How To Start A Blog: A Step-By-Step Setup Guide

In this video, I’m going to show you how you can start a WordPress website or blog the right way. Avoid the newbie beginner mistakes. Look professional from the very start and you’ll learn how you can make money online. Basically, it’s an easy step by step tutorial for beginners.

What’s up, everybody? I’m Pete Williams. And today we’re going to be talking about one of my favourite subjects, which is how to create a website. I’m going to show you every step you need to take to start a blog the right way.

If you’re new to this channel, it’s all about learning new skills that we can develop into habits with the help of tools and services available to us on the Internet. The end goal; a happier, healthier, more productive life where you can work less and make more. So if that sounds like something you’re into, make sure you hit the subscribe button and the bell notification so you don’t miss out on any future content.

Right? Let me start by asking you a question, are you a dreamer or an action taker?

Dreamers have a lot of ideas. They want to start a business, they want to start a blog, they want to be a YouTuber, but they never actually take any action towards these ideas, so they forever stay just a dream.

On the other hand, action takers, they know what they want, but most importantly, they do something about it. They take action!

If you want to achieve your dreams, you’ve got to take action.

Don’t worry if there’s hundreds of steps involved to get what you want, get started on step one. If you focus too much on steps two to one hundred, you’ll become overwhelmed and you’ll never get anywhere. That’s something I’ve been guilty of myself.

You don’t have to figure out everything before you start. That’s often impossible. Instead, concentrate on step one, complete that and then worry about the next step.

You’ll learn everything along the way, start and then learn. Not trying is a lot more painful than trying and failing. At least you’ll know you tried and you won’t grow old resenting yourself for something you never did.

So be an action taker and actually execute each of the steps as you follow along with this tutorial. It may seem a bit lengthy, but unlike most other tutorials you’ll find here on YouTube, this isn’t just a brief overview that doesn’t really help you get anywhere. You’ll actually have a functioning website that’s set up well and ready to help you share your value with the rest of the world and make some money.

Now I’ve been creating websites for over ten years and let me tell you something, you’re extremely lucky. It’s so easy to start a website nowadays, compared to when I started.

It used to be like, aggghhhh… I need to learn how to code HTML, CSS, JavaScript, constantly Googling how to code certain things, but not these days now it’s super easy. If you’re able to browse the Internet, you’ve probably got the skills you need to start a website. If you’re still on the fence 100% recommend giving it a go.

So in this video, I’m going to break down everything you need to know to create your own website and why you should have a website in the first place.

I’ll share the correct platform to use to create your blog because getting this wrong is one of the most common newbie mistakes.

I’ll cover how to design your blog. Not that this really matters when you’re getting started unless you’re putting an existing business online.

I’ll teach you how to make sure it’s user friendly, and by that I mean it’s mobile-friendly. It’ll work no matter what device your visitors are using.

You’ll learn how to set it up for the search engines with search engine optimization. And again, not that this is something you need to worry about when you’re just getting started, but it’s nice to have in place, well, the basics in place to begin with.

You’ll learn how to set your blog for social sharing so people can spread the word if they like your content.

One of the most important things, we’ll make sure that your blog is safe with security and regular automatic backups in place to prevent loss of your hard work just in case your website gets hacked.

I’ll teach you how to capture email addresses, and this bit is extremely important and explain why later in the video.

And I’ll even show you how you can add affiliate links to your blog so you can make money blogging, and start to generate passive income, once you have an audience.

Oh, and just a quick side note before we continue. Please don’t be put off by the length of this video. There’s a lot to cover, but the actual doing part is fairly quick.

I provided the timestamps below the video if you want to skip past me explaining why you should start a website, or you’d rather just get started or skip to certain sections of the video.

So even though it’s not the most exciting video you’ll ever watch, you should have a fully functioning website by the end of it, and I personally think that’s quite exciting.

Oh, and one last thing, if anything looks different to what you see in the video, don’t worry, the service providers and developers are continually updating and improving their products so things change all the time. The steps that I’m teaching you will still be pretty much the same so you should still have absolutely no problem following along.

Speaking of which, if you prefer to follow step by step instructions with text and images, head over to my blog post. It contains links to all the resources you’ll need for this tutorial. In fact, you’ll find all the links you need below this video.

So, why should you start a website?

Having a website is something that I recommend to everyone, whether it’s for work or for personal use.

The benefits: So for your personal life in terms of personal development;

If you’re blogging every week or creating videos if that’s your preference, you’ll become better at that skill. For example, the more you write the better you’ll get at writing. You’ll likely also improve your communication skills too. And the more you create, the more ideas you’ll get.

You’ll have a presence on the Internet, which gives you networking advantages and reach. Now what I mean by that is you’ll have the potential to get discovered by way more people. Huge benefit.

This exposure can help you get discovered by others, which can lead to a lot of interesting opportunities. For example, you could get invited to write articles for other well-established websites and publications. You could get invites to podcasts and interviews. You could also make new connections via a common interest.

And then there’s the benefits to your professional life.

It’s becoming fairly common for potential employees to Google you as part of the interview. So you could say that your website acts as kind of like an online CV. It gives you more exposure, people can relate, see common interests.

Plus, it’s an easy place to direct people if they want to learn more about you. Kind of like a digital business card.

And finally, what most people tend to favour the most. You can monetize your website if you want.

The main reason for your website should be to provide value, but you can make money from it. There’s plenty of people out there doing it, and there’s even some that make six to seven figures a year!

One of the reasons it’s possible is because your website can work for you 24/7.

I mean you’re not going to get rich straight away and you’ve got to remember that. You’re going to have to put in consistent hard work, but just know that the hardest part is getting started. Just take massive imperfect action, remain consistent and you’ll improve over time.

So what should you do with your website?

My recommendation is that you just keep writing at least one article or blog post per week for the next year or two and share it on social media.

And yes, it probably will just be your friends and family that reads it at first, but don’t get discouraged by that. I mean, one of them might read it and think, oh so and so at work might like this and they’ll share it with them and then your work is getting discovered by others.

Plus, if your content is good and improves over time, more and more people will likely discover it anyway. But like I touched on earlier, you’re not going to get rich quick. It takes time and you have to put in the work.

But if you stay consistent and regularly put out new content each week for the next one to two years, I’d be surprised if you haven’t created an opportunity for yourself. In fact, I’d be surprised if you haven’t created a plethora of opportunities for yourself.

The hardest part is getting started, so you need to take massive imperfect action.

Don’t worry about the more technical things at first. SEO, what your website looks like, how to monetize it. Just focus on creating valuable content and sharing it.

Just make sure that you stay consistent. Post at least weekly to your website and share it to all your social media platforms. Just get into the habit of creating content, publishing it and then showing your work to everyone on the internet.

And finally, if you’re worried or scared of putting yourself out there, it’s perfectly fine to feel like that. Loads of people feel like that to begin with. You’ve just got to get started and you’ll soon realise it’s not so bad.

In fact, if you’re put in consistent hard work, you’ll soon discover that your website has the potential to completely change your life.

Now hopefully that’s enough to make you agree that starting a website or blog is a great idea. But what should you blog about?

You need to think of a topic that you can write or make videos about on a regular basis.

Now you might be here because you’ve got a business idea already or an existing business that’s offline so you need to create a website for it. But what happens if you’re creating a website just for you for personal use? What should you actually write about?

I’ve got a short exercise that should help with this. So grab yourself a piece of paper and a pen or open your favourite note-taking app and I’d like you to note down the following:

What you’re good at, what you’re interested in, what you enjoy and what you’re interested in learning about.

Once you’ve wrote all those down, that should give you plenty of ideas of what you can write about for your website. If you need a bit of help, you could use me as an example.

I like creating websites, content creation, personal development, productivity, tech, money management, automation and health and fitness.

So if you’ve got something along those lines, just note them down.

At the end of the day, the best way to look at it is this; Could what you’re planning to write about be useful to at least one other person in the world?

Think of all the existing businesses that already exist out there. They all provide value. That’s what you need to do.

So now you know your website topic, you need to create a website, and this is the bit that worries most people, but there’s no need to worry because it’s actually a lot easier than you think.

There are three things you need to create a website.

Number one a platform, number two website hosting for that platform, and number three a domain name.

Let’s start by talking about choosing a domain name. Choosing a domain name for your blog is a very important part of the process, and it’s essential for branding.

Take your time here and choose wisely.

I’m going to repeat that because of how important it is. Take your time here and choose wisely.

Now the domain name for my website is internethabits.com. Now you’ve no idea how long this took me to come up with.

I mean, at first I was thinking about using my name, but because my name is really common, that was already taken, so I couldn’t use that.

I was thinking about using keywords about the things I was going to write about. But when I was trying to think of a combination of them as something cool to make the website name rememberable, already taken. So it’s a difficult process.

So if you’re having trouble choosing a domain name because it’s difficult, I’d recommend that you either go with your name, if it’s not a common one like me that’s already taken or just use a branded domain name like I have.

To make this process a bit easier for you, when choosing your domain name, you should consider;

Is it easy to remember? Is it easy to say and spell? If it includes your name and that’s a long name, you might want to use a shortened version if necessary. Don’t use Hyphens in your domain name. For example, internet dash habits dot com. Domain names with Hyphens are harder to remember. Plus, you’ll likely find it annoying when you’re having to tell someone your website address.

Don’t use numbers or special characters because you don’t want to explain that you mean the number 6 rather than the word six when telling someone your website name.

Keep it simple. So don’t use words that you can spell in different ways. For example, the word two or the word for, the various spellings on the screen now.

You’ve also got to make sure, ideally, that you keep it short so it’s easier to remember.

If you want to you could include keywords for your blog’s topic in your domain name. For example, Bluehost.com is a hosting company or there’s Dailyblogtips.com, which is a blog that provides you with daily blogging tips.

Basically, it will give your readers an idea of what they’re likely to expect. Your domain name is a very important part of your blog and it’s essential for branding. So I’ve said it again and I’m repeating myself, take your time here and choose wisely.

Once you’ve decided on your domain name, you’ll need to choose the platform to host your website, and this is where most beginners get it wrong.

I’m often asked how to start a blog and whether they should use Tumblr, BlogSpot, Squarespace, Wix or anything like that because they’re free, they’ve seen the ads or their favourite YouTuber’s mentioned them in a sponsored video.

Yes, some of them are free, but most platforms are paid. And if you want to take your website seriously, which I highly recommend, then you should pay for a service.

The reasons you should avoid the free platforms;

You don’t own your blog and it could be shut down. There’s a lot of limitations on what you can do. You have restricted control over your website design, functionality, optimization, and monetization.

You don’t want to look like a beginner, and by that I mean, your domain name will be an extension of the service provider’s name. For example, if I chose Tumblr as my platform for Internet Habits, the website address will be https://internethabits.tumblr.com instead of just https://staging.internethabits.com.

Now, a quick caveat. If you’re not currently in a position where you can afford to pay for a service, then just sign up for a free account on SubStack or something similar.

Just focus on creating content on a weekly basis, developing that skill and forming a habit until you’re in a better financial situation where you can afford it.

And if you can afford it, but you’d rather use a free service, then I wish you good luck. But my recommendation is that you invest in your future because it’s genuinely the sort of investment that has the potential to change your life.

Please don’t waste your time focusing on the wrong things, like trying to find the best free option just to save yourself a few dollars each month when your time could be spent creating valuable content that could make you a lot more than a few dollars. Save a few, make make a lot.

Oh, and I should also mention that my recommended platform isn’t very expensive, so if you can cut back on buying a few drinks per month, you should be able to afford this without any problem.

So now onto the platform. As I mentioned at the start of the video, the blogging platform that I recommend is WordPress. WordPress is inexpensive. The platform itself is free, but hosting will cost you a few dollars per month.

It’s quick and easy to use. It’s used by professional bloggers. Plus, it’s much easier to customise, thanks to themes and plugins that can help you to achieve pretty much anything you want to do.

Now, there is a free version of WordPress, but that’s just like Blogger and Tumblr, etc. It’s limited and restricted to their terms and conditions.

The self-hosted version of WordPress gives you full control and 100% belongs to you.

Now don’t get things confused here. They’re both free, but one is hosted for free, and that’s the restricted one. The self-hosted one where you’ll be paying just a small amount for hosting is the one that we’re going to go with.

One of the great things about WordPress is you don’t need any technical skills. There’s no coding knowledge required. It really is that easy.

Plus, if you want to be taken seriously, you need your own domain name that’s not a subdomain of another platform. Also, you’ll appear more professional with your own self-hosted blog rather than using a free blogging platform.

If you’re going to take your blog seriously, start off correctly and do things right the first time. Don’t overthink it. The content that you produce is much more important, so follow the rest of this tutorial, get your website set up and put your effort into creating valuable content on a regular basis.

So come on, let’s get started.

So, now you can see my screen, you can watch over my shoulder as I show you step by step how you can set up your very own self-hosted WordPress blog.

Now, before we can do anything at all with WordPress, you need two things in place; web hosting, which is a service that keeps your blog visible online and a domain name such as google.com or, in my case, internethabits.com.

Now, the good news is you won’t have to buy these separately. The web hosting service that I recommend to people that are just getting started online actually provides you with a free domain name when you sign up for one of their hosting plans.

My recommendation, which you can see on your screen is, of course, Bluehost.

There’s a few reasons why I recommend Bluehost when you’re just getting started. Firstly, is that you get the free domain name. Secondly, you get a free SSL certificate so your website visitors will always be protected. Third, they offer support that’s available 24/7 via phone, online chat and email, and arguably the most important when you’re just getting started online. The price. Bluehost are cheap.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Cheap doesn’t mean the best, but you don’t need the best when you’re in the setup stage, you need good enough, and that’s exactly what their shared hosting plans provide.

A reliable platform that you can use to build your audience and grow your blog. Once your blog is established and you have a lot of regular visitors, there’s nothing stopping you from upgrading your hosting or even moving to a completely different host.

Oh, and I forgot to mention they offer a money back guarantee. If you give them a try and you’re not satisfied, you can get a full refund within 30 days of signing up. So let’s get started.

The first step is to sign up for Bluehost. You’ll find a link to Bluehost and all the other services I recommend below the video. Signing up to Bluehost is easy. Just click the Get Started button and then you’ll be presented with a few plans. I recommend going with either the Plus plan or the Choice Plus plan.

The reason, unlike the basic plan, it allows you to have unlimited websites and unlimited storage space. However, as you’re just getting started, the basic plan will be just fine.

Remember, there’s nothing stopping you from upgrading your hosting at a later point in time.

Once you’ve chosen your hosting plan, it’s going to ask you to register a new domain. Now, we’ve already discussed that earlier in this tutorial, so simply enter the name you came up with and click next.

As my main blog is all about Internet marketing and habits, I’m going to register Imhabits. The system will then check if that domain is available. As you can see the domain was available for me. So the next step is to fill out your personal details. I’ll do that quickly now.

Next, you have to choose your plan length. You’ll see, the longer you sign up for, the cheaper it is.

And next you have the choice to customise your package. You could remove domain privacy protection to save yourself about one dollar a month. Although it’s worth noting. If people look up the information on the domain, they’ll be able to see your name and address. So if you want to keep this private check this box.

And you can also remove all other options because I’ll show you how to do that later in the tutorial for free.

The final steps on this page is to enter your payment details, which I’ll do quickly now. And then finally agree to the terms and conditions, and then click Submit.

Now we’re presented with a load of further information and upsells. You don’t need any of these, so you can just click no thanks. And then once your payment details have been approved, you’ll be presented with a welcome to Bluehost page confirming your purchase was successful, and you should also receive a confirmation email in to your inbox too.

Now the final step before you can log into your Bluehost account is to generate a password. So click on the Create Your Password button and you’ll be taken to the Manage Your Password screen where you can create your password.

I’d recommend using the Password generator because it’ll help you create a strong and secure password that will be difficult for other people to hack. Once you’ve created your password, read the terms and conditions, click the box to confirm that you agree to them, and then click Continue to create your Bluehost Account.

The next step is to log into your account if you’re not automatically redirected there. At this point you should see your Bluehost Account dashboard. You’ll want to make sure you’re on the hosting page and then look down the screen for the website section.

Within this section, you’ll see a number of options. The one you’re looking for is Install WordPress.

Once you’ve found it, go ahead and click on Install WordPress. On the next screen you should see a couple of options, one of which will be to manually install the WordPress script yourself and you may see some offers from Bluehost where they’ll charge to do it for you. You don’t need this. It’s really straightforward. We’ll go with the Free option. So click on the Install button and then on the next page, select the domain where you’d like to install WordPress.

In most cases, it will be the default option. Once you’ve made your selection, click the Check Domain button. Once Bluehost has checked that everything is okay, you’ll be presented with one last screen.

At this point, I’d recommend you click the Show Advanced Options button, enter your site name, and then take a note of your admin username and password. You’ll need these each time you log in to WordPress.

And then finally check the box to confirm that you agreed to the GPL v2 terms and conditions. Then it’s just a case of clicking the Install Now button.

And now we play the waiting game as Bluehost starts to install WordPress to your hosting account. You’ll see at the top of the screen there’s a progress bar. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’m going to fast forward. Once you’re notified that your WordPress installation is complete, click the View Credentials button.

Click the View button to be presented with your username, password, site URL and Admin URL. Note these down and then take a big sigh of relief. You’ve now completed the boring part of the tutorial.

So now the boring parts are out the way, click on your Admin URL and you’ll be taken to the WordPress Login page for your new blog. Now, enter your login details.

Once you log in with your login details, which I’ll do now, you’ll be taken to your WordPress dashboard. Think of this as the admin area of your new blog.

Now, at this point in the tutorial, you should give yourself a pat on the back. Congratulations. You now have your very own self hosted WordPress blog.

The only downside to this is it won’t look very good just yet. In fact, to begin with, you’ll just see a Coming Soon page. Well, that’s what your visitors will see. You are obviously able to see what the actual blog looks like and we’ll get to that shortly.

Next, we’re going to take this very basic blog and customise it so you don’t look like a beginner.

We’ll make it user-friendly, attractive, set up for social media sharing, safe and secure, able to capture email addresses, which is extremely important. We’ll get to that towards the end of the tutorial. And I’ll even show you how to add affiliate links to your blog.

If you want to make some money online, affiliate marketing is a great place to get started. In fact, it’s how I started making money online. So if you want to follow in my footsteps and start making some money with your blog, keep watching because this is where it starts to get a little more interesting.

When you’re logged into WordPress, you access all the sections via the menus on the left-hand side.

From here you can access things such as posts, pages and settings, and that’s what we’re going to take a look at first. Now the majority of the settings will be personal to you so I can’t help you with these, but I’m going to guide you through a few of the basics.

First, hover your mouse over the Settings menu on the left-hand side and you’ll see a little sub-menu appear. From here, click on General. This will load the WordPress General Settings page.

From here you can set things like your site title, tagline, email address, time zone and dates. That kind of thing. You’ll see, my site title is already set because I did this as part of the setup stage within Bluehost. However, my tagline is not set up, so I’ll quickly do that. Now, as this is my demo site, I’ll put something simple like Internet Habits demo site.

Next, we’ll go down and fill out the rest of these settings, including email address, which I’ll quickly enter. Check the time, date, and then most importantly of all, remember to click Save.

You’ll see a notification at the top of the page to confirm it’s been successful.

The next thing you should do is fill out your writing, reading and discussion settings. And then once that’s done, head over to the Permalink Settings page.

In my opinion, this is one of the most important settings you can change. Instead of sticking with the default Permalink structure, I suggest changing it to either post name or custom where you include a category and then your post name.

The reason for this is that the URLs to the pages on your website will look a lot nicer and be easier to remember. For example, let’s say you had a page about starting a blog. What would you prefer to have? A web address such as MyWebsite.com/startablog or MyWebsite.com/?p-123.

Exactly. The post ID will mean nothing to anyone but you, and that’s why it’s important you make this change.

Once that’s done, click Save and then head over to the Privacy Settings page. On this page, you’ll be able to link to your Privacy policy. Now, I doubt that’s something you have at this point, but it’s something important to your blog and you’ll need it in the near future.

I explain this in a little more detail in my free email series, which you can sign up for on the blog post that accompanies this video. You’ll find the link to that listed below.

So now we’ve completed the WordPress Settings, the next step is to install some WordPress plugins. These are simply additions to WordPress that allow you to increase its functionality and its features.

In fact, they are one of the key reasons to build your website with WordPress. Head over to the left-hand menu and click on Plugins. You’ll be presented with a list of all the plugins that are already installed on your blog. Now, any of these that you don’t want, you can delete.

What we’re going to do is add a few more, so click on the Add New button and then on the next page, head over to the search field. We’re going to install the following plugins:

Yoast SEO, iThemes Security, UpDraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin, Contact Form 7, Google Analytics by Monster Insights, WordPress Share Buttons Related Posts and Google Analytics by Shareaholics, and finally, Pretty Links.

Once you’ve successfully located each of the plugins, click the Install Now button. I’ll fast forward through this process because I’m sure you don’t want to watch me install each of the plugins.

Now that’s done, we’ll head back to the Plugins page. Here we’re going to activate each of the plugins we’ve just installed.

Now you can do this two ways. Activate each of the plugins individually, or select each of the plugins by putting a tick in the box next to it and then choose Activate from the drop-down menu and click the Apply button.

Once all the plugins have been activated, we then need to configure each of them. So that’s what we’ll do now.

We’ll start with Yoast SEO, which you’ll find has appeared as a new menu inside your WordPress dashboard.

In fact, I should point out each time you activate a new plugin, it either adds a new menu to WordPress or appears as a new option under the Settings submenu.

So now we’ll click on SEO and you’ll be taken to the General Settings page for the Yoast SEO plugin. The reason we’ve installed Yoast SEO is to help optimise your blog for a better chance of ranking in the search engines.

A bit of free traffic from Google and Bing? Don’t mind if I do!

Anyway, let’s get back to configuring Yoast SEO. If you click on the Need Help button, you’ll find that Yoast lists, video tutorials and a knowledge base within their plugin. This comes in extremely handy if you’re not sure what to do with each section. However, the easiest way to set up Yoast SEO is to use their Configuration Wizard, so that’s what we’ll do now.

Click on Configuration Wizard. The next screen you see will be the first page of the wizard. Click the Configure Yoast SEO button and then follow the instructions for each page. I’ll quickly complete that now. Once you’re done, click the Close button.

Now that your blog is configured for SEO, next we’ll move on to setting up iThemes Security. So locate Security on the left-hand menu and give it a click.

The reason we’ve installed iThemes Security is to protect your website. Now I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want to happen is for my website to be hacked. You could lose all your hard work and it could cause a lot of extra hassle having to fix it. So iThemes is used to help secure WordPress.

The first time you access iThemes Security, you’ll be greeted with a security check. On the screen, you can see the benefits of activating this. Go ahead and click on Secure Site. iThemes will then enable the recommended features and give you the option to activate network brute force protection. I’d recommend entering your email address and activating this. Once that’s done, hit close and then enable any further settings that you feel you need.

We’ll then head on over to the Settings menu and select UpdraftPlus Backups.

The reason we install this plugin is because if something were to go wrong, you can simply restore your last known good backup with very minimal data loss. So once you’ve loaded the page for the Uptraft Plus plugin, first you’ll want to head over to the Settings tab.

To begin with, we’ll set up a schedule for our files and database backup. I suggest weekly for the files backup and daily for the database backup. Then it’s just a case of choosing your preferred remote storage, completing the remaining settings for that, and then clicking Save changes.

That’s your automated backup in place. So next we’ll head over to the Contact Form 7 plugin page where I’ll show you how to create a contact form for your blog so that people can get in touch should they feel the need.

Once you’re an established blogger, you may find that companies get in touch with sponsorship proposals and such like or maybe other bloggers will reach out hoping they can write a guest post for your blog. No matter what the reason, it’s a good idea to have a contact form on your blog, so that’s what we’ll do now.

As you’ll see, the Contact Form 7 plugin comes with an example form already installed. Instead of deleting this, it makes more sense to just click edit. This way you can see how the form is set up, modify it to your liking, click Save, and then add it to your blog.

So make any of the necessary changes to your form, save them, highlight the shortcode for the form and click Copy.

We’re now going to head over to the Pages section of WordPress, where we’ll create an example Contact page. So click Pages in the left-hand menu, and then once that’s loaded, click the Add new button.

The first thing we need to do is give the page a name. In this case, it’s quite straightforward. We’ll go with Contact. As this is just an example page, I’ll include some sample text, and then in a new block, we’ll paste in the shortcut that we copied from the Contact Form page in the last step.

As this is just an example page, I won’t bother filling out the Yoast SEO section for this page, and instead, we’ll just head up to the top right-hand corner and click the Publish button.

Once the page is published, we’ll click the View Page button, and then we’ll head over to take a peek at how it looks. As you’ll see, we now have a Contact page on our blog.

Don’t worry that it looks so basic. Remember, this is just a default WordPress theme. We’ll be fixing this at a later step in this tutorial.

The next step is to head back to your WordPress dashboard and then locate Insights in the left-hand menu. Once you’ve found it, give it a click.

Now, the reason we set up this plugin is because it enables Google Analytics. It’s a free service that tracks and reports on your website traffic.

It provides you with visitor insight, and you can use the data to help grow your blog, so it makes sense to have it set up from the start. This plugin from Monster Insights allows you to see basic analytics data from inside your WordPress dashboard.

Once you’re on the Plugin page, locate the Google Authentication section, and then click Connect Monster Insights. You’ll be taken to the Monster Insights website, where you’ll be instructed to connect your Google Analytics account. Follow the instructions, and then head back to the Monster Insights page on your blog.

Once you’re there, locate the Set Up Wizards section, and then click on the Launch Setup Wizard button.

Follow the instructions in the wizard to properly set up your Google Analytics account, and then once you’ve completed the Settings, locate Shareaholics in the left-hand menu on your WordPress Dashboard.

This is the plugin that we’re going to use to make it easy for your blog visitors to share your content on social media. It can help get more eyeballs on your content, and at the end of the day, that’s the main goal.

Now, the first time you access the Sharerholics plugin, you’ll be greeted with a welcome to Shareaholics message that contains a little bit of blurb about the plugin and the Get Started button. Review their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and then click the Get Started button if you agree with them.

After you agree to the terms and conditions, you’ll be taken to the App Manager screen where you can customise the settings for the InPage Share buttons and the related content.

For the sake of this tutorial, I’m just going to demonstrate how you can customise the InPage Share buttons that appear below the post content. So I’ll click on the Customise button and then as you’ll see you get presented with all the different options that you can use to change the appearance of the social sharing buttons. I’m quite happy with the defaults, but I don’t particularly want Pinterest on there, so I’ll remove that and then save the settings.

Once that’s done, I’m going to click on the Edit Settings button and then go in here and add my Twitter handle. Once that’s done, I’ll choose my link shortener of choice. In this case, I’ll go with Bitly. Depending on the choice you make. You may have to enter some login details and then click Save Settings.

You can then feel free to edit any of the remaining settings, and then once you’re done, remember to click the Save Changes button.

Your blog is now in a good place. It’s optimised for the search engines, secure, has automated back up, it’s set up so your visitors can contact you, has Google Analytics enabled, and its content is set up for sharing to encourage growth.

But there’s still plenty more you can do to improve your blog even further. And it’s these next steps that are arguably the most fun.

At this point in the tutorial, we’re finally on the bit where you get to modify the look of your blog to make it look a bit more pleasing to the eye and professional.

To do this, locate Appearance in the left-hand menu and give it a click. You’ll be presented with the Themes page, but before we get into that as a reminder, we’ll just have a quick look at what your blog currently looks like with the default theme. As you’ll see, it’s fairly plain, and there are the social sharing buttons that we added in the last step.

So now we’ll head back on over to the Themes page and this is where you can modify your blog’s overall look. It’s the theme that’s responsible for the design of your blog, so it’s fairly important that you choose something that’s half decent.

But don’t worry, you can always come back and change this at a later time.

So when it comes to picking your theme, you pretty much have three options. You could pay someone to design your theme for you. This is brilliant because you’ll get exactly what you want. However, each time you need to change, you may have to pay again.

The next option is a premium theme. These are themes that are developed and supported by expert WordPress coders and should continue to receive support.

And then finally you’ve got a free theme. The downside to this is that it’s very unlikely that they’ll continue to receive support.

So when it comes to WordPress themes, it’s pretty much a good example of the good old cliche you get what you pay for. Investing in a good theme now can save you time, hassle and additional expense further down the line. So I’d invest a fair bit of time now to choose a theme that includes all the features you’d like on your blog.

Now trust me on this one. Once you’ve chosen your theme, do not waste time trying to perfect the blog design. Now is not the time to worry about how your blog looks and responds.

Learn from my mistake. When you’re just getting started, you need to focus on creating content and promoting that content. You can worry about perfecting the design once you’re more established.

So what things should you consider when choosing a theme for your blog?

I have a few rules:

It should be simple and clutter-free, easy to customise, so changing things such as the colour and logos, which can be done from within the theme options.

It should load quickly and be optimised for speed, and this ties into it having clean code. Themes that aren’t coded well will likely make your site speed suffer, and this can affect your search engine ranking.

Your theme should also follow the latest coding standards as this will make your site compatible with future changes to the Internet. It will also make sure it’s cross-browser compatible.

You’ll want your theme to be mobile friendly and responsive. If it isn’t, this can affect your search engine ranking and more importantly, more and more people are using phones and tablets to browse the Internet. You’d be making a huge mistake not to account for them with your theme.

It should also be secure. As I mentioned earlier in the tutorial, you don’t want someone hacking your site. The more you do to prevent this, the better. So choose a theme that’s coded to make sure it’s secure.

You also want to make sure your theme receives updates as being able to update WordPress and your theme to the latest secure version is vital.

And the last two things I think you should look out for are; support. That way, if you encounter a problem with your theme, it’s always nice to know you have support available to help you solve the issue. And last but not least, community. If numerous people are using the theme, you can bet there’s a strong community you can turn to for support.

So if you haven’t already guessed, my recommendation is to go with a premium theme.

There’s literally thousands of these to choose from. So to save you some time, I’ll link my recommendations below the video. You can also find them listed on my resource page, which you’ll also find linked below the video. That’s not to say that you need a premium theme though. You’ll be able to get on just fine with a free theme.

As I recommend a premium theme, that’s exactly what I’ll be installing for this demonstration. The theme was purchased and downloaded externally, so I’ll need to head over to the Upload button and give it a click. This will take me to the page where I can upload my theme. And below that section you’ll see a load of other themes that you could choose from. If you’re not installing a premium theme, it’s just a case of finding the theme of your choice, installing it and then activating it.

You’ll see these steps shortly when I activate my premium theme. So now I’m going to click on Choose File so I can select the premium theme that I need to install. The theme that I’ll be using is the Aspire Pro Theme by Studio Press. This is based on the Genesis Framework, so it involves two installs the Genesis Framework itself and then the theme. So I’ll select the first file and then click Install Now.

As you can see, this is installed successfully. So now I need to repeat the process for the second file. Remember, your theme may only have the one file, so you may not have to do this. The first file I installed was the Genesis Framework. So the next file I need is the Aspire Pro theme, so I’ll install that and as you can see it’s telling me that this theme requires a parent theme. It’s checked that it’s installed, found that it is and then successfully installed the theme.

The next step we need to take is to activate the theme. And now, as you can see, WordPress is telling me that the Aspire Pro theme is active.

So now it’s time to get creative. This is where you get to modify your blog and change things such as the colour, the layout, the background, and so on.

Now, dependent upon the theme you’ve activated, the way you go about doing this will be different. You should be able to find instructions from the company or developer that you purchased a theme.

This is another benefit of a premium theme. If you’ve chosen a free theme, you may not be able to find these instructions or be able to reach out to anyone for some help. All of the themes I recommend provide this information via guides and or video tutorials.

So for the purposes of this demonstration, I’m going to click on customise and then work through the options that this theme provides. The Aspire theme from Studio Press has a number of options.

As you can see, you can change the site identity, the front page background images, which you can’t currently see, but I’m going to modify the settings so that the front page does not actually show the blog, and instead that’s moved onto a separate page specifically for the blog. The front page will then become the blog’s home page, which tells you everything about the blog.

Within the settings you can also change the primary colour of the blog, the blog’s header image, which is where you can add your blogs logo and a number of other things.

So I’ll go ahead and make all those changes now. Oh, and I should point out this will include me importing the blog themes demo data so I can show you what this theme is capable of.

So as you can see, this is quite an attractive theme with built-in email opt-in forms, sections to showcase your products and testimonials and clickable links to other sections of your blog. I’m sure you’ll agree it looks the part.

So now we’ve got a professional-looking blog. It’s set up for the search engines. It’s secure. Has a regular backup. People can make contact with us. We can see the analytics and visitors can share our content.

Take a big sigh of relief. We’re finally at that part in the tutorial that most of you have been waiting for. How to Make Money With A Blog.

Now, there’s a number of ways that you can make money online with your blog, with the easiest being promoting your own products. But when you’re just getting started, it’s very likely that you won’t have anything to sell. So my recommendation is to promote other people’s products with affiliate marketing.

For those of you who haven’t heard of affiliate marketing, it’s simply the promotion of someone else’s product for a cut of the final sale.

For example, if I recommend a hosting service to you and you purchase it via my affiliate link, I get a percentage of that sale. Now it won’t cost the person making the purchase a single penny more. It’s just like them buying direct from the seller. As an affiliate marketer, you’re paid for the recommendation or promotion part of the sale.

In simple terms, you recommend a product or service, someone else buys it via your affiliate link and then you or the product or service owner benefit from that sale. And of course, the person who makes the purchase will also benefit from your recommendation.

That’s just me dropping in a little hint. You should never, ever recommend a product just to make the commissions. Only ever recommend products that you would pay for and use yourself.

Trust me, it will look after your reputation and pay off in the long run.

In fact, I’ve put together an affiliate marketing guide where I share all the best practices that I’ve picked up throughout the years to help you make the most of your affiliate marketing efforts.

You can find a link where you can sign up for the guide below the video or on the blog post that accompanies this video.

When you’ve found a product or service that you want to promote to your audience and you’ve checked and confirmed that they have an affiliate programme, first, familiarise yourself with the terms of their affiliate programme, and then once you’re happy apply to sign up.

The reason I bring up the terms of affiliate programmes is I don’t want you to do anything wrong in your affiliate marketing journey.

There’s a lot of rules and regulations that you need to follow. For example, I should point out that you must inform your blog visitors upfront that your site includes affiliate links. The last thing that I want to happen is for you to get in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission, so please, always make sure that you’re upfront and honest with your blog visitors and never try to mislead them.

So, once you’ve chosen your affiliate programmes and been accepted to them, the next thing you’ll want is a way to manage your affiliate links and also a way to make them more attractive.

I’ll put an example of a typical affiliate link on screen now.

Now I don’t know about you, but if that’s the link I saw, there’s a good chance I may not click it, whereas a more attractive affiliate link is much more likely to get my click.

It’s these links that we’re going to use to monetize our blog.

The reason we want an easy way to manage them is because sometimes you need to change your affiliate links. For example, let’s say one of your recommendations changes, which would you prefer; to go through all your existing blog posts, find each link to that product recommendation and change it, or go to the place where you manage all your affiliate links, change that one link and have it automatically update each reference to that link on all pages of your blog?

Exactly. And that’s the reason we installed and activated the Pretty Links plugin earlier in this tutorial and that’s where we’re going to head now.

In the left-hand menu of your WordPress Dashboard, locate Pretty Links and give it a click. The next screen you’ll see is the screen that lists all your affiliate links. As this is the first time here there aren’t any so let’s rectify that. Click on Add New Link. You can either do this at the top of the page or in the left-hand submenu.

On the next screen, you’ll see all the settings you have available to you when setting up a pretty link. So we’ll go ahead and select our redirection type. Enter our Target URL, which will be the affiliate link you’re supplied with. I’m just going to enter a dummy link for this demonstration. Give your pretty link and relevant name. Add a useful title and any notes that might come in handy and then give Advanced Options a click.

As this is an affiliate link, we’ll want to make sure that No Follow is ticked, and also that Tracking is ticked. That’s all the settings complete.

Finally, click Create to save your changes.

And there it is, our first affiliate link. So now you’ve got an affiliate link, you’ll want to put it onto a blog post. So that’s what I’ll show you next. How to create and publish a post in WordPress.

Now, before you publish any content, you need an idea of what to write about. This should be dictated by the needs of your audience. Who are they? What problems are they facing? What answers are they searching for?

Find the problems, supply the answers, and you should never have trouble getting traffic to your blog.

So, let’s get to it. In the left-hand menu of your WordPress Dashboard, locate Posts and give it a click. Next, either from the Posts submenu or at the top of the Post page, click on Add New and you should see a page like this. On this page, first, we’re going to head to the title area and give our blog post the title. And then we’ll want to add our post information into the content area.

Now on WordPress, we do this with blocks. To add the content block, you can click the plus to the left-hand side of the content, or locate the plus sign in the top left-hand corner of the Post page. Here you’ll see all the different types of content block available to you. The most used blocks, common blocks, formatting blocks, layout elements, widgets, embeds, and more.

For this demonstration, I’m going to add a classic block as it includes a lot of formatting options that come in handy all in one place.

I’ll then add in some sample text for the purposes of the demonstration. And then with this text, I’ll show you just how easy it is to make text bold, italic, and add in bullet points. As you can see, it’s really straightforward.

So next I’ll show you how to add media to your posts. But first, we’ll head up to the top right-hand corner of the page where you’ll see the publishing options, and we’ll click Save Draft. You’ll find this button comes in extremely handy, especially if you’re writing long posts.

Once the draft of your post is saved, we’ll head back to the Add Block section and locate and click the image block.

They don’t come much simpler than this block. It’s just a case of selecting your image from the relevant source and then adding it to your blog post. As we haven’t added any images to our WordPress Media library, I’m going to select Upload and then I’ll browse my PC for the image that I want to add. Once I’ve found it, I’ll select it, and as you’ll see, it now appears in the blog content, along with a few formatting options. These include things such as align left, align centre and align right.

In most cases, I prefer to align images to the centre, so that’s what I’ll do now. So that’s image is sorted.

Next, I’ll show you how to add videos into your post. As before, we’ll click to add a new content block, and then we’ll scroll down to Embeds where we’ll select YouTube.

Now, if you are adding a video that’s not from YouTube, you select the Embed block as opposed to the YouTube block. From here it’s as simple as heading to YouTube, locating the video that you want to add to your blog, copying the URL for that video, heading back to your blog, enter the URL into the YouTube block and then click Embed.

Alternatively, if you need to make use of the YouTube Embed options, you’ll need to add a custom HTML block, head back to YouTube, click on the Share option, which you’ll find just below the video, click Embed, set the options to your preference, and then once you’re happy, highlight and copy the entire Embed code.

Alternatively, you can click the copy option and it will do it for you and display the confirmation message ‘link copied to Clipboard’.

Once you’ve copied the Embed code, head back to your blog, put the cursor into the custom HTML block and then paste. You then have the option to click on the Preview tab and this will display what the video will look like within the post screen. And should you feel the need, you can also preview the video within this screen too.

Now, when you have a block selected within the Post editor, there are a number of options available to you in the right-hand menu. You’ll find these under the block tab and they are specific to the block that you have selected. Also in the right-hand menu, under the Document tab, you’ll find a list of options that apply to the post. This is where you can select things such as the category that the post applies to, add tags to the post and select the post’s featured image.

Underneath the post content, you’ll find the layout settings. These are fairly self-explanatory, and just below that, you’ll find the Yoast SEO settings for the post.

If you’ve jumped to this step in the tutorial. The reason the Yoast SEO settings are showing here is because they were added as a plugin earlier in the tutorial.

Within the Yoast SEO section, you can modify the settings for the search engines and the social media platforms.

This includes things such as the post title, the post slug, and the post method description. When you edit these sections, the plugin provides a preview so you can see exactly what a visitor would see should your post show up within the search engines. You can also select whether the post should show up in the search engine results. For example, if you were creating something basic, such as a thank you page, there would be no need for the search engines to display this.

So now we’re done with this post, we’ll head back up to the top right-hand corner and click the Save Draft button. And then once that’s saved, we’re going to click Preview to view the post.

At this point, you’d now check your post for any mistakes or formatting issues. If you find any, you’d then head back to the post and edit this. And then once you’re happy that the post is correct, we head back to the top right and click the Publish button. This will reveal a few publishing options.

These include things such as the post visibility, where you can select if the post is public, private or password-protected, and you can select whether to publish the post immediately or at a date in the future.

For this demonstration, I’m going to publish it now, so I’ll click the Publish button and as you can see it’s telling me that the demonstration post is now live. So let’s click the View Post button and go see what it looks like.

So here’s our demo post, which, as you can see, contains text, images and video.

You’ll also see that I’ve selected the layout that includes a right-hand sidebar.

This is a fairly popular layout, so in the next step, I’m going to show you how to customise this sidebar. So we’ll head back to our WordPress dashboard and in the left-hand menu, we’ll locate Appearance and then click on Widgets.

The next screen you see will be the WordPress Widgets page. This displays all the available widgets on the left-hand side of the page and on the right-hand side of the page, you’ll see all the available widgets areas that you can use within your theme.

These widgets areas refer to all the different locations you can apply a widget within your theme, such as your Homepage, the Sidebar, and so on.

To create or customise a widget for your blog, it’s as simple as selecting the area where you want the widget to apply, expanding that widget area and then dragging the types of widgets that you want to appear across into that widget area.

For this demonstration, I’m going to show you how to customise the primary sidebar for the blog. As you can see, there’s already some items within the primary sidebar widget area, and there’s a number of these I don’t want showing. So I’ll take this opportunity to show you how to delete widgets from a widget area.

You simply expand the widget that you no longer want. And then in the bottom left-hand corner of that widget, you should see the Delete button. Then it’s as simple as clicking Delete.

And now I want to add a custom HTML widget to the primary sidebar area, so I’ll locate that on the left-hand side. Click and hold on it and then drag it across and drop it within the primary sidebar area where I’d like it to appear.

I’ll then give it a title. It’s actually going to be using the next step, so I’ll label it that way, and then once that’s done, we’ll click the Save button.

Now that’s saved, we’ll head over to the blog so you can see what it currently looks like. And there you go. There’s our primary sidebar with the custom HTML widget that we’ve just added.

In the final steps of this tutorial, we’re going to change that HTML widget so that it shows an email opt-in form to allow you to collect email addresses directly from your blog.

To do that, we’re going to need an email marketing service provider.

If you’re thinking of skipping this step, I highly recommend that you reconsider.

The reason for this is that I believe building an email list is a vital step for your blog’s success.

By capturing your visitors’ email address and building an email list, it gives you the ability to communicate with your audience on a more personal level.

It can also be an extremely valuable traffic source.

Just think you could send an email and have almost instant traffic to your blog post or offer.

Having direct access to someone’s inbox also increases the chance that people will see your message. As you know, it’s quite easy to miss things on social media, and you can’t guarantee people will constantly check your blog. But most people regularly monitor their email, so it’s ideal to have their email address.

Now, unless you’re new to internet marketing, you’ve probably heard the phrase ‘the money is in the list’.

Now that is pretty much true. You’ve just got to remember one thing;

You have to treat the people on your list with respect.

Do not abuse their email inboxes. Always provide them with value and don’t just send money-making offer after offer.

The more value that you provide, the more trust you’ll build with your audience and the more you trust someone, the more likely you are to listen to their recommendations and make a purchase.

So please don’t make the huge mistake and ignore email marketing for your business.

If you’re not sure how you’d use it in the beginning, you could simply offer an email newsletter.

So now you know the importance of building an email list, we’ll get back to the tutorial.

Now at this point, you’ll need to choose an email marketing service provider. My recommendations are listed on the blog posts that accompanies this video.

The blog post also includes step by step instructions on how to set up my number one recommendation.

If you plan to utilise email marketing in your business, which you should, head over to the blog post now and then come back to this video once you’ve completed the email marketing set-up steps.

Welcome back.

Assuming you followed the steps in the blog tutorial, you should now have an email account that’s set up with an opt-in form and a series of welcome emails ready to send.

Next, you need to head back over to your WordPress blog and in the left-hand menu, highlight appearance, and then click Widgets from within its sub-menu.

On the Widgets page, head back to the Primary Sidebar widget and then locate the Custom HTML widget that we created earlier. Click the little arrow to expand the Custom HTML widget and then paste your code into the field and finally click the Save button.

All that’s left to do now is to head over to our blog and we should be able to see the form that we’ve just added. It’s highly likely that your form will look much nicer than mine because I’ve just picked the default design for demonstration purposes.

At this point, it’s good practice to test your opt-in form with your own email address. This way you can witness your subscribers experience and make any necessary changes before anyone signs up.

If you want to get a bit fancier when it comes to collecting email addresses, you can also integrate your campaign with lead capture apps. These allow you to build your email list with techniques such as pop-ups, slide-ins, sticky ribbons, locked content, and more.

If you’re interested in doing this on your website, check out the Social Sharing and List Building section of my Resource page. I keep it up to date, so it always lists my latest recommendations.

And that’s it you’re done.

Your website now has an opt-in lead generation form to collect your visitor’s email addresses, and it will automatically send out an email campaign when a visitor submits the form.

Nice one. You can now start to build your very own email list and remember, use the list wisely and the larger it grows, the more success you should have, and that brings me to one last thing…

The next steps that I recommend you take.

Hopefully, you’ve followed this tutorial, taken action and now you’ve got your own website.

It’s secure. It’s got a regular backup. The SEO basics are in place. You can view Google Analytics data to help you grow. You’ve got a contact form. Social sharing to help spread the word. You can collect email addresses for your visitors, sorry, of your visitors because “the money is in the list”, and you know how to add an affiliate link so you can make money with your website.

So if this tutorial has helped you, what I’d like you to do next is sign up for my free email course that will guide you through laying down the foundations for your website, taking it to the next level and helping you transform it into a successful blog.

With this free course, you’ll learn;

The types of blog posts that have proven to attract traffic to your blog. How to Create Professional Logo. The key pages that every website should have, including one that has loads of potential to make you some, if not a lot of money. How to generate email subscribers and much more.

Once you’ve signed up, all you have to do is complete the task in the weekly email that I’ll send to you.

I’ve tried to make each task as easy as possible for you by breaking it down into step by step instructions.

Once you’ve completed all the tasks, your blog will be in a much better position to start making money online.

To sign up for the free course all you have to do is click the link below the video and enter your email address where you’d like me to send the course.

There might even be a surprise email or two and some freebies.

Now, if you’ve got any questions that relate to the video, please leave them in the comments section below this video or better still, in the comments section for the blog post that goes with this video.

Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video. I know it was long, but hopefully, you found it helpful. If you did enjoy it, please hit the like button, share it with some friends, subscribe if you aren’t already and check out the other videos on the channel.

Oh, and please let me know how you get on. It’d be great to hear from you and I’d love you to become my next success story.

Now go on, go take action.

Website Hosting

• BlueHost
• SiteGround

Domains Registrar

• NameCheap

WordPress Plugins

• Yoast SEO
• iThemes Security or More Advanced WordPress Security solutions
• UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin or More Advanced WordPress Backup solutions
• Contact Form 7 or More Advanced WordPress Form solutions Google Analytics Dashboard Plugin for WordPress by MonsterInsights
• WordPress Share Buttons, Related Posts, Google Analytics – Shareaholic or More Advanced Social Sharing solutions
• Pretty Links – Link Management, Branding, Tracking & Sharing Plugin or Pretty Links Pro or Thirsty Affiliates Pro

Free Affiliate Marketing Guide

• Affiliate Marketing Guide

Premium WordPress Themes

• StudioPress
• GeneratePress
• Thrive Theme Builder
• Divi from Elegant Themes

Free Email Course

• How To Setup Your Blog The Right Way – Email Course

Books on Writing

• Accidental Genius by Mark Levy
• Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Email Marketing Service Providers

• ConvertKit
• MailerLite
• ActiveCampaign