How to create a blog to make money in 2021, a step-by-step guide for beginners [UPDATED OCT 2021]

Are you ready to change your life and start a successful blog today? I support you with this super easy and simple guide, a tutorial for beginners step by step!

In this guide I will show you step by step my process to create a perfect blog and grow it to generate income month by month.

Make money online in 2021

Why start a blog?

A few years ago I was just a more frustrated guy with his job who wanted to escape his life from 9 to 5, who had made a mistake in my job choice.

I was tired of having to follow strict schedules, looking forward to the weekend and not being able to travel whenever I wanted.

I decided to start several blogs with my brother: we made them out of nowhere and now they have millions of visits every month.

It is not for the money (although my family can not eat air) but for the freedom of schedules and the satisfaction of helping others that a blog can give you.

I can get up every morning, drink my coffee, and design my day as I want.

What is the advantage of creating a blog?
Creating a blog is one of the most popular ways to help your readers and generate passive income on the Internet. A blog lets you write about what you like and work whenever you want and in the place you want the Internet to have.

Having a blog can be a very good business, for example, in 2017 some famous bloggers came to have incomes of up to $ 140,000 USD per month.

Now, I want to guide you in the step by step of how to create your first blog so you can design your life as you want!

The following is a step-by-step guide on how to create your dream blog and really make money with it! And trust when I tell you: if I could, ANYONE can do it!

If you have not already done so - Start your blog with WordPress, then look at the tutorial below for step-by-step instructions.

In this article, we are going to see how to start a blog the only way you should - with Bluehost

Why use Bluehost?

First of all they have incredible support, then they are a very cheap and quality hosting starting a blog with Bluehost only costs you $ 3.95 US dollars a month when you register.

Bluehost is very easy to use. The process of starting a blog can be very confusing when you start talking about domain names, hosting packages, etc. Our tutorial below includes images, I even made a new domain to show you how it works.

Apart from that, Bluehost has a 30-day guarantee, if you didn't like it or decided that a blog is not your thing, Bluehost returns all your money!

There really is no risk. I did not start with Bluehost I changed since I had problems with another Hosting.

My site increased traffic and the support of the other Hosting was terrible, my site was offline and this greatly affected my blog. I swore it would NEVER happen to me again.

Bluehost, has excellent customer support, have the best customer service of all hosting companies.

This blog focuses on a successful blog (which produces income), not a blog to write your diary. (Who can afford to give free advice all day?)

This article will be EPIC. I will guide you through everything that needs to be done. Be sure to save this article to return to it later.

A summary of we will see:

Step # 1: Choose the platform for your blog

Step # 2: Register a Domain

Step # 3: Get a Hosting Service

Step # 4: Install WordPress

Step # 5: Choose/pick a Template for your Blog 

The first step is to choose which platform you will use:

Step 1: Choose the Platform for your Blog

A platform for your blog is a software to manage the content of your blog. It allows you to create pages, add content, images, videos and everything you need to update your blog. Another name they give to blogging platforms is CMS (Content Management System).

There are many open source platforms that most hosting companies support when you create your blog. The main blogging platforms are:

WordPress - It is the most popular and the CMS that you can customize the most. About 60% of all CMS are made with WordPress.
Drupal - it is very popular among programmers, but it is not recommended if you do not know code
Joomla - It's another very popular CMS, but hard to learn
Blogger - is a free Google platform, but with many limitations to customize it
Why do i like to recommend WordPress to start out A Blog???

I have tried several platforms over the years, and what I recommend so much to a beginner who knows nothing about blogging as someone skilled is using WordPress.

Make money online in 2021

IT IS INCREDIBLY EASY TO INSTALL

You'll see how easy it is to install it below in this guide on how to create your blog. To give you an idea of   how easy it is, there are 9-year-olds who can install it alone without ANY adult help.

It is very easy to use

Manage your blog, add content, add images, you can use it very easily with WordPress. Almost all the customizations you want with your blog can be done with WordPress very easily, with the other platforms not.

WordPress was designed to make Blogs

When WordPress was created, it was created with the idea of   creating a platform for bloggers, and years later it is even more specialized for bloggers. That's the great thing about WordPress you can install and publish your blog in a few minutes.

With WordPress you have Total Control

With WordPress you have control over your site. You don't have to wait for a programmer or designer to help you, you can make everything easy and fast.

WordPress is very safe

As long as you have updated your WordPress, which is updated with a button, it is the most secure Internet platform.

Free Hosting vs. Paid Hosting

Compare the hosting and hosting for free and paid. There is free hosting as a blogger or tumblr, but there is a reason why 99% of blogs do not use them and you should not use them either:

The design looks very basic
Websites are very slow
Your site loses credibility, a few years ago if a blog in BLOGGER was credible right now NO
You can't make many customizations
You are very limited as you can monetize your blog (you can not put ads)
I don't know any successful blogger who has a free hosting
For the problems and headaches caused by a free hosting, we will focus this tutorial on paid hosting (like Bluehost), because it is the only way to start a successful blog, at least you want your blog just as a newspaper.

Step # 2: Register Your Blog Domain Name

Register the domain name of your blog to start the process, and then follow the step-by-step instructions below to finish the process.

How do you buy a domain?
To buy a domain name and create your blog, and you can obtain the domain at the same time that you get the hosting, you must first choose a hosting package then you already get your domain.

If you are having trouble with a domain name, just remember not to complicate yourself. Your name matters little in the success of a blog, what really matters is the quality of the content you do.

For example, the name of this blog is intelligent passive income. It is a very long name, which is difficult to memorize and pronounce. Nobody remembers him. But anyway we have many visits because the name does not matter much. The people who remember are of your CONTENT!

Tips for choosing a name for your domain

It is better to have a .com domain, or if there is no .net or .org, .com gives the user more confidence and is much better established on the network.
Check your domain can have up to two or three words
I recommend having at least one keyword in the domain name.
Check that the name is sticky, that it attracts attention, but if you can't think of anything there is no problem.
You can obtain your domain directly from Bluehost, at the same time as a hosting plan! I recommend that this be so because it is the easiest way to do it!

Step # 3: Choose a Hosting Package

Wait .. what is Hosting or Hosting? Each domain occupies a lodging where it stays and runs.

A hosting is a computer that you rent that can be accessed from any part of the Internet another name you receive is Server. You occupy a hosting for your website !, otherwise you would spend tens of thousands of dollars on setting up your own server apart from what you would take to know how to program.

There are many internet hosting companies.

This can be very complex if you try one by one, the best best company we have used and the one that most bloggers recommend is Bluehost

When you are starting, buying the domain in the same place where you will be hosting your site makes things 10,000 times simpler.

Then let's start acquiring the domain and hosting.

Step # 4 Install WordPress on Your Blog

Bluehost has made it easier than ever to install WordPress on your blog. In fact, they have just eliminated many steps in the process so you can install it almost immediately.

Step # 5: Choose / Pick a WordPress Template for your Blog

A WordPress template or theme allows you to specifically control how your blog looks and how it feels without having to know code or design knowledge. In other words, a good template helps you design your blog exactly as you want it to look. If you are not a programmer, a WordPress template makes the job a million times easier.

There are 2 parts of the template: the Framework (the base), and the secondary template or child theme that is the part that makes the blog beautiful.

The Framework: There are several premium WordPress frameworks on the market but Genesis is the best or the best and the most flexible. Many templates only help you with the design, but the Genesis Framework gives you a solid foundation for your secondary template.

The Secondary Template or Child Theme: After purchasing the Genesis Framework, you want to choose your perfect Secondary template. The template depends on the theme of your blog, there is the Authorithy Pro template that is for bloggers or people who want to make a more personal blog.

Step # 6: Install the best plugins in your WordPress blog

The plugins, are the best of WordPress, are small software that you install with 1 click that help you do things without having to know how to program, things like: see the statistics of your visits within WordPress, improve the graphics, add facebook pixels , etc.

Ideally, install only the best plugins, a bad plugin can harm your site, so be very careful with the plugin you install.

Step # 7: Customize your blog to your liking, enjoy your blog and make plans for your blog

There are many reasons to decide to create a blog as a source of income, but here I show you and explain the most popular:

You can turn your blog into an online business that gives you recurring income

Creating a blog is a very hard work, with discipline, good organization and good understanding of your content and your community (I will talk about this later), you can generate good income by managing your own blog and talking about the things you like.

If you already have a business, a Blog helps you increase your customers and trust them

Having a blog is a very good way to get to know yourself and your business, which will allow you to reach an incredible number of people in exchange for practically no additional cost (except for the time you spend creating content).

A blog with an audience can help you succeed as an author

Not everyone knows, but most publishers prefer to work with authors who already have some type of presence or popularity on the internet.
The reason is simple: it is easier to sell your book to people who already know you and trust your criteria.
So, a blog is an important way to get to know and boost your career.

Writing is an incredible habit that helps you organize your thoughts better and communicate better.

When wanting to start a blog, many people use free platforms like Tumblr, Blogger or the free version of WordPress and create a blog almost randomly, which would be nice if writing was a hobby.
But if you really want to make money with what you write, we recommend that you first have very well defined the central theme on which you will focus on writing.

How should the theme be what you choose for your blog?

The theme of your blog should be something that you are passionate about and, preferably, of which you already have previous knowledge. Secondly (and this is very important), it is highly recommended that you have your own domain for your page.

In this first aspect I am going to teach you how to set up your blog step by step, but in a profitable way, capable of generating monthly income.

Keep in mind that creating a blog requires time and dedication

The most important thing when starting any project is to feel confident that you can achieve each of the necessary goals to successfully achieve your goals.

For the above reason, having a positive mindset is vitally important before starting your blog, because the way you feel affects how you write, and your mood is transmitted to your readers.

In this way, if you carry out the blog project with a skeptical or pessimistic mentality, it is likely that you will abandon it as soon as you have problems and you will lose not only the income, but the wonderful world that such activity has to offer you.

Now I will show you five small strategies that will help you start your project with a more positive perspective, not to mention that they will also help you live your day to day better!

Read motivational and topic books you want to write

It may seem obvious, but the more positive things come into your head, the more positive your thoughts will be, the more content you write for your blog and so you increase the likelihood of succeeding with your blog, so, when you have free time every day ( You can also dedicate an exclusive schedule, why not?), read at least a few pages.

Develop a morning routine to improve your blog every day

Having a routine designed every morning is one of the best ways to succeed in your projects, highly recommended by my idol Tim Ferris.

When you get up, you can, for example, exercise, write 500 words for your blog, write down your daily goals, make personal projections, listen to music or make some combination of the above.

Just getting up a few minutes before, you can spend some time for yourself; This way you will improve your attitude towards the day to come, reduce your stress levels and lead a healthier life. This is much better than jumping straight from bed to work.

How to choose a niche for your blog that leaves recurring income

Choose a central theme with potential

For your blog to work, it must meet three basic requirements:

• You enjoy working with him
• Attracts people's attention
• Get money

It is necessary that the central theme of your site be profitable; For this you must choose a theme that you enjoy and that has value in the market. There are aspects to analyze when choosing a profitable topic to create your blog. Then I will talk about them.

The niche of your blog has to have ways to monetize
It is very important to find out from the beginning.

It has happened to me that I have made blogs that after months of making content I realize that I cannot earn income from it.

I put advertising on those sites but because the public were pure children for that site, advertising generated very little income.

How to know if your niche for your blog can be monetized

The easiest way to monetize a blog is with Google Adsense, the Google advertising system, here you only put a code on your site and Google is responsible for being the intermediary you who do the content and have visits and the buyer of the advertising , and Google pays you.

To find out if the niche you chose pay a lot for advertising in Adsense or you have the opportunity to make your own products to sell, find out who your audience will be, and ask yourself if that audience has purchasing power or not. If your answer is, don't look for another niche.

How to monetize your blog with affiliate programs

A large part of the sites that generate income on the internet are focused on products or services, and generate their income through an affiliate system.

The best way to start a new blog is to look for topics that have a variety of products and services to promote and sell.

A good method to monetize your website is through the Amazon partner program.

Amazon sells practically everything and has a large number of products available for any topic you like to write; It also offers a good commission if people link to your site from your blog and buy the products.

I recommend you take into account several factors regarding the affiliate products you choose to promote; For example, it is recommended that the price varies between $ 30 and $ 150, since very economical products imply that you sell much more (that is, generate much more traffic) to charge good commissions, while products that are too expensive are more difficult to sell .

Other methods to monetize your blog

Of course there are also other methods to monetize your website. From creating and promoting your own products, entering partner platforms, selling courses or even advertising companies, you already have several monetization options.

The niche of your blog should be a highly sought after topic in search engines
Another very important aspect is knowing how many people are really looking for information on the topic you are going to work on.

Google's keyword search engine is the best tool you have at hand, because, although it does not accurately measure the number of people looking for information in your niche, it gives you a fairly clear estimate.

Keep in mind that the search engine counts people who are looking for an exact word, not their variations. A useful tip to select topics whose keywords are searched by between one thousand and two thousand people daily.

How to know if there is a lot of competition in the niche of your blog that you chose
Some themes attract surprising amounts of traffic and, in the same way, a surprising amount of competitors, that is, many blogs and pages that try to get the attention of your target.

To check the status of your competition, simply place your keywords in the Google search engine and see how many pages already consolidated appear at the beginning.

To find out how well established a web page is, you can enter its URL in Open Site Explorer. If your competition has a slightly higher rank than 50, it is a moderately well established page, but if it goes above 60, it will be hard to beat.

You can also observe the backup links of the page with Open Site Explorer, so if they do not come from reliable sites or do not have much movement, you can have an advantage. You can also evaluate the content of the first pages, because Google often puts recognized pages as first results even if they have little content; that's where you can focus and take advantage.

The explained in the three aspects mentioned, gives you an idea of   how to choose your niche or central theme.Remember that the topic should be something that you are passionate about and that you can try the thematic variations. Keep in mind that the blog will be your new way of working.

Follow this exercise to help you get ideas on your core topic:

• Brainstorm with 10 to 20 possible core themes.
• Choose the 3 or 4 themes that most capture your attention.
• As you learned above, analyze the market values   of the selected topics: investigate their ability to generate revenue through traffic, commissions, competition and a variety of products.
• Choose the central theme that offers you a better balance between how much you like it and its potential to generate revenue.

For your blog to work, it must meet three basic requirements:

Create your content and promote it

Very good! By now, your main work tool, your blog, is already in order. Now what you need is to create excellent content that keeps visitors constantly returning to your blog.

Many people have as a priority the creation of content, however, this is only half of the work, since for your blog to be successful, you must maintain a balance between good content and the proper promotion of it on the network.

It is very important to keep your audience informed, publicize news and create impact when releasing your new content to users.

The better you promote your content, the more people will visit your blog and the more likely it will generate revenue. In the following steps I will show you how to create your content and social media strategies, as well as how to produce and promote good quality content.

Create your content strategy

Instead of starting to create random content, it is best to start with the design of a content strategy.

I understand that you are eager to upload content on your new blog, and I even agree that it is good that you start posting content as early as possible, however, it is best to start with a clear idea about what you are going to write, before start to work.

The easiest way to do this is to try to answer in your content any possible questions that your audience may have at the time of reading. With full awareness of your central theme, focus on the most important issues at the time of writing.

Search blogs already established and see what questions remain unsolved in the comments. You will be surprised at the large number of new themes that you can get this way.

What are the essential pages that your blog should have
Before you start writing content on a specific topic, you must have the following pages on your blog (create them as pages not as posts):

1. Contact page.
2. Information about you, your company or your project.
3. Terms of Service page.
4. Privacy Policy Page.
5. Content that prompts you to subscribe to your email list.

The first four points that I recommend are easy to do and you can have them ready in one day without any problem; they are essential content that every blog or website should have regardless of what they are about

As for the last point, the mentioned content should encourage people to subscribe to your blog. Such content should provide special help for anyone who visits your page and should be interesting.

I suggest you use titles such as The perfect guide for (something of your central theme) or The 10 most common mistakes that are made when (activity related to your core theme), but any title that comes to mind and that is entertaining, eye-catching, current and of general or current utility, it will be more than good.

How to have ideas to create content for your blog

Half of this point is already earned, because in step 2 you have already researched the most used keywords in your core theme. So, you can already have a clear idea of   the type of content sought by people interested in your niche.

In the same way I recommend adding the following activities to your agenda:

• Visit your competitors' sites and see what their best content is about
• Place keywords from your niche on Google and see the content that appears in the results
• Use the keyword planner (Google Keyword Planner) to find words related to your core theme.
• Use applications like SEMRush to see which keywords your competitors use and which ones they focus on.

Every time you have a new content idea, write it down; In this way, as your blog progresses, you will have accumulated ideas to create content. The ultimate goal is the production of content with each of those useful ideas.

Now, a difficulty that you can find when selecting your content is that there is too much competition in your niche. If this happens, it could take you a little more time and effort to get your content to appear in the first search results, but don't worry, because to avoid this problem I will teach you a small strategy to find content options with little competition and make it easier for you to climb the search ranges.

First of all, you should know that this strategy involves the use of SEMRush. You can use the free version, but for the best results, I recommend that you pay for the premium version of the application, as it will allow you to see many more results, that is, more options for new content.

The steps of the strategy are as follows:

Go to Google and enter your main keywords.
Open the second and third search pages, and if necessary, the following.
Take those domains, pages and blogs of low rank, and review them with SEMRush.
Write down the keywords that such sites have on their first page or main page.

Create your content

There are two important factors to achieve success as a blogger: create and know how to promote good content. Before promoting your content, you must ensure that it is feasible. Remember that the better your content, your promotion will be easier.

A very important goal when creating your content is that the audience likes it. Do not write content only for search engines, but for people, mainly; so when writing pay attention and use keywords. Similarly, create content regularly.

Below I summarize how to produce quality content for your blog.

How to make a calendar to plan the content of your blog

In step 6 we talked about how to keep a list of content ideas. Now that you have some keywords as the basis for content ideas, it is very useful to organize them all on a calendar.

Having a content calendar helps you write in an orderly manner. While there is no specific number of posts that must be written within a certain amount of time, it is very rare for people to post new content randomly. There are those who publish new content once or several times a day, a week or even a month. If you promote your content correctly, a single publication per month may be more than enough to generate profits.

How to create a blog with good quality content
There are complete books on how to create quality content, but for ease, in this step I will present the panorama of what you should know to start your career as a content writer.

When creating content for your blog, you have 2 goals:

1. Your mission is to create content for your blog that solves specific questions and questions from users

To be sure of this, look for the keywords in your niche that are being searched by your audience and create content that responds correctly to that search. Find that when people read you, they don't feel any need to go to another page to seek a second opinion or additional information.

2. Your blog content must be adapted and friendly with Google SEO

The algorithm that determines the range of content in Google is a criterion that analyzes different aspects, such as the use of titles, subtitles and labels, number of words, keywords in the body of the text, among others. These factors help Google automatically determine the quality of the content in relation to the requested search.

According to the above, your second mission is to write content that meets Google’s technical criteria, or at least does not violate them.

3. Create content that your audience wants to share

Finally, you are also looking to create content that people are willing to share, and that includes what I already mentioned about correctly and completely answering the questions that users have. But for your content to inspire readers to share it, it must cause you to want someone else to read it.

Due to the latter, I present five strategies to make your content more impactful.

Write your article at least 2,000 words long

Normally, publications do not go from 2000 to 4000 words per content, however, the publications with the highest number of words tend to be the ones with the most authority on the web. Try to have your average informative content between 4000 and 5000 words and that the guides you present have 10000-20000 words.

The longer your article the better (but with quality content)

It usually responds more and better to user questions; Remember that a user whose doubts were completely cleared is more likely to share information more easily.

Try to appear in the first place of Google results

An escalation strategy works as follows: first search for top content in the search engine, according to the keywords of the topic you want to work on. After obtaining the content, consider it as a plan and create a piece of content better than the original. It certainly implies effort, but you will be creating better content than what appears in the first place.

As a result, by promoting your new content you will have more people sharing it, more mentions and more backup links.

Create a structure before you start writing

This step will help you a lot to create content in a more organized way and, of course, more valuable for the users of your blog, in this way you will avoid leaving loose ends and more easily answer questions within the content.

In addition to this, a structure facilitates the writing process, since you have already raised the points to develop and what is missing is a matter of writing as you go.

Use many subtitles

Subtitles are essential in any piece of content; use as much as possible and at the levels at which they are needed. The use of subtitles separates your content into small pieces, preventing it from looking like a lot of deformed information.

You should also know that Google's criteria take subtitles a lot into account, since they serve to better identify what your content is about.

Use images and visual aids in some articles (depending on the topic)

The visual part of your content is very important, so I recommend that you use flashy images that combine and fit well with the topic. If it is a scientific article, it does not have as many images (it has more graphics, etc.) as a medical article.

Use the images as a separator next to the most important subtitles or to help the user guide himself during the explanation of a process.

In this way you can give greater visual appeal to what you present.