5 Easy Steps To Start A Blog And Make Money From It

In this post you will discover a step-by-step process for publishing your blog and how to make money from it.

You don’t need any special knowledge. You don’t even need any Internet experience.
In few easy steps you will learn:

1. How to choose a domain name and hosting
2. How to install your blog
3. How to find and install the best theme
4. How to customize your blog
5. How to profit from your blog

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But before we start, I want you to have few things on your mind.

We want to start a blog and make money from it, but that doesn’t mean that we need to have banners
and sell from everywhere on your website.

Your best bet will be to establish yourself as an expert.
Your blog must help you achieve and establish you as an expert.

When your blog becomes established, your status is elevated in your niche.

More value content you post, the more of your readers will trust you.
That means more leads and more sales for you. Also you will be able
to interact more with your visitors (use comments for that).
More authority for you, more leads, more sales, more PROFITS!
Step 1: How to Choose the Right Domain Name and Web Hosting

 

A) Choosing a Good Domain Name

There are few important things you should consider when choosing a domain name

• Use a .com extension. It’s still most recognizable and most popular
• Your name should be descriptive – from it’s name it should be easy to know what’s your blog about
• The name should be easy to remember and say
• Keep it simple – if you need to explain the name, it’s probably not a good one
• Use a reliable domain registrar – the one I recommend is Namecheap 

 

B) Hosting For Your Domain Name

Next step is to choose a web host. I recommend Namecheap too. Here are the reasons:

• After I changed 2 different hosting providers (very famous) with terrible support and huge downtime, after 3 years of using Namecheap I never had any serious problems
• When some problems occured, I used Live Chat and problem was solved very fast
• Because I have lots of domains, it’s easier to keep them all in one place (but maybe it’s better to have a backup option just in case, so that’s what I will change in the near future)
• Very affordable hosting for about $8 per month

After you purchase your hosting plan, your provider will email you all the data you need. One of emails will have your DNS data, you will need to enter your DNS information into your registrar information. Don’t be scared, it’s very easy – but if you get stuck you should see FAQ (for namecheap all the info is here) or contact them on live chat.

 

 

Step 2: How to Install a WordPress Blog

I suggest you to start using WordPress system for your blog.

WordPress is frequently updated, there are unlimited design options, unlimited plugins (paid and free) for anything you can imagine!
It’s highly functional and customizable.

 

How to Install a WP Blog

When you bought hosting for your domain, in email you received the data on how to login to your Control panel. From there you will do the following:

Step 1: Log into your control panel. Usually all you have to do is go to http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel

Step 2: Scroll down to “Fantastico” – it’s near the bottom of your control panel main page. Click on it.

Step 3: Go on “WordPress.”

Step 4: Click on “New Installation.”

Step 5: Install your blog. All you have to do is complete your installation by following the onscreen instructions

 

Important: You will be asked what is the name of directory where you’d like to install WordPress. In 99% of cases you will want to install it your root directory so that is your main page. So when someone goes to www.yourdomain.com, he immediately sees your blog.

So leave “Install on Directory” blank so that your blog is in your main/root directory.

When you’fill out the short form on this screen, click the “Install WordPress” button. You’ll now be taken to a screen which tells you how to log into your new blog. The link should look something like this:

http://yourdomain.com/wp-login.php

Be sure to write this information down, along with your username and password so that you don’t forget or lose them.

Next, go to your domain name (www.yourdomain.com) to see if the installation was successful. If you see any error messages, delete the blog and try again. Otherwise, if all looks good, then log into your WP dashboard.

 

STEP 3: How to Find and Install a WordPress Theme

Now that you installed your WordPress blog on your domain, it’s time to discover how to quickly and easily make design of your blog much more beautiful.

Great news is that you don’t need to know anything about HTML or web design. You can change your blog using one of thousands free and paid theme designs. If you want to have unique blog, you can hire someone to do that for you using Upwork.com or Freelancer.com. But it’s very unlikely that you’ll need to do that since there are thousands themes to choose from.

 

You can find a theme from inside of your WordPress dashboard.

Go to appereance => themes => add new

From here you can browse too many themes. But if you want to search for more, just google “WordPress themes”.

If you select theme from outside of your WordPress, you will need to download it first to your computer. Then you will upload it into your WordPress. You will do it at the same place:

Go to appearance => themes => add new => upload theme

 

Instead of looking at different themes, now you will press upload theme, find a zip file on your computer. Usually it will take few seconds (up to one minute). After you upload it, you will need to press “Activate”. And that’s it, you have changed the way your blog looks like!

 

 

Step 4: How to Customize Your Blog

Now let’s move on to changing the function of your blog. Read on…

If you want, you can start blogging. But, you will want to do some changes, add some plugins so it works easier for you.

First – log into your blog’s dashboard (usually http://yourdomain.com/wp-login.php). Then click on “Settings” on the main navigation menu on the left side of your screen.

Let’s go through some of the options…

 

General Settings
Here you can change few basic settings, like name of the blog, email address, etc. After you finish, don’t forget to save changes.

Reading
Here you can arrange the main page of your blog – will it be a static page or it will always show most recent posts. For now, keep the default of showing the last ten posts.

Discussion
Here you will decide how to treat comments. If you decide to allow comments (of course you will), people will spam your blog. You will take care of that by installing plugin called Akismet.

To encourage discussion while reducing spam, be sure these options are checked/enabled:

Allow people to post comments on new articles.
Comment author must fill out name and email.
Email me whenever someone posts a comment.
Email me whenever a comment is held for moderation.
Hold a comment in the queue if it contains 2 or more links.

Choose settings for the rest of the options according to your preferences. Then click on “Save Changes.”

Permalinks
Here you will decide how will a blog post address look like. Default setting is something like this: “yourdomain.com/?p=123”. I always choose option called “post name”, so address will be like this: yourdomain.com/post-name.
Main reason to use this is that it’s search engine friendly.

Now click “Save Changes.” .

Tools -> Plug ins
You have the option to activate plugin “Askimet”. This will stop spam in your comments and you want to have this from day one. It’s well worth the effort. If you want to add more plugins, you can browse them here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/.

Other Settings
Until now we changed all the necessary setting to make your blog work good. But soon you will want to add some plugins, some for safety reason, some fro search engines, or simply to make it easier for your users to share your post on social media.

Remember that more plugins you install, slower your blog will be. So keep number of plugins at minimum. Try to delete plugins that you don’t use.

Before you add your first article, you should set up few main categories for the types of post you plan to write. Do it this way:

Click on “Posts,” then click on “Categories.” As you set up each new category, click on “Add New Category.” When you’re finished, return to the main “Posts” menu and select “Add New.”

 

 

Step 5: How to Profit from Your Blog

There are few different ways to make money with your blog. You can choose only one, or combine them all. It’s up to you. Just make sure that you are not being too pushy to your readers. You should make your advertising connected to your blog niche and your visitors should be interested in what you offer to them.

A) Create and sell your own products

This is probably the best and most profitable way to monetize your blog, if you do it the right way! You keep 100% of your profits,

Create products by yourself or find a ghostwriter to do it for you. Few of the great websites to find one are Upwork.com and Freelancer.com. Or you can even purchase the rights to other proven products (via resell rights or private label rights).

This is one of the most profitable ways to monetize a blog. Instead of promoting an affiliate offer and just keeping a fraction of the profits (generally a 50% commission for digital info products), you promote your own products and keep 100% of the profits.

B) Promote affiliate products

There are lots of different products that you can promote in any niche. You can find them on Offervault.com or Clickbank.com. You can join Amazon associate program and promote anything they sell.

If you are into Internet marketing, making money online or similar opportunities, I’d recommend you to create your own product.

If you want to make those high commissions now and don’t want to loose time or wait until your product is finished, I have a great thing for you. It’s called iPro and it’s not cheap to join, but there you will get everything – trainings, support, community (very supportive) and your own products that you can sell. Some of them will bring you $1k per sale. You can join here. Don’t forget to email me if you join using this link – for first 3 people I will provide a one on one support over Skype so you can make those big commissions fast and easy!
C) CPA (cost per acquisition) offers

This way you will get paid if your visitors fill a form or something similar, usually very easy. There are networks full of offers like this. At the moment 2 best ones are Maxbounty and Cashnetwork. Sometimes it’s hard to be accepted – just be polite, sincere – and it’s very likely they will accept you.
D) Make Money With AdSense

AdSense is program from Google. You will display pay per clicks ads on your website. When your visitors clicks on this link, you will make money.

But if you have chosen a good niche and if you have highly targeted traffic, you should be able to make much more money by selling your of affiliate products.
This are the most popular ways to monetize your blog. So get to work and be consistent. In my last blog post you could read about how to find a profitable niche. In few days I will show you how to get traffic to your blog.