How to Start a Blog in 2021: The Ultimate Guide
The Year 2020 was a mess. The pandemic destroyed a lot of our lives and it is still progressing. The sad part is things still haven’t returned to Normal as of 2021. In this time where boredom ruled and there was nothing to do and no one to talk to, many people have turned to blog. Blogging became a method to speak the unspoken words and say the sentences that remained unheard.
So not so surprisingly, many people started blogs at this time. People were writing about all sorts of things during this period but the main highlight remained the blogs about food, entertainment, business startups, and mental health.
The conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about. – Cory Doctor
A blog is a means for expressing your idea and converse with people all over the world. But not all of us know how to make a blog. For that, we have some simple instructions on how to start a blog in 2021.
7 Tips To Start a Blog in 2021
1. Pick a Theme
A blog is your online journal and a collection of your thoughts. So before making a blog you need to consider what you want to share with people and pick a theme – the things that you want to write about and share with the world. They can be any number of things such as:
- Life experiences
- Journal
- Business
- Hobbies
- Rants
- Journalism
- Art
- News
These are just some examples but the possibilities are endless. The point is to know what type of thoughts you want to publish on your blog.
One of such examples is a blog named “Nerd Fitness“. The theme of this blog is body fitness and working out and is targeted towards the misfits and nerds – the ones who are not the fittest of people.
2. Pick a Title
Once you pick a name, the next thing you need to do is to pick a title. Since it is the first thing that people see about your blog you need to be considerate while choosing one. Although there are no steadfast rules to this, one thing you should do is make sure your title matches the contents or is related to them in some way. If you want to be credible and want to be heard, this is the least you can do.
A good example of this is “What’s Eric Playing” a gaming blog. You can know that this is a gaming blog without visiting the blog – Purely from the title itself.
3. Register a Blog Domain
After picking the title, next you need to register a blog domain. No domain means no Blog and to get a domain you need a web host.
So Pick a web host and register your blog domain. However, sometimes the domain we want is not available. Maybe someone has already taken it or maybe it doesn’t fit in with the rules. In such cases, you can:
- Try different domain extensions such as .in and .net
- Try adding small words such as “a” and “the”. These words don’t change the essence of the blog much and can grant you the title that you want.
- Try adding dashes “-”
If none of these work, then you can always try to use the synonyms of the title that you want. They don’t change the context much can help you land the title that is not far from your ideal one.
If you do choose an independent domain, you will need to pay. However, if you want to register a blog but don’t want to pay, you can do it by registering it as a sub-domain under an existing domain. While sub-domains do not have as many benefits as a primary domain, it is still helpful for those who just want to let their voices be heard.
A good example of this is a poetry blog “extra dark coffee” under the subdomain .blogspot.com aka blogger owned by Google.
4. Design and Customize
The next thing that you should do is design your blog. This process includes everything from setting the format of your content, to designing the visual aspect of your blog and controlling information that you showed on your blog.
You can be as much creative as you want in this process as long as you don’t break the theme of your blog. Some things that you need to consider while customizing your blogs are
- Your Blog information
- Your Contact Information
- Categories for your articles (if you have multiple types of articles)
- The Author information
- Media compatibility
- The add on’s you need in your blog
Once you customize these things you can move on to choosing your blog design. This will represent how people see your blog. Although there are no rules on how you should design your blogs, there are few things that you should consider:
- Stay close to your blog theme
- Make the design eye-catching
- The fluidity of the blog is a good thing
- Stay in tune with the trends
- Choose a color scheme as per your theme
These tips are not set in stone and as the web hosting platform changes, designing and customizing options will change as well. However, as of 2021, it’s worth considering these things if you want your blog to do well.
5. Write and Publish
Once you have designed the blog, you can now start writing and posting. Since it is a medium to express your thoughts and ideas, you are free to post as per your wish. That being said since a lot of us want our thoughts to be heard, it is always a good idea to follow a few general guidelines of what to do while writing on our blogs to increase the reach. They can be summed up in:
- Know whom you want to express your thoughts to i.e know your target reader
- Make it fairly easy to understand to them
- Make it detailed but not boring
- Make it original
- A picture speaks a thousand words – Include original images
As Richard Bach once said
“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”
If you consider these things you are ready to start blogging. These steps are adequate if you just want to be heard and express your feelings. However, if you want to reach many people, you will have to optimize the SEO of your blog for search engines such as Google and Bing.
6. Optimize SEO of your blog
Optimizing SEO basically means making it easier to be found in search engines such as Google and Bing. The more optimized it is, the higher it will be on the SEO ranks. This is beneficial if you want your writings to reach a lot of people. Let’s be honest who among us doesn’t want this to happen? Optimizing the SEO is a complex and long and difficult process but you don’t have to be Elon Musk for maintaining a basic and decent SEO. As long as you follow certain guidelines, the SEO will be fine. Some of which includes:
- Do keyword research
- Write articles with the best keywords
- Good blog title
- Use internal links
- Easy to read blogs
- Make your content Unique – No plagiarism
- Analyze how your content is performing and develop them accordingly.
If you want to Optimize SEO well, you will need to pay for some advanced features. Regardless of some basic SEO, you can use keyword Analysis tools like Ubersuggest and Soovle. Along with that regardless of which platform you are using, you can get the basic analytics of your blog from there.
As you increase in ranks your blog will start to garner attention and be visited frequently. When this happens, it will be a waste if you don’t monetize your blog
7. Monetize your Blog
You can choose not to monetize your blog. However, money is always a good thing for a lot of us. Now there are a few ways in which you can make money from your blog. You may have heard about sponsorship but these are just the ones on the tip of the icebergs. Some of the methods in which you can monetize your blog that go beyond the tip are:
- Affiliate marketing
- Advertising
- Email Marketing
- Create and sell online courses
- Offer membership plan
- Get sponsorship
- Sell your products through your blog
These things can make you money. Once you enable these things, you will get a steady form of money from the blog. The chances of earning big money are small, but big companies can earn as much as $3 K from pay per click per month once you get noticed by big companies. This is equivalent to NRs 3,00,000 which is a substantial amount. You will need a lot of visitors to get this amount of earnings but it can be done.
Blogging can be done for both personnel and professional reasons. Whether you want to get a steady flow of money or just want to be heard, a blog is a good platform for that. It is a place where you are the creator, manager, and executor. It’s easy and effective as long as you follow some basic guidelines.
So, what’s your reason for not starting a blog?
Recommended links:
Comment Here!