17 Crucial Things To Know Before Starting Your Blog

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There are some crucial things you will need to know before you even think about starting your blog?

Blogging is a lot easier than you might think, regardless of your skillset and experience. But before you start a blog, you will want to have a good foundation and an overview of the world of blogging.

There is so much information out there that can confuse you.

As everyone has their perspective about different things in life, it will be challenging to know what will work for you.

So, how can you be sure if blogging is for you?

It’s simple.

Before you start your blog, write 5-7 articles on a word document or Grammarly.

If you can do it, then for sure, go ahead and start your blog.

For now, let me show you the most crucial things that you need to know before you start your blogging journey.

1. Blogging takes time and effort

It’s important to know why you want to blog. If your only goal is to make money online, blogging may not be the right choice as there are many other ways to earn money online.

Blogging is a lot of work because you will need to put time and energy into writing, revising your content, researching, learning, and many other things.

But I want to tell you that having a blog is a fantastic experience. Blogging has allowed me to get out of depression, have a better lifestyle, save more money, and appreciate the little things life offers.

If you have enough patience and you can stick to blogging for at least 12 months, then you will be able to create a full-time passive income, my friend.

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2. Choose the right platform

Maybe you are thinking of starting a blog on free platforms such as Blogger, Medium, or Tumblr. But these free platforms have many restrictions and will limit you from making money from your blog.

As long as something is free, it means you don’t have total control over it. When you are using these platforms, you will have to abide by their terms and conditions.

They have the right to shut down your blog without any notice, and there is no guarantee that you will be able to retrieve your content.

You cannot let your business be at the mercy of companies that don’t allow you to reach your full potential or where you can lose everything in just one moment.

That’s why it’s wise to have your self-Hosted blog as you will have more flexibility, higher storage, more monetization opportunities, and a lightweight blog that will perform much better.

When you are starting a blog, it will cost you around $35.40 for 1 year.

If you are ready to invest that small amount of money to get started, I have a simple and easy guide to help you start your blog in less than 10 minutes.

SPECIAL NOTE: If you are struggling with your blog traffic, you can use Pinterest to bring massive traffic to your new blog.

3. Choose your niche wisely

Your niche selection is crucial as it will dictate your path to success. There are millions of blogs out there, and you will have to find a way to stand out from them.

If you have been reading about blogging, I am sure you must have heard people telling you to choose a niche that you are passionate about.

Do you think it’s like that?

Let me tell you a simple but harsh truth: passion does not equal income, my friend.

So what must you do instead?

You must choose a niche that you have a little passion for, but the niche should have a high earning potential.

Here is your ideal niche:

You don’t need to have a lot of knowledge on a specific topic to write about it.

This is because you will have to do extensive research for every piece of content you create.

Therefore, what niche can you choose to start your blog?

To help you with this first, try to ask yourself these questions:

Who will be your target audience?
What will your audience expect from your blog?
How can you help your audience?
Is the niche profitable?
Is the niche broad enough to be able to create content for many years?
Do you like the niche, or at least you are a little passionate about creating content for that niche?

Once you have answers to these questions, it will be much easier to choose your blogging niches.

And to help you choose your niche wisely, this article will be perfect: The most profitable blog niches for you.

4. Choose the right Hosting

Many beginners like to use free Hosting when they are new to blogging, and when they finally realize that free Hosting is costing them much more money down the road, they become frustrated.

Choosing the right hosting company is very important, as this will be where all your files will be stored.

Can you imagine what will happen if the company happens to shut down or if your entire website is gone?

That sounds scary. Right?

So what are the things that will be worth considering when choosing the right Hosting?

Let me list some of them for you:

Hosting must be able to offer different types of plans based on your requirements. Usually, they will offer Shared Hosting(the basic plan), Virtual private server(VPS) Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, and Cloud hosting.
Compare the different hostings by reading reviews.
You will want to know the level of support you will get with the Hosting.

For those who are new to blogging, I will recommend Bluehost because they are the official Hosting recommended by WordPress.

Usually, the price for good hosting is around $7 per month.

But, Bluehost will offer you a free domain and SSL certificate at a discount price of $2.95 when you sign up through the link below.

Claim your free domain and SSL certificate, starting at $2.95 per month.

5. Starting small is the way to go

When you are a new blogger, you will want to take small steps and progress as you learn new things.

Trying to get everything right will overwhelm you, and you may get discouraged and give up easily.

And to prevent that from happening, you will need to have a blogging strategy.

What I mean by that is you must focus on one thing at a time to reach a point where you are starting to earn a passive income.

You can consider the below steps when you are a new blogger who will help you in your blogging journey:

Step 1. Do keyword research for your content before writing any blog post. You will want to have at least 5-10 keywords to concentrate on and focus on creating content for these keywords.

Step 2. Create content at your own pace. If you don’t have enough time to create 2-3 blog articles per week, try to create only one.

Step 3. After you have written your blog post, come back to revise it the next day. This will help you to have a fresh perspective, which will make your content much better.

Step 4. Once you have published your blog post, you can create a few pins for Pinterest and a few images for any other social media. Please focus on only one or two social media platforms.

Step 5. Repeat the process.

In short, the most straightforward process is:

Keyword research →, Writing content → Revising your content → Publishing your content → Posting on social media.

If you try to add any more steps, you will surely feel burnt out.

How much you can earn, and how well you will integrate affiliate links, create an email list, or send newsletters are steps that can be skipped for the first 3-6 months.

These steps will be necessary only when you will start to have around 100 visits per day to your website.

After a few months, you will know which blog posts are performing well so that you can add a call to action or monetize your blog.

SPECIAL NOTE: 95% of aspiring bloggers who start a blog fail. Do you know why?

It's because they are not using the right blogging model and they don't know the REAL TIMELINE for a blog.

Did you know, that you can build a successful blog by spending only 2 hours per day on your blog? Well, if you use MY BLOGGING STRATEGY, you will be able to do that.

6. Content is king

I am sure you must have heard many arguments concerning quantity and quality among many bloggers as everyone has their views about it.

Quantity does matter to maintain consistent traffic to your website because your readers will always want to learn new things.

But, if you want to give readers value, you must create quality content.

This is a no-brainer.

Do you think anyone will be interested in keeping on coming to your blog if the content is shallow and not informative enough?

Well, I don’t think so.

Remember that people won’t be interested in your awesome theme or your well-crafted blog name. This is of no use to them.

They will visit your blog for quality information.

7. Always back up your blog

How important is it to back up your WordPress blog?

Well, you won’t know it until you have lost your content completely. Would you want to take that risk?

Of course not.

Back-ups are essential because they are the first defense against brute attacks, hacking, and data theft.

Therefore, you must continuously find ways to improve your WordPress security.

There are a lot of plugins that can do the job for you. I like to use UpdraftPlus for my backups because they offer me various options like automatic backup and backup on remote locations like Google Drive or Dropbox.

Becoming a blogger is not just writing content and waiting for people to come to your website.

Since there are so many blogs out there competing for people’s attention, you will need to interact with other bloggers and your audience to attract them to your blog and build a long-term relationship.

You must have heard this quote often:” Your network is Your Networth.”

It is somehow true. You must expand your network and reach a new audience regularly.

So how can you do that?

First, you must try to connect with other bloggers by joining blog forums and commenting on their blogs.

Make sure to read their articles and provide relevant comments, or else you will be flagged as a spammer.

Second, you can use social media platforms like Twitter and Pinterest to connect with people.

The two social platforms will be enough for you to get traffic to your new blog.

9. Learn basic HTML

Previously it was more difficult and complicated to learn to code. Thanks to the new powerful platforms, learning basic HTML has become easy.

With WordPress, it is possible to edit themes and do almost everything without any advanced HTML and CSS knowledge.

There are so many free resources out there to help you with everything you need to build a profitable blog.

If you don’t want to learn any coding but still want to build a WordPress blog with the essential plugins, the below article will help you.

10. Learn Basic SEO

If you want to expand and grow your online business, learning about on-page SEO is a must.

It is not difficult to learn on-page SEO since plugins will do most of the hard work.

If you know the basic on-page SEO, your post is 80% optimized for search engines.

For on-page SEO, I will recommend you use the Yoast SEO plugin. It has everything that you will need for all basic SEO.

Once you have installed Yoast SEO and done all the optimization, the next step will be internal linking.

Internal links are links that you create on your website to your blog posts and pages.

This will help increase your page views, and it will benefit your search engine ranking by allowing Google to understand the context and relationship between all your content.

11. Learn about copyright issues

Did you know that using pictures from Google or other sites can add liability to your blog?

If ever someone does report your blog for Copyright infringement, you will have to pay a high amount, or Google can remove your content from their search results.

Why take such risks when there are many free resources like Pixabay where you can use the pictures for free these pictures are royalty-free.

Another excellent way to have access to unlimited free royalty pictures, and create your unique templates and Pins without any knowledge of photoshop is by using Canva.

Canva has both a free and paid version. But you can easily do a lot with the free version.

Create your free Canva account here.

12. Keyword research is fundamental

As I have mentioned above, before writing your blog post, it’s essential to do keyword research.

So many new bloggers are creating blog posts without doing any keyword research.

Don’t be one of them.

And why is it important to do keyword research?

Doing keyword research will help you find what people are searching for on the web and create content accordingly.

If you want to know how to do free keyword research and bring massive traffic to your blog, these 2 free resources will help you.

Related articles:

13. Consistency is key to success

Being consistent doesn’t mean you have to post every day.

A lot of bloggers may suggest that you post 2-3 times per week. But not everyone can afford to do that.

If you can only create one blog post per week, go ahead and do it.

Just keep in mind that if you post on Wednesday, make it a habit of posting every Wednesday.

By doing so, your audience will know exactly when to visit your blog to consume your new posts.

Remember to create new content at your own pace and make sure those blog posts are of high quality.

14. A good design is essential

What I mean by good design is that you should make sure that your blog is easy to read and is not ugly by using fancy and weird colors.

Your blog design must be mobile-friendly, clean, and neat.

So, where can you find such themes?

You can find some excellent themes at Themeisle . They have both free and paid versions.

15. Website speed is critical

Google search engine gives SEO advantages to fast websites, and it’s quite obvious that a fast-loading website will rank higher on search engines.

Also, good Hosting will give you a speed advantage. That’s why you should choose your hosting company wisely.

The second thing you can do to increase speed is by using a WordPress caching plugin.

If you don’t want to spend money on a WordPress Caching plugin, I recommend using W3 Total Cache.

The last thing to make sure your blog is fast is to use a fast-loading WordPress theme.

16. Ignore Haters and continue to create content

After a few months of blogging, you will start to get some positive comments on your blog post. These comments will be a sign of early success.

But you will also get some negative comments. My advice is to ignore those people and continue to create your content.

Don’t let these negative people prevent you from creating new content or from affecting your writing in any way.

These people often are lazy and cynical people who don’t have much going on in their life.

Your energy and positive mindset will be your asset if you want to succeed as a blogger.

So, don’t waste them on those people.

17. Perfection is not worth it

Trying to get everything right the first time is not possible. You will surely make mistakes, and it’s completely normal as long you are fixing them.

If you want to minimize your grammar mistake, I will highly recommend you use Grammarly.

I am still using the free version, and it’s working completely fine for me. If you want to enhance your writing and sound like a pro, then the paid version will do a perfect job.

My last piece of advice for you is to create content in your style. There are so many blog posts out there, and usually, the ones that have more personalized styles get more success.

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I don't really know when this exclusive offer will end, so take advantage of this offer before it's gone.

If you want to start your own money-making blog, then you can read my in-depth tutorial here.

Final Thoughts- Things to know before starting a blog

These were the 17 things that you should know before starting your blogging journey.

Blogging requires hard work, but it’s a kind of hard work that you can enjoy.

The most important thing is to create content in your style, don’t be afraid to say what you think, be yourself, and create content at your own pace.

If you are new to blogging, then you may like these resources:

I hope this article will be helpful to you so that you can prepare yourself better when you start your blog.

If you liked this article, please do not forget to share this pin so that others can benefit from it.

See you soon!