helping out with Adsense income.

Network online & face-to-face

Just like any career, networking is an extremely beneficial activity that helps to improve your chances of success. The people you meet, the knowledge you acquire and the skills you gain, can all have a positive impact on your professional profile and essentially, your career as a blogger. Whether you connect with fellow bloggers on LinkedIn or Facebook groups or you decide to attend face-to-face networking events, the people you meet could significantly boost your Blogging career. You may meet or connect with people who have a successful business or agency that you can collaborate with or perhaps they have a blogging position in their company. Networking is always something we recommend. 

Why am I starting a blog?

Now, these are the numerous reasons you have in your mind driving you to start a blog. These reasons can be the desires you have, the dreams you envisioned for yourself, you feel blogging can cater to your wants and needs.

Frankly, it can be anything under the sun but let me list some common reasons below;

What would you blog about?

What would you write about on your blog? When you ask this question, you get shallow answers and because these answers are so fickle, cheap and without purpose, they would end up participating in the failure of the blog.

This question is asking you what content would be seen on your blog and these blog contents can vary depending on you. You can choose the write blog posts, post only videos which turn your blog into a vlog or turn it into a download site the possibilities are endless.

Content is KING. So make sure the content going to be featured on your blog is top-notch, of high noble birth and quality and how do you achieve this?

By centring your blog around an area you have more knowledge than others, you don’t have to be an expert in the field before you can start a successful blog, you need to be one step ahead of your readers.

Don’t be in a hurry to publish low quality 300 words blog posts every day instead take your time to do proper related research and write high-quality blog posts with a minimum of 1000 words per blog posts for beginners.

Intermediate level bloggers should be looking to write and post more than 2000 words per article while the veterans, we all know the veterans because of their high domain authority, traffic, popularity, insanely high-income reports and reputation they usually post more than 3,000 – 5,000 words per article.

Writing a long-ass meaningful blog post is easy you need to have your head in the game.

Focus on the keyword, take your time, takes breaks, divide your blog post into parts and headings which means you can write about each title at different times which means you are giving your all to every heading in your article resulting in a robust, well-rounded, juicy blog post.

What do I want to achieve with a blog?

These are both short and long-term goals for starting a blog and with these goals, you can create a milestone to measure if your blog is a successful blog ad get your work out there.

But don’t put yourself in a straight jacket by setting fixed unrealistic goals that end up choking the life out of you causing frustration and leading to the death of your blog.

You need to set mild goals; monthly goals are the best. I remember how for two years I didn’t have a blogging purpose or plan or goals; I was a gung-ho blogger who writes when he gets inspiration or learns about a new tool or software and also want my readers to benefit from that tool or software.

I had no monthly plans, budgets, goals – Nothing! But in 2018 January to be precise, I have an idea, I have a budget, I have invested in my blog, I have monthly goals to start a successful blog for free.

I would also be sharing my experience, and monthly income reports to show the little I have made after been a non-profit blogger for more than two years now my blog is a successful blog and I am here to share my experience with you.

6: Create your Domain Name

Some people say choose your domain name, other say select but I say CREATE your domain name and the reason why I say that is right now it is hard to get a popular or common keyword domain name but don’t bother about that.

We are going to be looking into the domain name creation process which would help you create a list of domain names with popular and common keywords in them.

Tips for Creating Your Domain Name & get your work out there

An easy tip is to use a domain name generator; I recommend Businessnamegenerator.com. They would help you generate multiple domain names based on the keywords you choose.

Another tip for creating your new domain name which has been passed down for generations and they are the standard domain name tips. Why? Because they deliver results. Let’s get into it;

  1. Keep it short and straightforward (Use a maximum of 2-3 keywords).
  2. Use a friendly memorable name.
  3. Please don’t use numbers or hyphens (Some people are tired of maths).
  4. Try not to copy someone else. Please try.
  5. Keep your domain name clean and professional (When people see xxx they automatically think it’s an adult site).
  6. Please don’t use xxx in your domain name.
  7. You should be able to see yourself in the domain name (What do I mean by this?)

How to Get a Free .com Domain

A .com domain originally cost about $10.69 on Namecheap; this is the very first thing you have to buy before you can start a successful blog. What if I told you that you could get a free domain if you clicked on this link.

Let me explain further, to start a successful blog you need two fundamental things – Domain & Hosting. These two things will make your website or blog a self-hosted one which shows you mean business and you would be taken seriously online.

You pay for a domain name ($10.69), and you also pay for a hosting plan, I always recommend Bluehost hosting ($3.95)  for new beginners because they are so affordable and easy to use. So think along with me, why would you want to pay $14.64 when you can pay $3.95?

You can’t become a successful blogger if you don’t think smart and save money on deals, coupons and limited offers. Grab your free domain now!

how to create a successful food blog
how to create a successful food blog

How I Created Kudaxy.com Domain Name

This is the rationale behind this great name Kudaxy. Going back in time, I started my first blog back in 2017 titled AroTips long story short, I stopped blogging because of school fast forward three years later, done with college with a wealth of knowledge I was hungry to share the tech knowledge and wisdom bestowed on me through working experience.

P.S: I didn’t study anything relating to computers in college.

So, the best practice when creating a domain is to create one that reflects who you are, keep it clean, short, simple and memorable for start a successful blog.

We are going to be using this tool in our domain name creation process and what this tool does it helps you search for a new domain name quickly, and you get to choose the extension either its a .com,.net or .org domain you looking for this tool got you covered.

Domain Name Creation Process

What is domain name creation process?

This is a process where you take the maximum of 3 keywords I recommend 2 keywords because one of the tips for creating a domain name is to make your domain name short, try and mix them creatively to form something meaningful and if that fails,  try adding (s) or (x) to your domain name.

How does this work (Realistic Example) Hard skills

You take two words relating to your blog idea, try combining them. Let’s say I have a blog idea which is the talk about football matches and review them, also post some videos then it’s time to create a domain name. Football+Match+Review are the keywords in this idea then you check if footballmatchreview*com is available using the tool above.

If it’s not then, it’s time to start creating your domain name, and it’s effortless.

Try adding (s) to footballmatchreviews com, try using a .net or .co domain extension. Try using a football match review that can be your domain name and it works because all three keywords are present in your domain name.

This method works for all domain name ideas which means you can use it this method too.

Another method is not to go the keyword route; you can always use your name. Our names are pretty unique except for names like John Ford because I’m sure johnford.com is not available. If you have a unique name, use it then try adding one keyword to it.

The possibilities are endless to start a successful food blog.

Summary of the Domain Name Creation Process

  1. Use 2-3 words or keywords in your domain name.
  2. Add (s) or (x) to your domain name is the common popular one is not available.
  3. Use other domain extensions like .net, org, .co or use exact match domain extensions like.food, .write, .sports and so on.
  4. Use your unique name as your domain name.
  5. Add a keyword to your name to create your domain name.

7. Select the Best Blogging Platform

This is a job for WordPress. There are so many blogging platforms in 2018, but I will only list the top 10 blogging platforms in 2018.

  1. WordPress.org
  2. Wix
  3. WordPress.com
  4. Blogger
  5. Tumblr
  6. Medium
  7. Squarespace
  8. Joomla
  9. Ghost
  10. Weebly

Why I Recommend WordPress

8. Use the Best Hosting Plan

The hosting plan you choose will determine the future of your new blog, and if you are using a lousy hosting for your old blog, please I advise you to switch hosts and use this best hosting plan. Look at it this way;

People live in houses, website or blogs live on servers, so a web hosting company provides the space for your blog on the internet which is similar to like the land we build houses on. The domain is the home address, blogging platform is the tool you use to build your house and the theme is the furniture – Tip from Bylauraiancu.

How does Bad or Poor Hosting Affect Your Website or Blog

I feel it’s only fair that I take you through how you can detect a sick or poor hosting plan before I show you the best hosting plan. Oh, something just dropped in my mind – Harmful properties of an evil hosting plan (what harm does bad hosting bring to your website or blog?).

Let’s discuss that first before we talk about how you know a terrible hosting plan.

How do you know if you are using a Bad Hosting

There are signs of bad or poor hosting plans, and we will go through some of them together;

  1. When writing a post in WordPress editor, you get Connection Lost: Saving has been disabled until you are connected. This is the no. 1 sign that you are using a lousy hosting (This error means your current hosting cannot handle your website or blog processes, so it goes ON and OFF which is an awful thing because it drives customers, visitors away).
  2. Slow site speed
  3. Your website would be down, not working often which is not meant to be. Your website should be running, operating 99.9%
  4. You get Server errors like 503 errors, database errors, etc.
  5. Bad customer support. You open a simple support ticket “Hey can you help me check my website or blog to see ways I can optimize it and make it faster.” A good hosting company would reply to your ticket within 5 hours with actual helpful materials and not just copy and paste some documentation they found in their archives.

Benefits of using a Good Hosting Company

  1. A good hosting company should give you a free domain. Get a free domain name now.
  2. Fast, secure and reliable servers.
  3. 99.9% website uptime: This means your website or blog would always be in a working and functional state to your customers, audience or visitors.
  4. Enhanced performance and security.
  5. 24/7 support that takes time to do some research and give helpful insights that would solve your problem.
  6. Free features like free site migration, free site builder.
  7. One-click WordPress installation.
  8. Thirty days of the money-back guarantee.
  9. Affordable prices with good hosting standards and quality.

Introducing Bluehost: One of the Best Hosting Company

Bluehost is a US-based web hosting company with headquarters at Provo, Utah which started in 2003 and they host more than 1.9 billion domains. Bluehost offers affordable hosting solutions with fast, high performing and reliable servers.

Anyone can use Bluehost; they are not exclusive to anyone, they are for everyone that wants to have a good hosting experience with his new website or blog and even for old existing blogs tired of their current host.

Click here to get started with Bluehost.

9. Success Milestones {Soft skills}

In other to measure if indeed our blogs are successful, we need to set success milestones to measure our progress. I will provide a primary success milestone trail, and as you scale up, you should establish benchmarks for your website or blog.

Personalize your milestones, make them realistic and use them to measure success.

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Summary: start a successful blog

This is a quick recap of all that we have learned from this How to Start a Successful Blog post. We learned how to;

All I ask from you is you read this post start a successful blog, like and share if possible. Thank you.

Leave a comment below or send me an email let me help you directly.

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