How to Start a Blog to Make Money or Get FREE Stuff

I have to say, being a blogger has some great perks.  I started this blog as a hobby several years ago and it’s grown to become a full time job. I’ve got tons of freebies for having a blog and it is definitely worth the effort.  It does take work and dedication but anyone can start a blog these days with absolutely no computer experience.

Why start a blog?

Everyone will have their own reasons.  You can start a blog so you can get free stuff that’s only offered to bloggers, to make money, to help others, etc. Plus it’s kind of fun 🙂 You can devote as much or as little time as you want.

Can I start a blog for FREE?

Yes…. but you shouldn’t.   Hear me out.  You can start a blog on one of the free services but very quickly you will realize that you want to move to your own domain/hosting.  The free services give you the bare minimum on features and many times you can’t monetize (i.e. make money) unless you “upgrade”. You get a weird name like mysite.blogger.whatever that doesn’t look professional at all.  You also get no support and often times your site is super slow because they put it on the slowest servers.  You can’t add cool features either.  Trust me you don’t want to start in that position.  If blogging is something your seriously considering then you need to make the small investment in yourself.  Plus it’s gives you more reason to keep working since you paid for it!

The Basics

In order to start your own blog there are a couple things you need.

1. Domain name (thats the www. whatever.com)
2. Website Hosting (this is the place where your website lives on the internet)
3. Blog platform and theme (design) (WordPress is the Best!)

Step one

The quickest and easiest way for a beginner to get blogging in my opinion is to start with Bluehost.  It’s cheap, reliable, and they have great tech support when you need it.  And it’s EASY!  Plus you get a free domain name and can install wordpress (the best blog platform) in one click.  This makes it so easy, rather than getting everything from different places.

How to start a blog on BlueHost

So what you want to do is head over here to Bluehost.  Click on “Get Started Now” and here’s where we pick a plan.  When your just starting out the basic plan will work fine.  You can easily upgrade later once you start getting some traffic.  So for now choose basic.

Now you get to pick your domain name.  For instance mine is guide2free.com You can choose whatever you want as long as it’s not already taken.  If the name you chose is taken it will tell you to try again and give you some suggestions.

Pro Tip:  Make sure your name is short and sweet and easy to remember.  You don’t want names like www.thegreatestandbestwebsiteintheentireworld.com, that’s just too long!  You can’t change it once you pick so take a moment to really think about it.

Next, your going to enter your account info/mailing info and choose how many months you want to pay for.  You get a bigger discount for paying for more months up front, but if your serious about starting a blog it makes sense to get 36 months (3 years) for only $2.75 a month.  That is super cheap!  Plus your domain name is included for FREE (usually runs about $10 a year)

You can un-check the other boxes because you don’t really need the extras they offer.  The only thing you may want is the Domain privacy which makes it so that your contact information stays private.  If you don’t get it you will probably get some junk mail that is about it.

So your options for the basic package are going to be:

• 12 months @ $4.95 = $59.40
• 24 months @ $3.95 = $94.80
• 36 months @ $2.75 = $99.00 (Best deal!)

You may even want to get 60 month plan to lock in the low price.  I highly recommend getting the most months you can afford so you pay the lowest rate and you don’t have to worry about it!   For example, if hosting is not renewed or if the card expires, then your website is down and you risk losing business (visitors/traffic).

Ok so now you got your domain name, your paid up and have a brand new account and the fun is ready to begin!

Bluehost makes it very easy to create a WordPress blog and it is FREE.

• After you create your password, Bluehost guides you through exactly what you need to do in order to start a blog.
• First, Bluehost will ask you to pick a theme. You can just pick a random one here or find one that you actually like. You can change it later so it’s not a big deal or just scroll to the bottom and skip this step. Remember, there are many free ones too!
• Click Start Building

Your site will be on a temporary domain at first. Don’t be alarmed.

For new domains, this is because it takes 2-24 hours for your new domain to become fully registered. Go ahead and start working on your site. When the real domain is ready, Bluehost will switch it for your automatically.

Here are the video instructions

Here’s the video from Bluehost on how to choose a theme

Your Ready to Start

So now your ready to start creating content.  First take a minute and create a contact me page and an about me page.  Then you can start blogging!  What you’ll blog about depends on your goals.  My advice to you is to blog about what your passionate about.  If you try to make a food blog but you hate to cook, you will hate doing it and probably give up.  So try to talk about what you love!

If you have a blog, drop me a link below… I’d love to check it out!  And you can always contact me for advice 🙂  Good luck!