A step by step guide on how to create a self hosted wordpress blog from scratch

Creating a self hosted wordpress blog is easy and it should not be seen as something that only the tech savvy people can do. These days it only takes creating a blog to make money online. More and more people are creating blogs for the main reason of making money from it. Thanks to wordpress the internet has now became a level playing ground for all people who are interested in starting an online business.



To be part of the blogging revolution I will walk you through a step by step guide on how you can set up your self hosted wordpress blog in a matter of minutes. So walk with me as I show you how a money making blog is set up from scratch without hassles.



1. Choose a blog topic, this is the first step in creating a blog. You have to base your blog topic on one topic and not talk about everything under the sun. if you for example choose "weight loss" as your blog topic then you have to stick on that topic and try to talk about topics that come under that theme. Be careful in choosing a blog topic as a wrong move will make you fail. Your blog topic should be based on something you know and are passionate about. A kind of a topic in which you can explore very well and write a lot about. A common mistake that is done by many bloggers is choosing a topic that they know little about and what happens is that they end up quitting.



2. Choose a domain name, a domain name is simply the url or the address that people can access your blog e.g hubpages.com is a domain name that enables people to access what information is contained in it. A domain name can cost you as low as $10 a year and you can purchase somewhere like godaddy.com or any other registrar. I recommend you go for a dotcom extension as they are popular with web visitors. Also short domains work best.





3. Choose a web host, after purchasing your domain name the next thing to do is go ahead and acquire a web host for your blog. But what is a web host? It’s simply a company that enables you store your blog posts into their servers in such a way that it can be accessed by people anytime from anywhere. A web host is just like the premises that you use to house your normal businesses where clients can come and purchase your goods. It’s highly recommended that you choose a reliable, trusted and effective web host for your blog to get the most benefits out of it. You need a web host that enables your blog posts to be always accessed on the internet, one that offers you their no strings attached help when you need and one you can always count on.



4. Install wordpress into your web hosting servers, after you purchase a hosting account the next thing to do is to install wordpress into your hosting servers. You can do it manually which is most of the times hard for new bloggers or use some web hosts like hostgator which enable you to install wordpress by simply following some easy instructions.



5. Access your wordpress dashboard, after you install wordpress you can log into your dashboard with the username and password you initially provided. After you are logged in you might take some time to familiarize yourself with how wordpress works.



6. Install a theme, installing themes in wordpress is easy. Simply click on the "install theme" tab and choose from the many choices provided. Before you choose a theme you can click on "preview" to see how the theme looks. You can do some customizations like changing the background color, text color, font size, padding, heading sizes and colors, menus styles e.t.c to make your blog stand out from the rest. As a beginner you will start with a free a blog but as time goes on and you start making money from your blog its recommended you invest in a premium customizable theme.





7. Install plugins, plugins help you in accomplishing many different tasks without you putting less effort in. of course you don’t want your blog to be solely dependent on plugins but 15-20 important plugins will do a great job for your blog. Examples of plugins I recommend for you are: seo plugins, google analytics, related articles plugin, adsense plugin which enables you to insert adsense ads in your blog e.t.c.



8. Write your first post, now you are read to write and publish your posts for the world to see. Just hit the "posts>add new" tab to create your first post and publish it on the internet to be read by the target audience.





9. Promote your blog, your blog is now live on the internet and what is missing is readership. You can create an awareness about your blog on social media platforms like facebook and twitter. Also pay attention to search engine optimization to get targeted traffic from search engines.



10. Monetize your blog, now that people are reading your blog why not make money from it? Choose from different blog monetization methods like affiliate marketing, pay per click advertising networks like google adsense and chitika. Experiment with many monetization options to determine which works best for you.



I think the above steps are all that is needed to create a blog that makes you money. Does it look hard? I don’t think so. If you need a detailed explanation on how to create a successful blog from scratch visit my comprehensive guide here.