How to Start a Blog in 2023 – The Complete Guide

Have you ever wished that you could start a blog, share your ideas, change the world and get paid for it but you’re not too sure about how to get started?

I know more than a handful of bloggers who were like you, beginners with absolutely no idea on how to start blogging. Eventually they found a way to get started after a lot of trial and error. Today, the rest is history.

As one of these bloggers who started with zero experience, zero audience and zero pedigree to eventually build an internationally acclaimed blogging business that’s spanned more than half a decade, in this guide, I’ll be taking you by the hand, to show you how to start blogging, regardless of who you are or where you are.

No! I’m not promising you a one-size-fits-it-all road map. But, I’ll give you a template that’s worked for me. And millions of other new bloggers like you.

Now, the following are steps to start a blog in Nigeria or any part of the world. These steps have worked for many successful bloggers despite their location.

Find your Goal

As a beginner, if you want to start a blog that becomes successful, one of the first things you have to do is to find your goal.

The reason you need a goal is so that you can clearly identify the most important things you want to achieve with your blog, so you can easily devise a means to achieve that through blogging.

Knowing this keeps you on track. It also guides all your actions as you go about building your blog.

For starters, a lot of us did not have this understanding that there’s need to have a clear goal as at when we started our blog.

And for this reason, a good number of us started blogging without any game plan or clear goal except with the vague idea of making money online.

Starting a blog this way will definitely impact your capacity to achieve substantial success with your blog. Unless you’re blogging as a hobby without much aspirations, you don’t want to make this same mistake.

That’s why the first thing you have to put in place before starting a blog is to identify your goal clearly.

So, if your goal is to make money online for example, after identifying this you have to find out the ideas that can help you make money online.

In the long run, these ideas are going to affect all activities on your blog. It might even extend to your domain name in some cases.

After sorting out your blogging goal, you can then make a rough draft of a blogging plan.

Why you need a blogging plan is very simple – to guide you on activities that will get you to achieve your goal.

Remember, your blogging plan does not have to be something elaborate. It can always be changed at any time, to meet up with current realities.

Be sure to have at least a draft plan by the side as some guide.

Choose The Right Niche

First of all, a niche or blogging industry is a topic area you want to blog about.

It is always important you have an idea about this from the onset before you start a blog because it may affect a lot of things about your blog, including the overall success of the blog.

Now, a lot of blogging experts must have told you to blog about topics you have a lot of interest in or to choose a niche you are already knowledgeable about…

In fact, this is how some bloggers started out. But, this is not the only way to go about blogging.

While it is important to choose a niche you’re already passionate about before you start blogging, if your goal is to make money as a blogger for example and the niche you’re passionate about does not have capacity to generate income then you might be wasting your time.

That is why you must choose a niche that aligns with the goals you chose in step one above, if you really want to start a blog that becomes successful.

If you don’t have the requisite knowledge about the niche that can earn you a decent income there might be issues too.

So, to get around this, you need a blend of a niche that you’re both passionate about and that niche must also have the capacity to eventually generate income for you.

Popular Blogging Niches you can choose from

Talking about blogging in Nigeria and most other places, some of the most popular blogging niche includes the following;

• Entertainment,
• News and Gossip,
• Food,
• Tech and Digital marketing,
• Music
• Personal development etc.

Most of the above niches are already populated with too many existing bloggers so, you will definitely face a lot of competition, if you choose any of the.

But there are also sub niches within each of these niches…

Take for example, instead of going for a broad niche like digital marketing, you can be blogging about content marketing or social media marketing which are both sub niches under digital marketing.

You can even niche it down further, to focus on a particular region or industry, depending on your goal. So, instead of blogging about content marketing generally, you can blog on content marketing for small businesses.

Doing this, you will experience less competition. And for that reason you might be able to make a widespread impact more easily.

Get a Domain Name

A domain name is the name you want to call your blog.

It can be anything including your own personal name, the name of your business if you have one or any other brand name that will be suitable for what you want to blog about. I have written extensively on domain name in a post here.

Before you start a blog, you’ll need a brand name but while choosing a domain name, be sure you choose a name that’s in line with the brand you want to build.

If you have plans to sell off your blog at a later date in the future, it’s best you don’t use your personal name as your domain name.

Also, where you’re building a news blog or entertainment website, it’s always best you don’t use your personal name as a domain name in those cases.

When to use your name as Domain Name?

A lot of bloggers automatically use their name as the preferred domain name for their blog.

Usually, this is not always the best strategy. There are instances where you can comfortably use your name as domain name. There are also cases where you shouldn’t.

For example, if you’re building a personal blog for your freelancing, consulting or other form of personal services, you can consider using your name as a domain name.

If you’re building something more professional like a business and you want the business to be distinct from your personal brand then you shouldn’t use your name as a domain name.

Set up a Hosting Account

After getting your domain name, the next thing you want to do before you start a blog is to set up a hosting account for your blog.

A hosting account allows you to host your website on the servers of a web host, in order for the website to be accessible online.

A web host or web hosting company is an ICT company that makes it possible for websites to be hosted online.

Without a web hosting account, no one will be able to access your website. Now, choosing the right web hosting company for your blog is very important.

The reason is because if you choose the wrong web host, your blog may experience a lot of service disconnection or down times that’ll make it inaccessible to your audience.

Or in worst case scenario, the wrong web host can cause you your website due to their inefficiency. That’s why you need a hosting company that is reputable and can offer you a guarantee of at least 99.9% uptime.

You also need a web hosting company that’s accessible to you just in case you have technical issues where you need their assistance.

A lot of web hosting companies will always claim to offer these but before choosing any, you need to check out their pedigree and consider reviews from other users.

At VictorWinners.Com, we use Smartweb Hosting at a very affordable rates. You can get a hosting plan from them via the link here.

Now before we proceed to the next step, while choosing a web hosting account, pay attention to their hosting plan and choose the one that’s suitable for you, based on your goal.

For beginners on a budget, I always advise to start with a shared hosting plan unless you have the budget to go for a VPS, dedicated or managed hosting etc.

It doesn’t matter whatever hosting plan you’re starting with, you can always get over to use a better plan as your blog continues to grow out of the one you started with.

Setup your Blog

Now here’s where the real work begins. To create content online, you will need a blog. And before you get started with your blog, you need to choose a platform you want to build your blog.

There are a lot of blogging platform to choose from but one of the most popular of these platforms is WordPress.

WordPress is the number one Content Management System for bloggers around the world. According to W3techs, It currently powers over half of the whole blogs on the internet.

Apart from WordPress, there are other platforms you can choose to start blogging with but WordPress is by far, the most popular of them all.

If you already have a domain name and hosting account then it’s possible WordPress is already available on your cPanel.

All you need do is to head over to your cPanel, Install WordPress and begin to build your blog.

Where it is not installed, you can download the latest version of WordPress from WordPress.org, install it in your root folder and then proceed to build your blog.

Of course building your blog by yourself can be quite tasking if you don’t have the requisite skills. If this is the case, you can hire our experts to build a blog for you and train you on how to use it.

Where you can build it by yourself, you need to get over to building the blog and head over to the next step.

Create Content

Content is king! It is the live wire of all blogging activities. Without content, there is no blog. That’s why for you to start a blog that becomes successful, you need to write content for the blog.

Now, after you successfully start blogging, the next thing you want to ask yourself is what content do I create for my blog.

Since you’ve already created a goal for your blog in the first step above, arriving at an answer for this will not be difficult.

For example, if your goal in step one is to make money online by creating news content on your blog then your content is definitely going to revolve around news, information and entertainment content.

If on the other hand your goal for creating the blog was to become a thought leader or consult as a relationship coach then you will need to create content that revolves around this area, in order to attract people in search of such content.

PS: Before we proceed, one thing you need to remember is that starting a successful blog is not just about writing content.

For you to really build a successful blog, you have to consistently write valuable content to a targeted audience and in a timely manner. Now, let me explain further…

Valuable; Where your content is valuable, your readers will come back for more.

Other websites will also link to such content and this will attract even more traffic to your website.

Targeted audience; Your content has to be written for a clearly defined audience. Doing this will help you to attract the right kind of readers to your blog.

Timely manner; You have to be consistent throughout your content creation and posting process.

Another thing you need to consider while creating content for your blog is the search engine optimization aspect of content creation.

I have written a detailed post about SEO for both beginners and advanced users here. You can read it up.

While creating content for your blog, ensure that you create content that’s optimized for the search engine so they can be visible to searchers.

Promote your Blog

After you start a blog, you need traffic and a decent audience, if you want to achieve a success with your blog. And one of the ways to attract traffic and grow your blog is by promoting it.

If you have the money to spend, paid advertising is still some of the fastest ways to promote your blog.

You can do this by paying to advertise on search engines like Google, social media advertising or paying for ad space on popular websites with your target audience.

Outside this you can try other alternative and free strategies to promote your blog, including promotion on social media and beyond.

How to Promote your Blog

To get started with this, set up a profile for your blog on all the top social media with a decent number of your target audience.

Post on these platforms, engage with your audience, share links from your blog posts and encourage them to head over to your blog.

Engage in connected social media groups and forums. Create valuable content there, exchange ideas and share links back to your website if allowed.

Over time, you’ll need to create a social media marketing strategy for your blog and be sure to stick to it as much as possible.

Monetize your Blog

Monetizing or making money with your blog is the icing on the cake of successful blogging.

After starting a blog and watching it become successful, there’s no reason not to monetize it.

But one thing you must keep in mind is that monetizing your blog successfully will need a lot of traffic.

So, the first thing you want to do is to get started creating content that will get you some decent traffic before you focus on monetization.

How to Monetize a Blog

Having said that, the following are ways you can monetize your blog.

Affiliate Marketing; Affiliate Marketing is the art of promoting other people’s products or services and getting a certain percentage, whenever such product is sold via your website or link.

Affiliate Marketing is a gold mine for a lot of bloggers. There are always a handful of affiliate programs to choose from, depending on your location.

Paid Advertising; You can run paid advertising on your blog and get paid per ad you make for others on your blog.

Besides paid advertising, you can also use sponsored posts as a means of monetization for your blog.

Google AdSense: Google AdSense is another means of monetization which you can use for your blog.

After launching your blog and getting a decent traffic, you can apply to join AdSense here.

As soon as your blog is approved and Google starts showing their ads on your blog, you will get paid at intervals, depending on the performance of your ads.

Courses and Trainings: If you’re running a professional coaching blog, you can create some courses and trainings for your users.

This is one good way to monetize your blog if you’re mainly in the coaching niche.

A lot of bloggers in this nice have successfully utilized this monetization strategy and it’s worked for them.

To be successful with this strategy, you need to be perceived as the expert or thought leader that can be listened to.

So, there’s need to work on your branding and perception if you want to effectively use this strategy.

Personal Services: If you have expertise in any skill say Graphics Design, Video Editing, Programming, Web Design etc., you can also use this as part of your monetization strategy.

I have written a lot in details about growth models and monetization strategy that can work for you based on your blogging niche in this post here, you’ll learn a lot by reading it.

Final Words

In conclusion, starting a blog is not difficult but staying through to build a successful blog will require your time and effort.

Like I already said, a lot of people are crushing it. And you can really start a blog and become a successful blogger.

But to be really successful, you will have to be willing to go through these steps and patiently put in your best foot out as your blog becomes a turn around success.

So, there you have all it takes to build a successful blog, based on real life experience. Do you want to join our Smart Blog Mastery Course to become a better blogger? Here’s the link.

Now, it’s over to you. When it comes to blogging, what is your your biggest challenge? Drop your comments below.