Disclaimer: The opinions in this article are my own. I do not work for, or with, any brand mentioned in this article, nor do I have any official relationship with them. This blog contains affiliate links in which I receive a very small profit.
I know this isn’t really in my realm of expertise… as in, I mostly blog about painting or home decor or something I slapped together with a hammer & nails. But I keep receiving so many messages over the last year asking what I’ve done to be successful with my blog, so here is a low down on the step-by-step process on what I did and how you can easily do it to.
I’ve been asked so many times over the last year how I created my successful blog and what I would recommend to someone wanting to start one. There are so many different routes you can take, but I’m going to give you a step by step break down of what I’ve done and what is working for me.
I would say the biggest factors in my success is dedication & hard work. Nothing will ever be handed to you on a silver platter and if you’re expecting to just blog and have people read it, you will fail.
I once read that the amount of work it takes you to write a blog, you should be spending equal time or money promoting it. The first 4 months of blogging, I put every cent back into my blog.
In this post I’ll talk about how to start up a blog, what platforms to use & also how to gain more followers, subscribers and traffic. So grab a coffee & grab a pen & paper ( Or pin this )
How To Create A Successful Blog
Step 1. Purchase a domain name. Decide on what you want to call your blog. It’s very imperative that you purchase your name, if you do not, you will not do very well on google and your SEO will be very poor. I’ll talk about SEO and what that is important later on, but for now, trust me that you need to purchase your name. I went with www.whitepicketfarmhouse.com Not only is a unique name easier to find, but people will remember it too.
Step 2. Once you’ve chosen your domain name, it’s time to choose a platform. I highly suggest you go with a self hosted wordpress site. When I first started, I went with Weebly and I ended up having to transfer all my blogs & data over 5 months after I started blogging and I lost a lot of SEO and followers. So trust me, do it right the first time. Sign up for your own self hosted wordpress site.
Step 3. Now you can choose a provider that will power your self hosted wordpress site. I absolutely, hands down LOVE Siteground. They have different packages you can purchase, and I highly suggest that you buy the lowest package as you can always upgrade. Not only is the service amazing ( faster website, literally never downtime.. ) The provider I was with before was so awful and my website was always offline. Also, Siteground has amazing customer service. Anytime I have even the slightest issue, I jump on live chat and they are always there to fix anything for me, Even that time I almost deleted my website because I put code in the wrong spot ( I should really just leave the code alone 😉 )
Step 4. Design Time.. My first few months of blogging, I had a free theme. Once I got a lot more traffic & collaborations I decided to pay for a much more professional looking theme. You can go on Etsy and search themes and you can even pay the developer to install them on your blog. Most of the time, installing a theme is pretty straight forward.
Step 5. Start Blogging
How To Get Your Posts Seen & Shared
Pin your images.
I think one of the most important things when blogging is having gorgeous images to compliment your words. Beautiful photos get pinned on Pinterest, which means a lot more followers, a lot more traffic & brands can also easily find you. I think this is why I have done so well. I have quite a few articles that have gone viral on Pinterest which has given me a ton of subscribers & traffic. 53% Of my traffic is from Pinterest.
Sign up for a site like Boardbooster.
This site is amazing, It’s an automatic pin generator so you never have to. This site alone has probably given me most of my traffic as it continually pins my images to group boards on Pinterest.
Become a part of group boards on Pinterest.
Share your blog posts not once, but twice.
You might think you can write a blog and then it will be seen. No, it doesn’t work like that. In fact, how will people even know you have written an article if you don’t shout it from the roof tops? When I started my blog, I also started these social media accounts to market on:
-Google +
-HomeTalk ( For Home Bloggers )
Get an email/subscription provider.
I like Mad Mimi. I’ve been using this site to send out my blog posts to all my email subscribers. Over 33% of my traffic is from Email Subscribers, so this is a huge must.
SEO
This is important because if you want to be found on google & you want google to recommend your posts, you need to have SEO. What is SEO?
“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results—often referred to as “natural”, “organic”, or “earned” results.”
SEO can be contained from ALT Tags on Pictures, Titles in posts, having a keyword throughout your blog post. This might sound ultra confusing to you, but it doesn’t have to be. If you have a wordpress blog, you can download a plugin called “Yoast” and it tells you everything you need to do. I mean, if I can do it & understand it, so can you!
I hope this helps you in designing your very own blog. It doesn’t have to be hard, but you do need a lot of dedication and motivation.
I now receive anywhere from 130,000 – 200,0000 visitors each month and I will have had my self hosted blog for a year in April. I solely credit my success to my determination and sharing on social media because it has gotten me a large email list as well as lots of traffic fast. We have so much at our fingertips, so utilize it!
