How To Start A Successful Blog In 2020 And Make Money

Abubakar Shehu
8 min readMay 10, 2020

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How To Start A Successful Blog In 2020 And Make Money

Cooldown dear, I know what brings you here. Feel relaxed, ok. You’re here in Mini Billionaire. There’s a fire in your belly that you want to know how to start a successful blog. I love that. I feel it too. I want to help you burn even brighter, beautiful. I want to help you build the blog you have craving for, that blog that you have been dreaming of. I will take you through some series of stages, just bring a cup of coffee and enjoy this article while sipping your coffee.

Step 1: Select A Niche

Before going into blogging, you need to first find what you are good at in order to know which niche is best for you, and also how to make it profitable, also know who are your ideal readers. In a nutshell, a niche is a topic that you write about always, or even exclusively, in your blog. Niche blogging is creating a blog on a particular market or indirectly advertising that market. They are easy to monetize by using affiliate links and adverts etc and thus become profitable.

If you want to choose a niche, choose the right niche, the one you are passionate and interested about, so even when you are writing you can bring something out of it and also help with your view regarding the niche in order to stand out of competition.

Step 2: Choose A Blogging Platform

There a lot of blogging platforms out there which include free and self-hosted platforms (self-hosted is recommended). The free blogging includes:

Wordpress.comBloggerTumblrWix

The availability of these free blogging platforms is tempting, hence by blogging on them, you don’t have control over your blog entirely. They will be putting some rules and restrictions on the blog. You cannot monetize your blog or at some point you need to upgrade to get certain restrictions removed on your account. So, if you’re serious about blogging, please don’t start with free blogging platforms.

Self-hosted platforms on the other hand allow the use of your own crafted domain name aside from following your domain registrar hosting company’s rules and regulations, you are going to have full control of your blog and its contents. The choice of Content Management System (CMS) is yours when it comes to management of the blog entirely. Its named self-hosted because you are going to use your hosting space and domain name.

Do you want to start your blog NOW? If YES, being a new Blogger you should try using Bluehost, a company powering over 2 million websites globally.

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Step 3: Pick A Domain Name

When you were born, a name was given to you by your parent. So, as a new blogger, you will be a father or a mother to your blog, so finding a suitable name for your blog is your responsibility because it will serve as your unique address on the internet. Your domain name will continue to be yours for as long as you are paying your annual fee of $8 to $15 for a (.com) domain.

After giving your blog a name, users can easily access you through the name of the domain or some can easily find you through search engines like google and bing. And advice is to go for a (.com) domain, because people are familiar with (.com) domains worldwide but some other extension can work as well, for example (.co), (.org) or (.net).

Recommended Tool for Domain Name Search:

Step 4: Get A Hosting Account

Choosing a reliable hosting account is the key to a successful blog. Come to think of it, if I give someone my home address and whenever he comes he will not find me there, what will he think of me? I know what you’re thinking, a liar, right? The same applies to a blog, choosing a reliable hosting account that keeps your account active 24/7 to your potential readers without any downtime is a key because a hosting account is a place where your files are stored online.

Choosing a bad hosting account can cause a lot of problems to your blog because whenever your visitor visited you, he might find you at some point and otherwise at other points. So, choosing a good and reliable hosting account is a major piece of the puzzle to creating a successful blog.

Step 5: Starting A Blog on Wordpress

In this step, I will take you along the procedures on how to create a hosting account with the domain name and also set up your WordPress blog. I will help and take you along with some screenshots on how to make a blog with Bluehost, just take your time and go through it.

https://youtu.be/tVxHyQhJy9Y
Visit Bluehost.com

Firstly, open your browser and type “bluehost.com” or follow this link and click “Get Started Now”.

how to start a successful blog

Select Your Hosting Plan

After clicking the “Get Started Now” button, it will take you to a page that you can choose your hosting plan base on your requirements. You can choose the “Basic” option is you’re just starting, but the “Plus” option is the recommended one. As your blog is growing, you can move to the next option.

how to start a successful blog

Set your Domain Name

Giving your blog a good name has a positive impact on it, so take your time to brainstorm and come up with a nice name, something awesome and new. Then input the name in the “new domain” box and Bluehost will tell you whether it’s been taken or not (i.e. its availability). And if it is not available, Bluehost will provide you with the list of similar names to select from.

how to start a successful blog

Register for Bluehost

After selecting your domain name, Bluehost will then take you to the next page which is the registration page where you will fill out your personal and billing info which will take you a couple of minutes.

Select your hosting option

In here, you have to pay more attention to your hosting options. You can see that from the dropdown menu, the 12-month package has the lowest price, the other options are awesome and great when it comes to long term investment.

Note: You can uncheck those additional boxes, because they can only add some charges to your final payment.

Launch your Blog with Bluehost

Congratulations, we are almost done! Once you have your domain and your web hosting connected together, then its wordpress setup time.

Go to your Bluehost cPanel account, find “My Sites” section, and click on “Install Wordpress”. That is the easy one-click setup rendered by Bluehost. After which it will ask for your email address, which it will send a completion message with link to your backend login and how to set your password.

Now, if you go to your site’s URL, you will a “Coming Soon” page, because the site is not live yet.

Step 6: Find the Right and Beautiful Theme

First impression matters, that’s why the need for beautiful and elegant wordpress theme is of utmost priority. You want if a person visits your blog today, to stay longer and also come back tomorrow and be a regular reader of your blog. You also want your visitors to easily navigate through your site and find the information they are looking for. So, finding the right theme is important.

You can find a lot of themes in Envato Market, but the key things you will be looking at when choosing the right theme are as follows:

Read the descriptionCheck for ResponsivenessCheck the RatingsPreview the Theme

Once you find the theme you’re looking for, you can easily navigate to your backend and install it. Don’t forget to populate the site with your content as what you bought was just a skeletal theme with no content on it.

Step 7: Write Content and Promote your Blog

After you successfully set up your domain name and web hosting, and also set up your theme, then your system is complete and the world await to start hearing your message. Truth be told, you must learn how to write blog content, as your readers are there to read and gain something new from it, because readers are there to find something to interact with and come back to get more.

Here are the 3P’s that make a great content, so follow them:

Point: In here, you state your main idea you’re covering (i.e. point).Prove: In here, you give an example of the idea you’re covering (i.e. prove).Perform: In here, you give a simple way to execute the idea (i.e. perform).

If you want to promote your content on the internet, follow the following guides:

Let your friends know about your blog.Submit your blog to search enginesSubmit your blog to bookmarking sitesBe active in your nicheBe active on social mediaComment on other blogsGuest BloggingStart Building Your Mailing ListAdvertise on the Web (Paid Traffic)

Step 8: How to make Money Blogging

After you set everything and you’ve started posting great content on your blog comes how to make your blog a stream of making money. That’s simple. These are the lists on which you can monetize your blog:

Running ads on your BlogAffiliate MarketingSelling your Products and ServicesWriting and Selling e-BooksSponsored Posts

There are numerous ways to monetize your blog of which these are few. Just pick the method that suits you and easy for you to get started. I hope this helps you on your journey to how to start a successful blog in 2020.

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Abubakar Shehu

Cofounder/CEO @ stonetechsquare.com; Serial Entrepreneur and Backer (Stone Tech Host, Stone POS, Stone Media, Dankoli et al)