How to start a blog in the 2020s from scratch?

To start a blog in the 2020s from scratch may seem no different from starting a blog 10 years ago, with a few exceptions.

For one, the cost of starting a blog has decreased significantly. In the past, one would need to pay for hosting, a domain name, and design costs.

Nowadays, there are free platforms such as WordPress and Blogger that make starting a blog much easier and cheaper. Starting a blog with low money is definitely possible in the 2020s.

Another difference is the ease of use of these platforms. In the past, setting up a blog required some technical knowledge. Nowadays, anyone can start a blog with just a few clicks.

Finally, the number of people blogging has increased significantly in recent years. This means that there is more competition for readership but also more opportunities to connect with other bloggers.

Here’s in a nutshell how to start a blog from scratch:

1. Choose a good niche for your own blog.
2. Choose a good domain for the blog.
3. Choose a good hosting for your blog.
4. Set up WordPress.
5. Choose a theme for your blog.
6. Set up important plugins.
7. Start writing content and write a lot of it.
8. Avoid promoting your blog on social media.
9. Don’t monetize your blog immediately.

Following these tips will help you start a successful blog in the 2020s!

The past and the future.

Blogging is the future. In the past, blogging has been a way of expressing oneself online. In the future, blogging will be a way of making money online.

Being a blogger today, you are the middle man between the seller and the buyer. Affiliate marketing grows day by day, and it’s time for you to get your cut.

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. In other words, you promote other people’s products and get some percentage of every sale.

I always tell my loved ones to start a blog today so they can have a sense of control over their finances in the future because, unlike a traditional 9-5 job, blogging gives you the ability to make money while you sleep.

In addition, you aren’t responding to anyone, you don’t have a boss over your head, and you don’t have to worry about being late to work, instead, you can set your own hours of work. The pressure goes away, you don’t have to worry about your retirement company going bankrupt during the recession (as they do), and your financial future is more secure.

If you’re reading this in the 2020s, then starting a blog is one of the best things you can do for your future. It’s a long-term investment that will pay off handsomely if done right.

There are many ways to make money from blogging. The most common is through advertisements, and like I already mentioned affiliate marketing, but also selling your own digital products like printables or eBooks, or even coaching and consulting.

The sky is the limit when it comes to making money from blogging, and I believe that everyone has the potential to make a full-time income from blogging if they’re willing to put in the work.

If you’re serious about starting a blog in the 2020s, then I suggest you take some time to read till the end to find all the basics on how to start a blog. It’ll show you everything you need to know about starting a successful blog from scratch.

Trust me, by the end of this article, you’ll be ready to start your own blog and begin your journey to financial freedom.

How to start a blog in the 2020s from scratch?

Let’s discuss one by one how to start a blog in the 2020s. It shouldn’t be difficult. It is actually quite easy, but I want to give you my honest opinion so you can be successful rather than waste your time.

In the following paragraphs, I discuss one by one how to start a blog from scratch, including:

• Choose a good niche for your own blog.
• Choose a good domain for the blog.
• Choose a good hosting for your blog.
• Set up WordPress.
• Choose a theme for your blog.
• Set up important plugins.
• Start writing content and write a lot of it.
• Avoid promoting your blog on social media.
• Don’t monetize your blog immediately.

Choose a good niche for your own blog.

To choose a good niche for your blog, the old school says that you should consider what you are passionate about and what you can write about interestingly. But even though it is important to choose a niche that you are passionate about, you should not limit yourself to only writing about that niche.

The reason why you shouldn’t focus on writing about the things you are passionate about is that your passion can get you only so far.

Some of the most popular blogs are about topics that the blogger is not passionate about. But they are still able to write engaging and interesting content because they have other aspects to their blog that make it successful.

I suggest you start mixing it up, meaning, take your passion into account, but don’t focus on a very tiny niche.

Choose a good domain for the blog.

To choose a good domain name there is only one simple choice – use your name. As you can see, I used my name as the domain name for my blog.

And here’s why…

When you choose a name that is tight up to a small niche, for instance, “losing belly for men over 40”, you are tight up to it and have to adjust your domain name accordingly. However, when choosing your name as the domain name, you have a choice to change the direction of your blog towards the audience that comes to read it.

You have no such freedom with a small niche. But when using your name, if one niche doesn’t work, you can change it to another without changing or paying for another domain. Not only do you save money and time, but you also get more traffic as you can be found in more search engines.

And one more thing – your name is the best brand you can have. Why not use it for your blog?

Always choose your name as the domain. There is nobody Welsh running a blog under your name. It is also unique, and everything associated with your name brings more awareness to your personal brand. Nobody hacks that.

Choose a good hosting for your blog.

There are many hosting companies to choose from, but I suggest using only three:

SiteGround, A2 Hosting, Bluehost, and more… but there is only one I use for both of my blogs – HostGator!

HostGator is one of the best and most popular hosting companies. HostGator is used by many bloggers and has great customer service, 24/7, is super helpful, and is one of the cheapest in my humble option.

Whenever there is a technical issue, the HostGator team can solve it in no time. You simply get on the HostGator’s chat, as you would on Facebook, and chat about your problem. The HostGator’s team will ask you to give them 2-3 minutes while they resolve your issue. This is as easy as that.

HostGator has great plans for WordPress blogs, which is what you need if you want to start a blog in the 2020s from scratch, and which is the blogging platform I recommend.

To start a blog in the 2020s, you can get started with HostGator for only $2.75/month, which is a truly unbeatable price. This is less than the price of one cup of coffee (or tea, if you’re not a coffee person). It’s so cheap, there’s no question about looking any further.

Set up WordPress.

WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world. It is used by millions of people around the world and powers almost 30% of all the websites on the Internet.

WordPress is free and open-source software released under the GPL license. WordPress is a very versatile platform that can be used for almost any type of website, from a simple blog to a complex business website.

There are two ways you can install WordPress:

• Manually – you can download WordPress from wordpress.org and install it on your own web server. This requires some technical knowledge and is suitable for more advanced users.
• Automatically – most web hosting companies offer one-click installs for WordPress, which makes it very easy to get started with WordPress. This is the recommended method for most users.

If you’re using HostGator, you can use their built-in WordPress installer to set up WordPress. Or even better – use their live chat I mentioned above so they can sort it out for you.

This gives you another benefit in the favour of HostGator, choose it, and you won’t regret it. I guarantee you with my own reputation.

Once WordPress is installed, you can log in to your WordPress dashboard and start creating content for your blog.

Creating content for your blog is the most important part, so start that. In the meantime, you should also choose a theme for your blog.

Choose a theme for your blog.

To choose a theme, login to your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance » Themes.

On this page, you will see the default WordPress theme installed (Twenty Nineteen in this case), as well as any other themes you have installed.

To install a new theme, click on the Add New button. This action will take you to the WordPress.org themes repository, where you can browse through thousands of free WordPress themes.

You can use the feature filter on the left to find the perfect theme for your blog. For example, you can filter themes by features like:

• Popularity
• Layout (e.g. one column, two columns, etc.)
• Features (e.g. featured images, post formats, etc.)
• Subject (e.g. business, portfolio, personal blog, etc.)

Once you have found a theme you like, hover over it and click the Install button. WordPress will now download and install the theme for you.

Once the theme is installed, you can click on the “Activate” link to activate it or return to the themes page and activate it from there.

Now that you have a WordPress blog up and running, it’s time to start publishing your content.

Set up important plugins.

There will be some essential plugins that you should install on your blog to get started. Some of these might be optional, depending on your needs.

Here are some essential plugins that I recommend:

Akismet – this plugin checks your comments against a global database of spam and allows you to review the comments that it thinks are spam. This is a must-have plugin if you want to avoid comment spam.

Yoast SEO – this plugin is essential for optimizing your blog posts for search engines. It helps you to choose a focus keyword for your post and then gives you feedback on how well you’ve optimized your post for that keyword.

W3 Total Cache – this caching plugin speeds up your website by caching your pages and posts as static files. This means that your server doesn’t have to generate each page on each request, which can speed up your website significantly.

Once you have installed and activated these plugins, you’re ready to start publishing your content!

Start writing content and write a lot of it.

Creating content for your blog is the most important thing you will do from now on. Blog content can take many different forms, including:

• Articles
• Tutorials
• How-to guides
• Product reviews
• Opinion pieces
• Interviews
• Guest posts

And much more…

Your blog content should be high quality, original, and informative. It should also be helpful and useful to your target audience.

Don’t worry about being perfect. As long as you write to help people, they will notice that, and so will the search engine. What you should focus on for the next 2-3 months is to write content, and publish new blog posts on a regular basis, a minimum of twice a week, ideally more.

But again, focus on giving value to people rather than writing for the sake of it.

There are two main reasons why you have to focus on writing a lot of blog posts in the first few months:

• Firstly, for a blog post to rank it takes on average six to eight months, sometimes more, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see quick results, blogging career is an investment, but it will pay off.
• Secondly, not every blog post is going to rank. Many won’t. Even for me, there are articles I wrote 2 years ago that only appeared on the 10th page of Google, but there are a few posts that ranked in 3 weeks since I published them. Some get traffic, some don’t.

So please, do NOT worry and give up on yourself. It takes time to see results. But the only way to get out of this poop faze is by writing, and writing a lot.

You can speed this process up by using an A.I. tool like Jasper.

Don’t get caught up in redesigning your website over and over, it can be done any time in the future. Besides, nobody is going to visit your blog in the first few months, so focus on writing, and don’t think of anything else until you publish 30-50 posts.

Avoid promoting your blog on social media.

Let’s face it – social media is a huge black hole when it comes to time. You can spend hours upon hours promoting your content on social media and never get anywhere.

Not only that, but social media is not a very effective way to drive traffic to your blog in the early days. It’s much better to focus on creating great content and promoting it in other ways, such as through guest posting or email marketing.

Of course, you can still use social media to share your content from time to time, but don’t make it your main focus, and if you do, focus on Pinterest, as Pinterest has some actual benefits:

Pinterest is a visual search engine, it is not social media. It works similarly to Google, with one exception, you get the results fast. The downside of it is, that it takes you away from producing helpful content.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or even worse – TikTok, are a total waste of your energy and time.

These platforms want to keep you on their side. You cannot make a real business out of social media. If anything, use YouTube. But again, if you notice the pattern, YouTube is not social media, it’s also a search engine.

To sum this up…

if you really want to promote elsewhere, use Pinterest. But if you want to make a living blogging, and a blogging career, focus on two other search engines – Google and YouTube. Both of these complement each other.

• Start writing and optimizing your written content for Google search engine (SEO).
• Later on, you can add a YouTube channel to grow your blog through visual content.
• Lastly, this is not necessary, but Pinterest can boost your traffic significantly too.

Don’t monetize your blog immediately.

Don’t try to make money from your blog too early.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that they try to monetize their blog before they have enough traffic. They add Adsense ads, or they start promoting affiliate products, but they don’t have enough people visiting their site to actually make any money.

Not only that, but when you’re just starting out, it’s much better to focus on building an audience and creating helpful content rather than thinking about ways to make money.

If you try to monetize too early, not only will you not make any money, but you will also likely put people off with your constant promotion of products and services. It’s much better to wait until you have built up a loyal following and then start thinking about monetization.

There are many ways to monetize a blog, but the most common are:

• Adsense ads
• Affiliate marketing
• Selling products or services
• Sponsored posts

Which one you choose will depend on your niche, your audience, and your goals. But whatever you do, don’t try to monetize too early. Build an audience first.

Wrapping up How to start a blog in the 2020s from scratch.

To start a blog in the 2020s from scratch shouldn’t be rocket science.

Choosing a good niche for your blog is important because it will help you define your target audience and give you direction on the types of content you should be writing. A niche can be something as specific as fashion or travel, or it can be more general like lifestyle or parenting.

Once you’ve chosen your niche, select a domain name that reflects it. For example, if you’re blogging about fashion, a good domain name would be www.fashionblog.com.

Next, you’ll need to choose a hosting platform for your blog. There are many different options available, but we recommend WordPress because it’s free and easy to use.

Once you’ve set up WordPress, select a theme for your blog. There are many free and premium themes available, so take some time to browse through them and find one that you like. After you’ve selected a theme, it’s time to set up some plugins.

Plugins are optional but they can add functionality to your blogs, such as social media share buttons or contact forms. There are many free and premium plugins available, so take some time to browse through them and see which ones you think would be useful for your blog.

Now it’s time to start writing content!

Write about topics that you’re passionate about and that you think will interest your target audience. Try to post new content on a regular basis, such as daily or weekly.

Avoid promoting your blog on social media too much. This can come across as spammy and turn people off from reading your blog. Instead, focus on writing great content that will organically attract readers to your site.