How to Start a Blog in 2023 (Step by Step) // Blogging for Beginners

in today's video I want to talk about how to start a blog in 2023 I've been blogging for over 10 years and today I want to share my best tips and tricks how I would set up my blog today if I started as a beginner this is my job now I'm a full-time vlogger I quit my banking job like three years ago I think four years ago and I do this full time I'm a full-time blogger now so today I thought I would share my best tips and just walk you through like my thought process and that exact step by steps on how to start a vlog in 2023 that is actually gonna make you money and could be turning into a job for you so I'm gonna jump into my tips before I move on to my step-by-step how to start blog so if I would start a blog today as a beginner I would really think about my why and I know this sounds kind of stupid um but know your why I don't know if you've heard that before but I think there's basically like two reasons why you don't blog like there are many reasons but like in general you could be starting a blog as an online journal and that's totally fine but then you don't really have to worry about anything right you can just upload your stuff like your thoughts you can do that but the other reason that you want to start a blog could be that you want to turn this blog into a business eventually and if you want to turn your blog into a business I think it's really good when you know this from the start right so that you can make the best decisions for your blog so that you can grow really fast like I made every single mistake you can think of in those 10 years blogging um and I don't want you to do this so that's why we are here but if you approach your blog like from a mindset of this is going to be a business you're going to have an easier making the right decisions for that blog so really know if this is just a fun project or if you really want to make this your career as I did and then you want to think about some stuff and I'm gonna talk about this in all my tips and my setup so once you know what but you're wise I think you should get the blog set up out of the way like this is where I see so many people like struggle with like they try and make their Vlog perfect like first of all they struggle with the setup and I have a video on the exact step-by-step setup like you can do it in 15 minutes like I promise you and I get that like I did everything wrong when I did that the first time around but if I could go all over again I would really get the blog set up out of the way so you can start on focusing on your content and your content is really the most important part of blogging and I know people really obsessed about the look of your blog and that's important for sure but I think you should really not take more than a week to set up your blog and like for me I can set up a Blog in 15 minutes and then I use a day for example to design it and then I'm ready to launch like I've launched a lot of blogs now and I would highly recommend that you are like okay I'm gonna take a week set up this blog but then I'm going to move on and focus on something else because I see this so much that people get stuck with the kind of tech stuff and I have a full course on WordPress like that gets the tech out of the way if you want to check that out but I think you should really move on to content as fast as you can okay and this tip goes into the same thing like your blog design does not have to be complicated I love beautiful websites this is really the most fun I get out of blogging is like the whole design part but what I've learned in 10 years is that the design is really not that important like sure you want your website to look good for sure like it should look professionally designed and you can use like themes um they're super affordable themes out there that you can install and that determine like the look of your website but you should like not spend a month working on the design of your website if you're just starting out like I have a custom website now but I did not have four years so I always use like themes to make my blog look professional but the most important thing about your blog design is that it's easy to use on desktop and on mobile because a lot of traffic is going to come from mobile and you want to make it easy when you're starting out like don't waste time on designing the most amazing website when you haven't even published five blog posts like for sure if you're into it like I am I get it but your website design really doesn't have to be complicated for your blog to be successful okay so next on my list I wrote down that what you blog about matters and I just want to talk about the whole topic of Niche blogs because I had a lot of trouble like figuring out what I wanted to blog about like I think when I started out I had a food blog and like I was I'm a decent cook but like I've never taken my own photography never so that was really hard then I kind of moved in to a lifestyle block that lifestyle blocks are really hard and a bit oversaturated and also like in the beginning no one cares about you when you start out like we're gonna talk about that in a second like lifestyle block they can be tricky like some niches they just tend to get a lot more traffic and traffic is just how many people are visiting your blog so when we are talking about food fashion lifestyle DIY home decor things like that Finance they get a lot of traffic because a lot of people are interested in that however a lot of people are already blogging about things like that so it's kind of finding that middle ground of what you want to talk about that interests a lot of people but interests you as well and isn't oversaturated and I get it is super hard if I could go back and talk to me like 10 years ago I would just say to myself that like talk about what you're really interested in what like fires you up every day because you're gonna spend so much time on your blog and you really want to talk about something that your passionate about that you know something about you don't have to be an expert or have a PhD in what you're blogging about but you should know a little bit at least some helpful things you can share with your audience that they might appreciate okay and then my next tip is just to really understand that your content is the number one most important thing on your blog everything that I just told you is like to get to a point where you are creating that content this is where you're gonna connect with your audience where you're gonna help them Inspire them educate them this is where you're going to grow your traffic your audience your followers and eventually your income so I really want you to understand that all about the content and I get this question also a lot about how many blog posts you need to have to get started and you can basically start with one blog post just get your blog out there hit publish launch that blog you can also like prepare three to five blog posts if you like but like it's really about getting started and then getting on a schedule like how many blog posts should I post this is gonna be different for everybody I just want you to be realistic about what you can do like when I started I was a student at University so it was easier for me to create content now I'm a mom I work part-time like see what you can get out there on a consistent basis so if that's twice a month that's gonna be your schedule if that's once a week that's going to be your schedule like if you can manage to get two blog posts out every week like that's amazing but just I think consistency is way more important than just like a fixed number that is like universally applied to every blogger I mean if you can get an out five blog posts a day I mean amazing but you really want to also focus on the quality and also serving the people who visit your blog okay and then the next tip is like how you write your content this is something that I had to learn the hard way too like your content and your blog it's not about you like if your plan is to turn your blog into a business then you're not blogging for yourself you're blogging for your audience you want to serve your audience it's all about them it's not about you this is really really important like I always try to identify like the posts that I can write that are the most helpful for my audience like what do they want to read like which posts are successful already how can I create more of that content that is firing up my audience is this a question I get in my emails in my DMs in my comments if I do keyword research and this is a little bit too advanced for this um video but you can find search volumes for keywords and then see how many people are searching that keyword um to get events what are people really interested in and this is so important you're not blogging for yourself you're blogging for your audience and this will make a major difference when it comes to turning your blog into a business and actually earning from your blog okay so my next tip is to really understand then how people find your blog online and this is when you hear people talk about traffic traffic is the amount of people that are coming to your website so we have Google we have other search engines we have social media we have email like all these sources where people can find you and the thing is you have to promote your blog like crazy for people to find you like when I started blogging I thought I would hit publish on that blog post on that first blog post and people would just like magically find me and I got super pumped when I realized that that's not the case you need to show up promote the heck out of your content so that people actually find you and the most easy thing you can do as a beginner is to go on Pinterest create pins and drive traffic from Pinterest and I have so many videos about Pinterest like my whole YouTube is about like Pinterest and growing your traffic but I also loved Google like Google is the biggest search engine in the world so if you can show up in these two places and start to understand SEO search engine optimization keywords and social media and how you are driving this traffic to your website that's going to be key for turning your blog into a business and earning money because the more people that see your content the more ad Revenue you make the more affiliate income you make the easier you grow your email list where you can also sell like for example your own product traffic really matters and I get that this is super overwhelming but you have to understand that blogging is not something that you can expect to be successful in like two weeks I get super annoyed at people who are like oh I made x amount of money in like the first two months of blogging and I'm just like no you did not because blogging is really a long-term strategy like like this is really something you have to invest time and energy in okay and then my next step is to focus on one income stream the first step for you is to understand how bloggers make money in the first place like there's so many ways like I talked about this just before like ad revenue is going to be a pretty big one um for you when you're starting out you can sell your own products you can sell your own merch you can sell on Etsy and use your blog to promote that you can do affiliate marketing which is another great one for beginners you can sell coaching your courses but like you really want to think about what is the one or two revenue streams I'm gonna Implement right from the start I really recommend that you have a focus of how I'm going to monetize that block from the get-go and not just like six months in it doesn't matter how much you make like if you could be making a dollar a month but that's income from your blog like that's gonna grow I just really want you to have that mindset to think about how am I making money with this blog and how is this gonna turn into a business eventually okay now these were my best tips for beginners on how to start a blog in 2023 and I just want to walk you quickly through how I would start a blog step by step today if I would do it as a beginner and this is my specific process I do this every time I set up a Blog and this is really what I recommend for beginners so first of all to choose the right blogging platform and like I'm not a person that usually say this is the only way to go but I honestly think it is and you need to start a wordpress.org blog a South hosted website like when I started I started with wordpress.com so don't confuse wordpress.org with wordpress.com that was a free blog like it was so painful everything was wrong with it like I had eventually had to move on my blog to a self-hosted website it was a disaster I lost so much time I lost money um it was just really bad so the first first thing I recommend is to start a blog with WordPress and Bluehost and Bluehost is the host that I recommend it's super affordable it's like 2.95 a month to get started I have a link to this video here where I walk you through step by step on how to set up your blog from a technical site so it's really easy like 15 minutes um and Bluehost is just amazing they have great support so you can chat with them if something goes wrong and they're amazing okay then the second thing you need to choose is your name your blog name will also be in the URL so this is called a domain and your domain could be anything it could be your name a made-up name I just wouldn't make it too complicated like I did like what's Katie up to that's so like that's so complicated like if I could go back I would just make it something easy to read like I would recommend you use the right grammars just keep it very simple and then I also really recommend that you get a.com site so not DOT co.net keep it simple and then third you need to design your blog and I really highly recommend that you get a pre-built theme like their free WordPress themes you can use that are totally fine or you can purchase a theme like I've always purchased uh themes that are around like 60 or 70 dollars you have to pay them once and that's it you can even get some designers to set your design up for you and there's so many out there you can find great ones on Creative Market you can find some on Etsy I started out with blue chick I will link them down below they're also great and really affordable like feminine themes and they're really like easy like I like I mentioned in the beginning like you don't want to over complicate this process you want to have a beautiful website that's easy to use and then this is the most important thing you want to start publishing content ASAP what is the content schedule that's going to work for you because as soon as you can get content out there you will start getting people over to your site and this is going to be so motivating for you because as I've said like vlogging is not easy but if you see that people are coming to your website this is going to motivate you to keep going and this is the same thing that I said with monetizing like can you add some affiliate links in there so that you can maybe do your first sale like in the first month like even if it's only 10 cents but these things are going to motivate you to keep going because blogging is not easy and then as my final step you really want to start working on your traffic so focus on your SEO your search engine optimization so adding keywords identifying keywords adding those to your blog post and then set up your Pinterest account and start creating pins for your blog posts that lead people back to your blog so that you can start growing your community you can start growing your income and then it's really just a thing of doing it over and over and over again so then you're going to create more content you're going to figure out what people love what you should create more about and then just keep going improving learning about blogging and just figuring out like your own blogging strategy this was my how to start blog guide for 2023 with my best tips on how to start a blog and my step-by-step guide I really hope you got a lot of value out of this I know you can do this I know it can be sometimes really hard to just get started but I think the beginning of the year is a great way to get like a project like this off the ground so just start your blog right now like get the setup out of the way and then focus on your content so that was it for me for today I hope you enjoyed this video if you did hit that subscribe button and notification Bell and the like button oh my god um and yeah I will see you next week with a new video um about blogging and Pinterest so yeah

Channel: Katie Grazer

Views: 15,615

Keywords: start a blog, how to start a blog, blogging for beginners, how to start a blog and make money, how to start a blog in 2023, how to start a blog for beginners, how to start a blog step by step for beginners, blogging tips, how to start a blog 2022, starting a blog, how to make money blogging, how to create a blog, wordpress blog, how to make a blog, blogging tips from a full time blogger, how to create a website, build a website, blog setup, wordpress blog tutorial, blog

Id: 2HDC0sl945w

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 22 2022