Starting a blog is easy, but what matters is your ability to build a solid foundation for your blog, by doing the right things first. Signing up for hosting is at the core of starting a profitable blog, but what must you do before you sign up for hosting? These are five things you must do before you start your blog. You can do them even if you do not have money to pay for hosting to start your blog just yet.
1. Reflect on why you are starting a blog
Blogging requires a lot of commitment and hard work, so it is important to be clear on why you are starting a blog. Are you starting a blog as a hobby or to make money? Your motive for starting a blog can be either of them or both.
Reflect on the reason for which you are starting the blog and highlight what you and your potential readers stand to benefit from your blog.
For instance, I started my blog because I want to share self-improvement solutions with women and make money while I do that.
Knowing why you are blogging will set the tone for your blog and guide you on how to handle your blog. Your blog is an outlet to share information, so it is important to give it a professional look and post quality content consistently. Having a clear purpose for blogging will keep you going even when you feel like giving up.
The fun part of blogging is that you can write about topics you enjoy and make money alongside (why not have both?).
This is why you must take your blog at any stage seriously because even if you are blogging as a hobby, you may want to monetize it in future.
2. What do you want to blog about?
Ask yourself what you want to blog about. Make sure you are passionate about the subject you choose to blog about.
If you start blogging about something you are not interested in or passionate about, you will easily get bored and give up.
It will also reflect in the way you write, and your readers will not enjoy reading your content as much as they would if you were passionate about the subject.
Six-figure blogger Rosemarie Groner has said many times than I can remember that it is important to blog about what you cannot shut up about. She cannot shut up about budgeting and how we use money, and that is why she is able to write about budgeting consistently, sustain her blog for several years and make lots of money from doing that.
In my case, I am interested in helping young women become the best version of themselves, which is why I blog about self-improvement and blogging.
Bottom line is, make sure you are blogging about something you genuinely care about and love.
Niching down as a blogger has been a huge subject of controversy for most bloggers.
Must you niche down?
It depends. Lots of people are running successful personal finance blogs, travel blogs or mommy blogs, but there are others who do not niche down and are very successful.
It really depends on the useful solutions you provide to people and how you monetize your blog.
Pick up a pen and paper, assess yourself and settle on the topics you love to talk about without feeling bored and ill-motivated. Those are the things you should be writing about.
Related: 5 Podcast Interviews Every Blogger Must Listen To
Related: How to start a Money-Making Blog- A step by step guide
3. Find a name for your blog
The relevance of blog names has been another subject of discussion among a section of bloggers. Some bloggers believe your blog’s name does not really matter. Others also believe that your blog’s name increases your chances of selling your blog’s brand clearly.
No matter how important or otherwise you think blog names are, you need a blog name.
Before you buy hosting, it is important to think about a blog name.
Even though this name could change before or during the period of setting up your blog, it gives you time to find a name which best suits your personality and your blog.
One mistake people often make is to spend days and sometimes weeks trying to find a blog name.
Massively profitable blogs such as Avocadu, Chasing Foxes, Just a Girl and her Blog and Pinch of Yum have names you wouldn’t immediately relate to, but they are making thousands of dollars and driving massive pageviews each month.
I do not mean you must take just any name. What this means is that you must not spend weeks or months trying to find a name for your blog when you can spend that time on other things to set a solid foundation for your blog.
Now give this a thought; Will you still spend weeks trying to find a blog name?
Read: 3 Traits You Need to Succeed at Blogging- For Beginners
5 Reasons Why You Could Fail at Blogging
5 Facebook Groups you Must Join as New Blogger
4. Write at least 10 fresh and quality posts
I wrote about 17 posts before I bought hosting. Grace and Silas Moser had over 40 posts in the bank even before signing up for hosting. It turns out we have one thing in common. We both did not have money for hosting at the time, but we started working on our blogs and took baby steps towards the goal.
When you eventually buy hosting, get a domain and set up your blog with lots of content, it will reflect that you know what you are doing.
That way, you will easily get the attention and trust of your readers. If you do not do this, people will easily notice that you are a newbie, and bounce off quickly as soon as they read what they are on your blog for. You want them to stay longer, feel at home on your site and read other blog posts.
When I first launched Beauty for Bliss, I had 20 posts on the blog. The 20 blog posts weren’t as much as I wish I had, but it was still satisfying to find that all the categories on my blog were filled with blog posts and the blog looked like it had been around for a while.
Write 10 posts or more before signing up for hosting and make sure you have at least 20 posts before your blog’s launch.
Tip– Research and write quality content which address people’s pain points and provide solutions to real problems. If it is meant to be an informative post, make it relevant and timely.
When writing headlines, make sure you use captivating headlines to get people interested once they read your headlines.
5. Find stock images for each post
It is important to write useful and high-quality posts, but it is equally important to find pictures for your posts. In WordPress, you will need a featured image (the first image you see in the blog post, below the headline).
It is also important to use pictures to break down text. That way, your post is not only made up of long blocks of text, which look heavy and make your post difficult to read.
If you do not have pictures of your own, use high-quality stock pictures.
Where can you find free stock images? Pixabay and Freepik at two sites where you can easily find good images to use for your blog. I personally use Pixabay and it has been amazing.
If you are on a budget, you can start with the free stock images until you start making some money from your blog to pay for premium images.
Find good pictures which fit for each blog post. You can name them in folders to make it easier to identify once it is time to use them.
Follow experienced bloggers, read their posts and learn from them.
Check out my step by step tutorial on how to start a profitable blog here.
Conclusion
If you want to start a blog the easy way, it is important to take these initial steps. Reflect on why you are starting a blog, what you want to blog about, find a name for your blog, write at least 10 quality posts and find an image for each post.
If you do the above, the process will be easier when you are ready to sign up for hosting and set up your blog.
Where are you in the process of starting a blog and how has the process been so far?
