How to Start a Blog in WordPress with No Prior Experience

Did you know why and how to start a blog in WordPress?

If you want to start a blog, you might wonder how to start the process. This is legit! I can remember, that when I started my first website for affiliate marketing back in my early days; I was also confused about how to start from scratch. I asked a few people about the issue who already started their journey in the same way and doing good in their business.

A lot of blogs out there are saying that you need to know how to code in order to start a blog. However, this is not entirely true. While it’s good if you know how to code, it’s not necessary. Many people didn’t know how to code when they first started their blogs, and they have succeeded in building great blogs with help from others. Don’t think about starting a blog as something that requires much effort. Start small, maybe with a Tumblr account (if you’re on Tumblr) or a personal website (if you don’t use Tumblr).

Creating a website is not about what’s under the hood. It’s about functionality and achieving your goals, serving your real purposes. I must admit, until 2018, my personal sites looked poorly and also didn’t function very well. But that changed in 2019 when I started working with WordPress, which I think should be the standard choice for bloggers.

Why Blogging?

Before getting into the deep on how to start a blog in WordPress, you need to understand that there are many reasons why people start a blog. Some of them do it for business purposes and others do it just because they want to share their ideas with the world. However, since you’re reading this article I guess that you want to start a blog for business reasons.

The main benefit of starting a business blog is that it’s relatively easy to set up. You don’t need any special skills or permission from anyone to create your own blog. All you need is some free time and an interesting idea that can be shared with other people online.

Starting a Blog with WordPress

Now, let’s get into how to start a blog in WordPress right away. You know when you wake up in the morning and you’re feeling so good about life, but then someone asks you to code to start creating a blog!

Awe, yes! This is a tough one. We’ve all been there before. You have an idea for a business that you want to start, but the only thing stopping you is coding your own website.

Well, don’t fear! For I’m letting you know an ideal solution for you. This is where WordPress comes in handy. With WordPress, any dummy that has a brain can create their own beautiful blog without having to use HTML or CSS or any other computer language that would make a hacker go blind from reading it.

Based on my experience, WordPress is the best & easiest way to start a blog because it is so handy to operate with. But the fact is it’s just as easy to forget how intimidating WordPress is when you first start a blog. Something that offers so much functionality cannot be completely intuitive to a blogging newbie. There’s just so much to think about including settings, themes, plugins, and more. Remember, visitors care about the experience on your site. Your site should be well structured, readable, and full of helpful content.

How to Start a Blog in WordPress

Nowadays, blogging has become so popular. It’s not surprising to see that most people want to start their own blog because they are confident that they can make money through blogging. The fact is that it’s really important to have a good title and attractive design when you want to attract more readers or potential customers. If you think you can come up with those two elements on your own, then I guess you really don’t need my advice.

If you lack the necessary skills in creating an appealing title and layout, then you should find a designer who can help with this task. However, many designers charge for their services. So, it would be great if you could find someone who can help you out.

In this post, I’ll explain how to start a blog in WordPress in 10 simple steps. In this case, you don’t need to know how to code from scratch. You can also use this guide to grow your existing blog. Here’s what the article is intended to:

• Set A Practical Goal
• Define Your Target Audience
• Find An Angle to Start Off
• Find A Suitable Hosting Company
• Install WordPress and Get to Know how to start a blog in WordPress
• Pick A Quality Theme
• Put Minimal Effort On Design
• Build A Solid Email List
• Get Traffic To Your Site
• Be Consistent

Now, let’s get right in!

1. Set a practical goal

Most of the ‘How to Start with a Blog’ type articles lack this very aspect. They are likely to jump into the how-to guide section. Yes, that’s what they are supposed to show. But what should we be trying to achieve more out of a blog?

It can be hard to know where to start when setting out to start a blog. What should your blog’s purpose be? What should your blog’s focus be? How big should your blog be?

These are all great questions, and there is no one answer that is right for everyone. However, there are some things that are worth thinking about when starting a blog.

One important thing to consider is your blog’s purpose. What do you want your blog to do? Are you looking to share your thoughts and ideas with the world, or are you hoping to attract a larger audience and make money? Once you have a clear idea of your blog’s ultimate goal, then you can move forward to scale up the whole process.

2. Define your target audience

Before you can start and write on your blog, you need to understand who your target audience is. This will help you determine what topics to write about, what tone to use, and what style of writing will appeal to them.

Your target audience is the group of people who are most likely to read and enjoy your blog. To figure out who your target audience is, ask yourself these questions:

• Who are you writing for?
• What are their interests?
• What are their needs?
• What are their pain points?
• What do they want to learn about?

Once you have a good understanding of your target audience, you can start writing blog posts that are tailored to them. Keep in mind that your target audience may change over time, so it’s important to revisit this question periodically to make sure you’re still on track.

To identify your target audience for your blog:

If you want to know how to start a blog in WordPress, first, consider who you are writing your blog for. This may be based on your personal interests, or you may want to write on a more general topic. For example, if you are passionate about makeup, you may want to target other beauty enthusiasts with your blog. However, if you want to write more broadly on lifestyle topics, your target audience may be more general.

Once you have an idea of who you would like to write for, consider what topics they would be interested in. If you are targeting beauty enthusiasts, they may be interested in makeup tips, product reviews, or even just general advice on how to look their best. If you are writing more broadly on lifestyle topics, your target audience may be interested in topics like travel, fashion, food, or even just general life advice.

Once you have an idea of who your target audience is and what they may be interested in, you have moved ahead of your destination.

3. Find an angle to start off

These days, blogging is getting more and more challenging since competition is everywhere. You will find tons of resources on how to start a blog in WordPress and so. Most publishers, bloggers, and even any type of website owners are trying to get people’s attention on a priority basis. Actually, people are competing over everything and everyone is trying to capture our audience’s attention.

You have to understand that a person could watch a TV Show, the news, go for a run, or have drinks instead of reading your blog. It’s not like you’re competing with blogs only! No, you’re in a competition where people are engaged with multiple things and you show them a reason to give you the attention over everything.

It’s true that you shouldn’t expect success with the same strategies that everyone is following. You must think out of the box and adopt a different perspective while starting with your blog. No matter what is the situation, don’t try to follow sneaky tactics to get people to click on your stuff. Instead, focus on the long-term output that would be sustainable. Deceiving people by any chance would make you untrustworthy to your audience. So, it would be wise to try new methods to grab people’s attention.

4. Find a suitable hosting company

Now, let’s get a bit more technical without getting technical. Does it make sense? Probably not! But most importantly, this is all you have to know to start off your blogging journey. To place your website virtually, you need a piece of virtual land to run your website on. That’s where the hosting providers come in.

Hosting providers make sure that people can get & reach your website properly. That’s why it’s very crucial to pick the right hosting provider. For a starter, Bluehost could be a great option to serve the purposes. You can go for Site Ground, Kinsta, and Clowdways as well. Moreover, if you want to extend the hosting on a larger scale, you can choose AWS for better performance.

Another important aspect of using a quality hosting provider is getting an automatic backup facility. Almost all the solid hosting service providers let you backup your site daily, weekly, or monthly basis. I personally prefer weekly to save storage space. You should make backups of your SQL database through your hosting service provider as well. You don’t need to have any technical knowledge for maintaining all that, just reach out to them, they’ll make sure all in the best way possible.

5. Install WordPress and get to know how to start a blog in WordPress

Using WordPress to start your blogging journey could be the best bet for you. Most hosting provider allows you to install & use WordPress with one click. Once you install WordPress, try to play around with WordPress to know more about it. Take a look at the settings, which URL structure you want to use, whether you want people to comment on your articles or not, what kind of plugins you need to install, etc.

This article doesn’t aim to spend too much time talking about this step because it doesn’t matter. To say the least I can name some of the basic and most required themes & plugins. You can start with the free version of a quality theme like Astra, GeneratePress, and OeceanWP as a base. The only plugins I recommend using at first are Jetpack, Yoast SEO/RankMath, Easy Google Fonts, WP Smush, any form builder plugin and Monster Insight, and so on. You just need to get a Google Analytics tracking code to put into your WordPress dashboard, you can set that up in 5-10 minutes.

6. Pick a quality WordPress theme to know how to start a blog in WordPress

The theme is the base of any kind of website. WordPress theme can do a lot in this respect though you can have the option of customizing on your own. Ideally, a quality WordPress theme allows its users the most customizability. You can start with free WordPress themes with minimal customizability but you can purchase the pro version for having the most customizability built in.

In the past, it was needed to hire people to get a driving site. But now, buying a professional WordPress theme for a few dozen bucks can make you able to design your site as your wish. At first, keep the design as simple as possible. There are a lot of standard solutions out there to make your life easier.

You can use Astra, GeneratePress, OeceanWP, Authority Pro, and so on for better performance. Before you stuck with any specific theme, you probably try various themes to figure out the best one for you. Give a try with the free version before purchasing the pro version if possible. Moreover, if you have basic coding skills, you can have more opportunities to customize any kind of WordPress.

You can make some customizations to your blog so it may look different from the stock edition. So, search on the web for a theme that you’re expecting. Try a free one if possible, then buy pro if you want to extend the customizability. That’s it and you’re done.

7. Put a minimal effort into the design & learn how to start a blog in WordPress

I told you earlier to keep the site design as simple as possible initially. When you will be growing over time, then you can redesign your site at your best. I know, a lot of people are obsessed with the design part but it could kill your valuable time as well. Suppose, you spend six months on the perfect design for your website. And then when you start, no one reads your articles. Then what? You’ll probably feel demotivated to move forward.

Just believe me, design plays a vital role for any kind of website but for blogging, there is something more important to focus on. Readers only care about readability and quality content that will serve their purposes. So that means keeping your blog simple initially and focusing on producing quality content.

8. Build a solid email list & distribute them accordingly

Emai marketing still is the leading marketing medium for any kind of business. Building a potential email list means you’re making your business sustainable. They’re incredibly powerful tools that allow you to stay connected with your customers and prospects. And when you combine them with other forms of communication like social media, you can really build a solid relationship with your audience.

Creating an email list should be the prior task before publishing an article on your blog. To make it happen, you can use any reliable quality email service like MailChimp, ConvertKit, and so on. Basically, you can build an email list in two ways, the email provider itself, and the sign-up form on your page. There are more ways but these two are the most used ways to build an email list.

Once you build an email list, now, it’s time to distribute it through a proper channel. Try to giveaway to your targeted leads in various ways. A free welcome gift could be the best bet for serving the purposes. Giving something for free is the best way to build your email list. It can help the audience to get familiar with your work. Always keep in mind that people don’t know you. Some free yet valuable stuff like an eBook, video, or collection of best articles could work as good welcome gifts for your audience.

9. Get traffic to your site

Having sustainable traffic flow is the key to any kind of online business. Website owners have a common question – how do I get traffic on my website?

Most of the online resources on this topic comprise the common tricks & tricks that are not so driving to serve your purposes. However, considering the following aspects will give you insights to understand the process:

1. Writing about topics that people are always interested in can be a great source of traffic generation. Initially, organic traffic from SERP will be 0. That’s not a problem at all. If you can work hard bearing patience that ultimately builds up over time. There are a lot of examples of a steady increase happening after the first year.
2. Creating content that people want to share through their community. That’s how can see a lot of referrals from various types of social media channels etc.
3. To get the initial traffic flow, you can use your email list to start with the process of getting traffic on your blog site. Every time you publish something new, notify your subscribers. If it’s worth sharing, they will. Once people start sharing content, it has the chance to spread. But if no one sees it in the first place, it cannot. So, get it in front of as many people as you can initially. This is hard and tedious work at the beginning — emailing or messaging readers one by one.
4. Make your content SEO optimized so that people will find your blog in the SERP through their expected keywords. This is the most sustainable way to earn traffic on your blog site.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when creating an email list is not having a clear goal in mind. The email could be the starter to get the initial traffic flow on your website. You need to know exactly who you want to reach so you can craft your message appropriately. Eventually, they’ll convert into your website visitors.

10. Be Consistent

If you want to know how to start a blog in WordPress, then you have to understand first, that consistency is the key to any kind of thriving achievement. If you want to build a successful email list, you need to be consistent with your messaging. Don’t send out emails every day, but do send them at least once per week. Also, don’t send too many emails at once. Instead, send out several emails each month.

You’ll also want to make sure that your website has an opt-in form so people can subscribe to your mailing list. This allows you to collect contact information from visitors who come to your site. It’s also a good idea to add social media sharing buttons to your website so people can share your content on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

If you’re looking to monetize your blog, then you need to generate enough revenue from AdSense. There are several ways to do this, such as by creating high-quality content, using ad networks, or getting more views.

Final Words on How to Start a Blog in WordPress

Starting a blog is easier than ever these days. With so many free blogging platforms available, it’s no wonder that people are turning to this medium for self-expression. In fact, according to Statista, over half of all Americans use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and YouTube. So why not turn your passion into an online business?

I hope, this article helped you to understand how to start a blog in WordPress. If you have something to share regarding the topic; feel free to share your thoughts in be comment box below. I would love to cooperate with you in the best way possible.

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