You want to become a political blogger? These are the steps to take if you want to start a political blog, make money and become popular.

I do not run a political blog, I manage a news blog and because of that, I often write and publish posts on political events, policies, stories, trending political stories and updates.

7 Easy Steps to open a political blog

• Buy a domain name and host the domain name
• Chose WordPress software blogging platform
• Set up a simple design with WordPress themes (political web templates)
• Configure and install
• Write, write and publish articles, posts, stories, news
• Use social media to share your posts, articles, posts etc.
• Install email subscription form to get emails of visitors

Before I start explaining how to go about what I listed above, I think it is important I share some factors you need to do as you are about to go on this online niche.

How do I get up to date political news and stories?

One of the most daunting challenges when launching out is on how to get those stories because of the effect on two major issues:

• how fast you are able to publish them and get it out to your readers before other political blogs and website does so
• How authentic i.e how original is the news/updates or story

But the good news is that the following are proven sources on where to get real, original information. Check below;

• Target and follow the twitter account of most politicians, political parties and your local leaders
• Subscribe to their press releases
• if they have a website or blog, subscribe using your email ( this means anytime they publish any update, you will be the first to get it)
• Another place to check for trending political news or stories is buzzsumo; for viral ideas, buzzsumo is my number destination!!

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What is the purpose?

Blogging is serious business, except you are just doing it for fun. Doing blogging for fun does not make sense because:

• It will consume your time
• It will consume your money (for a start e.g. for domain name)
• It will consume your concentration and focus

So, before setting out, you should have a purpose of why you want to launch your own political blog. Your purpose will guide you in the right path and trajectory.

So, think about this!!

Expect no money in one year after launch

From all forms of blogging niches out there, political blogging is the least profitable in terms of making money. It is because all major forms of monetizing your blog in this niche does not fully fit in. What can work very well for you if your aim is to make good money is to probably transform the blog into a news or website of a sort and you continue publishing more of political contents.

If you decide to go in this way, then the use of Google AdSense and some paid advertisement from probably political parties will help your cause.

However, no matter what, expect no money in the first one year.

Are you passion driven?

I am of the opinion that your true passion should be the main reason why you want to launch out. The thing is, you are not going to make money in the first one year, it will consume your time etc.; so if that genuine passion is not there right from the beginning, I honestly advise that you drop this project now.

Passion is everything; your passion in becoming a political blogger is what will even keep you going in the face of adversity, challenges, court order, harassment, intimidation etc.

I mentioned those factors above because you are going to face them!!

Have a plan

You are not going to make money in the first one year, it is going to take your time, it is going to take your concentration etc.; this is where it is essential you have a solid plan on ground before running a political blog.

Allow me to explain:

It is imperative to have a short term plan and long term plain; Part of the long term plan includes:

• For example buying the domain name and web hosting registration for more than one year ( at least go for 2 years and above)
• Setting aside some money that you can conveniently spend each month for (e.g. Facebook advertising, press release, writers (optional) etc.). Have at least a budget for this that will cover 1 year.

Part of the short term plan include:

• You cannot do it alone if you are looking for efficiency and effectiveness. That is why I recommend you get someone on board with you right from the beginning. The best option is your boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/husband etc. they will assist and also back you up.

Start Local

I run a successful news blog in CapeTown (since 2016); I’ve received numerous emails, questions from readers and visitors on the best way to start a news blog. These guide is the best resource tool you need to read to get started in this year 2020 and beyond.

Here’s how to start a news blog:

• Get a befitting name that conform to your personality
• Get and set up hosting for it
• Install WordPress
• Study and learn your WordPress Dashboard
• Purchase, download and install the perfect design ( WordPress themes)
• Get a Logo ( part of your long term plan, trust me, it’s important)
• Install essential plugins ( mentioned and explained below)
• Get the audience, get to work, write, write, write and get serious
• Learn how to make money in this niche

Table of contents

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Introduction

• My experience / Introduction
• 7 Facts You Should Know

Technical Set up

• I mentioned them above, additional details include
• Design set up and configurations
• Site Maintenance ( introduction And Advanced tips)
• Getting SEO done, including Google SERP indexation

Success Tips / Traffic / Promotion

• Promotion
• Use of Social media
• How to effectively use Facebook
• Networking with influencers for massive exposure and popularity
• How to start a news blog and make money

Step 1

My experience / Introduction

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Owning, running and opening a news blog is one of the best things that has ever happened to me; it also helped gave birth to my other niche blogs out there, including this present one, HaceWeb.

Please know and understand that there is a big difference between a blog and running a website in this niche, you can read more about the latter here on how to start and run it.

The difference being that for a blog, it is basically like a library where you share, post and update latest happenings in the world of news to your readers, subscribers and viewers. It is much more of a personal thing where you are the alpha and omega.

So, for a local news blog, your budget is low and you are well able to keep it efficient and of course run it from the comfort of your house/room.

You have to be experienced to run the website version, however, for a blog, you do not have to be a journalist or an experienced media personality in this niche media industry (though, if you are, it is an added advantage and it means you have your target audience already). To be honest with you, most successful blogs out in this niche are people with zero experience in this industry; all what they had is just the passion and zeal to either expose the wrongs in the society/country, share their feelings and/or probably run it as an entertainment or gossip sort of news niche.

There are countless articles and junks on the internet on how to start and run a news blog, however, most of these writers are ordinary writers who do not have a blog that is running in that niche. They can never share and publish what works and what is not working because they are not actually practicing; as the saying goes, ‘you cannot give what you do not have’.

But before then, let me quickly and briefly share with you some vital truths you need to know and swallow:

Step 2

7 Facts You Should Know

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Start Local

You can only become a fast rising authority if you focus and major on being local. it is all about finding and getting your audience who are getting to stay and stick throughout the duration of your blog’s lifetime. This means you publish news, write stories and trending topics happening in your country, locality, your niche, business, select demography and or community.

This should be your number one objective when starting out. Who is going to be your audience? who do you really want to reach out to?

Once you are clear about your local target of the intended audience, then start publishing what they need and not what you want.

1 out of about 10 blogs die within the first one year, so starting as a local news blog is a test of your resolution, determination and actual passion of seeing it becoming successful. Don’t just become global, do not try to be the CNN or Aljazeera of a news blog. Those companies are running a full scale business and they have the monetary resources to fund it fully.

Remain Focused on a niche

One of the things that will not work for you is trying to be jack of all trade. When starting out, go local on a particular niche or just run pure news portal. The mistakes most new people does is that they tend to make their blog a content farm, a forum and also run it as a news outlet.

Visitors and people to your online news portal need to see it as a credible source. You will need to focus on politics, latest stories, business, metro and entertainment of your local stars etc happening around you and your country.

Be You i.e Find Your Voice

Remember that it is a blog you want to run, whether a political news blog or entertainment etc; you should know that it is not a website. Having known that, your news blog will be respected if you assert authority without fear or being a coward in writing from your heart and attaching your voice of personal instinct to it. In other words. Be real, apply your real personality to the details, be impartial, hit the nail on the head and be frank. This is what will make you standout, this is what will separate you from the thousands of chaffs out there.

Commit resources

If you truly want to make a business out of your blog and want to make it successful, you have three resources you must commit:

• Commit your time
• Commit your money
• Commit your true passion

One particular trait about successful blogs is that they constantly publish articles, stories on a daily basis at a consistent and persistent schedule. You will need to commit meaningful time in getting your news and stories out there.

An adage says ‘you spend money to get money’; this is true if you aim to run it as a business and not just as a hobby. You will spend money getting your domain name, registration on hosting (explained below), social media accounts and scheduling etc.

Passion is everything. Ask yourself if truly you love what you are doing or about to do. Your number one resource is actually your passion.

Blogging to become successful is not easy as some people makes you believe it is, it is pure hard work and if you do not have genuine passion, honestly, you will close shop within one (1) year.

Publish Daily ( know the peak periods)

The art of blogging requires optimal publishing of stories; for a news blog, it is a far more committal practice where you will need to publish at least 20 articles (even more) a day. For best practices that has proven to work very well, the following schedule of publication should be followed.

1. You should know the peak period where majority of people are online. The foremost peak period is early morning for a news blog. Therefore, as early as 5-6am; make sure you have published news stories for the entire day for the entire category and set it on scheduled sharing on social media accounts at set time intervals e.g. every 1 hour gap.
2. In essence,, your entire blog should contain new posts for that day and you do that first thing in the morning
3. After this, you can be publishing new stories throughout the day as you are getting them.
4. The second most important peak period is between 5:30 pm to 11pm; this is the busiest peak period and you should get highly engaged around this time.
5. Your social media accounts, e.g. twitter (most important for now) and Facebook needs to be busy and you should set the posts to be shared automatically on them at set times.

The next point you need to know before launching out is:

Draw out a plan- short and long term

Ask most successful people and they will tell you about the importance of planning. The same thing applies to this niche if you want to be successful and make money. Do not just see it as a blog for fun because it’s going to cost you money to set up and your time; therefore you need to make short and long term plans. Either of your plans falls into two categories:

• Support for one year
• Helping hand
• Social media accounts

One thing should sink in you right now, forget making money in the first six months. All you will be doing is working, publishing stories and news continuously non-stop till the search engines and your audience starts seeing credibility and authority in the blog.  Therefore, you need to have a structure in place that can sustain you financially for one year without depending on the blog at all.

From my own personal experience, I quickly became worn out and fatigue set in my first 4 months of doing everything by myself. As part of your planning, it is advisable you have a helping hand and the best place to get a reliable one when starting out is within you i.e. your family, girlfriend, wife, boyfriend, husband etc. Trust me, you will not regret this step.

Social media Accounts

You are not a super hero that can be everywhere at the same time. Managing Facebook and twitter at set intervals in not easy for any human to handle and that is why the idea of automation comes in. You will need tools that can help you schedule your posts and news to be shared on the social networks at intervals e.g. everything 5 minutes throughout the day. I fully explained this if you scroll down under the promotion and marketing tips.

Step 3

Get a befitting Name & Domain Name

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One of the first things that kills a business is the fact that people or the founders did not really imagine how successful it may turn out to be. In essence, they left out vital information and planning from day one. One of such is the name you will be calling your business entity, in this case, your blog.

I quite understand that you are at a cross-road; you are confused on the name to use and as such, I have penciled down some quick guidelines on picking a successful name that will resonate very well with your long term set objectives and branding opportunities.

Go for a name that stands out, for example, this blog you are currently reading is ‘haceweb’; thats the name of my blog. Both to me and people reading it, I am sure that the name is unique. It is short, unique and has great tendency for a long term advantage, branding and benefits. It is the same name I used on all my social media accounts including twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.

That is the same concept you should use in picking a name and it is the same name you will use in registering on the internet, a technical name called domain name registration.

A quick guide to do that is to first of all check for the name you are anticipating in your mind; to do that, go to bluehost checker form below and see if its okay and available. I pray luck should be your friend to see it is available because people are always on the net doing the same thing you are trying to do. so, do not waste time if you get a domain name that is available for you to use, register it quickly.

If you get the domain name registration name successfully, you will be guided on the next step. However, follow me as I explain in full details how to go about everything from A-Z.

Step 4

Getting the right design first

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As a news blog, simplicity of design and clarity of the contents should be the concept behind the design and layout you are going to use and implement. Though, Bluehost will give you some designs ( some ready made template, called WordPress themes) to chose from. I will advise against this because it will not serve the blogging purpose you are aiming for.

Instead of wasting time and your money trying to write and build codes, simply get a premium WordPress theme ( approximately USD35-60), buy and install it on your blog, that is all.

I have listed the following WordPress themes you can use as a news template for your blog. The video that follows next will guide you on the purchase and installation.

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2

3

4

5

6

7

For more designs and templates to chose from, see the companies below:

• StudioPress
• Mythemeshop

All you have to do is to buy what you desire, then you download them ( it will be in ZIP file format). The next step shows how you are going to install it on the domain name that you have also registered.

Step 5

Web Hosting of the Domain Name

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With this tutorial, you are gradually becoming a web master because of the step by step guidelines I am teaching you. Your journey is actually just starting, registering of the domain name is first, however, without putting the name on the internet and people seeing it, it means it is useless.

This is where you have to host the domain name and that brings us to this next step.

By hosting the name you want to use for your news blog, it means you are part of the world wide web and your blog can be seen and accessed all over the world ( of course, your locality first and foremost).

To get the hosting done is easy, Bluehost will guide you right from the domain name search ( explained above) to the hosting of the domain name. The displayed pictures will guide you also on the brief installation ( and this means anybody, even a newbie can get it all done).

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Search for domain name

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If successful ( or otherwise), as seen below

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With this offer, you will pay approximately USD3 per month

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Create your account immediately if available!!

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Chose your preferred hosting package

when running a news blog, the secret of getting it becoming successful is your ability to drive traffic ( human visitors) to the blog ( details on this is discussed further below). This is one of the reasons why I am recommending Bluehost hosting company because you can receive thousands and even millions of traffic to your site with a very cheap hosting.

Aside from this, the following are brief reasons why Bluehost is excellent for you as a starter in the news portal niche:

• They offer the cheapest hosting package in the industry ( most other companies charge from around USD25 per month)
• Their infrastructure is strong and they offer latency even when their is unexpected spike in traffic to your blog
• They are reliable and economically friendly ( being around for more than 20 years)
• The domain fee will be waived immediately you register it and also sign up for the hosting.

GET YOUR SITE HOSTED ON BLUEHOST WEBHOSTING PLATFORM AND RECEIVE FREE DOMAIN REGISTRATION

Step 6

Setting up the blog ( technical Aspect)

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When setting up and launching a news blog, Bluehost makes it easy; the best way I can explain everything to you is by following the images ( pictures) below and also the ensuing video.

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From the above explanations, just continue with the hosting registration, you will be prompted to chose a password, just follow the displayed pictorial guideline on the registration/configuration screen.

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Pick a design ( or ignore, you are going to use the ready made news template I mentioned earlier above)

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Click on start building

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You will  be brought to the dashboard ( shown above, which is the engine room and brain) of every design, settings and configuration you want to do.

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if you click launch, it will take you straight to the ‘nameofyournewsblog.com’ and of course it will be blank. The next steps will teach you how to set up everything and then get started writing.

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please note the following important task ( information)

• Check your email, you will be sent your bluehost login details ( keep it safe)
• During the above steps, you will be given your WordPress login details ( WordPress is the software that you will be asked to chose for the installation and set up). When you agree, you will be given your WordPress login and this login is your username and password ( please keep it safe also)
• The username is your email address you used to sign up ( in most cases) and of course, you have to chose your own password)
• You will need your WordPress logins to update your blog, write stories, upload media stuffs, design and configure. However, your Bluehost login is not needed except for when you want to make payment to the company or do something highly technical.
• To access your WordPress dashboard, just go to your browser ( chrome, mozilla, IE etc) and type ‘ yournewsblog.com/wp-admin ( please note, I am using yournewsblog.com as an example for your domain name). Once you click enter, you will be presented with the login box as seen above

• Type your username and password, once successfully login, you will now be shown your dashboard and from here, real work has just started.

Step 7

Configuration /Plugins Installation

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The following are steps you will need to set up your successful news blog;

1

Install WordPress themes

Login to your dashboard; to do that, type nameofyournewsblog.com/wp-admin and fill in the username and password. It will open and show you the dashboard.

Please remember the news template ( WordPress themes) I mentioned earlier, it is important you buy one of them. After the purchase, download the theme ( in ZIP file) to your computer.

The first step when setting up your blog is to upload and install the template you bought for this purpose. Follow the steps below;

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Install The Demo

To make things easier as you are just starting, I usually recommend you install the demo from the template you’ve just uploaded from above. With the demo, you can easily get yourself started and start putting things right by just editing, removing and adding.

To do that, watch the video below:

Step 7 (1)

Do This Immediately

As you are configuring your new news blog ready for stories, there are important configuration settings you need to implement as soon as possible.

• Go to settings, then permalinks; change the default permalink settings to ‘ day and and name’: This is important because you are running a news portal, its important your posts and stories comes with date. It is important hierarchy, and data arrangement.

• Under the same settings, identify ‘reading’ and select ‘discourage search engines from indexing this site’; This step is dangerous but its important as a precaution because you are still setting up the news blog. If you do not, Google and the search engines will crawl and index the blank blog and eventually penalize if the bot discover it is blank or still under construction.

But, do not forget to come back here and remove the ‘check box’ after you have set everything up so that Google and other search engines can index them and your blog can start appearing on Google search result pages.

Step 7 (2)

Install WordPress Plugins

The software used in powering your news blog will not be fully efficient without installing WordPress plugins. With WordPress plugins, you can do almost anything on your news blog, from getting emails from subscribers/visitors to actual selling/buying, selling subscriptions to premium users/readers etc.

However, there are some basic/essential plugins you need to install; the following explanation is essential for your help.

1. Yoast SEO: Very important for search engine optimization
2. W3 total cache: Without it, your blog will be slow no matter the webhosting you are using. It naturally boost and turbo speed your blog.
3. Sumo Me: From my personal opinion, this is the best social media sharing plugin plus it is mobile responsive.
4. No follow: Makes outgoing links nofollow
5. JetPack: Multipurpose plugin
6. Akismet: Stops spams and malicious attempt.
7. Yoast Google news Plugin ( important and also search for more of this plugin)

I highly recommend you read how to submit your news blog to Google news feed ( very important)!!

Step 7 (3)

Page set up

Pages are static positions which are not subjected to updates unlike a post where you published stories, news  etc. Important pages you need to have includes

• About pages
• Privacy Policy page
• DMCA page ( Very important for your news blog )
• Disclosure ( very important)
• Advertisement page
• Contact pages

However, to make it easy and I am also assuming you uploaded the demo from the templates you bought, some of these pages will have been there. All you need to do is to edit and update them. You may also need to delete the ones you do not need.

The following steps are what you will follow to create a new page:

• Click on pages
• Click add page
• Fill in the details required ( as shown above)
• Publish the page

For privacy policy, DMCA, Disclosure pages etc, you can check out the sean hannity blog and also the following established sites to get an idea of what to write.

• www.nytimes.com
•  www.washingtonPost.com

If you do not have a contact page, you can create one by either installing the contact form page plugin or follow the guidelines below.

• Create the contact page as usual (following the above step)
• Install Jetpack plugin, connect it to wordpress.com and activate the Jetpack plugin features ( don’t do anything on wordpress.com you are directed to).
• Go back to your blog, go to jetpack settings and activate the contact, click save and then go back to your newly published contact page.
• follow the screen below

Set up your categories

You need to set up your news blog into categories. Having categories is essential in having an effective, respected news blog. For example, for this kind of niche, the following are important categories:

• News
• Business
• Politics
• Local
• Relationship
• Metro ( transportation)
• Investment
• Finance
• Entertainment etc.

Creating your news category is easy, see the guidelines below:

• From the left dashboard, locate and click on categories, then click on create new
• Create your category as seen below, then click on publish

So, any story, news, article or specials you want to publish should fall under a particular category.

Setting up your Menu

Without the menu, your news blog will be very difficult to navigate, especially for the visitors and also for search engine crawlers. The image below is an example of what a ‘menu’ looks like.

To set up your menu for your news blog, just watch the video below and study the image below:

Widgets settings

If you want to create a news blog, you need to be mindful and decide if you want a 2 layer homepage and also for the post pages. In most cases, it is usually two layer, the main content page and a right hand sidebar which will contain the adverts ( e.g. Google adsense codes and banners), latest posts, subscription forms, social media accounts image links, latest comments etc.

All these is possible by just adjusting the entire template i.e WordPress themes from the widgets.

The image below is the widget:

Step 8

Getting credible news sources and references

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The following are proven tricks I use to get news sources, trending topics and stories from around my locality, community and also around the world.

• Subscribe to latest updates on most companies websites, politician/sport/celebrity websites and press release sections
• Follow most companies, celebrities, politicians, businessmen on their social media accounts. Most of them posts update about life and next line of actions on social media. A very good example is Donald Trump, the present president of USA (he is a twitter addict, www.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump)
• Subscribe to most press releases
• Go to buzzsumo ( https://buzzsumo.com/)to get ideas on latest news and trending stories.

Buzzsumo is the top go to if you are looking for proven story and viral post ideas, I recommend you go the site and play around to get ample ideas of trending stories.

Step 9

Write, Write And Publish

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Without wasting much time, the next step is for you to start writing and publishing those stories and news updates. Doing that is easy, see the video and image guidelines below:

Lots of people complains that their news blog is not getting traffic or noticed; the problem from my experience is that you need to be posting news and stories regularly every 1 hour interval or at least by sharing/re-sharing your news posts on social media every 10 minutes interval!!.

Step 10

Get registered and set up on Google

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It is a beautiful thing when you see that you are nearly about to launch your news blog and make it successful..but… there are two more things you need to do.

1. Get your news blog noticed on the search engines, starting with Google search console
2. Submit it on Google News

On Google News; get the details and guidelines here: read it here.; And also Google here.

The registration for Google search console ( or Google webmaster) can be viewed through the video below:

 

Google Indexing your news post

Please go back to your settings and ‘ uncheck the do not index this site’ option ; Please do that now!! After that, from your search console, follow the picture above and click on ‘fetch as Google’. This tool makes it easier and faster for Google to index your blog and posts immediately.

Please, remember to install these plugin, it is very useful for this purpose: ( https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/)

Starting a News blog – Promotion

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After your news blog is online and you have started writing/publishing stories and news, it is important you promote them so that people will know about them.

Step 11

Use Facebook and Twitter

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Naked truth: Without Facebook and twitter, your news blog is not going to be successful!!

With that said and done, it is important (not negotiable) you open a Facebook page. To do that,

• Go to Facebook.com, scroll down and click on Page (or rather if you have a Facebook account, you can simply open a Facebook page for your business).
• Create a page for your news website ( remember to use the name of your site, I made mention of this important point earlier)
• Create Facebook Ads to promote your posts

Read Neil Patel: Beginners guide to facebook ads that convert

For Twitter

I personally use twitter and to me, twitter is far more effective than Facebook. I recommend the following guidelines and tools.

Go to www.twitter.com and sign up using the name of your news blog. To grow your followers, I recommend you use the Manageflitter App.

If you grow your follower diligently and non-stop on a daily basis, I will not be surprised if your followers becomes 30,000 in two (2) months

Step 12

Submit to Press releases

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Sign up with the following press releases and submit your news stories there:

Free Press Release sites:

• PRLog.org
• PR.com
• PR-Inside.com
• Newswire.com
• OnlinePRNews.com

Premium (Paid) Press Release sites:

• PRNewswire.com
• PRWeb.com
• BusinessWire.com
• MarketWired.com

how to start a successful news blog and make money

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The following are proven ways to make money on your news blog:

• Google AdSense
• Direct advertisements
• Press releases

Ready to start, open and run a wellness blog? This article will run you through the process of starting out a successful Health blog using WordPress. This tutorial not only discusses how you can build the site, but also shares practical guidelines in running it as a successful entity.

The following are important factors to put into consideration before setting out to launching.

• Passion

First off, ensure that your passion for this chosen niche is your certified drive into starting out a blog in the first instance.This factor is peculiarly paramount because you’ll come to realize later that passion is the only thing that’ll ensure you keep going amidst odds. So hold this one thought in check before anything else.

• Resources

Ensure you have enough means to begin your blog with, debunking general myths that you need quite a lot of funds to build a blog; you certainly don’t. For your benefit, I’ll state out an estimated budget breakdown for building your blog from scratch.

• Domain and hosting (bluehost) – $59.40 ($4.95 for 12 months)
• WordPress Themes Template (You can get them at Mythemeshop) – $35 ( One time fee)
• Plugins: Essential plugins like OptinMonster cost about $49/year and that’s clearly optional.

So in total you need to have an approximate of about $162 – $211, depending on added features like plugins which you may or may not integrate at the start up level.

• Dedicated team

Deciding to start off a blog in this chosen niche is enough proof that you already know quite a lot in this area, but you see, the Health and Wellness industry as proved over time to be ever developing in terms of research, information and new methodologies.

So to keep up with the ever broadening pace of the industry, you might as well need to carry along a couple specialized professionals in your field. Not to worry, you don’t need to hire professionals or anything in that order, simply start with close associates, colleagues and people you know could contribute considerably to your blog.

Now with all that in place you are almost all set to get in gear your career in this interesting niche. The following steps are meant to guide you thoroughly into the procedures needed to get your blog rolling.

Step 1

Website Set Up

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Domain and Hosting

You have to think of a name for your site. Now this part could be a bit tricky, but hold still and give it some deep thought, you can’t afford to miss is here. A few tips to help;

1. Let it be short and catchy.
2. Something easy to keep in memory would do.
3. Let it be closely associated with your niche. The reason for this is so anyone who comes across it could easily associate it to what your blog is about. For example, healthinsights.com would be more advisable than insights.com. Just something that pinpoints exactly what you do and what your blog is about.

Registering a domain is quite easy with bluehost, all you need do is create a Bluehost Hosting Account.Once logged in, you have two options to register a domain; from the register sub-tab or from the domains page. For clarity sake and ease of access it’s advised to register directly through the domains page.

The procedures are as follows;

• After creating your Bluehost Hosting Account , log in to your Bluehost Control Panel
• Click the Domains tab.
• Input in your desired domain name in the search box.
• Click the get started button.
• Add the domain to your cart by clicking the green cart button
• Click next and afterwards review the registration settings and click add to cart.
• Apply payment details, and checkout.

Hosting with Bluehost is a good choice, for one, it comes with a free domain, but then you’ll need to begin by selecting a suitable plan based on your budget, the intentions for your blog and the features you want to have in place.

Find below, selected plans and pricing which Bluehost offers its users along with their given features.

 

After your selection, you’ll be directed to the next page where you’ll have to register your domain or select a new one. As stated earlier, Bluehost offers a free domain along with hosting so there’s no need to get a domain from anywhere else.

 

The next phase involves your data entry; contact details, personal information and payment details. After successful payment and checkout, your all set, the system will ask for a password with which you’ll use to login into your site, which wraps up the domain and hosting phase.

Step 1 (1)

Choosing a WordPress theme

Next in line is the theme set up, which is optional as you can either make use of downloadable themes or simply just skip this phase and deal with it later.

You have tons of options when it comes to WordPress themes. You can find an array of lovely themes in the health and wellness niche through the following platforms:

• Mythemeshop
• StudioPress
• Themeforest

Below are some WordPress health and wellness blog themes as found on Mythemeshop

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Step 1 (2)

WordPress Installation

Now it’s time to set up WordPress on your server and configure your WordPress settings. The installation process happens briskly with Bluehost, so no fears, you absolutely do not need a developer or professional on this one. All you need do is accept the permissions and the WordPress installation software runs automatically.

Install recommended plugins: Now, there is no certain way of predicting exactly which plugins you will need during your work. But there are some which are essentially recommended for beginner bloggers in the health niche. Here are my top three plugins to use when starting out a health blog:

• SEO by Yoast

Believe me when I say this plugin is a must have for any WordPress blogger not just those in the health niche but any at all. It’s quite easy to maneuver. You can easily get stuff work by following the provided documentation. This plugin offers you with the ability to implement essential keyword optimization throughout all the content on your site with step-by-step simplicity and reliability. Reviews from users have also added that it could as well help improve blog rankings over a short period of time. Did I also mention it’s free? Yeah so no need to over ride this bad boy based on your paycheck. It should be be the first on you list when going plugin hunting.

• WordPress Health Tracker

This plugin enables users and page visitors track their health progress, diet, exercise and vitals through interactive charts.

How this works is simply through the seamless process of entering exercise, diet, and vitals data for each day and watch as the interactive charts and reports are built, showcasing health trends over time.

• OptinMonster

Email marketing has been proven to be very effective in generating leads. This plugin is actually quite seamless and built with such capability as to reduce the complexities involved in building a subscription list.

OptinMonster is a useful tool in creating, accepting and collating new email subscriptions. As a health blogger, you are certain to need this tool at every point, to grow your list and to ensure the dissemination of updates, building a team of dedicated followers.

Step 1 (3)

Page Setup

Here you’ll learn how to set up the outlook of your page, create a main menu and install Widgets. To appropriately navigate and gain control of your site you need to properly harness these WordPress widgets which come with the themes.

These widgets could be anywhere within the header, footer and elsewhere depending on the particular theme design and structure. You can arrange these widgets to your taste on the Theme Customizer or Appearance > Widgets in the WordPress admin control panel.

Your WordPress theme by default are designated with widgets but you can install new ones from plugins based on your needs. The video below explains the procedures to setting up a page.

Step 2

Curating Content

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With curating the content for your health blog in mind, you’ll also need to select a particular area to focus on. The following are a couple wellness specific niches to select from;

• Weight Loss/Diet

Contents under this niche will focus on offering expert advice on weight loss and appropriate diets to aid them. You could also provide content with personal experiences from self or clients to make it easily resonate with. Whichever way, all your doing is mapped around providing content for your audiences to help them actualize their diet needs or achieve their weight loss goals.

• Fitness

Contents under this category will focus on the area of fitness, exercise, routines and training’s for particular goals and the likes.

• Food

The focus here, will be on recipes, health benefits of meals, meal plans, procedures, healthy culinary options, and so on.

• Healthy living/Lifestyle

Contents under this category will contain all aspects of associated healthy living and lifestyle choices. You might also include beauty related articles or health means to beauty. And health related choices for different ages and gender.

• Others 

There are other health related content themes not listed here. It’s your choice to stay creative exploring greatly on the world of health. Categories here aren’t meant to limit you but to give you an idea on just a few of the choices you have when curating the content for your blog.

Note: The above categories are prone to overlap but regardless, deciding to focus your content to something peculiarly distinct will help significantly in keeping you grounded in your niche. The industry is quite broad and competitive but its best to be known for one thing. It’ll help you in getting a dedicated audience and also help you work out better in giving your all and improving and providing relevant content in the area you are most vast in.

Also ensure to use original images along with your content. You can purchase stock photos or utilize Pinterest.

Step 3

Going Live

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Now you have an idea of contents required for your blog, you’ll need to develop a scheduling strategy for publishing.

This is where your dedicated team comes in to play; sync minds with them, categorize and schedule your contents and also ensure to have ready archives to draw from regularly. The key is to never run out of content. Keep things original, unique and creative.

Step 4

Promotion

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You’ll need to develop a strategy for taking your blog to the frontiers of your target audience. No dilly dallying in this area, you have to give it your best here, because how well you get by at this point will largely determine the success of your blog.

Here are some tips to help promote your blog;

Develop a media presence for your site

To begin, try on at least three of the most relevant social platforms for a start; i’m certain quite a number of your targeted audience makes use of at least one of these under listed platforms on a daily, they are absolutely free and easy to run. They include; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Creating business profiles and accounts on each of these platforms should take roughly about ten minutes. What to do with them – share your links to your blog posts on them and also integrate social media buttons to the side bar or footer on your site using the Social media icon widget. Also engage your audience on each of these platforms for optimum lead and share updates about your blog, offers and new content and features. The video below explains how you can embed this social media icon on your blog page.

Set up Google analytics

It’s best to know how your audience interacts with your site for many reasons, one of which is to determine the best route amongst others with which to create avenue for more leads to your site. Google analytics helps to answer the question of who, what, how and when people find and visit your site.

When you get a glimpse of this, it better helps to understand your needs and helps you direct your promotional effect to workable progress. Setting up Google analytics for your site is free. All you need do is sign up for a Google analytics account and install it on your WordPress using MonsterInsights which is the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

Use Quora

Quora is a great way to publicize your blog either directly or indirectly. It’s a forum based platform with millions of users and professionals in various niches offering expert advice on various topics.

You can utilize this to your advantage by answering directed questions in your niche and also by adding links to your blog to attract new users. To use Quora, create a professional profile and include details of your site, also participate regularly on forums and engage with users in your related niche.

Use SEO

SEO is seen to be a great tool for marketing initiatives. By directing content peculiarly to people interested in what you do, your blog is more likely to scale amidst competitive reliance with SEO.

SEO makes it possible for your blog to establish a selling path if highly ranked. Moreover it’s more effective than paid ads. It’ll help greatly for you to learn the intricacies of search engine optimization because it has been proven to help reduce the cost per lead while simultaneously attracting higher quality engagement.

All these are very achievable, but first you have to lay out a solid groundwork in committing yourself to learning SEO marketing in actualizing the success of your blog. Below are six major steps and guideline.

• First things first, you need to run a website audit and ensure your blog is easy to navigate. Ensure no failing links exists, check the images, check through the content as well, and ensure the relevancy of the keywords you are using.
• Second, optimize your site for speed and create unique URL’s relevant to the topic. Create unique and relevant meta descriptions and tags for each page, it’ll help boost your sites search engine click-through rates.
• The third step to using SEO is to constantly evaluate your site for performance. Use these to give you a glimpse of how well your site is doing and what methods are working and what’s not.
• The fourth step is to do a keyword research. Think of your targeted audience, what words and phrases will they have probably searched in order to discover your content? So give this some deep thought before rambling up your site content with unnecessary keywords.
• The fifth step is blogging regularly. This is a very effective way of reaching a new audience and expanding your brand largely to frontiers. It might take a lot from you but it’s definitely worth the effort.
• Lastly, use social shares to your advantage. This is a clever way of increasing traffic to your site. Once you begin developing keyword-rich content on your site, distribute to Facebook and Twitter as well as LinkedIn. You can also include links to your profile and content through guest posts of blogs related to your niche. What’s important is focusing on creating genuine, original and very succinct content that people will love to engage in. When this is in place, it’s easier to get more likes, shares, comments and engagements, which all contributes to the leveling up of your SEO ranking.

This is a 6000 word count practical tutorial teaching on how to make a successful food blog; essential steps to open and create a cooking site is fully explained.

The following are briefs on how to launch this food blog and website project of yours;

• Start up capital and cost of approximately USD145-200
• Your true passion, love of this niche and real skill
• A full mobile responsive WordPress themes template
• Domain name registration and webhosting using Bluehost Company
• Installation of WordPress software and its total configuration
• An HD ( high definition) Nikon Camera for quality pictures

Table of Contents

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Set Up Instructions

• 6 Hard Core Truths To Know
• Getting mobile responsive design with WordPress themes
• Getting a Domain Name and getting The Right Hosting
• Installing WordPress Software
• Set Up Guidelines ( Practical)
• Maintenance of the blog
• Getting on Google search Index

Success Tips / Traffic Generation / Promotion

• Getting on Social Media With a difference – Power of Pinterest
• Networking
  • Connecting with Food bloggers
  • Blog Commenting Strategy
  • Google+ Community and Facebook Group
• Rules of Pictures / Food blogging ideas and topics
• Applying SEO
• Making money

Step 1

6 Hard Core Truths to Know

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The following are brief hard core truths you need to know before you set up and decide to run this type of online niche stuff:

Your Passion is First

You need to genuinely have the passion of wanting to launch this project. Do not start just because of the various food bloggers income you are reading on the net.

I will explain briefly!!

You may be an excellent good chef in the kitchen and probably, your fans, family, guests, colleagues have been praising you on your cooking skill. You may just be someone who loves cooking, I mean tasty, delicious and mouthwatering meals etc.

Having the above passion and your genuine interests to probably:

• Show and teach people the ‘how to’ on various cooking recipes and being creative in the kitchen
• Showing and teaching people how to live healthy by their eating lifestyle; i.e. teaching them what to cook, how to cook, what to eat to have a healthy lifestyle.
• Probably you are a vegan, and you honestly desire to reach out to people in the world
• Helping by teaching and showcasing to people how they can break fast food habit and avoid eating junk foods etc.

If you do not have these passion in you, please forget about starting this blogging stuff because your passion is what will keep you going if things are rough; you passion will make you to work harder on the project and your genuine passion will ultimately reflect in your blogging activities.

Treat it as business or else

Successful people knows that punctuality is the soul of business!!

90% of people set up a blog as part of their hobby, and 100% of these people fails before they even clock a year. 10% of people that sets up a blog and treat it as serious business and implementing the requirements of what a business needs achieve and maintain success.

There are approximately 300 million blogs in the world right now and out of that, we have about 3 Million food blogs; so, the competition is tough out there.

You cannot just buy domain name and hosting, launch a blog, write one or two things, and then sit down and expect success to fly straight at you. It won’t, you will need to work your success out!!

The following are briefs of what you will do:

• You will need to work hard, publishing quality, unique, educative and resource rich food blog posts on a constant and consistent basis; probably 2-10 blog posts every week.
• You will need to be using quality pictures, don’t use images and pictures already existing on the internet or Google images. Get your own pictures and the best way is to probably get a good camera and then try to get a high resolution picture with no pixel ( no distortion, it should be clear and sharp).
• Invest Time and money: Ask successful food bloggers who are actually making money, the honest ones among them will tell you that he/she works hard and also commits lots of time and money in the business. You don’t expect success when you just invest one hour per day running the blog. You will commit resources, including your money in running Facebook Ads, getting likes, promoting using Guest post etc.

If you want to launch a successful food blog, then digest and swallow the above honest truths!!

Build a team

If I say build or have a team, I am not saying you should start by hiring and paying people. Your first team should be your family, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your wife, your children etc.

You can start all by yourself, but for you not to get burnt out or fizzle out so fast, you need them around you. Probably, in taking pictures, helping you out in maintaining the site or maybe in writing the blog posts.

The bottom line is: Do not run the show alone, you need support, you need a helping hand that will support, motivate and encourage you because the first six months is not always easy.

Forget the myths that are not real – income reports

Most food bloggers displays income report just to entice you and encourage you to launch yours. The truth is that they will not or did not tell you the amount of labor, work, time and sacrifice they made before making that sum of money.

The honest truth is that out of their so called blog earnings or income report they display, 75% comes from a single source which is from Bluehost (you can check it out).

In addition, these bloggers (more than 60% of them) have stayed long in the business and they have more than 200 blog posts on their pages.

My summary is this; do not be carried away by the so called income reports, while it is true that 85% of them are making the money, for you to get to that level, you will work hard, spend 20 hours out of 24 hours, invest seriously and commits lots of resources publishing quality posts out there.

Be focused and stay unique

As I said earlier, we have about 3 million food blogs out there, and more than 92% of these are all in the same general niche.

One easy way for you to be recognized, respected and regarded as an authority is not to go with the crowd. You can probably focus on being a vegan food blog (probably with specific areas on the vegan stuff); you may focus on obese people and how to avoid this serious problem by starting a blog on this; you may focus on children diet i.e. starting a blog with focus on children etc.

Summary: Don’t do the same thing other people are doing, launch your own food blog with a unique perspective; you are much more likely to achieve success at a faster rate.

Spying on your Competitors

This is very bitter to swallow. You should know that you don’t have real friends to be honest. Every other food bloggers out there is trying to grab all visitors and all the money to his/herself. So, technically and financially, you guys are not allies but competitor.

So, you will need to spy on them; spy on their winning strategies, study their model of advertisement and method of making money. Study their model of writing blog posts etc. Study their social media activities and accounts. Spy on them, then leverage on what they are doing and go the extra mile to better it.

For example, if you discover that one of their published blog post is the main cash cow ( giving them money); why not try and publish the same thing/topic/title, but make it more better with facts, pictures, videos and increase the word count to double their own word count!!

Step 2

WordPress themes for the design

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Everything starts by your approach, and your approach in this context is how your blog looks like. I will be discussing the design concept, including the importance of having a design that will be mobile responsive (i.e. people can view, read the contents without distortion, straining their eyes or scrolling up and down unnecessarily on their mobile phones/devices).

The solution is to make use of powerful, professionally designed premium WordPress themes built specifically for this niche purpose. These themes are mobile responsive, SEO tamper proof and are beautiful designed.

Do not waste your money and time trying to write codes and build the design framework by yourself.

Examples of these WordPress themes are listed below:

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You can get these WordPress themes from the following respected and reputable companies;

• StudioPress
• Mythemeshop
• Themeforest

So take your time to view the demos of these themes and when you are pleased with a particular one, you will need to buy it (costs ranges between USD45-USD120).

After the purchase, you will download the ZIP files or the ‘Core WordPress Files (it depends from where you bought the themes from and again how to use these ZIP files in designing your site is fully discussed as we progress).

Step 3

Getting a Domain Name and Web Hosting

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Take a look at the various blogs and sites out there, examples below;

• Name of blog: Pinchofyum
• Domain name; pinchofyum.com
• Name of Blog: huffingtonpost
• Domain name: huffingtonpost.com
• Name of site: Facebook
• Domain name: Facebook.com

Can you see the above? that is a simple illustration of the meaning of a domain name. You will need a domain name that will be your brand, both now and the future. Your domain name should be a simple, yet unique name that does not exist anywhere.

So, what are you waiting for?

Start thinking on the sort of domain name you will use for your new blog; a very good way to start is by searching for the availability first and then registering it.

Once you get a name that is available to register, quickly do a fast check up on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram if you can also use that same name.

• Go to Facebook, open a free FB page and use that name
• Do the same thing with Pinterest and Instagram

The reason for this is because of branding advantages; it is a good thing and highly respected decision to have the same name cut across the blog name, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.

See the below illustration:

• Name of site: Google
• Domain name; google.com
• Name on Facebook: www.facebook.com/google
• Name on twitter: www.twitter.com/google
• Name on pinterest: www.pinterest.com/google
• Name on Instagram: www.instagram.com/google

Can you see what I am trying to explain to you? You need the same concept for your long term success.

Webhosting of the domain name

To have a presence on the internet starts with the domain name registration and also the hosting of the domain name.

The domain name registration and hosting happens at the same time on Bluehost Webhosting Company and I honestly recommend you host with them. I have been using Bluehost for a very long time and I must say they are the best in the industry for a new starter like you. With as low as USD3.5, you can have your blog running in no time.

To host your blog, follow the images and pictures below;

The following are summary of why I am Recommending Bluehost Webhosting Company to you;

• Reviews

If you want to know about a particular product(s), just check out the reviews on it; Do Google search and you will see lots of positive reviews on their services and products. The reviews on them is almost 98% positive.

• 24 Hours Excellent Support Service

One of the reasons why I am still with Bluehost is because of their excellent 24 hours customer support services. It is second to none, and trust me, you are in safe hands. Having access to support 24 hours 7 days a week non-interrupted is of great importance to your site when there are problems.

• Fair Pricing

As I earlier mentioned, you can get your blog up and running with as low as USD3.5 per month; this is one key reasons why they have the largest customer base amongst their peers in the industry. Bluehost has over 1.9 million customer and remains the best and most popular webhosting company in the world.

• Excellent Features

Most expensive webhosts out there do not offer full scale features, bluehost does. With your hosting, you have email features, apps, themes and different design option with right tools.

• Uptime / Load Time

Uptime on bluehost server is approximately 99.9% (the highest in the industry); the uptime factor is important to the success of your food blog because you will not visitors to visit the blog and found out it was down or offline. With Bluehost, you are fine.

In addition,

• When you host the domain name with Bluehost, the domain name fee is waived ( you will not pay almost USD18 ; this is a great deal);
• For a WordPress powered blog/site ( yours is an example); they are the best and mostly recommended even from wordpress.org/
• I have been using them for almost 8 years running, for my blogs and clients likewise; they are reliable and dependable.

GET YOUR SITE HOSTED ON BLUEHOST WEBHOSTING PLATFORM AND RECEIVE FREE DOMAIN REGISTRATION

Step 4

Installing WordPress Software

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After the successful purchase of the hosting packages, Bluehost starts the installation and initial configuration for you.

They starts by asking for your permission to install WordPress software (W logo). Accept the permission and the whole installation occurs in the background within 2-10 minutes.

Follow the images below for the WordPress software installation.

Please take note of the following (very important):

• Your domain name; nameofblog.com
• Your Blog URL address: www.nameofblog.com
• Your login (WordPress login): nameofblog.com/wp-admin/ (this is the address you will type on your browser to be able to login into your dashboard and starts posting or do any other task on it); after typing it on the browser, the image below will show on the screen.

• Your username and password to access it is ‘admin’ or your email address and the password is known only to you (created during installation above).

Once you get this right and you are able to login, what you will see on the screen is your dashboard, and the real settings/configuration has just started.

Step 5

Set Up Guidelines (Practical)

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The set up guidelines is a little bit comprehensive and I would simply want you to read my earlier blog posts on how to set up a blog, check it here.

Or, let me briefly explain the step by step instructions on how to set up everything; the following are steps we need to take, follow me patiently as I explain each.

• Uploading and installation of purchased WordPress themes
• Header, footer and Logo Adjustment/ Settings
• Settings of the Menu
• FrontPage Design and settings
• Widgets, Pages, category, post set up instructions
• Permalinks Set Up Instructions
• WordPress plugins – Top 3 plugins for a food blog
• Final Configuration

I will be using this WordPress themes (the best and most popular template for a food blog) as my tutorial.

Step 5 (1)

Uploading and installation of purchased WordPress themes

I earlier recommended some templates, called WordPress themes for you to buy, if you have bought them (you should have downloaded the ZIP file), then it is time to upload the theme and start with the design of the site.

• Go to your dashboard, locate appearance, and under appearance, you will see themes, click on ‘ add new themes’

• The theme page will open and you will see some recommended themes, ignore them; just click on the upload box, check for where you downloaded the ZIP files, click on it and have it uploaded

• After few minutes, the themes will be uploaded, click on installation and then activate the theme.
• Go to your homepage, refresh the homepage and the new design will be showing.

But, for a faster process, it is best and highly recommended for you to import the demo so that your new food blog will look exactly like the WordPress themes you bought.

Using the Demo Upload Option

If you want this process, follow the guidelines below;

• Go to the ZIP file, UNZIP it by removing or transferring the contents to a new folder or you simply move it to the desktop.
• Check inside the unzip file, and locate demo.xml or any file ending with .xml; this is the demo file we are interested in and it is the file we are going to import. After seeing this, then,
• Go to your WordPress dashboard, go to ‘tools’; under tools, click on import; and you will be taken to the import page.

• On the import page, check the last option (installing the import plugin)
• Run the plugin by clicking on it (do not mind any warning that comes up, after the installation, we are going to remove and delete the plugin, so you are safe)
• Look for the .xml file and import using the plugin ( the plugin does all these task, just give it the necessary instruction)
• Ascribe all attributes to the Admin and proceed; after few minutes, the demo contents will be imported.

Refresh your homepage and you will see all the imported contents, images may be missing, you will need to handle this manually; however, all settings, posts, pages and categories just like the demo themes is totally imported.

I recommend you watch the videos below for more understanding:

Step 5 (2)

Header, footer and Logo Adjustment/ Settings

Just look at the image below:

The header is an important element and you will need to adjust and set it up for your own brand of a food blog concept.

The header is house to the menu, the logo and some brief descriptions, and in cases advertisement (e.g. the leaderboard Google AdSense Ad format).

To edit your header;

• Go to widgets and follow the instructions there (the widgets is located under the ‘appearance’).
• Go to theme options (present on the dashboard, though not all themes have this features, you have to check the dashboard if there is).

Footer and Logo

The same way you edit your header is the same principle of editing your footer. Honestly, if you make use of the imported demo, your task will be so easy and you will just be editing them one by one.

For the logo creation, check the theme options and the widgets settings for instructions on the logo. The instructions will clearly tell you the size and expected dimension (e.g. in pixels, in inches etc.)

Step 5 (3)

Settings of the Menu

The menu is the most important part of the header, it is located just below the header, mostly below the logo. Below is what a menu represents;

As a food blogger, setting up your menu is important because it serves as the gateway to all contents on your blog.

I encourage you to check the menu features of your competitors to grab some winning formula;

To set and implement the menu, I encourage you to watch and study both the image above and the video below:

Step 5 (4)

FrontPage Design and settings

As a blog, your FrontPage settings can be achieved from three perspectives;

1. Going to settings, then to readings as seen below:

2. Going to the widgets and setting up everything;

3. And in some cases, you go to the ‘theme options’ and set up everything

The next step is for you to set up and arrange your pages, categories and also the post areas.

Step 5 (5)

Widgets, Pages, category, post set up instructions

Watch the video below to have an understanding of all these:

Once you are done with the above, then follow the instructions on your pages and categories:

Pages

You already have some published pages because of the demo, and if you do not use the demo, then you need to create pages.

Important pages to create includes:

• About
• Contact
• Advertisement
• Privacy Policy
• DMCA
• Terms of service
• Disclosure

To edit pages ( or even create page) from the demo, just go to the settings page, as seen below:

Step 5 (6)

Permalinks Set Up Instructions

The Permalinks is important for SEO; I am sure you do not want this type of published URL (example shown below)

• http://www.myfoodblog.com/02/10/2018/3 or
• http://www.myfoodblog.com/02/10/2018/php1 or
• http://www.myfoodblog.com/2018/vegan-diet-for-old-people or

The best URL model is shown below;

• http://www.myfoodblog.com/vegan-diet-for-old-people/

This is excellent for SEO advantages and naturally helps you to rank higher on the SERPs;

Now, you will need to change the default date based URL structure to a name based URL structure, as seen below.

Step 5 (7)

Installation of Essential WordPress plugins

WordPress plugins powers a WordPress blog, of which your own project is part of it because everything we are using is based on this powerful software.

The following plugins are essential to install;

• Yoast SEO plugin: Very important for SEO, this plugin will assist you greatly, even in sitemap creation.
• W3 Total Cache: it makes your blog to loaf fast, it boosts and cause a blog to automatically load fast. Very much essential.
• Akismet Plugin: Removes and blocks spam without you having to worry about Capthca
• Jetpack plugin: A multipurpose plugin, must have. Excellent to create contact form for contact page, important also in knowing daily statistics.
• Sumo plugin: the very best plugin for social media sharing buttons and icons.
• Nofollow plugin: important to prevent dofollow backlink leak from your blog.
• Real Time chat plugin: Important for instant messaging between you and visitors (that will turn to clients/customer). You receive chats on your mobile phones/PC and you reply instantly. Very handy and highly recommended.

The following are important /MUST have WordPress plugin for a food blog:

• Tasty Recipes: Though it is a premium plugin but it offers much more value, especially from SEO point of view. First, it makes your recipe good for SEO, helps in adding rating format( star), it also helps your recipe photo to show in Google search result pages, ( this increases your conversion because people are more likely to click on this type of result format).
• jQuery Pin It Button For Images: People and visitors can easily pin and share your recipe images/pictures on Pinterest directly.
• WordPress Related Posts: Very useful to display related posts; this plugin helps you to reduce bounce rate on your post and pages.

So, the above plugins are plugins you MUST install on your blog. To install and activate a plugin, I recommend you watch the video below.

 

Step 6

Maintenance of the blog

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If you read and follow the above listed instructions, your blog will be up and running in no time. The next step is just for you to maintain the health status of the blog.

You maintain it by:

• Publishing constant and consistent streams of post
• Checking and updating of installed WordPress plugins
• Checking and updating of installed WordPress themes
• Checking and updating the latest version of the WordPress software used in building it.

Now, the last three points are very easy to do. Anytime you logged into your WordPress dashboard (using www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/), you will see a notification telling you that updates are available for those three points. Simply follow the on-screen instructions and click on update. It will automatically updates in the background and your site will be in excellent shape.

Step 7

Getting on Google search Index

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Congratulations for the successful launch of the blog, it is now time you get on Google radar for indexing and the flow of organic visitors from the search engine to your site.

• Google search console ( https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/)
• Google Analytics ( https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/)

Google search console

You use Google search console to get your site indexed; to start, go:

• Go to Google console at google.com/console, open a free account and get your blog verified. The process of getting verified is best explained with the video below:

Once verified, submit your sitemaps on it and use the ‘fetch as’ tool to get faster indexing of your posts and also the homepage.

To create a sitemap, go back to your food blog, check under the installed ‘Yoast plugin’ (seen by the right hand side of the dashboard), follow the instructions and you will create a sitemap, then take the sitemap and submit it in the sitemap section of the Google search console.

Google analytics

Google analytics is important for use to collect and study data about how your blog is progressing, especially about visitors. You get statistics on daily, weekly and monthly traffic of visitors to your site.

Go to ( https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/) to get registered and be verified. Watch the video below.

Success Tips / Getting traffic / Promotion

Step 8

Getting on Social Media with a difference

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We all know the importance of having a presence on the world’s leading social media networks. It is one of the reasons why I earlier mentioned that the name of your domain should also be used to open free accounts on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.

When you open an account on these sites ( using your domain name because of branding, and if not available, use a name close to your domain); make sure you complete your profile, upload high quality pictures of your recipes, food stuff as your profile and background pictures.

• Facebook: Follow the above instructions, invite your friends, colleagues and friends to like the page. Doing this give you your first 20 followers/likes. After this, you can advertise to get likes/fans.
• Instagram: Do the same thing as above with Instagram

However, Pinterest is your secret weapon of getting traffic and I am going to concentrate on it.

Power of Pinterest

The most popular category of content most shared on Pinterest is on Food related articles and contents. Pinterest is the MAJOR source of traffic for successful food blogs. Pinterest is the Google (traffic / visitor source) for 100% of all cook and chef blogs.

Focus your power and attention on Pinterest; how?

• Go to pinterest.com and open a free account
• Get your blog verified on Pinterest, by adding their code on your site. Doing this gives you a PR8 dofollow backlinks from your profile back to your blog (very important).
• Create boards (just like category); in this board, you will be sharing your pinned images there; so it is like arranging your PINs in a hierarchy order.
• Take powerful, sharp and crystal clear pictures (the pictures should be original) of your contents and pinned them on Pinterest.
• For best results, you can use Photoshop to edit your pictures and images to the standard of normal Pinterest images as seen below, or you can use the canvas website to do this ( canvas is very good because they already have different Pinterest templates you can just pick from).

But here is the secret to getting lots of Pinterest referral traffic to your food blog;

• When you join Pinterest, make sure you follow other pinners who share similar interest like yours (follow other food bloggers).
• Look out for what is called ‘Group boards’, just like Facebook groups (this is where the secret lies). Some of these groups has members that are close to almost 30,000-200,000 in numbers.
• Join these group boards, you may sometimes have to contact the admin to allow you join them.
• Join as many of these boards, at least, close to 20 different ones.
• Get active by commenting on them, pinning other members of your own board etc.
• Do this constantly for at least 1 month
• After getting active, you will need to contact the Administrator to allow you share and pin your own PINS in the group
• Once accepted, start sharing your pins there on a reasonable and timely manner (do not spam them).

You will be surprised at the traction and flow of traffic you will be getting from them. Learning how to start a food blog and aiming for success depends a lot on the use of Pinterest!!

Step 9

Networking

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As a food blogger, networking is essential to your survival; you cannot stand alone and expect to be known, heard and or popular. Let me discuss briefly;

Connect with other Food bloggers

You probably know some few bloggers in the food, vegan and/or cooking niche; start reaching out to them using the tips below:

• Send them email directly, introducing yourself and telling them you wish to be their protégé/students to learn from their pool of experience
• Join and follow them on their social media networks i.e. on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.
• Visit their blogs, read their blog posts, drop meaningful comments; comments that will naturally attract their attention and they will in return also visit yours and do likewise. Commenting is a powerful weapon if used wisely.

Get on Google+ Communities and Facebook Group

I have already explained how to make use of Pinterest and the group board on the site. I also advised that you should focus 100% on the use of Pinterest because it sends traffic to a food blog more than any other social media networks.

However, for the sake of SEO (search engine optimization), it is important you get on:

• Google+ Communities
• Facebook Group

However, Google+ is the most powerful one to join first, how?

• Go to Google+ at google.com/plus, and sign up for a free account
• Complete your profile with professional details, including description, perfect profile and background picture etc.
• Go to communities, search for food related communities, join them; join at least 10 communities.

• After doing this, get engaged (just like the Pinterest board in above) and become active. Do not share your posts immediately after joining these communities/boards.
• Email and contact the administrators to accept you so that you can start sharing your posts on the Google+ community. Contact the administrators after being engaged and you should have stayed for about 1 month.

Google+ is extremely powerful and its influence on SEO is undisputed!!

Step 10

Rules of Pictures / ideas and topics

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I have listed out some tips that will guide you when taking your pictures to use as a respected food blogger; please remember that the pictures must be your own picture, from your own kitchen and not taken elsewhere.

Lightning

The lightning should be of the same intensity throughout the room; it means it should stand uniform with no shadows interfering in the brightness.

CAMERA AND LIGHTNING

Place of taking the Photograph

I quite understand that your kitchen will be busy with different ingredients, tools, knife etc.; however, when taking your pictures, the pictures should simply concentrate on the main recipe or cooked item.

And the best position is to place the item on a clean tabletop with no interference of unnecessary items.

Have more than one Shot / Snap

Take more than one snap of a particular item, and of course, snap from different angle and positioning so that you can have different options to use.

Use Photoshop

After the photographs, you can use Photoshop to add text on it (for security and to avoid image theft) and also to sharpen and make it look really professional.

Food blogging ideas and topics

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Examples of curated suggestions and ideas if you want to run and launch your own food blog:

• Vegan diet and meals- how to etc.
• Seasonal foods
• Blogging about international cuisine e.g. Thailand, Brazil, Africa, Asia, India, Texans, America, Germany etc. (it is countless) you’re trying out
• Or writing blog posts on/and about restaurants, cookbooks and also reviews about kitchen tools and equipment etc.
• Professional guidelines on Kitchen layouts – sharing your experiences on how you turn your kitchen around etc.
• Eating Etiquette
• Blogging on how to achieve body fitness with your meals etc.
• Kitchen tips and tricks
• What about cooking classes
• Blogging on Hot deals, sales and coupons

Step 11

Applying SEO

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SEO means search engine optimization. SEO is important because you need the search engines to send traffic (organic traffic to you). Though it is complex, I will briefly give you the tips.

As a new blog, it is important you fine tune everything so that it can get the attention of Google (the biggest and powerful search engine).

Follow the steps below

• Install Yoast SEO plugin – This plugin will help you solve the basic and initial SEO problems. You can read more on how to use the plugin and set up the SEO of your blog. Check the resource guide below.
• Stick to a publishing schedule and post original, high quality post that is not plagiarized or duplicated. Publish these posts on a constant and consistent basis.
• Invest time and money to guest blog (I usually outsource these task), you can Google to find out details on guest posting and how to outsource it.
• Avoid Google penalties, I highly recommend you read this resource guideline on this important issue.

As a newbie, I honestly recommend you watch this video from Yoast:

Step 12

How to make money from a food blog

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Successful food bloggers make insane amount of money every month, you can also achieve the same, but with hard work and also by implementing all what I have suggested to you.

You can make money from the following:

Running and offering online classes on cooking

You know, cooking is a skill and not every lady/women out there is skilled with this; you can organize online classes to teach interested people. Believe me, you are going to make incredibly amount of money just by tutoring people.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is easy to do, unlike running the above online classes earlier suggested. With affiliate marketing, you stand to make lots of money.

How?

Sign up as an affiliate on Amazon; when you sign up as an affiliate, you will be given a code to display on your blog, with Amazon, you can sell and refer people in making purchase of any kitchen related items and equipment.

Amazon is big enough to accommodate any food, cooking or kitchen related products you want to market and the beauty of it all is that you can do this from anywhere in the world. Amazon pays your affiliate commission (earnings) either through check or PayPal.

Hot Deals, Sales and Coupons

Lots of people are not using this method to make money on their food blog; recommending and displaying hot deals, sales and coupons to your visitors is a great way to make money.

It works just like affiliate marketing, but this is more targeted and people tends to make purchases with this strategy.

If you have not tried it on your blog, I recommend you try it. Some coupons may be free lunch at expensive restaurants, mouthwatering offers from reputable kitchen equipment manufacturers, huge discounts etc.

Go on Google and search for coupons and hot deals on affiliate marketing to get started. You can search for merchants in this niche at ShareAsale ( one of the biggest affiliate network company, like amazon)

Direct Sales

You can offer direct sales of your eBooks, eCourses tutorials, products and materials to your customers and visitors. Trust me, it works like charm. Just make use of the Easy Digital download plugin or outsource it to Gumroad to handle this aspect

You can also offer direct advertisements and any company interested may contact you.

Refer to start their own blog

Most successful food bloggers uses this unique strategy to make money. Because of their successful experience and having lots of subscribers/customers/visitors; they easily create a dedicated page and tell people how to start their own food blog.

In that page, they explain to them the tools and products to use, including the use of Bluehost and dedicated cooking templates. In essence, they help people and in return, they also make money.

CONCLUSION

All information you will ever need to open your own food blog is practically discussed in this guideline, it is a one-stop solution guidelines to your quest. I sincerely hope you that you really find it helpful.

Please keep this guide; bookmark it on your computer, and share it among your friends and family and most importantly kindly link back to it.

If you need any help or assistance, do reach out to me. Cheers!!

How can I make a successful blog and  get money using Bluehost just as you are making USD250 per day? I replied to the fellow, you need to take blogging seriously and not just a hobby.

To start a successful blog and make money, you need;

• USD 145-200 ( this is the approximate start up cost)
• to know the why of blogging ( decision on what to blog about)
• to know the where of blogging ( chose preferred blogging platform)
• to get a mobile responsive WordPress themes for design outlay
• to register a unique domain
• to get a cost effective webhosting server ( Bluehost is recommended)
• to install WordPress software
• to start writing articles ( blog posts), remain consistent, work hard and continue to learn

Table of Contents

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• My story – breakdown of my earnings
• What is Blogging, knowing the why and where!!
• Free Blogging platforms And Why You Should not use them
• The Right Approach – wordPress.org vs Wordpress.com
• Choosing a Niche
• Choosing the perfect Blog design
• Choosing a name And Domain Name
• Website hosting (Recommended Company)
• Configuring your blog, Installing plugins, overall settings
• Pages set up, categories, menus and Widget settings
• Overall blog configuration, settings
• Professional tips on blog post ( tips on getting first 30 posts)
• How to publish your first Blog post – Rules of the perfect Blog Post
• Setting up your blog on Google search console and Google Analytics
• Google indexing your posts
• Google penalty triggers to avoid

Success Tips / Promotion / Getting Traffic

• Use of social media accounts
• How To Network and expose your blog

Step 1

My story – breakdown of my earnings

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My first online earnings of USD 0.07 cent was made about 7 years ago; that was when I was a writer on hubpages, I was averaging about 20 USD per day (from Google Adsense) when my account was suddenly closed for no reason and I had serious heartache for more than 3 months before I braced up to set up my own blog

First Rule: Set up your own blog and do not depend on other people’s blog either as a writer or contributor to make money. The hard way is actually the best and only way to SUCCESS.

After setting up my own blog, I started writing on the new blog, made some money, but after 1 year and 3 months, I was hit by Google penalty and all my daily earnings disappeared; I was frustrated for almost 5 months before I had the courage to start all over again.

After this, I set up two other blogs and all of them failed at the end of the day. In late 2015 (November), I started two new fresh blogs and both is giving me approximately USD150-250 per day.

Second Rule:  Do not give up; when you fall, rise up and be renewed. It takes months and sometimes years to start making reasonable money.

My experience has taught me that with blogging, you need to focus on what you know best, be a good writer (and sometimes hire people), focus on product and service oriented niche of blogging (and not just information based), diversify your blogs (by having 2 blogs with different niches), concentrate on affiliate marketing and your own products (to sell) and finally be a good friend to Google

Third Rule: Be creative, and focus on product, sales or service based niche of blogging

Step 2

What is Blogging ( knowing the why and where)

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Blogging is taking your diary of events and uploading on it online for your friends and readers to know the latest updates about you. It is a personal online avenue to share your ideas with the outside world. The real idea of blogging did not take into account the possibility of making money, however, the concept of blogging has evolved into a money making machine when done properly.

As you are about to start, there are some facts and myths I would want you to know and probably knock out:

• Blogging is not rocket science; the only major requirement is your ability to write. If you can write, then give blogging a chance. It is fun, easy and not stressful at all.
• Making money with blogging is not easy, especially if not done properly (e.g. choosing the wrong niche and/or choosing a niche you do not have adequate knowledge about). You will need to work hard if you want to make money.
• Anybody can run a blog; be it a president, busy man, pastor or reverend (just find your niche, your groove and the unwavering desire to start).
• Running the blog as a hobby or on part time basis will not give you your desired success or may slow your success down.
• You must have the passion for blogging; along the journey, you will become discouraged, become fatigued, discouraged etc; but if you actually love what you are doing, then the impetus to keep on moving will naturally propel you forward.

Step 2 (1)

Free Blogging platforms And Why You Should not use them

I must be honest with you here; there are free blogging platforms that you can use to get started. It cost zero sum of money to launch your blog on these platforms. However, it is never recommended because of numerous disadvantages.

The following are the popular free blogging platforms and their disadvantages:

Blogger

Blogger is the oldest platform and it is run by Google. Though it is flexible to use, and to some extent, most people get started on this platform before they migrate to a better platform which is WordPress.org platform.

Disadvantages include:

• You can’t get a brand name; your blog will be in this format ( just an example): nameofyourblog.blogspot.com
• You cannot make money on it, except through Google AdSense ( you will be extremely limited)
• Advertisers will not see you as a serious fellow to transact with
• You are not in control ( the blogger account can be closed anytime)

WordPress.com

There are two versions of WordPress platform; the free platform is WordPress.com while the original (what I am recommending to you is the WordPress.org version).

The WordPress.com is the free platform and the disadvantages are also the same with the blogger platform mentioned above.

Tumblr

Tumblr offers a free blogging platform but do you know what? All their blogs are not indexed in Google, so , what is the point. This is a no go area.

Facebook

It is true that you can set up a blog on Facebook, but the blog is either in the form of running a Facebook page and /or group.

It is not a blog in the real sense because you cannot publish a blog post; you cannot run advertisement like Google AdSense. The only thing you can do is just like the normal Facebook account where you post updates, pictures and videos of yourself or things you want.

The only way to make money with a blog on Facebook is by promoting affiliate products to your followers (likes).

My candid advice is ‘do not start your blog on Facebook’ because there is even more restrictions when it comes to making money with product promotion. Secondly, you are not in control and FB can close your account or the page/group anytime.

Step 2 (2)

The Right Approach – WordPress.org

This is the best platform and it is the recommend platform on which more than 31% of blogs and websites are built on. All my blogs are built using WordPress.org and I must say it is the best experience so far. It is easy to use, easy to update and you can build any type of blog without having to stress yourself about a single line of code. I will explain and teach you everything in this tutorial.

With WordPress.org, it is premium and you have to buy your domain name, host the domain name and also get WordPress themes ( for the designing concept). Full explanation is detailed below.

Step 3

Choosing a Niche

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The beginning of this journey actually starts with choosing a niche. There are various niches out there, however, the best niche you can start with is the niche you know about i.e the one you can be sure you are an authority and also the niche you honestly love.

For example, we have fashion, beauty, lifestyle, technology, food (cooking), news, entertainment, tutorial focused niches etc. You need to launch a niche you will not find stressful.

• Want to know about Fashion blogging; read it here
• Want to know about beauty and skin care? read it here
• Want to know how to set up a technology blog, read it here
• Want to know about cooking/food related? check it out
• And also about online news blogging; check it out

Just check and search the entire haceweb blog, I have published extensive guidelines on virtually all types of blogging niches out there.

Another point is , not all niches gives the same amount of revenue because of their different advertisement/money making revenues; in this case, if you want to focus on popular niches/money making niches/EDD ( exact domain name) etc.; you will need to make research on that.

To do that, I recommend you use the world renowned tool (used by professional bloggers and myself) to get ideas, know traffic statistics etc.; the tool is SAMURAI ( SIGN UP FOR THE FREE TRIAL).

Step 4

Choosing the perfect Blog design

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The niche you chose determines to some extent the type of design you want for the blog. Generally, there are free WordPress themes (design templates) out there, but none of them is safe, secure and can actually give you what you need (again, they are limited because they are free). I will never advise you to go for the free templates.

Each niche has professionally designed WordPress themes that are search engine optimized, gives you good ROI ( return on investment e.t.c).

From my experience, I have been using most of these ready made, professionally designed templates from reputable companies rather than wasting my time on coding/programming or trying to design the blog myself.

So, if you have a niche in mind or general blogging, you will need to search for your preferred choice through the recommended companies below, buy your preferred WordPress themes (templates, it is generally in the price range of USD35-USD129.), download the ZIP file to your laptop/PC/desktop computer and have it ready for the installation/upload in the next stage of the tutorial below;

• StudioPress
• Mythemeshop
• Themeforest

For example, I have listed out some designs for select niches below:

Fashion

Food

The above template designs are just examples. For you to see different template blogging design templates ( WordPress themes), go to the above mentioned companies ( also seen below) and thoroughly search (you can type the keyword in their search box e.g. medical, college, tutorial, money making, computer, celebrity, Google Adsense etc) for design that will fit your purpose.

• StudioPress
• Mythemeshop

And remember, to always view the demo!!

After this, just save the ZIP file, and continue with the domain name registration and web hosting for your new blog.

Step 5

Choosing a name And Domain Name

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If you chose the wrong name, then you will have trouble and future problem with branding. The name you chose for your blog should be an identity that defines you, your purpose, products and services.

Look at popular bloggers out there, check out their names, check the uniqueness of their identity and try to replicate same.

Please know that the name you chose automatically becomes your domain name; the domain name is the technical name understood by the web and other internet protocols; it’s the real identity of your blog online.

When choosing a name/domain name; please bear in mind that the name should be:

• Short and memorable
• Not more than 12 letter words
• Unique, unused and easy to pronounce
• The same name will be used for your Facebook, Instagram, twitter, Google+ and possibly Pinterest Account (but the most important of all is Facebook, Instagram and twitter)
• So, when thinking of the name to use for your domain name, also think of using that same across all your social media accounts.

Why?

Branding Purposes!!

Take a look at social media accounts of Facebook, twitter, and Forbes accounts:

• For Facebookcom – Facebook.com/Facebook, twitter.com/Facebook
• For Twitter – Facebook.com/twitter, twitter.com/Facebook
• For Forbes – Facebook.com/forbes, twitter.com/forbes

For example, Forbes is the name of the popular entertainment/news blog and the domain name is forbes.com; Facebook is the name of the world’s most popular social networking website and the domain name is facebook.com; twitter is the name of the world’s most popular microblogging social networking real time blog and the domain name is twitter.com

You need to be cautious, calculative and pencil down different names you will likely use for your domain name (because this is the beginning of the start of your new blog); To do that, I recommend you use the form and tool below ( From Bluehost company) to do the search immediately

Search very well, and if the preferred name you want is available, I recommend you register it immediately and keep it for yourself ( because other people from all over the world are doing the same research you are doing, you need to act fast and smart to get the domain name immediately!!)

Step 6

Website hosting (Recommended Company)

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As soon as the domain name is available for purchase, you will also be presented with the option of hosting the domain name.

Hosting the domain name means, you are buying a space on the internet (through the use of web server, provided by the web hosting company) that will make your domain name to be seen and accessible online.

Without hosting the domain name, the domain name is useless and will not function/work.

For a starter, I recommend the same company you used for your domain name registration; Bluehost is reliable, dependable and it is the hosting company I am using for this blog and my other blogs.

With USD3.45 per month, you can get started, and if you decide to host with them (you will not pay again for the domain name registration, it automatically becomes free, saving you an approximate sum of USD17 per year).

GET YOUR SITE HOSTED ON BLUEHOST WEBHOSTING PLATFORM AND RECEIVE FREE DOMAIN REGISTRATION

Step 7

Configuring your blog, Installing plugins, overall settings

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If you are well able to get the domain name and hosting correctly, then I congratulate you ( or if you have problem or need help, just reach out to me through the chat feature below or through the contact page).

This next stage is a little bit technical, and I will explain everything you need to know with both pictures and video tutorials.

Follow the screen shot below for the registration of the blog on Bluehost and also for the initial set up instructions.

Please note the following points:

• Your login to your Bluehost account will be created for you; typically, this involves your email address and your password will be chosen by you.
• Please keep it safe somewhere (including your password); because this is the engine room of anything you want to do for your blog.
• When installing, chose WordPress software ( you will be asked or shown the logo); please also note and write down the login ( username and password).
• When the installation is complete, you will be taken away from Bluehost and shown your WordPress dashboard like the one below.

• And if you are not , just sign out of the Bluehost Cpanel ( Account), then open your browser and type in the login of your new WordPress bog ( in most cases, it will be in this format, yournewblog.com/wp-admin/ or www.yournewblog.com/wp-login/ ;

• With the earlier mentioned WordPress Login I told you about, you will now use it to sign into your blog; if successful, you will be shown the WordPress dashboard as shown above.

At this point, the actual settings and configuration of your blog is just starting, please be patient and follow the guidelines and further instructions below:

Step 7 (1) 

Designing / Configuring your blog

From the dashboard, the first thing you will need to do is to change the default/initial design that came with the installation and upload your earlier purchased WordPress themes/templates. Follow the screen shot below.

• Locate the ZIP file

• Click on appearance, then themes, then click on Add new; follow the screen guide; locate the downloaded ZIP file and upload it.
• Watch the video below

Template Demo Upload

However, in some cases, you may want to have the demo (as displayed in the template you purchased) uploaded on your blog for two reasons.

1. Probably because of easy ways to edit the contents and gradually add yours
2. Probably you want your blog to look full and professionally looking exactly like the demo.

To do that;

• Go to your ZIP file, unzip it by opening it
• locate demo.xml ( or anything that ends with .XML)
• Once you find it, upload the .XML ( that is the demo content); before uploading, you will need to install the WordPress import plugin ( see the image and video below).

Watch the video below for tips to upload the demo contents;

If you get this done, the next step is to install what is called WordPress plugins. Plugins powers your new WordPress blog and they are highly important for any task you want the blog to carry out. For instance, you need a plugin if you want to be selling downloadable items/eBooks/Music e.t.c. on the blog or even offer services and collection of your money using PayPal.

Step 7 (2) 

Plugin Installations and Configurations

There are some basic/primary plugins you need to install immediately. These basic plugins are listed below:

• Yoast SEO plugin
• W3 Total Cache
• Akismet
• Jetpack plugin:
• Sumo plugin
• Nofollow Plugin

Other plugins you may want to consider includes:

• Mail Poet: Helps you to get email leads of visitors and enables you to send newsletters to your subscribers/readers.
• Easy Digital Download plugin) : to sell eBooks and collect money using PayPal
• AMP plugin ( to turn your blog to Google specified Mobile responsive blog and make it load faster)
• Image crusher etc.

To install the plugins, follow the guidelines below:

From your dashboard, locate appearance, and under appearance, locate plugins and from there, click on Add new.

• From the new page, locate the search box towards the right hand side, type the name of the plugin you want to install e.g. Yoast SEO.

• The plugin will be displayed, and simply click on install and later on “Activate”.

Or simply, you can download the plugins and upload them using the above method ( but you will click on upload, instead of using the search box to upload).

For easy guidelines, watch the video below:

Important Configuration

After the above installation and configurations, there are some important configuration settings you should do immediately.

• You are going to change the default Permalink settings to ‘name’. To do that, go to your settings (from the same dashboard, scroll down and you will see settings. Click on it, locate permalinks, click on it and change the present settings to ‘name’

• Again, since you are still setting up your blog, it will not be wise for the search engines to start crawling and indexing the blog yet. You have to tell Google and other search engines not to index it yet. To do that, go to general ( from the dashboard), check the box that says ‘ search engines should not index this site’

• After you have set up the entire blog and ready for people and search engines to start visiting and reading the contents. You MUST come back here and ‘uncheck’ the box, or else nobody will know about the site and you will not get a single visitor. ( please remember this important issue)

Step 7 (3) 

Pages set up, categories, menus and Widget settings

If you uploaded the demo as explained earlier, then you already have pages, categories, menus and posts created. The task before you will just be editing of these stuffs, start adding your own contents or simply deleting them and starting new.

However, if you did not upload the demo, then you need to start creating some important pages, categories and also set up your menus.

Pages

You need to create and set up the following pages immediately:

• About pages
• Contact page
• Advertisement
• Privacy policy
• Terms of use
• DMCA

To create a page, see the image above.

Contact Form Creation in The Contact Page

However, creating a contact page with contact form is quite different. The first task is to :

• Use a Jetpack plugin

The first task to do is to make sure you connect and activate your JetPack plugin and you will do this by linking the JetPack plugin with a new free wordpress.com ( you are just going to link them together, do not bother posting articles on the wordpress.com account). The notification to do that will be displayed on the dashboard clearly.

After linking them together, you will be brought back to you WordPress dashboard ( your blog dashboard). Then go to your newly created contact page, refresh the page, then go the edit portion of the page. On top of the edit tools, you will see the icon for ‘insert contact form’ ( as shown below). Click on it and finish up the configuration.

Categories

The standard best practice is that all published blog posts must fall under a particular category. The default category for any WordPress powered blog or site is ‘uncategorized’. Depending on the niche you are into, the following are some basic category that you should create and publish related post under.

• Tutorial
• Videos
• Music
• News
• Apple category (any post or news related to Apple products e.g. iPhone etc.)

The task before you is to draft out categories that will be present on your blog and then create them. To create a category is simple and easy, follow the steps below:

Follow the images below and also watch the video below

Step 7 (4) 

Creating Your Menu

The image below is the perfect description of what a blog menu is and what it actually looks like. The menu is actually an important part of the design and configuration settings, without a menu, a blog look empty and disorganized.

• To create a menu, please understand there is a primary and secondary menu settings; to set up one, follow the guidelines below:
• Go to menu settings by going to appearance, under appearance, click on menu
• On the menu page, click creates a menu (and selects the pages and categories you want to be displayed on the menu).
• In most cases, your primary menu contains ‘Home’, ‘About’, ‘Contact’, Advertisement, Products, services, terms of service etc.

See the images below and also watch the video below for more guidelines

And also watch the video below:

Overall blog configuration, settings

The above guidelines are more than enough for you to understand how to set up your blog, no matter the niche you are considering. However, for more understanding, you can reach out to me though the contact page or through the live chat features below.

In addition, you can watch the video below for more tutorials:

Step 8 

Setting up your blog on Google search console and Google Analytics

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After doing all the above tasks, you need to set up and submit your new blog to Google search console and Bing. The two are search engines, but the most important is Google. Follow the guidelines below to set up your blog on Google search console and analytics.

• Go to Google search console at: www.google.com/console

Follow the instructions and guidelines.

For more understanding, it is important and compulsory you watch the video below:

Please understand that the Google search console is an important and integral part of the whole concept of search engine optimization. It is important you understand it, set up your blog on it and totally configure it.

However, for a starter, I recommend you install the Yoast SEO plugin ; use it to learn about SEO, how to use ‘fetch as’ feature to quickly index your posts, and also know how to use the sitemaps etc.

Google Indexing Your Posts

When you publish a new blog post, you have to manually submit the post/article on Google search console to that Google can index it and add it to their database. With this process, it means, your blog post would be seen and available on the search pages.

You are doing this manually because your blog is new but as your blog grows, you do not need to do it manually because it will be added automatically.

Step 9

Google penalty triggers to avoid

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Most blogs struggles to be seen, make profit and rank high on Google search pages not because the posts are not well written but majorly because the laws of Google were not applied and followed.

If you flout Google’s ranking rules, Google will penalize you. Some of the rules you should know are explained below:

• Do not copy and paste other people’s content
• Avoid duplicate content
• Avoid thin content ( your articles  or post should be more than 300 word count)

More of the penalty triggers are explained in this comprehensive posts by Neil Patel; Read it here.

Step 10

How to publish your first Blog post – Rules of the perfect Blog Post

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Watch the video below on how to publish your first blog post, what to do, how to make use of the blog post settings and adjusting the category you are going to be publishing it under.

Professional tips on blog post (tips on getting first 30 posts)

This is the beginning of your blog publishing and you need to plan everything very well so as to achieve faster growth rate and become successful.

From my experience, it is recommended to have at least 10-20 articles/post that is ready. What you will do is that you will schedule each post to be published (e.g. one article per day) for the next 20 days.

And before the next 20 days finishes, you already have another article (batch) on ground and you schedule them.

The reason is because Google and other search engines love new articles; and they give authority to a blog that is seen to be publishing a blog post or article on a constant and consistent basis.

Another major point of emphasis is this; your blog post should exceed 1000 word count; from experience and from research, it has been proven that long blog posts tends to rank higher on Google search pages than blog posts with about 350-700 word counts.

Immediately you publish a blog post, do the following:

• Share it on twitter
• Share it on Facebook
• Use fetch in Google console to submit the post and get it indexed immediately

• Interlink the post to each other on your blog

If you feel overwhelmed on getting blog posts, then you can outsource some of the task to professionals at:

• Elance
• Guru or Odesk
• fiverr
• Or simply hire professional freelance writers ( though this option is expensive but it is the best!!)

Success Tips / Success Tips / Getting Traffic

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The steps to take to be successful are not rocket sciences; if the steps are carefully followed and implemented, then success is not far at all.

Step 11

Invest in the quality of your blog posts

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Nearly all sorts of topics are already covered on the internet, no matter the title or article of interest; you will discover that thousands of such are already published on the net.

What is needed from your own side is that you should invest in the quality of the type of blog post you are going to be publishing.  Publish authoritative, well researched, non-duplicate articles.

Embed high quality videos, pictures and images to add flair and interesting explanation to your blog posts. Add polls if needed and try to write with a neutral flair. Don’t write for the search engines but for people. Readers should be able to understand and easily comprehend what you are trying to explain in the article.

Forget about publishing 150-400 word count posts but rather try as much as possible to write and publish nothing less than 1500 word count post.

Research has shown that quality long blog posts tends to rank high on Google search pages than ordinary short blog posts.

Step 12

Use of Social Media Networks

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Successful bloggers and website publishers invested heavily on the use of social media; the reason being that the use of social media is important for the overall success of your blog.

For your blog to experience success, the number one factor needed is traffic; you need people to visit the blog and execute an action on it.

Getting the traffic is the challenge, but!!

This is where social media ( e.g Facebook, twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat etc) plays a huge and important role.

You will  need to :

• Go to the above mentioned social media network and open a free account on them
• Remember to open the free account using the name of your domain as earlier explained because of branding advantages
• Set up your profile on Facebook, twitter, Google+, Instagram with professionally looking pictures and background photos.

For overall understanding on how to get the above task done easily and achieve good returns on investment (ROI), then I recommend you check out the below resource materials:

• hidden secret to get massive Facebook traffic using groups, read it inside my earlier post on how to create a website like buzzfeed ( here) and revenue sharing website ( here)

• 20 Secrets That’ll Boost Your Facebook Organic Reach

Step 13

How to Network and expose your blog

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By now, you will have realized that running a successful bog is serious work and it is not a child’s play. Do not be deceived by all those blog earning reports, what the publishers of those report fail to tell their readers is the enormous amount of work and time they invested on their blog.

Since your blog is a brand new blog, fresh and just out of the heaven; nobody knows about it, and as such, you will have to go the extra mile and let the blogging community and people know about it.

This is where the issue of networking comes into practice!!

To network and make your blog known and popular, you will:

• Open an account with major social networking websites as explained above and drop the URL of your blog ( in such a way that it can be clicked on): an example is shown below of a twitter account profile of rsadaily

• Open an account with Google+ and create your profile
• Join relevant blogging communities on Google+ and participate ( the winning trick is to get the admin of their communities and ask for their permission to share your contents)
• Join relevant Facebook Groups and participate ( do the above mentioned winning trick)
• Join premium social bookmarking websites and submit your URLS ( i.e the addresses of each of your published blog posts). A very good example is klinkk.com and www.growthhackers.com/
• Join bloglovin and submit your blog
• Go to Bing search engine and get your blog registered and indexed
• Do the same thing with yandex.ru and get your blog registered and indexed
• The most powerful networking tool is to blog comment. You visit relevant blogs, read their blog post and drop meaningful /insightful comment with a link to your blog. Drop at least 2 comments on 10 different blogs every week.

If you need assistance, you can reach out to me through the contact page section.