How To Start a Blog in 2022 – 10 Steps For New Bloggers

Once you’ve decided you want to start a blog, it can be tricky to know what you need to do. Here, we will go over how to start a blog in 2022 and the 10 steps that you need to start that website/blog. Whether you have had a website in the past but it has been a while, or you are brand new to it, here are the main first steps you need to get yourself all set up.

It’s exciting! You want to start your very own blog!

Let’s go over how to start a blog in 2022.

Follow these steps and you can’t go wrong. 

You don’t have to be technically minded to set up your own blog – at all.

It’s so much easier than you think to create a professional looking blog.

Let’s go through all the basic steps to get you all up and running!

 

1. Work out why you want to start a blog

This is a topic I touched on in one of my posts recently. Talking about if anyone can start a successful blog in 2021. 

You need more than “wanting to make money” as a reason to start a blog.

That of course can be a goal – the sky’s the limit! But it can’t be the only reason. 

Imagine having to master a skill, at the end there is the potential to make a lot of money from it, but imagine it was something you didn’t enjoy and weren’t interested in at all. Or imagine there was a large payout for completing a game, but the game would take practice and a long time to master, and you didn’t even enjoy that game…

Would you be able to stay consistent?

Absolutely not.

Now imagine either of the scenarios above but with a topic or game you DO enjoy.

 

Bingo!

 

This is why it’s so important to pick a topic you are passionate about, or even just hugely interested in.

I’m sure you have Googled how much you can make with a successful blog (scary right, haha), but you can also make money along the way!

It’s a lot of work, but if it’s a topic you adore, it doesn’t feel like work. Suddenly you’re now aiming to get paid from talking about something you know/are learning lots about anyway!

Big difference.

If you have a topic you adore and either know a lot about or spend hours researching and learning and are currently learning about, then you’re already ahead and have this step nailed.

 

 

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2. Pick a niche

Following on from step 1, picking a niche is so important. 

This can sound tricky but it doesn’t have to be.

If you’ve already got a topic in mind (even a broad topic like gardening) then that’s a really good start.

This is the difference between a hobby blog and a pro blog…

A hobby blog may talk about any and all things gardening.

A pro blog would narrow that niche down to something a lot more specific.

Instead of gardening as a whole you could go for something like;

• Lawn care
• Pruning for beginners 
• How to make the most of a very small garden
• How to look after roses

Just as a few examples!

It may sound like you are narrowing your audience too much as you would only be targeting specific people, but the opposite is actually true.

If you leave it as a hugely broad website, it will be a lot harder for people to find you, as there is just so much competition out there.

What is a lot more likely to happen is that people will find you when looking for an answer to a specific question, for example “how to deadhead roses?”. 

Your post about deadheading roses will pop up in Google, the reader will find your website and get their answer.

 

But this is where the magic of a niche site happens.

 

They are Googling about roses, as this is a topic they are actively interested in and want to know more about. They see your website is all about roses and notice you have lots of other posts about roses and think this is maybe a good resource to come back to! 

The best idea (if you want to make money from your blog, either in the near future or somewhere down the line), is to pick a specific niche. Specific enough that you know that people who find your site are interested in what you are talking about, but not too specific that there’s only a few things to talk about. 

Summary of how specific you want to aim to be when picking a niche:

• Gardening – too broad
• How to look after roses – perfect
• How to look after only yellow roses at 10am on Tuesday morning’s in a specific village in the world… – potentially a tad too specific! 

3. Free or paid blog

I go over this in full detail in this post about whether you can make money with a free blog or not.

If your goal is just to have a space to talk about whatever you chosen topic is, not aiming to monetise it and and want to keep it as a general broad topic where you can talk about anything you like, then you could consider a free blog.

I personally feel there are too many cons to a free website as opposed to a paid one.

Imagine putting all that work in and having your own perfect little space on the website, and then the company decides to close all it’s free blogs down?! It could happen. Scary thoughts!

If you get a self hosted website then you own that site yourself. You get a lot more personalisation and control which is perfect and always the option I would recommend to anyone – hobby blog or not!

 

4. Choose a domain name

This very much ties in with picking a niche.

You want a name that either reflects you (your name), or reflects what you are talking about.

If you are a new blogger, you may not know exactly what niche is fitting you yet, so I would advise picking a name slightly more broad than your chosen niche, as the niche may change. 

As an example, you want to talk about crocheting blankets, you can absolutely have a domain name that matches this, but what if down the line you wanted to also talk about crocheting dolls or something a bit different? 

Just something to think about!

Domains can be super cheap to buy, probably averaging £12/$15 a year!

I got mine here from HostGator – they also do the hosting for this website which again is super affordable.

Click here to get your domain from HostGator too.

Domains are tricky to change (so I’ve found), so keeping it that little bit more broad means you have the flexibility to change niche if needs be, without having to set up a new site or have a domain that doesn’t match your content.

 

5. Choose hosting

Hosting can very often be purchased at the same time as your domain name.

There are various options to choose from.

You can always upgrade your hosting package at a later date, so to begin with I would honestly just go with one of the cheaper options. 

The one I would recomm end for beginners – no matter your niche – is HostGator as it’s a perfect affordable choice for new bloggers.

You really don’t need a huge, expensive hosting package when your website is new. Maybe down the line you may want to upgrade once your website is bringing in a lot more traffic, but upgrading is super easy so don’t worry about that!

 

 

 

6. Pick a theme

Once you’ve done the steps above, you’re now at the stage to make your website look how you want it to! 

The theme is what makes your website look a certain way.

They give you layouts and a certain aesthetic to your site, and you can pick any theme you want!

The post I did on free vs premium themes here about whether a free or premium theme is best.

Unlike free blogs, free themes absolutely have their place and can be simpler for those who don’t want to customise everything on their website. 

A premium theme gives you more flexibility in terms of layouts, fonts, colours etc.

On my website here I use the Ashe Pro Theme. It’s a premium theme which was just a one off payment of $30 (about £22), and I absolutely adore it as it works well, is so easy to customise, and looks just how I want it to.

Themes are also easy to change, but try not to get caught in the trap of swapping themes a lot as you’ll have to spend time fiddling with all the settings and aesthetic of your website again, each time lol. Believe me, I’ve been there! Choose one you like, customise it, and then focus on other things.

 

7. Start customising your blog/website

You are now well over half way through these steps for how to start a blog in 2022!

Once you’ve chosen a theme/how you want your website to look you can now make all the changes to how your website looks. WordPress makes this so so easy, it’s often just a matter of dragging/dropping where you want things and changing fonts and colours and adding widgets where you want them.

(In case you’re really new a widget is just a box you can drag and drop where you want to add a picture, tags list, advert, social media links, text etc.)

Try not to spend too too long on this, but have fun playing about getting it all set up looking just as you want it to. 

Things can always be changed so don’t worry too much, just make it however you like it that fits your website and you’re sorted!

 

8. Plugins

Some plugins are important, but please please do not install hundreds of them! 

Plugins are like undercover widgets. 

While widgets help you change the look of your website by adding pictures etc, plugins help by doing things often behind the scenes. 

You can get plugins to backup your website, google analytics to see how many people are visiting your site, add GDPR compliance, to help with SEO (Yoast SEO is my favourite one for this, anti-spam, even down to things like adding a word counter, or pretty much anything else you fancy. 

Plugins can be magical and make such a difference and make things so much easier!

Initially I would go for one to back up your website, Yoast SEO, Google Analytics, GDPR/Cookie compliance (this will be different in different countries), Anti-Spam and Jetpack.

You can add others of course but the more you add the more likely your site will be slowed down.

Two other things to be aware of is that not all free themes support all plugins – occasionally you will find this with paid themes but very rarely – much more common with a free theme.

Plugins sometimes have a bad habit of fighting with each other. 

More so if you have lots of similar ones – like say you had 4 different anti-spam plugins, it may not like this too much.

Extra tip – don’t update all plugins at once as this occasionally causes clashes too. Update one or two and then just make sure your website is still good.

If you ever have an issue with clashing plugins, the best solution I have found (believe me, I have crashed my website so many times over the years lol) is to speak to your hosting company and they will get you back up and running.

I wrote a post about what to do if your website crashes and how to get back up and running.

Nearly every time, this will be because of plugins. But it’s a simple fix!

 

If you find any really cool/useful plugins, let me know! 

 

It is best not to have too many, but the odd fun one never hurt anyone!

It’s all just another way to personalise your own site to suit your own needs.

 

9. About me/Contact Pages

Two staple pages of any website are the About me page and the Contact me page. You do not have to have either/both of these of course, but you may well find that these are the 2 pages that people do look for. 

Your Contact me page should only take you 5 minutes to do really, your About me page may take a little longer but once it’s done it’s ready to go.

Quick job to get both of these done but it is important to have them all filled out for when your website goes live.

 

10. Write and publish your first blog post

The most exciting part of all!

Out of all the steps explaining how to start a blog in 2022, this is the one that is the scariest but also the most exciting. This is the one that makes it feel more real. 

Write your very first post, be it a “Welcome” post, or just dive straight into the information!

Content is the single most important part of any website.

That’s you all set up! 

Simple!

Things may need tweaked or changed, but that’s okay as the majority is now done.

You now have your website, you can now fill it with epic content and share it with people to start growing your audience!

Speak soon!