Starting a blog is so much easier than I thought it would be. And I was terrified. I had thought about starting a blog for 3 years. I had everything picked out – two years ago.
Honestly, I’m not sure where the motivation came from to start. I had done all this planning and nothing had ever come of it. Then one morning I just jumped in and started a blog in an under an hour.
This is going to seem like a lot but I promise it is really easy
How to Start a Blog On Bluehost
Note: This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you purchase something through one of those links, I may earn a commission. Please read our disclaimer for more information.
What About Free Hosting?
Can you host a blog for free? Technically, yes you can. Do you want to? No, not really. It really depends on what your looking for.
Here’s the problem with free hosting:
- You don’t own your blog – the blog hosting company does.
- Maybe you’ll wake up one morning and all your hard work is gone. Why? Because it’s not really yours.
- The ads on your blog – you aren’t making money on them, your hosting company is though.
- Your blog’s domain name becomes ridiculously long.
- And really even if it was just for updating family & friends on your life – just use social media.
You can sign up for Bluehost for as little as $3.95/month. AND you get your domain name free for the 1st year. That’s only $47.40 for the first year. Click here to sign up for $3.95/month.
01. Choosing your Plan
The plan you pick really depends on you and your website.
If you are just starting out the basic plan should be more than enough – and more than enough for a while.
If you have more than one website or you just don’t think that the basic plan will be enough for you – jump your plan up to the Choice Plus. Mainly because it’s the same price as the plus and you might as well get all the extras if you’re paying the same price.
02. Domain Name
Don’t have a domain yet? That’s ok – actually it’s great because Bluehost will give you a domain for the first year for free. Get your domain name free through Bluehost.
I’ve got a handy domain availability checker below for you to check if the name you want is still available.
Once you’ve chosen your domain name and it’s available, hit the next button to move on.
03. Account Information
Enter in all you information to create your account. If you want to speed up this process you can Sign in with Google. (Make sure your google account is the account that you want linked to your website.)
04. Packages & Extras
If you’re looking for the best deal, get the 36 month price. The 36 month price is their lowest price! Keep in mind the low prices are introductory rates – meaning that after your first term (whether its 12, 24, or 36 months) the prices will go up to the regular rates.
Package Extras
- Domain Privacy Protection. All the account information you entered from above (your name, address, phone number, and email), this protects the world from seeing it. I highly recommend getting it.
- SiteLock Security – Find. This verifies your credentials (email, phone & address) to prove that your site is trustworthy. It also have basic spam, blacklist, and malware monitoring.
- Codeguard Basic. Automatically creates daily backups of your site and stores it so that you can reset it with just one click.
- Bluehost SEO Tools Start. This tool makes getting listed & ranked on search engines easier. You’ll also get a action plan, marketing report, and keyword tools.
Out of all these extras, I strongly recommend getting the domain privacy protection. Just keep in mind that each of these do come at an extra price.
05. Payment
Once you’ve entered all your payment information, and hit submit you have yourself a website. A website with nothing on it but it’s still a website.
06. Password
This is the password you will be using to access your Bluehost dashboard and cPanel – so keep it safe and maybe make a note of it!
07. WordPress
As soon as you’ve finished the regisitration process, you are ready to start building your website. Click “Start Building”. This will get you started on building yourself a WordPress website.
What is WordPress? WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS). It’s used to manage the content on your website. And WordPress is one of the best. I use it on my site and it is very easy to use.
Bluehost has made it even easier to set it up.
08. Design
Now you can start designing your site.
The first thing I always start with is a theme. WordPress has a bunch of free themes to choose from. I started with a free theme. And yes you can change it. Now I have a paid theme. I prefer the theme I have now because I can customize it more (this is the theme I’m using now). BUT if a paid theme just isn’t in the budget now – that’s ok!
09. Add Content
Start adding Pages & Blog Posts.
Pages you need:
- About Me. Your “About Me” page is where you’re going to tell your readers about yourself and about your blog.
- Contact. The contact page needed for people to reach you – your readers, other bloggers and companies who want to work with you, etc.
- Privacy Policy. You need to let people know what you are doing with data that your website collect, cookies and other stuff. (I’m not in anyway a lawyer so I can’t tell you exactly what this is for)
- Terms of Use. These are the rules that people using your site are agreeing to in order to use your site.
- Disclaimer. If you plan on using any kind of affiliate marketing, you are going to need a disclaimer page.
Menus
How you set up your menus is completely up to you. The main thing is you want everything to be found easily! If someone can’t find it, the chances that they will make it there is unlikely.
Here’s how I did mine: in my top menu I have included; Start Here (My About Me page,) Contact, Freebie Library, Blogger Resources, and each of my blog categories. At the bottom of my site, I’ve included Contact, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer & Terms.
Blog Posts
Create 2-3 blog posts for each of your categories on your blog minimum.
If you want to get really prepped: Create an extra 2 weeks of blog posts to be scheduled after launching your blog. I didn’t do this but I really wish I did! Why? Because I was so busy trying to promote my starting posts and I fell behind on what I wanted to write for the next two weeks. By week 3, I’ve sorted out how to I’m promoting everything and cut back on a lot of time I was just wasting.
10. Launch
Your site is set and your content is ready to go it’s time to launch!
Hit the big blue “Launch” button and you are done!
11. Monetize Your Blog
Monetizing a new blog can be a bit tricky. You may not really have the page views for ads. And you’ll more than likely have troubles getting sponsored for posts unless you have a huge engaged following right off the bat (and if you do…..how?)
Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing is the best and easiest way to start monetizing your blog. To find affiliate marketing programs you can sign up for programs like, Amazon, cj.com and Awin (large affiliate marketing sites with many different programs to choose from) or you can find a product you like and search “PRODUCT affiliate program.”
Once you start getting more readers then you’ll be able to start making more money in other ways such as ads and sponsored posts. (You should apply for ads as soon as you can – and just reapply again later if you get denied.)
Start a blog of your own today.
