6 Steps to Start a Successful Blog
Blogging is a great way to make money online in Pakistan, India or anywhere else in the world. However, not many writers know about it or those that do it are not aware of how to turn it into a side or a full time income. This blog post shares how to get started with blogging for the newbies.
Steps for starting a successful blog
Yes, you have guessed it right. You need a website where you will write and publish your blog posts. So what's the first step in getting your very own personal blogging website or a blog?It is all discussed below:
1. Select a blog name (also known as domain name)
Every website has a url and a name. Most of the time, the name is the website’s url. The website's url is also known as the domain name but without the .com, .org etc part. That part is known as the domain extension. For example, if www.yourname.com and your website, then yourname is the domain name and .com is the domain extension also known as the TLD ( top level
domain). After you have selected your domain name, you need to book it through a domain registrar in Pakistan. There are a number of domain registration in Pakistan companies that will help you in this regard.
There are different tips for choosing a domain name. Some of the prominent ones include:
- Using your brand name if possible
- Use a short name
- Do not use any special characters and numbers
- Keeping it memorable
2. Choosing a Blog Hosting
Now that you are done with your blog name or domain name, the next step is to choose an appropriate web hosting plan to make it live on the internet. Wondering what web hosting is? Well, it's the space on machines known as servers rented by the web hosting companies to store a website’s file. Every time someone types in a query regarding a website, its files are fetched from the server and presented over the search engine.
You can choose shared hosting if you are just starting out. There are a number of hosting agencies offering web hosting in Pakistan at affordable rates with shared hosting as the cheapest solution. You can always upgrade to the other hosting types such as VPS hosting in Pakistan or WordPress Hosting in Pakistan later on as per your budget, traffic and web requirements.
3. Choose WordPress as your Blog's CMS
WordPress is one of the world's most popular CMS used for blogging. It is not limited to blogging as you can always create other types of sites with it. Most hosting in Pakistan agencies offer a one click WordPress installation under their hosting plan. Even if it's not available, you can do it in under 5 minutes. There are many tutorials available on YouTube which would help you do that.
4. Customize Your Web Appearance
Now that you have your domain and hosting connected to your website with WordPress running, you need to customize its Appearance. There are many free and paid WordPress themes available which you can use to personalise your site. Just goto WordPress.org and check out the available themes for your blog. You can also check out paid themes on themeforest.net
5. Setup Plugins
Setup some plugins for extra features such as Yoast SEO, Google Analytics for tracking users and word fence for security. These plugins would be enough for your website.
6. Time to Write & Publish Content
After your website is ready and functional, you can start writing your blog posts and publish them for your readers. For organic traffic, make sure to follow SEO guidelines like keywords, headings, Meta titles and Meta descriptions, internal and external links etc.
For the SEO Tips, you can check out a few seo consultants such as Nathan Gotch, Neil Patel or Brian Dean.
Post your content regularly taking care of seo aspects and sooner than later you would be able to create a following for your blog. Apply for ad networks such as Google adsense in order to monetize it. You can also sell affiliate products by writing reviews related to your industry. This way you would be able to turn your writing passion into a money making skill! Good Luck