I know, you are here because you want to start blogging. Aren’t you?

In starting of new year 2021, and it’s first month, it’s good that you are thinking to start something new. The only thing you need is the strong dedication to your commitment and your will. In this blog post I will show you only how you can setup a new blog, with what new options are available in 2021, but for making you blog a success count, you will need to work regularly on your blog.

This year is of killing Covid-19 and move ahead, a new start.

In any kind of project, the most important phase is the planning phase. Because this decides what will be the future of the project. Blogging is not an exception. Planning is very important in blogging.

Setup a blog is very easy with today’s fast growing web technologies. Just few clicks and you are live on internet. There are lots of automated platform these days to start a new blog, But I suggest before setting up your blog, you should plan how your blog will work, the very minor details is important to keep in consideration.

I know many of the new comers ignore the planning and after that they face more difficult situations. The best solution is to plan your blog very well and after that you will experience the smooth blogging.

Now the question arises, what do I have to plan in blogging?

There are some important things to think of before you start your blog like which topics you write about (your niche), which blogging platform to use and so on.

So, let’s see the steps we need to take for creating our blog.

Steps to create blog:

1. Buy domain name and web hosting
2. Install/Setup WordPress
3. Install a great looking theme
4. Install some useful plugins
5. Write some great content
6. Exploring ways to earn money from your blog (Optional)

But, before jumping straight into creating a blog, if you prefer, and I will strongly recommend, to do some research and take decision on these three things:

1. Decide niche
2. Decide the domain name
3. Decide the blogging platform

Decide your niche

This should be the first step in your planning phase. Sit down and think for some time. What you’ll write on your blog. On which topics you will write. If you are planning to become a professional blogger you must decide your niche. If you are creating your blog for only expressing your personal experiences then you can skip this part.

For blogs that are meant for online earning, deciding the niche is important. Niche specific website are best candidate to turn into authority site, which really boost the page ranking in search engines.

Decide the domain name

Well, choosing domain name is kind of personal interest. Some people prefer to get domain name which reflects their business or give relevant idea of their websites content. Other prefer to get some unique domain name which can be very easy for people to remember, for example Facebook and Google.

But I will list some general guidelines for choosing domain name:

• Keep it relevant:Select a name which is somehow relates to your blogs main theme.
• Don’t use difficult spelling, number or hyphens.
• Pick .com or .org:Pick domain name with .com or .org extension. Other new extensions are also getting popular day by day, but .com or .org is still the most popular choice for blogs.

Decide the blogging platform

You’ll need bogging platform for blogging. I believe you should be aware of WordPress. I will suggest you to use this platform. It’s used by most bloggers and by far one of the biggest blogging platforms in the world, with countless plugins and add-ons and provides infinite ways to design and layout your blog.

Although in 2021, WordPress usage is down by half as compared to 2015, but it is still one of the most dominant blogging platforms. Recently it has added more features so that will also boost its usage.

There are other blogging platforms like blogger, tumbler which are free to use. But WordPress is far better than these platforms.

WordPress comes in two version: –

• wordpress.com
• Self-Hosted WordPress (from wordpress.org)

WordPress.com: This is the hosted version. Just like blogger and tumbler this is free blog and you don’t have to pay for hosting your blog. If you are not very serious with blogging, you can go with these platforms. But for a professional blogger they have some downsides:

• You will not get your own domain name. You will get a blog URL which will be mixed with the blogging platform URL. For example –Youblog.wordpress.com or yourblog.blogger.com.
• If you want to change your blog’s domain name, wordpress.com will charge you almost double the price in which you can buy domain from another place. Blogger offer to use custom domain name free but blogger doesn’t have features like WordPress.
• You will face problem in monetizing your wordpress.com hosted blog. You can’t use AdSense or any other monetization services.
• The most important thing is that you don’t OWN your blog. Your blog could be deleted at any time if they want to.

Self-hosted WordPress: With this you are the true owner of your blog. It’s free and open source. It is available on wordpress.org. I will strongly suggest you to use this version. You can use your custom domain. You can use thousands of available themes and plugins on your blog. You can monetize your blog in any way you want with any service of your choice. Buying a domain and hosting is not very expensive.

And as I said that I will show you what option is best in 2021, here is the answer: it’s WordPress self-hosted version again. WordPress is continuous master in blogging solutions from many years. Many websites like TechCrunch, Sony Music and many more are using it. WpBeginner have posted a nice comparison of blogging platforms.

It’s highly recommended to use WordPress. Best Option.

After you have done all the brainstorming, as suggested in above decision-making steps, its time to start creating our blog.

Step 1 – Buy a domain name and hosting

You can buy domain name and hosting from anywhere. If you are the person who research extensively (similar to me), then you can take your time and search on google for best providers. There are many hosting companies, and you can compare them and select best for you. Some of the big names are Godaddy, BlueHost, Hostinger, namecheap etc.

Many of these companies provide combo pack, where they will give domain name and web hosting in one purchase, but you can also buy them separately from two different providers, for example domain name from Godaddy and hosting from Hostgator. In this case, you will need to point your domain name to your new hosting, so that any time a user types your domain name in browser, that domain name will know where to look for your blog.

I had used Hostgator for many years and its very nice service and also very affordable. So, I will recommend it.

Side Note: If you are technical person and have some programming knowledge and know how to setup Linux server, then you can try and Linux VPS. Setting up WordPress will be different, as it will require to do many manual steps.

Step 2 – Install and Setup WordPress

This step is the easiest one. Mostly all these hosting companies gives you “one-click” WordPress install option via their admin panel. All you have to do is to login to the admin panel of your hosting provider and select your domain (if domain registered company is other then you have to point your domain name to your hosting IP) and then click on WordPress install button

In just few clicks your blog will be setup. Isn’t that easy.

That’s all. Now you have successfully installed your blog. All you need to do is login to your blog and start writing blog posts. But before that, strongly recommended is to use some good-looking themes and useful plugins, to give your blog a professional look.

Step 3 – Install some good-looking theme

Looks of the blog is as important as the content of the blog. Because, after all, we create blog for humans, and people love great reading experience cosmetics.

WordPress gives you ability to change the theme of your blog, without changing any content of your blog. You can access this feature from the admin page, go to Appearance -> Theme option. There you will get option to preview or use that theme. Experiment with different themes and choose one that best suits your blog.

Step 4 – Install some useful plugins

WordPress has lots of plugins and these plugins automates works or boosts your blogging site capabilities, without writing any code manually.

I have listed some must have plugin for you here.

Contact form 7 – Use this on your blog to add a nice-looking contact form, so that people can reach to you if they need.

W3 Total Cache – Use it to implement caching on your blogging site. This makes your site faster and it will create positive effect on SEO of website.

Step 5 – Write good content

Content is the most important thing of the blog. Its like soul of the blog.

Take your time, and write some very good blog articles that is really helpful for your audience. You will find to create new blog post option in the Admin panel, navigate to Posts -> Add New Post option. Give a nice title to your post, keeping SEO in mind, and write the content of the blog post.

Step 6 – Earning money from blog

This is optional because some people do blogging only for fun. But yes, many do it for online earning. And if you are interested, you can turn your blog into good source of online earning.

Let’s see some good options to make the possible.

• Google AdSense: It is the mostly used revenue source based on the display ads.
• Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is very good option if you write content related to the features of any product or recommending it.
• Offering services: If you are professional, then you can see your services via your blog, for example if you are a software developer and your blog is related to programming, then you can offer you services and put a button like “Hire Me” on your blog.
• Selling own products: You can also sell your own products from your blog.

After all these steps, keep writing content and monitor your blogging matrix.

If in any case you got stuck or having any problem in installing your blog, feel free to contact us or leave comment.

Have a nice blogging journey.