Let’s get the details straight: Blogging is and continues to be a highly-profitable business venture. Content creation is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and it’s super competitive. Traffic conversion leader OptinMonster says that approximately 409 million people read over 20 billion pages a month and more than 3 billion people watch streaming or downloaded video content once a month. The digital content market was worth roughly $12.4 billion back in 2020, and experts estimate it will reach $38.2 billion in size by 2030. Not surprisingly, the digital video content market is even larger, clocking in at a global value of $151.4 billion in 2021 and estimated to grow to $391.1 billion by 2027.
If you can convert even a fraction of those billions into working dollars for your website or business, your content creation efforts will be well worth it.
Where to start
Many websites in the Googlesphere can detail the basics for starting a website: pick a name, find a host, write a post and publish it. But this article is about creating a successful blog.
At the end of the day, a website, whether personal or business in nature, serves a purpose. If you want to be able to live off your website, you’ll need to approach its creation with the right mindset. How many articles and videos exist out there? (Answer: Trillions.) And creating a successful blog or website means that you need traffic, because how else can you achieve your purpose if you don’t have real people eying your content?
Businesses, just like personal websites, should be driven by their purpose, their mission.
Before you start, figure out your purpose. What product or perspective do you have to offer? How is it different from the competition?
From those questions, you can dream up a name that best represents your mission. Here, at Moneyblade, we believe that everyone can be financially free if given the right tools and education. And disseminating that information – through this article, for example – is one of our prime objectives.
Pick your blog name and start a website
Once you’ve decided on a name, you’ll need to focus on setting up your website. If you’re still stuck on what to call your blog, try using Instant Domain Search to help. The name of your site should be related to the domain name or URL that you will register, since presenting a cohesive image to your readers is important. Use a thesaurus for related terms, think up a witty phrase or even use your name.
Now, if you were just creating a public diary on the internet, you could easily go with a free blog on WordPress, Blogger or tumblr. But since you’re planning on using this blog as a launching pad toward financial freedom, we highly recommend going the paid route. Choosing a site host and installing WordPress software sounds complicated, but in reality, it’s very simple. The end result can look similar to a regular, free blog, but behind the scenes is a different story. You can set up a website in less than an hour and for less than $50.
Remember: approach this opportunity like launching a business. The flexibility and control you gain from hosting your own website is what will allow you to make your blog a success. Every cent that goes into it is an investment for your future.
Choose a website host
Launching a website consists of two parts: selecting a domain host for your site (finding a virtual home to park your website) and installing the website structure (building the pages that you see and read).
At Moneyblade we recommend using Bluehost. In fact, we’ve used Bluehost ourselves!
Bluehost is a website hosting service with:
- Excellent 24/7 customer service that’s 100% US-based
- Scalability that makes it simple to adapt to your needs as your website grows
- Free domain name that allows you to avoid the recurring charges associated with domain registration
- A 30-day money-back satisfaction guarantee
Best of all, Bluehost offers great pricing. A basic plan costs $3 a month and is more than enough for your first website. The next level plans cost roughly $6 a month.
Serious website builders might find other hosting alternatives more attractive, since they often boast higher loading speeds and efficient memory storage, but they also aren’t as user-friendly for beginners. Popular alternatives include Siteground and Cloudways Vultur HF, however both cost significantly more and offer less website space (10GB and 25G vs. Bluehost’s Basic 50G). Furthermore, Cloudways is a highly customizable website host, which means many of the useful features are paid add-ons – and forget about integrated email hosting, which comes free with a Bluehost plan.
Set up Bluehost
To get started, go to Bluehost and click the ‘Get Started’ button. The hosting site offers three plan tiers, depending on how much space and how many websites you need to build. Most people will be fine starting with a Basic Plan.
Next, assuming you don’t already have a domain name registered, type in your desired name to the new domain box. If you own your own domain, use the ‘I already have a domain name’ and go from there. Register your account to complete your webhosting setup.
Install WordPress and set up your website
Setting up your website is as simple as clicking a button, since WordPress and Bluehost are an integrated system. Log in to your Bluehost account, skip the blog design steps and Bluehost will install WordPress on the backend (the technical part of this set up). And that’s it! Installation is done. Click ‘Start Building’ to set up the visual aspect.
Select and install a WordPress theme
WordPress themes allow you to customize the look and feel of your website without any technical knowledge. WordPress offers many, many different themes with a range of prices. Depending on your budget and your desired visuals, choose a theme and install it.
First, go to your Bluehost login. On the Home screen, you can click the ‘Customize site’ shortcut, which will bring you to a non-published version of your site. Click ‘Change theme’ and navigate to the WordPress.org themes. There you can preview and buy a theme that suits you.
Add plug-ins to track your site information and improve traffic
Plug-ins are third-party add-ons that help you collect and read data for your website. In general, the more information you have, the better you can optimize your site.
We recommend installing two free plug-ins to grab site data:
- Yoast SEO is the standard search-engine optimization plug-in for WordPress, making it very simple to use. For everything you’d ever want to know about WordPress SEO optimization, read Yoast’s Definitive SEO Guide.
- Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights allows you to track your website’s traffic with important data, including overall traffic, traffic sources, views by author and category and even tracking of outbound traffic.
With these plug-ins added, you’ve finished the initial set-up of your site. You can tweak the visuals after the fact if you’d like, but the most important step of all is next: writing content.
Write compelling and relevant content to create a blog your readers love
If there is one content creation commandment you must follow, it’s this:
All Content Must Stay Relevant.
Remember how you needed to figure out your blog’s purpose prior to even setting it up? That’s the main theme and foundation of your website strategy.
Set up your basic pages, like an About and Contact page, and make sure to add a Start Here page. It’s where you’ll collect all the important posts that make up the basis of your website. The Moneyblade Guide page is our equivalent of a Start Here, and it details the basics of what we stand for.
Who are we? Why do you want to read our content? What can we tell you that you don’t already know? Potential readers need to be able to find those answers easily. On average, people spend barely 15 seconds skimming a page for relevant information, so the easier it is for them to find, the more chances you’ll have of capturing additional time from a reader’s busy life. A 2021 Digital Experience Benchmark Report from analytics firm Contentsquare found that readers across all industries averaged on 52 seconds on each page, and 1 in 2 readers navigated away from the website after just one page.
Going deep into your subjects allows your website to garner more attention and authority, which in turn, allows your site to grab more traffic. Again, approach this blog as a business opportunity and think about what your “customers” might want to learn about. Hopefully, if your content is engaging, readers will go further in depth, clicking more pages on your website and allowing you more opportunities to convert them into ardent supporters.
Make sure you add photos to each post, as well. Some websites advocate for adding personal photos, so readers can identify with the author better. Relevant and engaging photos can pull readers further into your content, so include interesting visuals to add to your words. High-quality stock photos can be free, such as those from Pexels, Unsplash and the Library of Congress, or you can pay a fee and choose from a larger selection at sites like iStock, Shutterstock and Getty Images.
Lastly, when publishing posts, try to aim for a minimum of one blog post a week. It takes time to build up enough content to rank consistently in search engines, and at times it may seem like you’re talking to no one. Youtube monetization experts estimate that it takes at least 50 published videos to start earning notable traffic, and with a written blog, it can take from 100-200 articles to garner significant attention. You can read more about increasing domain authority and improving your linking strategy here.
Bottom line
Building a successful blog takes purposeful effort, despite what many other sites may claim. You can easily set up a customizable, self-hosted website for $50 in less than an hour, but first take time to really think about what your objectives are. The majority of websites out there experience little to no traffic, because the people running them aren’t thinking of the big picture, and many of them end up abandoned.
Approach your website launch like setting up a business, as it may prove to be a cornerstone of your financially-free lifestyle. Focus on your site’s purpose, invest in a worthwhile structure for your blog and publish relevant, engaging content that will pull in readers over time.
