If you start looking around and finding other successful blogs, you might start wondering how to build your empire too. If you have no idea where to start your planning process to start a blog, this article is for you. There is so much that goes into blogging. It’s quite literally physically, emotionally, and mentally draining. We don’t say that to dissuade you from trying either! We say that to be 1000% honest.
The hours you spend creating content deserve to be rewarded – but they may not be for YEARS! There are, however strategies you can put in place to ramp up your success. We wish we had been taught these from the beginning so that’s why we’re sharing them with you!
Pssst! This is going to be a long post breaking down everything you really need to know. – If you’re short on time – click that Pinterest share button to the left and save this for later!
#1 Coding
Let’s start this article off with a little tough love.
THE TOUGH LOVE:
If you don’t know even a little about coding, or have no idea what the difference is between Javascript, HTML, and HTML 5 is.. you’re in for a rough road.
We’re not telling you that you need to finish every module at freecodecamp.org. (Although that’s also a REALLY good idea!) – But at least starting it will give you some familiarity with things that could go wrong. Or the little bit of coding needed to tweak your theme?
Here are some ways that a little bit of coding knowledge comes in handy:
- Installing Pinterest tags (to track your analytics)
- Adjusting map sizes if you’re a travel blogger
- Fixing broken content when switching from one hosting platform to another
- Adjusting CSS for your theme (the way it looks to the reader)
#2 A Good Hosting Platform
A LOT of people out there are going to try and sell you on buying your hosting from Bluehost. We don’t use Bluehost for a number of reasons, but before we tell you what we use – do you know what a hosting platform is??
It really won’t make sense to explain why we chose our lightning-fast hosting platform or how this qualifies as a ‘skill’ so you need to understand a few things. Mainly – the difference between a hosting platform and content management systems.
WHAT IS A HOSTING PLATFORM?
A hosting platform is where your website is stored on a server. WordPress (which we highly recommend you use) is the content management system (CMS) that you use to create your content on the hosting platform. Not all hosting platforms and CMSs are created equally. The skill is in mastering how to use your hosting platform, where to find help, and monitoring your site backups!!!
Reason #1 We Don’t Use Bluehost: Everyone was telling us to use it. When we tried contacting them about just starting the onboarding process after switching from a different CMS, it just felt like we weren’t going to get good customer service? Navigating the ins and outs of web design is difficult enough without signing up for something that you don’t fully feel supported in!
Reason #2 We Don’t Use Bluehost: If you look at the predictors of how Google will rank your website – site speed is a major factor. Bluehost ranked – but it was not the fastest hosting provider.
Use Siteground For Hosting
Speaking of bloggers telling you what to use for hosting: here’s our affiliate link for Siteground! After two weeks, we saw a tremendous increase in traffic {almost 10%}! If you look at our analytics above from Google Analytics, it’s easy to see why we recommended Siteground for a successful blog. We were getting around 978 sessions on average a day and then hit around 1200 sessions a day shortly after switching.
** If you’re looking at other successful blogs, you may notice that they are often members of the ad network ‘Mediavine’. In order to be accepted into this program – Mediavine requires 50,000 sessions as their blog traffic metric. The faster your site, the more sessions you’ll have because people get click-happy when bored!
Before you just click and purchase: let’s talk about why Siteground was a good fit for us and why it could be a good fit for you.
A little About SIteground:
- #1 Siteground Professionals transferred our site for us. This MESS-FREE transition from WordPress.com Business Package to our WordPress.org/Siteground’s self-hosted space was $30. As busy professionals ourselves.. it’s important to know when to delegate. This was not something we wanted to tackle, since at the time we were hovering around 30k visitors a month in traffic and growing!
- #2 Siteground Was Easy To Set Up: When we say easy – we really mean that it took a solid 25 minutes to get totally set up and hand over the reins to having them transfer our site over. And after that 24-48 hours process was complete – our site looked perfect without any downtime!
- #3 Siteground Specializes In Website Speed: From everything to installing Cloudflare, they will help you make your site faster. They have their own WordPress plugin called ‘SG Optimizer’ that will walk you through small fixes that take seconds off your website load times. This. Is. Important. The significant change in speed is also why our monthly sessions went up!
- #4 Siteground had different packages based on what level of traffic you’re getting. At the time we signed up with over 30k in monthly sessions/75k+ page views – we knew we needed help. Siteground provides an excellent level of service while allowing you to grow.
#3 Knowing The Ins & Outs of WordPress
While there are higher-end sites to use a website builder like Tonic etc. – Most bloggers opt to purchase a theme and build their site themselves with WordPress. Not only is it more cost-effective for beginners who are making absolutely no money from their blog – but it’s also a great learning experience.
Over 40% of websites you’ll visit these days are WordPress-built sites. If you’re wondering how to start a blog, you’ll want to start with purchasing a theme.
When you buy a theme, one of the best things about using a custom theme is that you get support when things don’t look right. We didn’t even realize that was possible and after purchasing the Emily Grace Theme from Pix & Hue, we’re so glad we took that leap! We have to brag on Louise from Pix&Hue because she has been incredibly supportive. Through every WordPress update, Elementor update, and beyond – she has helped us create a site that fits our needs at every step of our blogging journey. When you purchase a theme, you’ll get in-depth guides on how to create your website, integrate your email subscribers platform and social media!
Get our theme (The Emily Grace + Font Plugin Bundle) here & shop all Pix & Hue WordPress themes here!
Now – how is this a skill you might ask? Managing your WordPress site and quickly building pages and blog posts is incredibly important as you start creating content. The faster you can create high-quality content, the higher your traffic will be. Consistency is key in everything you do as a blogger!
#4 Photography
Imagery, graphics, and stats basically sell your ideas for you. Whether it’s a picture of a yacht on a finance blog or a hidden jungle escape on a travel blog – visuals are key to influencing your audience.
If You’re Not Interested In Photography: The best thing you can do is invest in a solid stock photography strategy and presets. Stocks photography is great because you don’t have to worry about cameras at all. Your blog posts can have all the necessary imagery to capture your reader’s attention!
How To Make Your Photography Work For You: The most important thing you can do is make sure none of your photos are blurry or grainy. Good quality and applicable photos can make a boh difference in your post! Everyone is used to glossy images on Instagram these days and they expect no less from high-quality blog posts. Grainy images (unless stylistically purposeful) are highly damaging to the credibility of your content!
Finding A Consistent Editing Style: Last but not least – it’s important that you get a consistent editing style. Whenever you find articles on how to start a blog – they’re probably not going to tell you how ugly things were in the beginning! But don’t let that fool you. Any successful blogger being honest will tell you – their photography was bad and yours probably will be too! That’s ok though. Just keep working with it and define your style!
P.S. Editing images is a massive part of content creation. Don’t be surprised if you spend 4 hours getting through 2000 photos of a trip just to start writing your blog posts!
#5 Figure Out What Social Media You Like
There are a lot of successful influencers, bloggers, and a combination of both out there. What you need to understand is the difference between them and decide what you want to be.
We don’t want to be influencers necessarily? It’s a high-profile life that doesn’t really suit our lifestyle. We have no intention of throwing our faces online every day. That’s ALOT of stress and expectation that we personally don’t believe in.
Does that mean it can’t work for you? NO. The on Instagram everyday life can totally work for you! Whatever social media you chose – remember that you can work it to your advantage as free marketing! (Because no one will read your blog if they don’t know about it or can’t find it!)
Pinterest is our jam and it’s 100% worth it to get a Canva Professional account. Free for the first 30 days, this small investment in your blog allows you to create as much as want and save it for future projects! It’s even how we created all the graphics in this post! (P.S. Save one of these to your favorite Pinterest board if you want to finish reading later!)
P.S. If you’re a content creator struggling to get Instagram to allow you to add songs, get our guide on all the best ways around this glitch.
#6 SEO
The best advice we can give you is a three-part strategy.
#1: Keyword Research with Keysearch: Start understanding what kind of keywords you can rank for. You can’t outrank everyone for every keyword – but you CAN find keywords to center your writing around. The best way to do this is by using our favorite tool Keysearch. It’s the most efficient keyword generator we’ve found to help us get ranked on Google as #1 for many different keywords!
You can get a subscription for Keysearch monthly or annually – but once you start using it – you’ll never go back!
#2 Get Yoast Premium! – Yoast has helped us so much in terms of understanding how to write efficiently. Not only does it remind you where to put all of your keywords, it also reminds you to split up your text for readability and Google SEO!
#3 Read Other Travel Blogs: Start understanding what it takes to really convey your ideas and become a good writer. There is no time like the present to learning what draws people in and keeps them coming back. The more you read, the more you’ll start to define your writing style. (This doesn’t mean copying the work of others! It simply means gaining a larger vocabulary and figuring out what kind of writing speaks to you!)
You can’t expect to be perfect right away at this either. It takes time and practice. Just remember that when you’re figuring out your path toward how to become a blogger – all successful blogs started with writing!!
#7 Implement Monetization strategies
This is so important and we wish we knew it much sooner. If we had typed in the words: ‘How to start a blog and make money’ into Google – we would not have wasted so much time! The fastest way to make money as a blogger? Monetize your site and your content.
People do not just casually send you a Venmo for writing good content! Even if you write amazingly helpful and thought-provoking content – you have to figure out a way to give just about everything you do a monetary value.
We can’t tell you how many times we’ve run across blogs that have great information – and no ads, no content to shop, etc. This is a mistake and you can set it up from the very beginning. When you start a blog – you can start making money right away! The trick to monetization strategies and where the real skill comes in is figuring out how to do it without sounding sales-y. Successful blogs aren’t too pushy and don’t scare people away. There are approximately 1.3 trillion options out there on the internet – they might just find something else if you don’t handle things tactfully!
Sign up for our emails below to be the first to know when we publish our thoughts on the best monetization strategies!! (See what we did there? A casual call to action (CTA) that will help us convert in the long run!)
#8 Create An Email List
We know. You’ve probably seen this x1000 times. ‘Create an email list’… without anyone actually telling you why it’s so important, how it converts, or even how to set it up?
Whether you’ve typed ‘how to start a blog’ into Google today, or you’re an old-timer, we all have the same goals. Traffic.
Your ultimate goal is almost always going to be centered around traffic on your website. The higher the number of sessions & pageviews – the higher your income potential. Whether you’re selling services, have an affiliate marketing strategy, or ads – you need traffic. Eyeballs on the page, and people coming back for more because they like what you have to say. What is the number one way to remind people they like what you have to say? EMAIL THEM.
Literally remind them once a month, once a week, or whatever – depending on your content! A person already clicked on your blog once – they’re more than likely to come back if you gave them something they needed. Make your emails about the things people need!
Here at MyColorful Wanderings – we use ConvertKit. At the time of writing this article – we’re still using the free version and it’s the best choice we’ve made! With unlimited landing pages and sales funnel options, we’ve passively collected more email subscribers than ever. When we first starting this blog – we used a different option that we found really hard to work with. If someone had told us that using Convertkit was part of the path of how to start blogging successfully – we’d have WAY more email subscribers!
#9 Getting Goal Oriented
If you don’t understand what all of those Google Analytics metrics mean, it’s ok. If you never take the time to learn – this is not okay. Sessions, page views, bounce rates, etc are all key factors in how much money you make from just your blog. Not to mention that if you head over to each individual social media channel – you’ll find they have their own metrics.
The key to becoming successful is in the details. From brands you want to work with, finding advertising networks, to negotiating hotel collaborations. We really mean it when we say there is a method to the madness of blogging. It might seem like you’re always pulling out your hair – but beginning a blog is the hardest part.
Once you’ve taken those first few steps and figured out what you want out of your blog – you’ll do so much better!
P.S. If you’re struggling to get organized – our yearly, monthly, and weekly goal planning sheets are a life-saver! It takes the guesswork out of keeping your thoughts all in one place! You’ll find ways to pace yourself and stay consistent! Get your planning download here!
#10 Successful blogs require Multitasking
After you set up your site aesthetically, you’ll then move over to how to start writing blog posts, etc. What no one tells you about blogging is that you have to become a master at way too many things when you start this journey. Let’s review all of the things we’ve talked about you needed to learn so far:
- Web Design / WordPress/ Hosting Platform Basics
- Social Media
- Graphic design to help you create attractive images to grab your reader’s attention.
- SEO – Search Engine Optimization
- Monetization Strategies
- Coding – Probably the most tricky of all the skills you need to master in your blogging journey!
- Photography
- Creating an email list
- Copywriting – From writing blog posts to getting your voice across in your emails, copywriting is basically defining your style and making sure your personality/brand comes across in your content.
As with anything you’re trying to tackle, the old elephant adage comes to mind. ‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.’ It all may seem overwheleming at first – but you CAN do it! Your life-changing & successful blog is just around the corner!
So how do you accomplish what seems like an insurmountable list? You get a planner, get your copy of our blog planning worksheets, and MAKE. IT. HAPPEN. As hard as it can be – you just have to want it bad enough!
Bonus #11: A ‘Work In Silence’ Attitude
Have you ever heard of a billionaire or any other uber-successful entrepreneurs speech? Do they ever talk about all the parties they went to or all the time they wasted while working on their dreams? NO.
Every entrepreneur ever who has made something of themselves will talk about their nose-to-the-grindstone attitude. It’s what you need to have too! Don’t tell people you’re starting a blog – show them your successful blog. Heck, maybe one day you’ll be running multiple successful blogs? Don’t tell people about your travel Instagram account – let them stumble upon it when it’s blowing up. These things only happen when you ‘get your digital hands dirty’ and get elbow deep in all things blogging.
We say this because it really does help! Our blog never flouished more than when we cut out the nonsense!!! Get serious about learning to make it aesthetically pleasing, fast and uber-shareable!!!
Important Links & Pinterest Pins
Before you go, wed love to know your thoughts in the comments below! If you found this article helpful -save one of these pins below.
- Purchase Your Siteground Hosting (WordPress.org Included)
- WordPress Themes From Pix & Hue (Our Specific Theme Available Here: The Emily Grace)
P.S. We’re just going to be upfront about it: we make a small percentage if you use our link to purchase your hosting package or your new WordPress Theme. Hopefully after reading this article though you know how much we care and how much we believe in what we’re telling you!
So the last thing we’ll say is: If you aren’t ready to put in a ton of hard work, you aren’t ready for a conversation about how to start blogging successfully.
Make sure to sign up for your free blogging goals planner, and get all of our raw & honest thoughts about blogging!
While you’re here, check out our fellow bloggers’ favorite post: The Best Songs For Instagram Reels. There are over 300 songs available for creating content that aligns with your brand. P.S. If you’re just starting out as a content creator, find all of our content creation basics below!
Until next time friends,
SHOP
