Blogging is a popular online activity that attracts millions of authors worldwide.

It’s a genuine privilege for writing talents who want to display their skills and also a lucrative business opportunity for young entrepreneurs. But in order to start blogging, first you need to create a WordPress website.

Why WordPress?

The reason is simple – it is by far the largest content management system in the world that currently powers over 30% of all websites on the Internet. It’s an open source platform so you can use it free of charge, which is another privilege for beginner-level bloggers.

It’s impossible to count the exact number of WordPress blogs, but some reports claim there are around 60 million blogging pages powered by this platform alone. It’s a huge number that clearly reveals you have to be super-proficient if you want to stand out from the crowd of competitors.

You must start strongly and make no mistakes in the process. This is where we step in to help you, so keep reading to see the benefits of blogging and to learn seven things that can make your first WordPress blog successful.

Benefits of WordPress Blogging

If you are still wondering whether WordPress blogging is a good thing, you should check out some of its greatest advantages. Blogging experts at Rush my essay say that the benefits of running your own blog are versatile:

• It’s easy to launch a WordPress blog. Almost every step is automated or a click or two away.
• Blogging allows you to express personal thoughts and show creativity.
• It gives you the chance to share knowledge and build a professional reputation online.
• Long hours of work will help you to perfect writing skills.
• Build a network of professional connections, which could give a big boost to your career in general.
• Blogging can earn you some real money. We will discuss this benefit in one of the coming chapters.
• You can also promote your business through blog posts.

These are only the biggest advantages of WordPress blogging, but we are sure you will discover many others along the way. Now is the right time to focus on the critical segment of our post, so let’s check out seven steps you need to take when launching a blog.

1. Do You Need WordPress.org or WordPress.com?

The first dilemma is as old as WordPress itself. Almost every first-time user is confused with this because both platforms look exactly the same. So, do you opt for WordPress.org or WordPress.com?

Jake Gardner, a web designer at Brill Assignment, explains that the difference between the two systems is that WordPress.org represents an open-source platform, which means that it’s completely free: “You can use it whenever you want to build websites, but it’s a do-it-yourself solution and you need to take care of it single-handedly.”

On the other hand, WordPress.com is a commercial platform that includes hosting and automates most of the website building work. If you want to use this version, you’ll need to create an official account and pay a monthly fee.

Since you are a WordPress beginner, we definitely recommend you to test and experiment with WordPress.org because it doesn’t cost you a dime. The platform offers you excellent customization features, so you can really learn a lot about WordPress in general.

2. Choose a Domain and Hosting

If you go for the free version and select WordPress.org, you’ll need to choose a domain name and pick a hosting provider separately. Don’t let it confuse you – it’s an easy process that you can handle rather quickly.

A domain name is simply the name of your new blog. It’s the address that users type in when they want to visit your WordPress site. For instance, Google’s domain is google.com. What is important here is to come up with a nice and preferably a short domain. Shorter domains are easier to search for, while you should also consider including a keyword that reveals your niche or field of interest.

But in order to choose the name for your blog, you also need a hosting company because WordPress.org doesn’t give you one. This is basically the system that powers your WordPress website, but you can choose from hundreds of different options.

Most users stick to Bluehost, the official partner of WordPress. This provider guarantees effortless WordPress installation as you’ll get the job done in not more than a few clicks. Besides that, you get a free domain name. Hosting options may vary, but you can make a 3-year contract for less than $3 per month.

3. Publish the First Post

You’ve got the website prepare and now it’s time to write and publish your first blog post. You can copy and paste text from another document or write in WordPress directly. Just open the WordPress dashboard and click Posts → Add New.

This function creates a new document in WordPress Editor, so you can start writing your article immediately. And if you want to add other details to your post such as visuals, you only need to click the image block and upload the photo of choice.

Now, don’t forget that your WordPress blog comes with a predefined theme that determines the overall appearance of your site. If you don’t like it or just want to distinguish your blog from thousands of similar pages, you can change the theme by selecting another one.

The easiest solution is to go to the WordPress theme library and find the one that suits your style and topics in general. All those themes are free, so you can test different options without paying anything.

4. Install Plugins to Improve Functionality

WordPress themes influence the looks of your blog, but plugins make it better and more functional. This is why most webmasters decide to upgrade their sites with a whole set of plugins. Such tools play a wide range of roles and impact everything from website backups to security.

Just like themes, you can also find plugins on WordPress directly as the system offers you more than 55 thousand plugins. All you need to do is enter a keyword in the search box and WordPress will show you all of the corresponding tools currently available.

Keep in mind, however, that plugins may slow down a website and ruin user experience. This is why you need to choose plugins carefully and use the ones that can really improve website performance. Professional bloggers at Best Essay and Assignmentgeek suggest using the following tools:

• Yoast SEO: It is a comprehensive SEO solution for all WordPress websites, including blog pages.
• WP Forms: The goal of every blogger is to engage with the audience and build long-term relationships with his/her readers. Adding contact forms to your site, the task becomes much simpler.
• Social Share Buttons: If you want readers to spread the word about your blog through their social accounts, then you should add social sharing buttons to your website.
• Wordfence Security: You shouldn’t allow hackers and malware attacks to ruin months of hard work, so make sure to install this security plugin as well.

5. Create High-Quality Content

Now that you’ve taken care of technical aspects of blogging, you can finally focus on what matters the most and that is content creation. We already mentioned that millions of bloggers publish content on a daily basis, so you need to prepare well and start creating high-quality articles.

First of all, you need to choose the best topics for your audience. Analyze their demographic preferences such as age, gender, and location, but don’t forget to delve deeper into the research and figure out their personal beliefs and interests.

At the same time, you should use tools like Google Trends to learn about the hottest topics that guarantee a lot of clicks. When you identify a good topic, create a captivating title to attract the audience. There is a tool for this, too: CoSchedule Headline Analyzer will assist you in figuring out the finest headline.

Of course, your copywriting must be immaculate. Try to write longer blog posts because users demand highly analytical and in-depth articles. Analyze topics from every point of view and offer practical solutions to the problems your audience is facing.

Another important detail is to mix content formats. Don’t just rely on huge bulks of text, but rather combine it with images, videos, infographics, GIFs, and other types of content. This will make your blog more colorful and interesting, thus increasing the time spent on the website.

6. Capitalize on Your Blog

This tip is the main reason why most organizations and individuals write blogs in the first place. Namely, WordPress blogging allows you to gain profit in a number of different ways. The way you go depends on the nature of your content and your professional background, but we will present you three types of blog monetization.

• Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is a widespread monetization tactic that turns bloggers into business promoters. In its essence, it’s a process in which bloggers promote brands and their products or services through blog posts. However, the trick is to play it cleverly and avoid being too pushy and greedy. You need to stick to your niche and promote products that perfectly align with the needs of your target group.
• Google AdSense: Advertising is yet another very popular revenue generation model among bloggers. Google AdSense is a platform that connects bloggers with publishers based on the content you create. It’s a super-easy advertising model that requires almost no work from your side.
• Direct sales: The third most common solution is to sell items through your blog directly. You can sell physical products or digital items such as eBooks, artworks, infographics, audio files, etc. If you have a wide base of loyal followers, direct sales may as well be the right way to go for you.

7. Create a Google Analytics Account

After everything you’ve seen so far, the only thing left is to create a Google Analytics account and begin measuring the results of your new blog. This is important because there is no other way to determine whether your site is actually driving traffic and user engagement or not.

Google Analytics will guide you through the process, but it only takes a few steps to set up your own account. After that, the platform will monitor each one of your links and help you to identify top-performing posts as well as pain points in your content.

If you want to make the job even easier, we recommend you to install Monster Insights, a Google Analytics dashboard plugin for WordPress. The setup is quick and easy (just like with all other plugins), while the tool enables you to track performance from your WordPress dashboard directly.

Conclusion

WordPress blogging is a rewarding activity, but you have to take it seriously and keep it professional right from the start. From technical details to the writing essentials, there are many details to pay attention to here. This is exactly why we decided to point out the most important steps needed to create your own WordPress blog. Reading this article, you could learn the following:

• The benefits of blogging
• What is WordPress and how to choose between the two versions
• How to find the right domain name and hosting
• How to create your first post
• How to handle WordPress themes and plugins
• How to create quality content
• How to make money blogging
• How to monitor performance using Google Analytics

We hope our guide will help you to launch a new blog, but feel free to write a comment if you have any questions – we will be here to answer you!