How to Start Your Own Blog

I know you’re interested in starting a blog and you just have NO idea where to start. I’m going to walk you through the steps to begin.

1. First things first, what are you going to blog about? I believe its super important to niche down when deciding what you are going to blog about. We have enough #mombloggers out there. Get more specific. Ask yourself a series of questions to determine what your niche will be. My favorite question to ask myself is:What do my friends and family come to me for advice on? This question typically reveals a lot about your passions and interests.
Once you’ve decided what you’re going to blog about then it is time to begin.

2. You need to figure out what platform you are going to use for your blog. I use WordPress, but another good one is www.blogger.com. I believe it’s important to be self-hosted and own your own domain. I purchased my domain from GoDaddy. You need to pick a domain name. This is tricky. Do you want to name it your name (mikellavandyke.com) which would let you blog about anything you want or name it what you are blogging about. (chasingsacred.com) This is entirely up to you.

I actually bought a theme called genesis framework found [eafl id=”1716″ name=”Genesis framework” text=”HERE”] from studio press which is well known in the blogging world and I purchased a layout from reformed 316 for this blog. They have different themes that make it easier to plug into your blog. I love [eafl id=”1717″ name=”Blog Framework” text=”THIS”] theme from reformed 316.

3. Next is setting up your blog. Hire it out or do it yourself. If you are good with coding then you can do it yourself. If not, it’s a good idea to either purchase a format or hire someone to do the behind the scenes work of making your blog beautiful. There’s a lot of places that sell formats, including Etsy. Or, like me, you can hire a Virtual Assistant to put in the hard work.

4. Branding Design and Logo- If you are a creative person then you are going to LOVE this part. It’s time to design a logo and brand yourself. I loved using Creative Market to help me design my own brand and think through what my logo should look like. You can purchase mood board templates to help you think through what you want your brand to be like. (What colors do you want associated with you brand? What do you want the logo to look like?) Click HERE to see my previous post here to see how to do that.

5. Now for Graphics, Pictures, and Writing. It is time you either invest in a good quality camera and get yourself familiar with LightRoom or you can hire this part out. For photos I love to use PicMonkey to edit them, click[eafl id=”1719″ name=”PicMonkey” text=” HERE”] to download the app. It is such an amazing tool! If you have a friend that is a photographer then do some trade-work. Make sure you have good quality photos and graphics. For my graphics, I like to use Canva. Canva is an amazing resource that lets you format your blog graphics and pins. Another GREAT tool is the ability to now purchase presets from other bloggers. It is amazing how presets can make your iphone photos look extremely professional.

Once you have your blog up and running this is how to post:

1. Sign into WordPress
2. Press on Posts
3. Press on Add New
4. Enter in your content and pictures
5. Save as a draft, schedule it to post at a later date or publish it immediately

6. In order to get traffic to your blog you are going to have to use many different marketing tactics. One of them that I use religiously is Pinterest. I receive most of my traffic to my blog from pinning pins and using a scheduler called, [eafl id=”1720″ name=”Tailwind” text=”Tailwind”] . Tailwind helps you to schedule up to 50 pins at a time so that the pins will drive traffic to your blog.

7. The number ONE way I monetize my blog RIGHT NOW is through [eafl id=”1727″ name=”share a sale” text=”ShareASale”]

I hope this was helpful! Happy Blogging!