Pick Your Niche
First, you need to decide the topic you are most passionate about. What is that one thing that you are the most interested in.
There are many topics you can blog about such as Food, Traveling, Photography and many more. Mine is about investing and documenting my journey to financial independence. I’ll suggest to pick a niche with a large audience.
Before you think of it as a business it as to be a subject you enjoy talking about and open for discussion. Share you own point of view with others.
Nowadays, you can get your website up and running in under thirty minutes. You can click here to get started with Bluehost
Visit Bluehost homepage
A host is technically an online server with massive space. With a small monthly fee you can purchase some space to store all your data. There are plenty of other hosting companies out there but it will be really hard to find one more affordable than this
If you are a new blogger, Bluehost will be a great place to start due to it’s reliability and it’s user-friendly portal.
Select Your Plan
As your first blog I’ll recommend the Basic plan and familiarize yourself. But, if your budget allows, I’ll say pick the Choice Plus and no need to worry about any limitations. No matter the plan you select you can always upgrade to Plus or Choice Plus with any any interruptions.
Register Your Domain Name
Your domain name is your blog address URL. It’s mostly how your audience will identify you with, this will be your brand; therefore, make it a unique address, pick a clever name that’ll help the reader have an idea of what your blog is all about before even navigate through your blog pages.
You can make a quick search and see if your chosen blog name is available by clicking on Domains on the top navigation menu on the Bluehost homepage
Take a look at the Package Extras they are nothing but addons that you can add to your package. For more details click on the More Information links
Fill out your Payment Information, check the box below to agree with all Bluehost terms and hit the Submit button.
Once completed you should get a confirmation email and your new blog domain name should be ready in no time.
Connect Your Domain and Your Hosting
If you purchased your domain through Bluehost, you should technically be all set.
But, if you purchased your domain through another company such as Namecheap you can easily point and connect your Bluehost hosting DNS to yo Namecheap domain.
May sound complicated but it’s very easy to do. Let me show you:
1. Sign into your Namecheap account
2. Click on the Domain List on the left panel
3. Click on the Manage button on the right
4. Click on the Advanced DNS
5. On the Host Records row click on Change DNS
6. Add your Bluehost provided DNS to the Nameservers
It may take up to an hour before it all synch and go live. In the meantime you can start installing WordPress.
WordPress Installation
Bluehost now automatically installs WordPress for you regardless if you decide to pick a theme from the start or skip to simply build from your template from scratch using the WordPress builder.
Plugins I highly recommend
I’ll describe it in just a couple words but please click on the plugin name for more details. Free version works fine for me.
Yoast SEO: for posts optimization
Smush: for image compression and optimization
Prettylinks: for shrinking and tracking links
Insert Headers and Footers: for repetitive formats
WPForms: for Contact, Registration and Survey forms