When it comes to website success, what you see is what you get. While compelling text, blog, and social media content can help set your brand apart from the competition, the visual appeal of your site is the first thing users see when they follow backlinks or click through on search engine results.
Recent research found that it takes just 2.6 seconds for users’ eyes to focus on a specific area of your website. What’s more, it takes just 0.05 seconds for visitors to form a general first impression of your site — meaning you’ve got just one opportunity to change their minds or reinforce this impression, and it happens in the first three seconds of arrival.
As a result, it’s critical to create webpages that are both aesthetically appealing and contextually relevant. For larger businesses, this often means hiring dedicated graphic designers to develop eye-catching designs and deploy them consistently across web pages, but SMB budgets may not support this type of spending.
What it Takes to Have a Great Design
Advanced graphic design skills require practice, practice, practice. Great designers can take one look at your webpage and see where current visual elements aren’t performing, then create visual content options that capture both your brand position and aesthetic style. But what about website and business owners who can’t afford the skills of a master graphic designer? How can they jumpstart the process of improving their site’s visual appeal?
The first step is taking a step back. Open your own webpage in multiple browsers and see what stands out. What’s the first thing you notice? Is it a specific image — or lack thereof? Is the image clear and concise, and does it drive action? What about the text formatting, color, and font? Here, the goal isn’t to drill down and analyze the nitty-gritty details of website design but instead put yourself in the digital shoes of a site visitor.
It’s also a good idea to ask for feedback from other staff members along with friends and family. While this comes with natural bias — they want your site to succeed, after all — it can help identify persistent or problematic visual elements and suggest an initial course of action.
In this piece, we’ll examine some of the best free graphic design software tools, where this software fits into your website strategy, and how they can help capture user interest from the moment they arrive.
What is the Best Free Graphic Design Software?
If your research turns up a problem — your images aren’t compelling, your text is hard to read and your color scheme hurts the eyes — you need a simple solution.
Free graphic design software offers the ability to customize the look and feel of your site without breaking the bank. But with a host of options on the market, which is the best fit for your business?
Two broad factors impact this outcome: Your current graphical ability and your potential use case. For example, if you have no experience with graphic tools of any kind, look for a solution that’s simple, streamlined, and does most of the work behind-the-scenes. If you have a graphic design background or natural inclination, tools with more robust customization and control may be a better fit.
If you’re planning to revamp your entire site with new colors, images, logos, and menus, meanwhile, you’ll need an in-depth solution that provides this level of control. If you’re starting small with minor changes to your color scheme or image quality, this kind of granular adjustment isn’t necessary.
So which software tool is the best fit for your business? Here’s a look at five free graphic design tools and some pros and cons for each.
The Best Free Graphic Design Software for Beginners and Mac Owners
The Best Free Graphic Design Software for Beginners
DesignWizard ranks among the best free graphic design software for beginners. The tool offers a large database of images along with a host of free templates (over 10,000) plus a simple, easy-to-use interface. You can also quickly create custom templates, but where DesignWizard excels is as a front-line, free graphic design tool for beginners.
Despite an easy-to-use interface and no upfront costs, it’s worth noting that most of the more powerful options in DesignWizard are only available in its for-pay version.
Setka bills itself as “everything you need to create content that converts”. This graphic design software is primarily focused on delivering enhanced content branding across your website, ad campaigns and social media posts — and works from within your current CMS or in the cloud.
The caveat? Although the Setka Editor is free to try for two weeks, companies will need to select a plan — Starter, Pro, or Enterprise — to unlock the full feature set and keep using Setka.
Whether you’re looking to create an ebook, infographic, business card, or email header, Canva has a template to simplify your process. The free web design tool, developed by non-designers, offers professional, easy-to-customize templates for just about any design need you can think of.
The drawback? You might need to invest in the paid version or try one of the more advanced free graphic design softwares as you skill up. While Canva’s free version is great for new designers working with templates, you can access more complex tools and features — such as team sharing — in the paid version.
Adobe Spark is a free alternative to the company’s popular, for-pay Adobe Illustrator. While it’s not nearly as full-featured it does support integration with other Adobe products, is easy to use and comes with a host of free templates. If you’re looking to quickly create posters or videos for ad campaigns, Spark is a great choice.
The potential drawback? A limited feature set makes this a great starting point for beginners but less useful for more in-depth projects or experienced designers. Spark is available for both web and mobile, however, meaning you design anywhere, anytime.
Krita is a free, open-source painting program made by artists, for artists. Ongoing development of this tool depends on donations and is driven by the needs of the designer community at large. It’s no surprise, then, that Krita includes a customizable user interface, feature-rich toolset, and a comprehensive resource manager.
For businesses looking to boost their graphic design impact, Krita is a great tool — if they have the help of an experienced designer. For companies in need of simple, streamlined solutions, meanwhile, other software on this list offers a better fit for beginners.
Gravit is a vector design application created by the makers of Corel Draw. With a host of tools for creating vector art and a self-adjusting interface, Gravit earns its place among the best free graphic design software for Mac and Windows — the tool is also available for ChromeOS and Linux.
Worth noting? When you sign up for a free trial of Gravit you automatically get access to “Pro” features including the ability to work offline and see version history. However, you lose these features when your trial is up unless you’re willing to pay for a subscription.
Creating a Great First Impression
The first thing users see when they land on your website significantly impacts their perception of your brand — and their likelihood to become paying customers. The right free graphic design software can help ensure your site delivers visual value from first impressions to eventual purchases and streamlines the process of ongoing aesthetic adjustment.
Even years before the term “blog” spread through the Internet, people were writing personal stories in different online formats. Back in the ’90s, individuals had been writing online journals and diaries where they were able to express feelings and share information. Since then, those diaries evolved into the whole blogging industry, and blogs quickly became a trend that everybody wanted to follow.
It’s time for you to learn how to start a WordPress blog of your own.
Today, blogs have become more than just a way of expressing yourself. They have become a way of life. Some people will occasionally write personal stories, while large enterprises will invest thousands of dollars into their blogs. Blogging has developed into a career and dream job for many individuals who can now work from any location in the world.
Getting started with WordPress
Now, whether you imagined your blog as a hobby or a potential money-making machine, first you need to make it. We will skip the motivational speeches and assume that you already set your mind on creating a WordPress blog. Oh well, you can even build a blog from the comfort of your couch if you have a laptop.
We want you to understand that there are various blogging platforms you can choose to set up your blog. But in this article, we are going to focus on the most popular blog site – WordPress.
So, how do you start a WordPress blog?
NOTE
In this guide, we are going to show you how to make a WordPress blog from scratch using the two most popular methods:
Creating a blog using any of the above options is a straightforward task and can be done in 10-15 minutes. This tutorial is designed for Beginners (no technical or coding skills needed). At the end of the day, you will successfully launch your own blog.
Before getting into details on how to set up a blog, it is important that you understand the differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.
For starters, WordPress.org is an open-source CMS and thus available for anyone to download and use for free. Many developers, designers, and coders who loved the platform got involved and built a large community around it.
WordPress.com is a commercial project (service) that uses the WordPress.org system to power itself up.
Disclosure: FirstSiteGuide is supported by our readers. When you purchase via links on our site we may earn a commission. We test and try all the products that we recommend.
Setting up a WordPress blog with Bluehost (recommended)
Even if you’re just starting out, we strongly recommend going with the self-hosted version. Yes, there will be a higher learning curve and probably more work from your side, but having your own site that you get to control is priceless, and it definitely pays out to invest extra time into the management. You will be able to install any themes, plugins, and services that you wish, run ads, and monetize the blog the way you want. There are practically no limitations to a self-hosted WordPress blog.
Before you can install WordPress, you will need web hosting which can store all the files, manage your domain, and take care of your site. For the purposes of this tutorial, we have chosen Bluehost which is a fantastic and popular hosting company that lets you start a WordPress blog for as little as $2.75 per month! With Bluehost, even the lowest-priced option gives you a Free domain, SSL certificate which will make your site more secure, option to install WordPress through a few clicks, and 24/7 support.
The section below explains how you can register with Bluehost and install WordPress using the ‘one-click install’ button.
1. Visit the Bluehost site
Go to Bluehost.com and click on the “Get Started Now” button.
2. Select a hosting plan to start a blog
If you are a beginner, choose the basic plan as it will cover all the fundamental needs of your site’s functioning.
Once your blog takes off and starts receiving heavy traffic, you can consider upgrading to the prime version of your hosting plan, which offers advanced features better suited to handle the massive inflow of traffic.
3. Input a domain name
If this is your first time with a WordPress blog, you will have to register a new domain. Enter a name, and choose the extension from the drop-down menu next to it. There are different domains you can choose from including .com, .net and .org to name a few.
After clicking the “Next” button, Bluehost will check the domain and let you know if it’s available. If the domain name is free for usage, you can proceed with the registration process. If not, you will have to select another name.
If the domain name you like is already taken, Bluehost will help you by letting you choose one later. That will give you time to do some research and thinking.
Bluehost will then take you to the registration form, where you’ll fill in the billing details along with your personal information.
5. Select your hosting options
The 12-month package offers the basics at the lowest price. But you can also consider the other two options – after all, hosting is a long-term investment. You could always remove unnecessary features from your package in the initial stages of your blog launch and add them back later, whenever you feel the need.
6. Set your password
You’ll set your password after you’ve entered your payment information, as the final step in registering yourself with Bluehost. This same password will be used for verification purposes.
7. Log in to your new account
Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of a brand new website. Login to your Bluehost account to proceed with the setup.
8. Choose your WordPress theme
Now you’ll be given an option to choose a WordPress theme – pick one that suits your brand and represents your website in the best way.
If none of the displayed options work, visit WordPress’s repository to choose a theme from the choices shown there.
9: Welcome to WordPress
You’ll be greeted by a “Welcome” message once you log in. Then, BlueHost will guide you in creating a blog. In case you don’t need supervision when setting up a blog, it also offers you the option to continue on your own.
And this is it! You can now go to the WordPress login page and start working on your blog. That was easy, wasn’t it?
Pros of a self-hosted blog
We believe that the self-hosted version of a blog is a much better option than having a free account at WordPress.com. Although there are many pros to having your own site, here are just a few ones you should take into consideration.
Pros:
Complete control of your blog
Use any theme or plugin
Monetize the blog anyway you want
Setting up a blog with WordPress.com
On rare occasions, having a self-hosted blog may be unnecessary. No matter the perks that come with it, some users will never need complete control over their site. They won’t have to switch and customize themes nor use various plugins. Many users are just not interested in learning about WordPress. They don’t want to install WordPress and take care of it on their own; all they want is a platform to let them publish stories.
So, the other option when starting a blog with WordPress is to register a free WordPress.com account. By doing so, you can start writing your first article in the next few minutes after reading this, without having to pay a single cent. You won’t have to worry about domain names, hosting space, or doing backups of your site. So, how do you start a free blog with WordPress.com?
Choose the type of a website you want to create (blog, website, portfolio or online store)
Select a theme
Enter the name of your site and choose the first free option
Choose “Start with Free” option
Fill in the account info
Click on “Create my Account” button
From the very moment after clicking the button, the versatile machines at WordPress.com will generate your site. You can now log into the blog and start working. You can additionally change themes, add widgets, and create new posts. This is it. You have your first blog free of charge. Good luck!
How to upgrade your free account
Although the free account will be just enough for some individuals, you should know that there is a possibility of upgrading. WordPress.com has several plans you can choose from, and if you get a bit more serious about your blog, you will probably need to upgrade (or better yet, switch to the self-hosted version):
If you choose to upgrade your account, you will get a custom domain, Jetpack custom features, additional space, access to new themes, support, customization, and more. The business plan now lets you install custom themes and plugins as well. But take your time to go through all the options to see which plan will suit you the best.
Pros and cons of WordPress.com
Just like with the self-hosted version, WordPress.com has its pros and cons. Although you can have an account completely free and professionals will manage it for you, there are many disadvantages to it. For example, if you decide to use different themes and plugins you might find on the Internet or customize particular parts of the blog, it won’t be possible to do with the free or premium WordPress.com sites.
Pros
Free for basic service
Professionally managed
Beginner-friendly and easy to set up
Cons
Can’t use custom themes or plugins unless you opt-in for the Business plan
You don’t have control over the blog
Limited monetization options
Pricing and features comparison
WordPress.org (Bluehost)
WordPress.com (free)
WordPress.com (personal)
WordPress.com (premium)
WordPress.com (business)
Price
$2.75 per month
Free
$2.99 per month
$8.25 per month
$24.92 per month
Domain
Custom domain name
WordPress.com Subdomain
Custom domain name
Custom domain name
Custom domain name
Storage space
50GB
3GB
6GB
13GB
Unlimited
Design Customization
Complete customization
Basic
Basic
Advanced
Advanced
Monetization
Full freedom
Limited
Remove ads
WordAds program
WordAds program
Support
24/7 support
Community support
Email & Live Chat Support
Email & Live Chat Support
Email & Live Chat Support
Maintaining a WordPress website
WordPress works in two ways:
The front end
As the name suggests, this page will be visible to your visitors whenever they access your site. The tasks usually performed in the back-end like the plugin functionality enhancements, and the customization of your theme will be visible to you and your visitors on the front-end of your WordPress website.
It also allows actions like commenting and sharing on other social mediums to be performed from the front-end by you and your incoming visitors as well.
The back end
This is commonly known as the WordPress dashboard – this is where you can oversee and manage every aspect of your site’s content, functionality, and web design.
If you want to access your WordPress dashboard, type “yourwebsite.com/wp-admin” into the address bar of your search engine. Here log in using your WordPress username and the password you set for your account.
The dashboard
The WordPress Dashboard handles your website’s administration.
The Dashboard is the center of blog administration. It consists of three main parts: the left side menu, top toolbar, and middle section.
The left-hand column of your WordPress dashboard is where you’ll find all of your admin options and where most of your creative effort will be focused.
To write a new blog post, log in to the Dashboard. On the left side click Posts – Add New. The editor area will open where you can start writing your first post.
There are a few things you need to get familiar with. For more details watch the video below or read our in-depth article on how to write your first blog post.
Yes, you can start your blog for free. There are more than just a few options you can choose from. One of the most popular choices includes starting a website with WordPress.com, which is entirely free. The same is with Blogger.
But one of the best ways is to start a blog with a self-hosted WordPress where creating a site is completely free, and the only expense is hosting, which you can get for just $2.75 per month if you choose Bluehost.
Do I need WordPress to build a blog?
While WordPress is the most popular blogging choice, it is not the only one available. There are dozens of other content management systems you can use to start blogging. The most popular alternatives are Wix, Squarespace, and Blogger which allow you to start your blog quickly.
How much money do I need to start a blog?
If you want to start a simple blog, you can do that with no money at all. Starting a blog on WordPress.com, for example, costs you no money, and it takes just a few seconds to register a new account.
If you decide to step up your game and choose to blog with WordPress, you will need less than $3 per month to pay for premium hosting services like Bluehost.
Can I create a blog without a web hosting provider?
Hosting services are an inevitable part of each website. However, if you decide to start your blog with a free website builder like WordPress.com, Blogger, Tumblr, or Wix, for example, you can forget the whole idea of hosting providers.
Don’t let that surprise you. Hosting is still something a site can’t do without, but in these cases, the website builders use their own hosting services. That means that you do not have to pay or worry about hosting at all. WordPress.com, Wix, Blogger, Tumblr, or any other free website builder will take care of every hosting aspect, so you can focus on designing and building your website.
What domain name should I choose for my blog?
Finding good and available domain names is hard. But this should be entirely a personal choice. Choose a domain that you will like, and that will represent what you do. Ideally, you should find a domain name that’s short, easy to remember, and still is tightly connected to what you do.
If you need help, you can always use domain name generators that will get you some new ideas.
Can I make money with WordPress blog?
Starting a blog with self-hosted WordPress means owning the blog. So you can do anything you want with it, and there are many possibilities for earning money with it.
You can show CPC and CPM ads and banners on your site, which can bring you money. Showing private ads is an option, too. Selling digital goods, using affiliate links, selling memberships, or sponsored posts are all excellent ways of earning money through your blog.
The answer to this question would be completely different a few years back. But today, it is possible to design a blog with no technical skills. Many platforms like Wix and Squarespace have introduced visual builders that allow you to simply drag and drop website elements where you want them to be until you get a site you like.
WordPress, on the other hand, has more than a few page builders. If you combine those with premium themes, you can design a professional-looking site without having to write a single line of code.
How do I create a custom email address for my blog?
If you have a custom domain name for your website, creating a custom email address is just a few clicks away if you’re using Bluehost. You just need to log in to your BlueHost cPanel, and open the Advanced tab. There, you will find the Email Accounts setting where you need to click the “Create” button to create your custom email address. After that, you will be ready to start using your new email address.
If you need more options when it comes to custom email addresses, you can check out and learn how to set up a custom email with G Suite or one of its alternatives like Zoho, Microsoft 365, Fastmail, ProtonMail, Pobox or Rackspace Email, to name a few.
How do I come up with good ideas for my blog posts?
At first, coming up with blog post ideas may be relatively easy. You have probably started a blog with some concepts in your mind, and covering those first few points might not be a challenge. As you move down the road, crafting a unique and exciting blog post will get harder and harder. That’s especially true if you care about your blog and want to make the best out of it.
When you get stuck, you should see if there are any open or unaddressed issues in your field of expertise you can solve. It would help if you also thought about changing the perspective; instead of writing about a general problem, try writing from personal experience, which will attract the audience. Also, explore keywords, and see what people are interested in. If you can combine those keywords into something unique to you, having a popular blog post is just a corner away.
You also always have to know your audience and write about stuff they want. If you still do not know your audience, you can start asking them questions via blog posts, polls, or social media.
Although you have several options when starting a WordPress blog, we recommend going with the self-hosted version on Bluehost right away. For as little as $2.75 per month, you can have complete control over your site. There are practically no limitations when you host your own blog, and you won’t have to worry about monetization options or themes and plugins that you wanted to use.
Yes, it will take more time to manage the entire blog on your own, and sometimes there will be problems with 3rd party themes and plugins. But after all, you can rest assured knowing this is your blog, and that you can do anything you want with it.
Note: To make it easier for you to take action, I’m suggesting only those options in terms of platform, hosting which are working for everyone.
How To Start A Blog From Scratch and with No Experience
This blog creation guide is created for users like you who are just starting out and knows a little or nothing about blogging.
Within the next few minutes, you will have your blog up and running.
Step 1: Select the Blogging Platform
The first answer you should have is, where should you create your blog?
There are many blogging platforms out there, and people have different opinions about each of them.
Most of the Bloggers start blogging on the WordPress platform.
WordPress is popular because it’s easy to use.
Here is an interesting fact: 37% of the websites in the world is powered by WordPress.
Once you have crossed the testing period, you are ready to do something more meaningful. Get a WordPress blog, and don’t confuse yourself with WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress -blog.
A self-hosted WordPress blog (WordPress.org) is what you need.
The very first thing you need to do is find the niche of your blog. By niche, I mean finding a topic that your blog is going to be about.
I hope you don’t plan to blog about every random thing and make money. This doesn’t work in 2020 and your chances of success are better when you blog on a single topic.
You might be a jack of all trades, and want to start a blog on multiple topics, but it will not be fruitful, as people like to subscribe to a blog, which is an authority on a particular topic.
Moreover, Google which is the biggest search engine prefers a website which is built on a single topic. For example, ShoutMeLoud topic is “blogging,” and that’s how you found us.
Now, the big question is
how to find the topic of your blog?
Here are a few tips that will help you to get started:
Find a topic that you know better than anyone else. It doesn’t have to be the job you are doing, and it could be anything. Try to think about the topic that you most like to talk about, and you can comfortably talk about it for hours.
The good idea is to pick a topic that you usually read about. The topic which you read about all the time is something that interests you.
Also, make sure you have a keen interest in a particular topic, and you can add values with your own insight.
For newbies, I always recommend to take the help of pen-paper and write down the topics in different columns that you like. For ex: Motivation, Fashion, Technology, Finance, Photography, Scientific research, Babycare, health care and so on. Now, try to write 5 post ideas for those different columns. When you are writing the post title, think about what you can write without taking reference. By the end of the 5th article, it will help you to find the topic (Niche) that you like the most.
This is a critical step before starting a blog, as it will help you to pick a topic that you are most passionate about.
This will ensure that you will not burn out when your blog goes live.
If you are picking a topic that you like to talk about and write about, it will ensure that your burn out period will never come. So, I assume you have selected the niche for your blog which can make some money for you.
Conclusion- Selecting the appropriate niche is the first and the most important step for starting a new blog.
Step 3: Pick a Blog name & domain name for your blog
Domain Name:
There are 4 rules that I usually follow when picking a domain name:
Easy to remember
Easy to type
Easy to pronounce.
Easy to brandable
A domain name is the URL of a blog which a visitor will use to open a blog.
For example; www.shoutmeloud.com
A custom domain name is like www.shoutmeloud.com, for which we need to pay $12/year. However, I have shared a trick below which will help you save this $12 on domain purchase.
Now, there are a few rules which will help you to pick the best name for your new blog. Here are some of the tips from my experience:
Prefer .com domain name above everything else.
Your domain name should be easy to pronounce and easy to type.
Make sure your domain name should not be confusing to the listener.
You can use Bluehost domain suggestion feature to check if your domain name is available or not. Simply enter any word that you have picked for your blog and it will also show you available domain name suggestions.
Name of your blog very crucial in my opinion. You can also have a domain name under your own name, and its great for personal portfolio or if you planning to make yourself a brand.
However, I prefer having a generic name so that in future I could have people running it, and I could enjoy the benefit of solopreneurship.
My suggestion is to be creative and follow the four rules I shared above. Here are a few things you should not do when selecting the domain name for your new blog:
Don’t use a too long domain name. Try to keep it lower than 12 characters. Ex: ShoutMeLoud
Don’t use domain extension like .info, .net and so on, because they tend to rank bad in Search engines. I always prefer and suggest to use a domain name extension like .com or .org.
Suggested read:
Step 4: Picking the hosting to start the blog:
Now, let us build our blog on a hosting.
Web-hosting is where WordPress will be installed. This is a server which stays online 24*7 and all your future blog images, your blog design and everything will be stored on this server (hosting).
That is how your website will be up and running 24*7.
Select the Basic plan if you want to start one blog or Plus plan if you want to start more than one blog.
On the next page, you can claim your free domain name. If you are yet not ready with your domain name, you can click on Choose later.
On the next page, fill up your contact information. Pay special attention to package extras as you can skip a few things to save some money.
Apart from Domain Privacy Protection, uncheck everything.
Under the payment information, you can pay via credit/debit card or if you want to pay via PayPal, you can click on More payment options.
Once you have made the payment, Bluehost will also create your blog in next 10 minutes. This will be done automatically and saves a lot of hassles for beginners who just want a ready-made blog.
If you like to learn by watching videos, here are two videos that will help:
Now, watch below video to learn about buying hosting and domain name:
Here is the cool part:
Once you are done buying hosting + domain name, Bluehost will automatically install the WordPress software on your domain name.
That means your blog is installed and now comes the cool stuff which is something every beginner blogger enjoys.
But, before we get there, have a look at this quick video to understand how you should be using Bluehost dashboard:
Step 5: Set up your blog
The best thing about Bluehost (as you see in the above video) is, it will automatically install the blog for you. However, you are not done, as you need to complete a few things before you will write your first blog post
To start setting up your blog for branding and make it perfect, I have shared some guides which you can refer to get started:
Step 6: Design of your blog
Blogging platform? Check!
Blog niche? Check!
Domain name? Check!
“The first impression is the last impression”, that’s the mantra we follow for a blog.
Blog design is the most important aspect of your blog because a good design will ensure that your visitors will love your blog. In fact, that is how your readers will remember your blog. Imagine your blog design as you with a nice outfit.
In WordPress, there is a concept called “WordPress themes”. These are ready-made designs that are available for all types of blog.
There are many Free and premium WordPress themes out there. I always recommend to go for a premium theme because you will get all the support and starter guide, and moreover, you will have a quality design for your blog.
Here are easy to use modern theme clubs which I would recommend you to start with.
Astra theme: This is a lightweight theme which offers the template for all kind of blogs. Once you install this theme, you can pick from the ready-made template and your blog design will be ready within 30-45 minutes. This is a perfect companion for any new WordPress blog. You can read Astra review to learn everything about this versatile theme.
Genesis: This is one of the best theme frameworks out there. I use this for ShoutMeLoud. You need to buy the theme, and skin to make it suitable for you.
I will share some of the articles link below to get you started, but here are few tips which will ensure you don’t make mistakes a newbie usually makes:
When you are writing your content, imagine there is a person sitting next to you, and you are talking to the person. Write in the first person tone, because there is a single person who is reading your blog. For example, you are reading this blog post alone. That is why you might notice, my tone is “I” and “You”.
Your content should cover all the aspects of the topic you are writing about. Feel free to write 1000+ words.
If you wanna skip the general crowd and level up your blogging game, then read my guide on SEO copywriting. This will ensure whatever you will write will help you drive great traffic from search engines.
Step 10: Add important pages on your blog
Here are some of the important pages, which you should have on your blog. You can add them over the course of the next few weeks…
About page: Contains detail about your blog, and you.
Contact page: A page with a contact form. You can use free contact form 7 or Jetpack contact form feature to create a contact form on WordPress.
Media kit page: You don’t need it now, but you should know about it. This page is where you will write about your blog traffic and available advertising options.
Privacy policy page
Disclaimer page
Disclosure page
Terms and conditions
Step 11: Driving traffic to your Blog
So, you have got everything covered and your first blog post is live.
Now, there are many techniques that you can use to get traffic to your newly created blog.
Step 12: Getting social
Once you have established your blog, make your blog social so that your readers can join your community.
You just need to get started and no need to stress, as again I’m here to guide you with the best resources.
To get social with your blog, you need a Facebook page, Instagram account, Twitter account.
Here are resources, which will help you to get started here.
Now, Make money from blogging in easy steps
There are many ways by which your blog can earn passive income for you.
Here are some of the most popular ways:
I have covered all these aspects of blogging money in this exclusive article: How to make money blogging
What Else you need to reach the next level of Blogging:
Learn SEO to drive free traffic
SEO is an advanced topic and it’s hard to complete it in a single article. Many newbies try not to concentrate on search engine Optimization, and it’s a big mistake.
Search engine optimization helps you to drive targeted traffic from organic search, which in turn makes more money for you. There are three core parts of SEO:
On page SEO: Your content quality, Keyword placement, and other factors.
On-Site SEO: Crawling, indexing of your website.
Off-Site SEO: Backlinks from other sites.
With the evolution of SEO, I would also like to add two more here:
Social signals: Social media plays a great role in improving your blog ranking. Google plus is proven to be the best social networking site to improve ranking.
User experience: New Search engine optimization is all about giving a great user experience. Some of the key aspect of good user experience: Navigation, site loading, website design, readability and so on.
Here are a couple of articles, which you should definitely read to learn about SEO:
Getting traffic to your blog
If you have done everything as mentioned above, you will start getting organic and traffic from social media sites. Now, here I’m sharing some of the selected posts to help you drive more traffic to your website. Do remember, targeted traffic makes more money.
Readership and improving your blog
One major difference between a normal blog and a good blog is the detailing.
An A-list blogger usually takes care of every tiny detail to ensure that users subscribe to his blog, and love to be a part of it. This is what we call turning one time visitors into readers. Here are some of the advance and less talked techniques to take your blog to the next level:
In the world of blogging, we always wish that there was someone who can guide us right from the scratched when we start a new blog.
While that may not be possible but there are plenty of resources available. Join the group and forums related to blogging and put up your doubts, there are thousands of people out there to help you out.
FAQ about starting a blog?
⭐️How many posts should you post daily?
The idea is to be regular with posting. You can target one post a day and if you are creating long-form content (over 2000 words plus), even 2-3 a week is a great number.
I tried to cover as much as I could for a newbie to get started, but if you still have a question in your mind before starting your new blog on WordPress, feel free to give us a shout via comment.
Do share this start a blog guide with others who wanted to create a blog for some time.