Frequently, I get asked about how to start a blog. It’s something people think about but simply don’t know where to begin.

I have always loved to write and often thought about blogging, so when my school teacher daughter-in-law, the mother of four little girls started her adorable blog, I got the message. Start somewhere!

She told me how easy it was to start her WordPress blog on Bluehost and she was right.

Now, I LOVE blogging. It has changed my life! It has enabled me to grow as a writer and get more in touch with who I am. 

That’s why I want to help others to do the same. Whether you blog for FUN or want to Make Money, I’m going to show you step by step how to start your own blog in the hopes that you’ll be successful and love it as much as I do. Get ready for a great adventure!

The great thing about blogging is you can do it as much or as little as you want! It’s all yours…..YOU ARE THE BOSS!

If I can blog anyone can blog.

Make money …. or just have fun!

Starting a WordPress Blog on Bluehost can be a little intimidating if you’re new to blogging.  But I’m going to show you how surprisingly simple it is with my Step by Step Tutorial. Have Fun!

At the end of this tutorial you’ll be the proud owner of your very own blog! It’s so exciting to see your very first post online. You’ll want to share it with everyone and I’ll help you with that TOO!

WHY START A BLOG

• You can make a little money blogging. What could you do with an extra $200 a month?

• You can make SERIOUS money blogging! I know of people making over $50,000 a month in less than two years while traveling and working anytime and anywhere in the world. We’ll talk about the different ways to make money blogging. 

• You can blog just for fun sharing ideas, feelings, photography, recipes, stories, pictures anything!

When I was a little girl, a fun outgoing friend of our family asked, “Arvey Sue, what do you want to be when you grow up? When I rattled off my long list of things I dreamed of being she said, “you want to do all those things?” And so it began.

Over the years, I’ve waited tables, been in finance, owned a catering business, gourmet food factory, successful BBQ restaurant, child care centers, had my own clothing label, been an RN in various capacities, worked in pharmaceutical sales, real estate and am a commercial real estate broker. I also love to write and have written books. My new hardback book Ruling the Roost From the Henhouse will hit the shelves in the next few months. I’m sure I’ve left out a few, but with as many things that I’ve done over the years, it seems my bucket list just keeps getting longer. I love life. After surviving a heart attack six years ago I understand I don’t have time to waste!

But of all my careers, I’ve never  felt so free and been so excited to get out of bed in the morning! Starting businesses for myself and others is my passion, because I love to create.  But along the way, with every adventure I’ve added valuable tools to my “tool box.”  Those tools are my greatest assets no matter what I do or where I go. What’s in your toolbox?

I’ve never understood why anyone, with all the opportunities and wonderful things going on in this world, would limit themselves to doing the same thing their whole life? A sociology professor I had in college strolled around the room one day and explained to us that if you didn’t work the same job forty hours a week, for forty years, to earn your forty-dollar watch, you were unstable. That my friends is the definition of unstable.

Blogging is an escape into a world YOU create. A place you create and can get lost in and share the wonders of it with others. Abraham Lincoln said, “The best way to predict your future is to create it.” The beautiful thing about blogging is it can be whatever you want it to be. It’s all yours.

Some people blog for fun, to share their passion, experience and knowledge with others, while many blog to make money.  Some start their blog as a hobby and discover they are having so much fun, they’re going to turn it into a lucrative business. Why? It’s a great way to have fun writing about what you love from anywhere, anytime you choose.

I’ve spent a lot of my life helping people. Now I want to help others experience the excitement of starting their own blog, whether it’s for fun or it’s for making a little money or a lot of money. There are different ways and I’ll tell you how. The best part, I’m here to help walk you through how to start your blog with a few easy steps. 

IF A BLOG IS A BLOG WHAT’S A GROG?

A GRANDMA’S BLOG OF COURSE!

GRANDMA’S ARE GREAT BLOGGERS

BECAUSE THEY HAVE LOTS TO SHARE!

Blogging has given me a tremendous sense of freedom to express myself and be who I want to be. The sky is the limit. Of all the wonderful things I’ve done in my life, blogging is by far the most fun, exciting, creative, rewarding, challenging and versatile. It’s so exhilarating to open your computer and just start writing about whatever you want to write about. That’s what blogging is. It’s your thoughts and opinions and ideas, sharing a talent or area of expertise if that’s what you want. Or it’s sharing stories and pictures or videos. Let it take you where you want to go. 

I would never recommend anything to anyone that I had not tried and used myself. BlueHost is one of the most established and well-know hosting brands on the internet for beginners to experts! They host over 2 million WordPress sites and are the leading platform for many of the biggest bloggers. There’s a reason for that. You are never alone. And they are all the nicest and most helpful people I’ve ever talked to. That’s saying a lot!

YOU COULD BE BLOGGING TODAY FOR ONLY $3.95 A MONTH! I KNOW. I DID IT!     

   LET’S GET STARTED. 

CREATE AN ACCOUNT WITH BLUEHOST

• Your First Step to creating your blog is to find a good home where it will live on the internet which is a great hosting company.
• Bluehost is one of the most well-known and established brands on the internet, hosting over 2 Million sites. Their platform is excellent for beginners starting websites or blogs because their platform is easy to use. You don’t have to be a computer geek to use it.
• To make it extremely easy for beginners and to cut down on steps, Bluehost uses a process that automatically installs WordPress when you sign up. This makes it possible for you to write and post your first blog immediately. This is huge!
• It is so affordable starting as low as $3.95 a month! And you get all the following.
• Free domain name which is the name of your website. You usually have to pay around $12.00 a year for this.
• Free email addresses.
• Unmetered Bandwidth. This means you don’t have to worry about your blog crashing if it suddenly gets an onslaught of traffic from one of your amazing posts. When you get 10,000 visitors to your blog you won’t be charged extra. Very Big Deal!!!
• A Complete Guarantee. Full refund if you cancel your account within 30 days or they prorate the remainder of your hosting term if you cancel after 30 days. Your first year you pay annually.
• 24/7 Technical support via phone, chat or ticket. Great when you’re sitting by the pool Sunday afternoon blogging! And for a small fee worth it’s weight in gold you get WP Live! My lifeline.

BUT I SAW WHERE I CAN GET A FREE ACCOUNT?

You’ve heard that you get what you pay for and it’s true with a host account. If you ever want to get serious about blogging DO NOT start a blog for free. 99.9% of professional bloggers don’t use free accounts!

• They look incredibly sloppy. Visitors will see you as a novice who blogs as a hobby.
• The customizations are very limited.
• The websites are slow and there’s nothing more frustrating than waiting on a slow site.
• You are limited to how much you can monetize your account. Very bad.
• Companies don’t like to work with blogs hosted on free platforms, like sponsors, direct advertising etc. (These are some of the ways to make the money we were talking about.)
• You want to work on a solid platform and avoid having to deal with unnecessary problems.

UNDERSTANDING BASIC BLOG JARGON

 What is a Blog: I often get asked how a blog is different from a website.  A blog is a type of a website.

 Web + log equals Blog.  It’s a chronological list of your posts called content, what you write that people want to read about. This is a blog you’re reading now. It’s just a regularly updated website. Pretty simple.

A blog is a type of website that is updated with new content by the blogger on a regular basis. Websites have information usually business related. A restaurant might have their menu on their website and a lawn service would tell you about their services. Examples of blogs are Buzzfeed, New York Times or CNN. They are nothing but content, a word you’ll hear a lot when you start blogging. 

Every post you make, which is just an article you write, is content.

 

Let’s talk about the parts of a blog and some of the terminology. You don’t need to be overwhelmed by knowing everything about blogging to get started. All I knew was click here, which I did and took it one step at a time. It was great fun watching my blog come together. I love this analogy that makes the blog structure easy to understand.

 

√YOUR HOST:   You are going to rent a house. You find a perfect house in a beautiful neighborhood that has a couple of extra bedrooms for you to expand as your needs grow. You rent the house. This is where your blog will live for as little as $3.95 a month. I use and recommend BlueHost for all the reasons I talk about through out this post.

√YOUR  PLATFORM:   When you rent your house, you’re going to move into a vacant house and add pictures to walls. This is where you will add the articles you write aka posts and pictures (images called media) to your blog.

√YOUR WORDPRESS THEME:  You will want to design and decorate your house with your own colors and style. A WordPress Theme is the style of your blog. You choose your own from hundreds of themes.

√PLUGINS:    You will need furniture in your house to meet your needs and make it look nice. These are the Plugins. They make your blog more functional and successful. If you want to add an email subscribe button to your blog so readers can sign in with their email you would use a plugin. More on plugins later. They are so much fun. The sky is the limit!

√WIDGETS:   You will want a space to put your furniture. These are the Widgets. For example, if you used a Plugin we talked about above for an email subscribe button, a widget is where you would add that button to your blog. Simply really.

These can get a little confusing, but once you understand the terminology it’s easy. Like any new venture, creating a blog can be a little overwhelming at first, which is one of many reasons I suggest WordPress on Blue Host. Blue Host has 24/7 support a phone call away and they are the nicest most accommodating techs I’ve ever worked with. They actually want to help you. WordPress also has a WP Live program you can subscribe to for a small additional charge that is worth its weight in gold.

You can call them as many times a day as you want. When I started, I called them as many as ten times a day and they joined my screen through Zoom.us and walked me through everything while I set up my blog. They never once made me feel stupid which I loved, even when I asked questions like what’s a post. 

WHAT IS A NICHE AND HOW TO CHOOSE ONE 

The first thing you need to decide is what you would like to blog about, or your Niche.  A blog niche is a topic that attaracts a specific audience. It can be broad or narrow. My niche is grandmas thus the name TheGrandmaConnection.com.  A narrower niche would be young grandmas. Your blog will target like-minded people. Some niches typically make more money than others. I know of a young man whose niche was in technology. He sold his blog for around $50M. Food is a common niche but it’s harder to make money. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it. One blogger I follow makes $127,000 a year blogging about healthy recipes with beautiful pictures she takes. I know of another who is making several times that blogging about gluten free food. She’s a Celiac and blogs for them.

There are some considerations when deciding what niche you want to write about. Choose something that you love, know and are passionate about. When I started I spent more time deciding what niche I wanted to blog about than anything else because I’m passionate about so many things. You’re going to be spending a lot of time writing about whatever you choose. If you are blogging to make money, there are niches that can be more lucrative than others. A quick internet search will tell you which blog categories make the most money. However, anyone can make money blogging in any niche.

The key is excellent content and information that people want to read that will bring them back to your blog repeatedly. Blogs are more personal than websites. Your readers will get to know you, and you will build a following of like-minded readers. Choosing a topic or niche you love and are comfortable with will make you more successful. I chose TheGrandmaConnection.com because I have eight grandkids, seven of them girls, and one one the way. I love the creative things we do together and wanted to share that with other grandmas. That led to connecting with grandmas and talking about subjects that concern women as they season as well as grandkids.

I see niche-related things all around me every day to write about that I had never thought about. Keeping an ongoing list of ideas for articles is something I highly recommend. I’m a 3 AM idea person. Ideas are fleeting. Write them down as they come or you’ll forget. I keep a dedicated Note on my IPhone with ideas for articles. If you do this you’ll never run out of things to write about.

 

Blogging has allowed me to grow as a person and explore life. My mind is on fire. I get up every day more excited than I’ve been in a long time. You’ve heard me say this several times. Of all the things I’ve done, I’ve never loved anything so much as blogging.

WHAT IS A DOMAIN NAME AND HOW TO CHOOSE ONE

The Domain name is the name of your website. Mine is TheGrandmaConnection.com. To obtain a domain name you need to find one that isn’t taken which can be challenging sometimes, considering there are over 340 million registered domains. But with a little creativity you can find your perfect domain name. I’m a domainaholic! The first thing I do when I have an idea for a business is create a domain name.  Owning close to a hundred domain names I have some experience here. There is an online tool called Bust A Name where you can type in some keywords you’re thinking of using and it will come up with available combinations using those words. Great resource. It normally costs about  $12.00 a year to rent a domain. One of the many benefits of choosing Bluehost as your platform is that it is not only very affordable at only $3.95 a month, you get your domain name FREE! And it’s secure. That’s huge! 

When choosing a domain there are some guidelines I recommend you follow:     

 

• Choose a unique name that says what your blog is about 

• You want one that is easy to remember    

• I recommend .com over .net if possible, which is more common and easier for people to remember. The second choice would be .net.

• Choose something you’ll still love over the years

• Avoid numbers and hyphens in your name. Hyphens are also hard to remember and numbers are confusing. People never know if they are spelled out when they hear your domain.Short and memorable is best. A long descriptive domain is a pain for a lot of reasons.

• Short and memorable is best. A long descriptive domain is a pain for a lot of reasons.

         Here we GO! This is the part you’ve been waiting for!                   

 I’m going to step you through how to set up your first blog on the blog of Your Dream

              HOW TO START A WORDPRESS BLOG ON BLUEHOST

1. CREATE AN ACCOUNT

Click here on the green get started now button to go to Bluehost and create an account. Click on the Get Started Now button and you will be taken to the Select Your Plan page.

 

 

 

2. HOW TO SELECT YOUR BEST PLAN

You will need to decide how much you want to spend on your hosting. This is where your blog lives. Choose $3.95 a month for the best pricing. Select 36 months for even better pricing.  

The first year you will have to pay for the full year, but it is refundable within 30 days should you decide to cancel. After 30 days Bluehost will prorate your refund. And Bluehost makes cancelling extremely easy.

I elected for the Plus Plan for $2.00 more a month to get the unlimited websites and emails. My husband is already starting his own blog for his business with our plan. He just can’t stand it that I’m having so much fun without him! He’s also reading about the sites making well into six figures blogging.

But wait until you see the all the extras you get with your registration! Unmetered Band Width means you’ll never run out of room no matter how many visitors you get. Remember the two extra bedrooms the rental house had for expansion?

A free Domain name which is a $12.00 value.

Five email accounts.

That’s A HUGE BIG SAVINGS!

Leave all of the other boxes unchecked for now unless you want to double-up on your site security, then you would check SiteLock Security for additional security against hackers and spammers accessing your blog. Bluehost has its own security service installed that is very strong so you probably won’t need the additional SiteLock at this point.

After choosing your plan, enter your payment information, click on submit, and you’re off!

3. CHOOSING YOUR DOMAIN NAME

 

The Domain Name we talked about earlier is the name of your website. There are no additional charges because your Bluehost plan gives you one free. Isn’t that nice? You’ve already decided on your Domain Name at this point. To register your Domain Name with Bluehost, enter it under the “new Domain” box and click “next.”

If you already have a domain name, you can type it into the “I have a domain name” field. If you’re having trouble coming up with a domain name, try word combinations on Bust A Name. Choose something that tells people what your blog is about like Blooming Girl for a flower blog.

Enter all of your account and contact information.

 

Finally, all you have to do is add your credit card information, check the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, and click on the green submit button.

CONGRATULATIONS! NOW YOU OWN YOUR OWN BLOG!!

Now that you’ve purchased your plan and entered your account information, it’s time to create a password. Choose one that is strong to keep hackers out and one you can remember. You will be the only one who knows your password unless you share it with someone. Click on Next.

 

             CONGRATULATIONS! WELCOME TO BLUEHOST

                                              

Now that your password has been created, you can log into your account for the first time! Click the blue “log in” button. It should automatically take you to the Bluehost Portal, but if not, go ahead and log in using the “hosting” tab and not “webmail.”

INSTALLING WORDPRESS ON BLUEHOST

Another of the many benefits of using WordPress of BlueHost for your blog is that they have a process that automatically installs WordPress when you sign up.

1.Log into and on the WordPress page click on Log in to WordPress 

2.Next you’ll be asked about the kind of site you would like to set up, Business or Personal. That’s totally up to you or you can skip this step and click I don’t need help.                                               

3. The next page is Pick A Theme That Inspires You. Pick something that appeals to you but remember you can easily change it if you don’t like the way it looks. Have fun with it

4. I suggest you pick one that’s free and put in a couple of posts to see if you like it. It’s hard to know what they will look like until you get some content into it.

5. First we want to get you to the main screen where you can start to play around and customize things.

6. You will then be taken to a dashboard that looks like this.

 

From this step you can write your first post and start looking through the options in WordPress, but we recommend settling on a good theme first. 

 

SELECT A BLOG THEME

From the black, left-hand menu >Click “Appearances” then >”Themes>”. It’s now time to have some real fun and find a great theme for your blog and start customizing it to look how you want.

Here you’ll see the options to change your theme. Simply “activate” a new one to see the changes. Note that WordPress has a few FREE ones to choose from, so play around with those a bit to get started and find the one that works for you.

FREE themes are a great place to start if you’re a beginner blogger, but they will lack some of the tools a paid theme give you. I suggest you work with one of these for a month or so until you understand the difference between what these and a paid theme offer.

Most bloggers go through several themes before settling on one they really like. You’ll want one that has the most customizable options eventually.

TIME TO CREATE YOUR FIRST POST

You can create your first post from this menu. When you need to log back in to create a post with your login here’s what you do.

Now that you are set up with your WordPress, log into your account with a URL that looks like this

Yourdomain.com/wp-admin. (Be sure to put your new domain name in place of yourdomain)

This will take you directly to the log-in page for WordPress.com instead of going through Bluehost.

This is a little confusing because you will have a sign-in username and password for both WordPress.com and Bluehost.com. Be sure to write down both. Remember  BlueHost is the house and WorPress is the platform for your blog.

To go directly to your site so you can edit it, go to WordPress.com

To sign up for emails or anything to do with your host, go through Bluehost.

If you did not change the default username given to which is admin I suggest you do to prevent hackers getting into your site.

Once you’re inside WordPress, you’ll see the black toolbar on the left side of the page.

1. Click on Posts > Add New (To create Your First Post)

2. There are a lot of functions but here are a few you need to know about for your first post.

3.Add Media is where you add images and videos to your posts. It will take you to another window to upload you images/videos. Just click on upload images and when it’s uploaded, click on bottom link to add to your post. Make sure your curser is where you want your image to be.

4.Add a Link. Highlight the words you want to link and click on the chain to add the URL

5.Publish Immediately. This is great because you can schedule your posts to go live immediately or on a specific date. I like to schedule at least two a week ahead of time so I can work on building marketing campaigns and other things in between.

6. Preview Changes. This shows you what your WordPress blog will look like

7. Save Draft. Use this button to save your post as you are creating it so it doesn’t accidentally get deleted if you close your window, lose your connection or your computer goes down. It’s very important so you don’t lose your hard work. You can always come back to finish your blog if it’s saved as a draft.

8. Text shows you the HTML of your post. If you wanted to add a banner to your page, you would click on text, add the html code and it will come up as an image on the visual sid

9. Edit Button. This is good to changes the URL of titles that are too long that Google doesn’t like. It’s best to make these changes before it’s published to avoid 404 errors that could cause you to lose traffic from sites liked to that page.

10. Paragraph has a drop down menu where you can find H1 to H6 tags which are important to include in a post for SEO purposes.

Now for the fun part! If all looks good to you click the green Publish button and your post is live.

If you accidentally publish your post before it’s ready just go to Status and set it back to Draft or click Edit where it says Published and schedule it to Publish at a later date.

 

ADDITIONAL TOOLS TO HELP CREATE A SUCCESSFUL BLOG

Congratulations you are now a Blogger! You have created your first post. We call it content and great content is the most important element to make your blog successful. Content is what brings viewers and followers back to your blog repeatedly.

WordPress has hundreds of wonderful tools to help make you more successful. Here are a few that I recommend checking out. Play with your blog a while and get comfortable with posting before you add of these tools at once. Bookmark this page and come back to it as you feel you are ready for each one.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

You have published a few posts and now it’s time to find out what kind of traffic you are having and where it’s coming from. Is it coming from social media channels like Facebook or Twitter. Or even better yet, was one of your posts shared on Buzzfeed or maybe it’s just catching on. It’s fun to watch the number of viewers who are reading your posts.

Google Analytics is a powerful FREE web analytics survey that shows you where your visitors are coming from how long they stay on your blog, which one of your posts is the most popular and how your blog is being found.

I recommend you install it right away!

YOAST SEO PLUGIN

This should be at the top of your list to install as soon as you have created your WordPress Blog. It is a FREE plugin. 

SEO which is Search Engine Optimization is basically writing content that’s optimized for organic searches on Google, Bing and other search engines. You want to add Keywords  to your high quality content to help your posts gain traction and bring in visitors.

Yoast can also help you create a sitemap, set up meta titles, shorten your URLS and give you pointers on the content of your posts.

There are eve colored dots that show you what needs work (red) and what looks good (green).

OPTINMONSTER

One of my favorite tools, OPTINMONSTER helps build your email list and bring them back to your blog. They specialize in high converting signup boxes and have an extensive library to choose from.You can also see which boxes are converting well. You can place them at the top, bottom and sidebar and have them stationary or pop up. Their design tools and customer service are the best. Once your blog takes off you’ll want to connect to your readers by sending them newsletters which will bring them spike your traffic.

 

Design Beautiful Pop-up Forms to Convert your viewers to subscribers!

 

MAILCHIMP

You’re going to need a service to capture your emails when visitors subscribe as followers, so you can keep in touch with them about your posts and send newsletters. Mailchimp is a great marketing platform for small business perfect for your blog when you start for up to 2,000 subscribers and it’s FREE. You can capture the emails of your subscribers. Send beautiful emails, connect your e-commerce store, advertise, and build your brand.

BUFFER

Part of your job as a blogger is to share your content on social media to get your blog off the ground.The more people you get it in front of, the more visitors you’ll have to your blog. Buffer is a social media management platform that schedules posts, tracks the performance of your content, and manages all your social accounts including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google + and LinkedIn, in one convenient place.

 

CANVA

CANVA is a wonderful tool for creating graphics for your posts. I can’t imagine how I ever got along without it! I use it to create all of my headers for my posts, add borders, creative lines to break up text, accent boxes and everything I can want to feature.  t’s great for Pinterest pins and eye-catching graphics for social media posts like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as well. Let your imagination go wild. It’s very easy to use and there is a FREE option, but there are so many great advantages I opted for the upgraded level. It’s very affordable especially for what you get! All the FUN things you see in this Tutorial were done in CANVA!   

                              LET’S GO BLOGGING

 

WANT TO MAKE EXTRA MONEY HAVING A LOT OF FUN

                                     DOING YOUR OWN THING

Follow these easy directions and you can be having a great time blogging today. What’s your passion? Share it and make money working when you want, where you want and how you want! It’s so easy. All you have to do now is Click Here to Get Started Blogging by Signing Up for a WordPress Blog on Bluehost and choosing from hundreds of beautiful themes! What’s in Your Toolbox?

I WANT TO START MY BLOG