So you have decided to start a blog. Maybe you have thought about this for weeks or months and have a detailed business plan or you are like me and you woke up one day, did a little (very little) research and decided you are going to start a blog today. (This post contains affiliate links.)
You will read how easy, quick, and cheap it is to start a blog. I read that you can start a blog in anywhere from fifteen minutes down to as little as four minutes.
Until today that is. Today I read somewhere that you could start a blog in two minutes! I’m not sure that I could even do it in two minutes now that I have been blogging for awhile and know most of the terminology. I takes just a couple of minutes to fill in the stuff you know (name & contact information)!
I am here to help you with the rest. Hopefully, after reading this you will be prepared and can breeze through it.
The first step to setting up a blog is hosting. Setting up hosting is basically choosing a domain name, entering your contact information, choosing your plan, and entering your payment information.
No problem right. Before you even go to Bluehost, brainstorm domain names. Hopefully you have picked an unique one that no one else is using. We went through a lot of domain names and variations of my current one before finding one that was not already taken.
Many new bloggers, myself included, start off using Bluehost. It is a good fit for small to medium sized blogs.
I would suggest starting off with the starter package. You will often see $3.95 in conjunction with signing up for Bluehost. That $3.95 is per month for a 36 month contract. I felt like while the 36 month contract would save me money over the longer term, but the 12 month contract at $5.95 a month was a better fit. Like I said early, I just woke up one day and decided to start blogging. I had no idea whether I was going to like it or it was going to work out, so I did not want to commit to a long term contract.
Once you figure out the contract, there are four add ons (at a small additional cost) you can add. I chose to skip all the add ons; in part because I had no idea what they were or whether I would need them. I cannot give you a review of them, because I have not used any of them. Here they are so that you will be aware of them and can research them ahead of time if you would like further information.
- Constant Contact-this allows you to create customized emails and newsletters for your subscribers. There other programs out there that I hear bloggers talking about and using more often.
- Site Back up Pro-automatic online back-up
- Search Engine Jumpstart-I have not done a lot with SEO (search engine optimization). I do have a free plugin (more on plugins later) installed that helps when writing posts.
- Sitelock Security -Find and verifies your credentials to show that you are a trustworthy business
Your next step is payment. The contract price says $3.95 per month or $5.95 per month. You are paying that all up front, not on a monthly basis.
You now have hosting and this is what others are talking about when they say you can have your blog set up in a few minutes. Sorry, you have a few more steps until you have your blog ready, but yeah you passed the first hurdle.
