Follow the step-by-step instructions to learn how you can start a blog in less than an hour. We used this process to create our successful blog start referenced in a lot of sites.
Blog Start in Five Simple Steps:
- Choose a blogging platform, domain name, and hosting option.
- Design your blog using a simple theme.
- Modify your blog to get your desired look and feel.
- Select the best plugins for your blog.
- Write compelling content that adds value to readers.
How to Start It: Step-by-Step Instructions
So you’re thinking about starting a blog, but you don’t have any idea where to start, right? Guess what—neither did we. We were clueless. When we created this blog a few years ago, we had no idea how to start a blog or how to be a blogger. Heck, we could hardly spell HTML, let alone build a blog.
But good news: it’s easier than you think. We’ve learned a ton of lessons during our ascent to 4 million readers. And now you can learn from our pain and suffering to circumvent much of the tedium involved in setting up a blog.
Here’s how we started our blog, step by step, followed by an instructional video, as well as additional rationale and insights:
Domain and Hosting
The first thing we did when starting our blog was going to a host and register our domain. We didn’t even need to set up a WordPress page first, which is the platform we use since hosts do all that for you. basic price, which works for 99% of people (go to Then, we did a simple, free, “one-click” install of WordPress through like Bluehost. When we had questions we were able to chat with the “live chat” for free. They pointed us in the right direction and made starting our own blog super easy.
Theme
A good theme gives you the look and feels you want for your blog, allowing you to make a blog that looks exactly how you want it to look. If you’re not a coder (we certainly weren’t), then a theme makes the design work a million times easier. Plus, once you purchase a theme, which is inexpensive for the time they save you, you own it for life. A theme has two halves: the framework (the bones) and the Child Theme (the beauty):
Framework. There are several WordPress theme frameworks on the market, I highly recommend you take a look at the Ink blog WordPress theme once it’s fully customizable and easy to use, and with the 1-click demo import you can have a fully equipped and ready-to-use blog site in a few minutes.
Modify Your Blog
Once we had our domain, hosting, WordPress, and theme, we spent a lot of time tweaking the theme to get the look and feel we wanted (i.e., making our vision a reality). Then we spent even more time tinkering with the theme and arguing about it and tweaking it some more. Once we had created our blog, we set up a free Feedburner account so people could subscribe to our site via email and RSS subscriptions. And then we established a free Google Analytics account to track our stats. Feedburner and Google Analytics were both easy to sign up for, and we still use both today.
Plugins
We use only a few plugins on our site: “Google Analytics for WordPress” and really simple Facebook and Twitter share-button plugins (since human beings are intrinsically wired to share value, it’s important to make your posts easy to share with others). They take just a few seconds (literally a few seconds, it’s just a click of a button) to install once you’ve started your blog. And if you really want to play around with some cool plugins, check out WPBeginner’s Best WordPress Plugins.
Write Compelling Content
Last, via WordPress, we started writing and uploading the content for our pages: About Page, Contact Page, Start Here Page, Books Page, Tour Page, Archives Page, etc. Next, we designed our logo using free images we found online and text from a regular word-processing program. Then we put a picture of ourselves in the header (this is important because people identify with people, not logos). Finally, we started writing new blog posts and publishing them regularly (at least once a week), accompanied by free photos from Unsplash, Pexels, and the Library of Congress. And the rest is history.
Reasons for doing it.
We were inspired to research and write this essay after reading Joshua Becker’s 15 Reasons I Think You Should Blog, in which he discusses 15 great reasons why you should start a blog. Why is the keyword here? In other words, he talks about the purpose of blogging, not just how to start a blog. That’s what all these other blogs about blogging seem to miss; they miss the purpose—the why behind a blog started.
Reasons for not doing it
So now you have 15 reasons why you should start a blog, and we’ve shown you how to create a blog, step-by-step, based on our personal experience. But after giving you those detailed instructions, which could save you hundreds of hours of wasted time, we also want to give you some good reasons why you should not start a blog. (Keep in mind that these reasons are just our opinions, and we do not pretend to offer them up as some sort of collection of empirical blogging maxims.)
Money
You should not start a blog to make money. We need to get that out of the way first. If your primary objective is to replace your full-time income from blogging, forget about it. It doesn’t work that way. Do you think that Jimi Hendrix picked up his first guitar so he could “supplement his income”? No, he didn’t. Rather, he did it for the love of it, for the joy and fulfillment he received, and the income came thereafter, much later actually.
Notoriety
Don’t plan on getting “Internet famous” right away. Not every site grows as fast as ours did, but that’s totally OK. The truth is that we kind of got lucky. We got a great domain name, we cobbled together a logo and site design that people really liked, we write fairly well, and our content connects with people in a unique way. We didn’t start this site to become “famous” though. That’d be ridiculous. Our notoriety and quick rise to “fame” came as a surprise to us, and as a result of a little luck and a lot of hard, passionate work.
Traffic
Not all traffic is good traffic (as we explained here), so don’t worry about getting thousands of readers right away.
The funny thing is that all these things can happen. You could make a full-time income from building a blog. We do it, But if these are the sole reasons why you start blogging, you’ll be miserable, because it will seem like a job, and if it feels like a job you won’t be passionate about it, and so you’ll either (a) hate it, (b) fall flat on your face, or (c) hate it and fall flat on your face.
Instead, write because you’re passionate about it.
20 Recommendations for Your Blog Start
We receive plenty of emails asking for advice about blog start, about how to blog, about blog topics, and about creating meaningful content—even a few questions about whether we wear boxers or briefs. These are the answers and recommendations we tend to give.
Find Your Niche To Start You Blog In Simple Steps
You needn’t have a niche, but it helps. When learning how to be a blogger, it’s important to ask yourself what you’re passionate about. Running? Cooking? Being a parent? Have you found your passion? If so, whatever it is, write about that. If not, then you must first find your passion. (Note: We generally recommend that people don’t start a blog about minimalism or the paleo diet or any other heavily saturated topic. But what we really mean when we say this is: don’t create a blog about something unless you have a unique perspective. If you’ve embraced simple living and have a unique perspective, then by all means have at it. Enjoy yourself.)
Define Your Ideal Readers
Once you’ve found your niche, you need to know who will be reading your blog. For example, we blog about living intentionally. Thus, our ideal readers are people who are interested in exploring minimalism so they can clear the path toward more meaningful lives. If you want to write about your newborn baby growing up, that’s wonderful: your ideal readers are probably your friends and family. If you want to write about restoring classic cars, that’s cool, too. Tailor your writing to your readers (whether it’s your family or local community or whoever else will read your blog).
Add Value
Your blog must add value to its readers’ lives. This is the only way you will get Great Quality Readers to your site (and keep them coming back). Adding value is the only way to get someone’s long-term buy-in. We both learned this after a decade of leading and managing people in the corporate world.
Be Original
Yes, there are other blogs out there about the same thing you want to write about. Question: So why is your blog different? Answer: Because of you. You are what makes your blog different. It’s about your perspective, your creativity, and the value that you add.
Be Interesting
Write epic, awesome content. Especially if you want people to share it with others.
Be Yourself
Part of being interesting is telling your story. Every person is unique, and your story is an important one. The important part of storytelling, however, is removing the superfluous details that make the story uninteresting. A great storyteller removes 99% of what really happens—the absorptive details—and leaves the interesting 1% for the reader.
Be Honest
Your blog needs to be authentic—it needs to feel real—if you want people to read it. You can be your blog, or your blog can be you. That is, do you really embody the stuff you write about? If not, people will see through you. “Be the change you want to see in the world,” is the famous Gandhi quote. Perhaps bloggers should build the blog they want to write for the world.
Transparency
Being transparent is different from being honest. You needn’t share every detail about your life just for the sake of being honest. Always be honest, and be transparent when it adds value to what you’re writing. (You won’t ever see pictures of us using the restroom on our site, because that’s just not relevant.)
Time
Once you’ve learned how to start a blog, you’ll learn that blogging takes a lot of time, especially if you’re as neurotic as we are (we spent over 10 hours testing the fonts on this site). And see those black Twitter and Facebook icons in the header? We spent hours on those, deciding what was right for us). That said, once you have your design set up, don’t tweak it too much. Instead, spend the time on your writing.
Vision
The reason our site design looks good is that we have a great host, we have a great theme, and most importantly, we had a vision of how we wanted our blog to look. Once we had the vision, we worked hard to make that vision a reality. (Note: neither of us had any design experience prior to starting a blog.) It’s hard to create a beautiful blog if you don’t know what you want it to look like.
Find Your Voice
Over time, good writers discover their voice and their writing tends to develop a certain aesthetic, one that is appalling to their readers. Finding your voice makes your writing feel more alive, more real, and more urgent. For additional reading, check out Joshua’s essay about Finding Your Voice.
We Instead of You
Use the first-person plural when possible. Statements of we and our are more powerful than you and our, especially when talking about negative behaviors or tendencies. The first person comes off as far less accusatory. Think of it this way: we’re writing peer-to-peer—we are not gods.
When to Post
Question: When is the best day and time to publish a blog post? Answer: It doesn’t really matter. We don’t adhere to a particular schedule. Some weeks we post one essay; sometimes we post three. Yes, it is important to write consistently, but you needn’t get too bogged down in the details.
Social Media
Yes, we recommend using Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to help connect with your audience and other bloggers, but don’t get too caught up in it. Focus on the writing first, and social media thereafter.
Ignore Negative Criticism and Stupidity
Sure, we get a lot of negative comments and stupid questions from ignorant people who aren’t really our readers (e.g., negative comments like “You’re not real developers” and stupid questions like “Are you guys gay?”). We call these people seagulls: they fly in, crap on your site, and fly away. But we pay them no mind because we didn’t start our blog for them. Delete their comment and move on.
Research
Spend time researching what you’re writing about. The reason we are able to use so many helpful, relevant links in our essays is that we put in the time to research our topics.
Keep It Simple
This is where minimalism can be applied to starting any blog, irrespective of its genre. No need to place superfluous advertisements or widgets all over your site. Stick to the basics and remove anything you don’t need. Remove anything that doesn’t add value.
Picture
Put a picture of yourself on your blog. People identify with other people. If two goofy guys from Ohio aren’t too afraid to put their pictures on their site, then you have nothing to worry about.
Comments
If you’re going to have comments on your site, then read The Five Words That Kill Your Blog by Scott Stratten.
Live Your Life
You’re blogging about your life (or about certain aspects of your life, at least), so you still need to live your life. There are things that we always put before writing: exercise, health, relationships, experiences, personal growth, and contributions.
Now that you’ve learned how to blog start —and why you should start a blog
