If you’re interested in the fast track for how to become a blogger in 2020 see the FAST TRACK below; otherwise, skip to the next part:
Table of Contents
FAST TRACK for how to become a blogger:
First, if you want to learn how to become a blogger, you will want a hosting site.
A Hosting Site is a service that simply holds your site on a database or server for you so that visitors can come to use your site.
We recommend Bluehost. It is what I use and they are a good affordable choice for starting out a blog and website.
They have an easy one-click install of WordPress.org. WordPress is used by over ⅓ of all sites on the internet. It is well established and thus easier to figure out than other sites.
Once you have your Bluehost and you one click to install WordPress all you have to do is choose a theme and you’re well on your way to learning how to become a blogger!
If you are learning how to become a blogger for fun or ESPECIALLY if you are considering making some passive money on the side blogging, you are going to need the right tools in your writing toolbox. If you want to monetize your blog you will want to own a domain name and you will need to buy web hosting.
We use Bluehost. It is one of the top web hosting companies in 2020 and one of the four most trusted hosting sites for WordPress blogs. You can start your own blog with them for as low as $3.95 a month (It’s normally $7.99 a month, but with promotions they offer you can get your first 3 years at a lower rate.) That is their basic plan. The premium costs more, but I’d just start with the basic. It’s all you’ll need right now and you’ll save money. Lots of people are signing up with Bluehost every day so don’t miss out on a good starting price.
You could start professionally blogging today for as little as $47.40 a year.
You can choose a different site to host your blog (and I list other host options in this guide in Step 1 if you want to see other options) but if you decide to use Bluehost you can get your domain name for free for your first year (this will save you at least $11.99 on your initial purchase). I went ahead and got the 36-month plan because it saved me money in the long run. I’m glad I did.
Even if you’re not planning on monetizing your blog you never know when you might change your mind and decide to and at that moment you’ll be happy you decided to self-host your blog and own your domain name.
If you don’t own your domain and you’re not using WordPress.org instead of WordPress.com (tricky and confusing, I know) then your site could be shut down at any moment for NO REASON. This is based on the “free” hosting terms of use. To keep this from happening you would need to own your domain and choose a hosting site that allows you to “self-host” instead of “shared host.”
This is another reason I use Bluehost, you own your domain, and you’re self-hosted through them and no one can shut down your site on a whim. With GoDaddy or Blogger, you don’t “own” your domain 🙁
If I could save you the hassle and confusion I would say just start with Bluehost, but you’ll have to make that decision for yourself.
For those who are thinking of making money through a blog: having your own site looks more professional to potential clients, affiliate programs, ad networks, and readers. You will be able to have a better following and at any moment you will be able to decide to monetize through ads and affiliate marketing.
Some of my blogging mentors had their blogs going for years before they decided to monetize. You just never know.
For anyone considering Web Hosting with Bluehost read this, if not you can skip further down:
Follow this link: “Bluehost Link” and see:
- Free Domain Name for 1st year
- FREE SSL Certificate Included (this helps visitors trust your site)
- 1-Click WordPress Install (this saves a lot of complication)
- 24/7 Support
- Get at least 36 months (3 years) at $3.95 a month their site says
$8.99a month (That’s a difference of at least $179) - Plus * They say special intro offer and 30-day money-back guarantee (fyi, the 30-day guarantee does not include the domain name, so if you request a refund they will charge you for the $15 domain name you initially got for free the first year. It wasn’t a problem for me, but I just wanted you to know and be aware 🙂 )
With this one-click easy setup, you’ll be set up to blog and learn how to become a blogger in no time. You’ll be set up to have another income stream while working from home, whether full-time or on the side.
And if you decide to switch to a new host later, that is something you can do and you take your domain name with you.
End of FAST TRACK on how to become a blogger.
Now on to the juicy stuff, the 11 easy steps on how to become a blogger.
How to Become a Blogger in 11 Easy Steps
- Choose your Host Site
- The Fun Part 1: Choose your Domain Name
- The Fun Part 2: Choose What You Know Well and Find Interesting to Write About
- Choose your Platform
- Next You’ll Want to Design Your Blog
- Create Necessary Pages (Contact, Home, About Us)
- Create a Publishing Routine
- Make Sure to Create Great Photos That Feel Professional
- Devise a Strategy that Will Make your Content POP!
- Learn to Promote your Content Through as Many Channels as Possible (Without Being SPAMMY!)
- Learning How to Become a Blogger Takes Work (Don’t Be Fooled. This is NOT a “get rich quick” scheme)
- BONUS: Plugins I’m enjoying 🙂
How to Become a Blogger
1. Choose your host site
We have already gone over choosing a host site extensively in the FAST TRACK above. As you know I recommend using Bluehost. If you want, you can jump over to their site right now through this link: “Bluehost Link” (Which will get you a free domain name for your 1st year) and as we go step by step you can take action on your brand new blog as we go along in How To Become a Blogger!
Another good alternative to check out for blogging with WordPress.org would be Kinsta. They are a bit more optimized for more traffic sites. You can check them out here: “Kinsta Blog Hosting Plans“
Some other popular WordPress.org Hosting site options:
- WP Engine
- Flywheel
- HostGator
- SiteGround
- DreamHost
- InMotion
- Kinsta
For me personally, I recommend avoiding hosts that use “shared hosting” and looking for hosting that allows you to “self-host.” It may be cheaper in some circumstances to use shared, but there is USUALLY a reason why it’s cheaper and there are some things you just don’t want to cheap out on (like used socks compared to new socks, just don’t do that.)
That being said, there are many options to choose from and I would make it easy on you by saying again that I use Bluehost personally and they were very easy to sign up with and get started easily in one sitting. They make something as confusing as hosting and getting a blog started on WordPress.org as easy as a ‘click.’ But you have to choose for yourself which host will be best for your site needs.
2. The Fun Part 1: Choose your domain name
After choosing your host site, most of the time you will be asked to buy a domain through them or they will be expecting you to bring your owned domain name with you.
For me, this part (choosing a domain name) was more fun. I’m a creative type. That means any time I get to brainstorm, innovate, or create I get pretty excited.
Not everyone gets excited when learning how to become a blogger so I guess I’m nerdy in that way 8)
When thinking about a domain name, try to think of something catchy, but not too long.
Think of something that is a play on words like “do the Write thing” instead of “do the right thing,” because at Do the Write Thing we write about writing and we want to help you do the right thing while you write 🙂
We like writing and writing about writing so it’s fun all around!
Some “punny” play on word ideas to help your brain juices get pumping on how to become a blogger with a creative domain name:
- Love everything Llama? No Probllama
- Like baking? You bake me crazy!
- Inspirational? Have Beleaf in yourself
- Vegetarians? Give Peas a chance
- Selling lights? You light up my life
- Still like baking? All you knead is love
- Can’t get enough dessert? Get stuck on a dark dessert highway
- Do you love coffee a latte?
- Writing about tea? Watch out for the Tea-rex!
- Writing about everything Irish? Irish I had an idea for you…
To choose a good domain name you’ll probably want to have in mind what you want to write about. Name and niche pretty much go hand in hand.
Try to specialize in something.
You don’t want to be so broad that you write about anything and everything. You won’t be able to hold anyone’s attention that way.
You also don’t want to be SO specialized that you run out of topic material.
My suggestion is do some quick research.
Look up topics you enjoy and are interested in. Don’t just go for topics you think will make a lot of page views or money.
Readers will be able to tell if you like or know anything about what you’re writing about and worst of all, you’ll be able to tell. You’ll start writing and you’ll find that you’re bored and you can’t wait till it’s over. This won’t last long before you give up and stop writing.
This brings us to the next step. These two steps go hand in hand. Pick your domain name, pick your writing subject.
3. The Fun Part 2: Choose What You Know Well and Find Interesting to Write About
So again do some research.
When you think of something you like, for example, skydiving. You can look up blogs about skydiving and start to see how you can write about the topic you’re interested in.
I recommend reading many things about your topic that you’re thinking about how to become a blogger about. Books, blogs, article, videos, educate yourself on the subject and become an expert. Figure out how to become a blogger expert on your topic. NEVER copy someone. It’ll be easy at first, but it will hurt you down the road. Become your own expert on something. Then you can write from what you know and it’s yours and you can own it.
As writers, the best place to get ideas is from real life whether it’s your personal experience or whether you interview someone that went through the experience you want to be a blogger about.
This will help you develop unique and dynamic content that your readers will eat up as you learn how to become a blogger!
Once you have a pretty good idea of your topic and the research you’ve done will help you come up with something unique and creative for your domain name.
(Don’t be afraid to choose the wrong name.) You, your site, and your writing will grow and change over time.
There are many successful blogs that start out in one topic but migrate to another with time.
The worst thing you can do to yourself is be paralyzed by indecision.
Pick a topic, pick a name, and get started!
If you’re really worried about it just make it your own name and then you can make it about whatever you want whenever you want.
4. Choose your platform
I recommend WordPress.org for this.
I would avoid WordPress.com- you can’t use free plugins. And just because you buy a domain name on godaddy doesn’t mean you “own it.”
You have to be careful with who you go with as far as blogging.
With Bluehost, it was literally as easy as a click for me and I was ready to start blogging on WordPress.org at no extra charge.
WordPress.org gives you the option of MANY free high-quality plugins to work with, and lots of content on the internet is made daily to help you out with blogging on WPO.
WPO= WordPress.org for short.
WPO has been around for a while so they have developed their platform and worked through many bugs and issues.
Since a lot of sites use WPO there are an equal amount of engineers creating friendly themes and plugins that make your life as a WPO user much easier.
Also, there is a ton of helpful information just a google search away. There is a massive amount of youtube videos and content written to help WPO users get things done.
If you happen to run into a problem or can’t figure something out, you can literally do this: Google search: “How do I (problem) WordPress” and I’ll wager that you will get a large number of resources and answers to guide you to your WPO solution.
Other platforms are not bad and have their upsides to using something like WPO, but in my opinion, there are less free good resources to help you get done what you want and run as smoothly as what you might find on WordPress.org
For me it is a matter of convenience.
I like the resources I have found for WPO. They have been nice, up to date, work seamlessly, and are reliable.
Other platforms and resources for them might not be as convenient or caught up with the curve as they just don’t own enough of the space yet.
With other platforms, you may have a little more freedom to customize and create a look outside of the box if you think that might be more your thing and you want to spend more time figuring it out. If you like the idea of website development then you might like that.
For me I wouldn’t consider a different platform unless you want to do more customized development. You can do a ton of blog dev on WPO, but some platforms are made for dramatic development. For me it’s an overkill for the type of blogging and money making I want to do with my blog.
5. Next You’ll Want to Design Your Blog
In my opinion this part was not my favorite.
When you’re learning how to become a blogger, you don’t think about how much designing and development you have to figure out if you want your site to look and feel professional.
Thankfully there a are a good amount of themes to choose from but even with themes there is a fair amount to figure out on your own.
I’m a writer, not a designer, but through the process of learning how to become a blogger myself and designing it myself, I learned valuable WordPress skills and I’m happy that I did it.
If you don’t have time to design your own blog I recommend hiring a WordPress developer.
There are several or more freelancing sites that have many freelancers to choose from and the sites usually make it fairly easy for clients to find freelancers and protect them during the payment process.
If you want to find a good freelancer look at these important things:
- Look at their reviews. If they have a bunch of glowing reviews they probably will do good on your project as well.
- Look at how much they charged other clients and how consistently they charged the price they are asking for. You can learn a lot by going through their reviews and save yourself time in the interview process.
- If they know what they are doing and talking about they probably will have clients lining up to work with them so they might be less likely to worry about impressing you in the interview process. Freelancers interview everyday so more than likely they are looking to shorten the interview time. It’s time and work they don’t get paid for. Look for the freelancer that isn’t that interested in “wowing” you upfront, but still has amazing reviews and commands a decent price.
- Cheap work is easy to find and you might waste money by going cheap. You might be able to find a lower priced freelancer with amazing reviews, but more than likely if it seems to good to be true, don’t waste your time. Go for the freelancer that is interested in giving you a great product, not the one that’s looking to “wow” you in the interview. Some high quality freelancers won’t even go into a free interview and won’t offer any free samples. These freelancers most likely have very good experience and profitable ideas for your business.
- Look for samples on their site.
- Look to see if they have established their own sites.
- Look to see how many hours they’ve worked and what each job outcome looks like.
If you are going to DIY, One of the main things to decide and easier things to do is to choose a theme.
Even though themes are easily loaded and switched around the theme you choose is very important and gives your readers a “feel” for your sites personality.
The cool thing about WordPress is that there are A LOT of free themes to choose from and you may find a free one that you love.
Not to worry though. If you can’t find one you love, you may want to purchase a theme as they come with other benefits, but they are very affordable.
I recommend writing a blog post and loading the post and then going through different themes to see in real life which theme feels the best to you.
It was easy for me to load one and see right away whether I liked it or not.
This is also a good time to look up 10 or more blogs you like so you can start to see what your options are, what you like and what maybe you don’t like. I know this process was very helpful for me when choosing a theme.
By looking at other blogs I realized I didn’t like crazy colors, that I liked something more simple and that I was looking for a simple plain background.
It would have been hard for me to picture what I liked if I hadn’t gone through to see my options.
6. Create Your Necessary Pages (Contact, Home, About Us)
As you are learning how to become a blogger you will see that a post is your traditional blog post, similar to this one.
But your pages are more like foundational pieces of your blog site, examples: About Page, Contact Page, Home Page.
These will be tough to figure out, but going through and nailing them down right away will help you choose your design and theme.
If you are looking just for an outlet to write and you have no interest in promoting your content right away then the more fun and creative process is to procrastinate these pages.
If you want to promote and monetize your site and create side income or full time income for yourself you will have to make these pages and make them sooner rather than later.
In today’s savvy internet culture, readers and browsers look for these pages.
After reading some good tips on your posts the reader is going to get curious, “who is this person writing these things for me.” As emotional and social beings we long to connect with each other. A great way for you to connect with your readers and for them to connect with you is to make a great and personal “About Us” page.
You want to stand out from your competitors so you’re going to want to make it welcoming, inviting, personal, fun, and somewhat vulnerable.
Naturally, you’ll tend to steer away from being vulnerable with your audience, but in doing so you’ll be like everyone else and they won’t connect with you as well.
At the same time you don’t have to share EVERYTHING with the world right away. Just share things that you’re comfortable sharing. Share struggles and fears, but share also how you overcame them. You never know when one of your visitors is struggling with something similar to you and how reading your story can help encourage them and pull them out of the fog.
Every part of your site can be made to feel more inviting, professional and warm. Especially your Home page.
Think of your website like a house with many rooms. Your home page is the part of the house that has the most doors and the most possibilities for the visitor to look around.
Another way to view the home page is like a place to reset. They might get lost down some corridors and hallways into your blog area. By being able to click the home button at the top they know they can start over and find whatever they are looking for next.
You might be thinking you want to venture off the beaten path and make these pages different or not at all. I wouldn’t recommend this. With these pages, visitors have been “trained” to expect this sort of layout and you will make your site less user-friendly by not following the traditional layout.
You don’t want to copy anyone’s about us page, but you definitely want to make your own if you intend to share, promote, or monetize your content.
Creating the traditional layout pages can be tedious at times, but in the long run, you’ll be glad you did.
7. Create a Publishing Routine
You don’t have to write at the same time every day. You don’t have to publish at the same time every month, but developing a habit has been proven time and time again to be reliably helpful as you successfully learn how to become a blogger.
You will have to figure out what works best for your schedule, but here are some helpful habits for the creative writing process.
- Don’t wait for inspiration
- Write down your ideas when they come to you, not later
- Make time to write
- Keep a journal
- When you start a blog make a quick outline or you’ll forget your main points
- Figure out what tools work best for you
Don’t wait for inspiration
You have to learn to just sit down and write. If you wait for inspiration you will never actually write anything down.
You may feel inspired from time to time or maybe even a lot at the beginning of your blogger journey, but as time wanes on you might find it more and more difficult to just write.
It’s best to just force yourself to write and do research to figure out what you don’t know and manufacture inspiration of your own.
Write your ideas down the moment they come to you. Don’t wait till later.
Inspriational writers and thinkers including music artist have developed their own routine for recoeding their creative ideas, whether they are out with friends, at work, driving, or awoken from a dream.
For me, I have a notepad on my phone that I use a lot, and I also like to use google docs.
Especially for blogging. I’ll be in the middle of creating a blog post and I realize a title for another blog post I’d like to make and at that moment I take 15 seconds. I open a brand new google doc, type the title, and close the google doc.
I don’t want to take away from what I am writing, especially if I’m “in the zone,” but I also have been creating long enough to know that if I don’t write it down right now, later on tonight, I’ll get this feeling that I had an idea BUT I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT IT WAS!
It is honestly one of my LEAST favorite feeling in all the whole universe…I’m being slightly dramatic, but for real…I hate it.
So now instead of thinking to myself “oh that’s a good idea, I’ll write it down later or tonight before bed, NOPE! Gotta find something to write it on now.
And if worse comes to worst you can always write it on your arm or a napkin and stuff it in your pocket for later.
Full Disclosure: I just left this page, opened a google doc and wrote down a title for a blog I’d like to create later.
Now hopefully the internet won’t crash and I won’t lose all my good ideas.
Make time to write
Just like inspiration won’t come smack you in the face every day, having time to write won’t be some magical luxury that makes itself avaible to you out of nowhere.
When you are learning how to become a blogger you need to make time for you to write.
There are many thoughts on what time of the day is best for your creative mind to flow right and make things happen.
For me thoigh, I wirte at all times of the day. I write after I do my wake up routine. I write mid day. I write in the evening. I write late. It’s 12 am right now and I’m writing. For me it really just depends on the day and when I can make time.
For me writing success is as simple as this simple little question:
Yes: Success!
No: Failure!
That works for me. It might not work for you!
I tried all the other tricks; write a certain number of words a day, write a certain amount of time a day, write at a certain time every day. It just wasn’t working for me.
After years of trying different techniques I learned or read about, I just started to tell myself, I just have to write, I just have to write.
And what I found was that just by starting to write I would usually get into a rythm and end up writing a good amount if I sat down just to write. I didn’t have any word constraints or time restraints.
I could quit if I wanted or write if I wanted, but I didn’t have any prisoner- like goals to accomplaish “or else.”
I found this to be very freeing for me and it made the process of writing less work and more fun.
Some days it is still hard to start, but once I do it is quite enjoyable most days.
You must figure out what works best for you so that you will create at least a bit every day if you can.
Keep a Journal
I think some people will really like this.
Keep a journal of your thoughts and great ideas, that way you always hae something to look to for inspiration.
Keeping a dream journal is a unique practice that I find interesting and I may start up again someday.
I have tried the regular journaling pracitce and it hasn’t helped me personally, but I have experienced fun moments of reading old journals and being shocked that I thought something or did something and went “oh wow, I don’t remember that!” Or “wow, I’m glad I wrote that down, that’s very cool.”
So, I would especally think for some people that a journal would be a very good idea and would be very helpful in learning how to become a blogger.
When you start a blog post make a quick outline or you’ll forget your main points
This step is HUGE for me in my blogger routine.
The day I started to make this is a habit in my blogger life is the day I shouted for joy. OK so I probably didn’t literally shout for joy, but I cannot tell you enough how helpful it has been to develop the practice and method of creating an outline of my main points first thing.
For me, this is no longer some BIG TEDIOUS brainstorming session. No, this part usually takes me a few seconds and if I really cant think of good ideas I’ll do a quick 5 minute google search. I may edit or change parts of the list as I go along with the post, but that’s about it. I try to keep things in my blogger process simple and effective.
As you learn how to become a blogger you’ll develop your routine and best habit practices and you’ll enjoy them too, hopefully 🙂
With my outline of the main points I want to hit the blog almost writes itself.
You’d be surprised how often your writing and you draw a blank. My outline is what I look to anytime I run out of words to write. I scroll up or click over to my outline and look to see where I’ve been and where I’m headed.
This helps me stay on track and cuts down my blogger work from home time down dramatically.
Also, when you first think of the blog post you want to write all these great ideas fly through your head of what it should be made of. I’ll bet you that when you come back to write about it, you completely forget what those great ideas were.
With an outline, you can step away from your post and pick up easily where you left off just by looking at what you have written and your list of what you want to write. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve been distracted from this exact post or had to walk away or put it down or go to sleep while I’ve been writing it, but every time I come back I just go to my outline and see what I’ve done and I know where I want to go and I feel good about it.
You don’t want to make a habit of walking away from your piece in the middle of a thought. You want to do your best to find a good place to stop that will be easy to pick up from later. Finish your thought or your main idea and then get up. Life is too complicated so it’s best to plan for interruptions because they will happen more often than you think.
Therefore, make an outline and you’ll be so glad you did!
Figure out what tools work best for you
As you learn how to become a blogger, you will find that not every tool offered to you is necessary, you will love some, and you will ponder why others use some that they do.
For instance, for me, some of my greatest tools outside of my acer laptop, Bluehost, and WPO are Google Docs and outlines.
The moment I found google docs changed my freelance writer life. That has carried on to all my writer projects, including my blogger projects.
And as I expressed above, I am so fortunate to have developed a habit of outlining.
For some people, long brainstorming sessions are big for them and they develop these big idea brainstorm bubbles on white boards. I never needed that nor did I enjoy it. For me it was a waste of time. It doesn’t help my brain simplify the tasks I need to do to get the blog done.
Your tools are going to be best used to partner with your working style to get the blog done in a fun but effective manner. So find tools that help you get the job done faster and better.
Another tool that I enjoy having around is Grammarly.
It took me a long time to give in to the Grammarly crowd, I thought, “eh, I’m a good writer. I don’t need it. It’s just another thing to bother me.” But to the contrary, I love having it. Best part! It’s completely free! They have a paid version too that can give you extra insight into your writing and how it can be better.
I would recommend Grammarly to anyone who writes and bloggers. It’s a no brainer. I would especially recommend their paid version for bloggers and writers where English isn’t your first language. Even if English isn’t your first language, the paid version of Grammarly will help you with English in a way that spell check can’t.
Grammarly checks not just spelling, but the use of commas, periods, punctuation, and word choices that makes it more professional and readable in English, and English doesn’t have to be your first language for you to make a living as a blogger or writer in English. Between Google, Grammarly, and freelancers you can get it done and get paid for what you do!
In conclusion, you have to figure out what blogger tools are best for your specific writing goals and needs.
8. Make Sure to Create Great Photos That Feel Professional
In your journey to learning how to become a blogger you will quickly realize how important images are to your image, tone, and feel of your blog.
Blogs without images just don’t perform as well.
It is sad but true.
Blogs with images, especially, unique, fun lively ones tend to give a more professional feel and tone to your blogger community.
For me right now, I use a combination of Unsplash and Mailchimp to get great looking customized photos and texts FO FREE.
Yes, the image above is cheesy. But it proves a point. It only took me a few moments to make this image and load it up to this page for you. This means you don’t have to spend hours on photoshop or hundreds of dollars on stock images or developers.
While you are blogging, especially using WordPress. You will start to get a feel if you want to start offering your freelance services as a developer, more specifically a WordPress developer. If you do decide to do this, I would definitely recommend using Adobe Photoshop and other Adobe Tools to offer amazing services to clients! My sister has her own photography business and she uses Photoshop non-stop on her projects and couldn’t do her side hustle without it.
In learning how to become a blogger, you might just find out that you want to be a WordPress Developer as well. If this is your case, I recommend getting more deeply involved with WordPress and checking out their professional plans as well as Adobe and their Pro Plans.
You can start with WordPress FREE, but if you are going to be a serious developer (freelancer) that makes good money, you’ll want to at least go with Premium. If you are designing for Ecommerce store clients, you’ll want to know how to use the eCommerce plan. (Disclaimer: Make sure you know the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com and use the one that makes sense for you.)
While you’re starting out and learning how to become a blogger you might not need to spend money on professional tools to make great, unique amazing looking photos that give your site the feel and tone you want it to have. If you decide to, that’s completely up to you, and I’ve laid out various options here, but most of all just make sure you put it crisp looking videos and photos where you can, but don’t overdo it and make sure that it makes sense.
9. Devise a Strategy that Will Make your Content POP!
The idea of “content strategy” can mean a bazillion things, some of them more technical than others. But as you learn to become a blogger your content strategy will grow and change with time.
In this strategy we will focus on these things briefly: (this is in no way exhaustive)
- Some technical stuff
- Make your content readable
- Make your content POP!
- Understand your audience
- Feed your audience
Some technical stuff
This would be like planning and organizing. Some people love organizing. Not me. I love “being” organized, but I do not enjoy the process. For me it is a necessary discipline that I have learned with practice and time.
I use my phone, notes, google docs, email, and my wife to help me stay organized 🙂
You need to figure out what organization tips and tricks will work best for you to keep you going and on task with your content strategy.
I don’t have a set schedule. My schedule is actually very fluid and for the most part I work to keep it that way. Then I can say yes or no to things freely.
That’s not for everyone. Some people LOVE their schedule and how dare you live without one 😉 haha, but if you need a schedule I recommend a tool like Trello or other free scheduling tools.
Trello is nice and neat and it’s set up to be an easier, smarter interactive to do list with alerts and calendars to help you stay on schedule and not forget things. Trello really helps with a team. You can throw up a to do and the teammates that are in the need to know will know instantly. No need to schedule a meeting. Actually, if you need to schedule a meeting with certain teammates and not others you can do that too. Imagine Trello as a virtual office that runs on smart sticky notes and chats.
Figure out what technical tools you need in order to make your blogger life continue to spin as you journey deeper in how to become a blogger.
Make your content readable
As you continue to learn how to become a blogger you will want to develop a skill that should be second nature to you as you create and write content.
I CANNOT overstate how under-stressed this point is. Make your content readable.
This means your content needs to be written at a low reading level. Be aware of your audience of course, but for the most part writing at an eighth grade reading level is high enough and will be more accepted by your traffic than if you wrote to them at a college level or higher.
As a blogger write shorter paragraphs. Sometimes just write just one sentence, this will help your audience read through all of your material. Most web visitors naturally skip big BLOCKS of text and skip to the more scan-able texts.
Write simple and make it easier for your audience to digest your content. Use the Flesch Readability calculator and try to maintain a score above 70. Keep it fairly easy at least for all your readers.
Make your content POP!
As a blogger, how does one make content POP?
We already went over images and how important they are to you as a blogger and how they make content have a completely new feel and how easy they can be to create.
But now I’m talking about your text.
It is actually REALLY EASY and in time with practice, you can become very good at it.
You might not even think about it but I’m doing it right now.
That’s right just bold, italicize, color, highlight, capitalize, or underline your text in the right places, at the right moment and this will help your content POP for readers to digest more easily!
Don’t overdo it and learn how to do it masterfully and it will be a very useful skill as you learn how to become a blogger.
Understand your audience
Take your time. Do your homework. Get something like Google Analytics and get to know your audience.
Listen to your readers’ comments not just on your site, but on other sites where you can find them as well.
Find them on chats, forums, comments on products, find them wherever you can and pay attention to them, their words and how they talk about what they like and what they don’t like.
When your audience responds to what you do, take note and respond in kind.
Feed your audience
When you find out what your audience likes, doesn’t like and what they want, give it to them!
Find out what your audience is asking and answers those questions in a post.
Find out what their worries and doubts are and try to find solutions for them.
Try to help your audience.
Find out what they want to know as well as be savvy enough to understand what they need to know and give it to them 🙂
10. Learn to Promote your Content Through as Many Channels as Possible (Without Being SPAMMY!)
This one is a toughy.
You want to promote your content as much as you can, but you DEFINITELY want to be cautious about being too Spammy.
In other words, don’t be that guy or gal!
You know what they are like. They pop into your forum out of nowhere. They don’t add any value to the convo. They just post a link to WHO KNOWS WHAT?! and then disappear like a fart in the wind (they literally make a fart noise as they vanish into a cloud of green dust laughing maniacally.)
But in all seriousness, as you learn how to become a blogger you will quickly realize that a successful blogger is one that spends A LOT of time promoting their blog.
But don’t worry!
You don’t have to be spammy to do this well!
You actually get to be helpful and build meaningful blogger relationships 🙂
That’s the best way to do it anyways.
Find ways to join conversations all over the internet.
Be a kind, polite, and nice person.
BE HELPFUL!
Don’t post your own stuff right away unless it makes sense. Take time to answer questions, pose meaningful questions and add value to the conversation.
As you leave a good impression on others, when the right time comes you’ll be able to recommend one of your posts that is helpful to the group and generate some traffic for yourself as a blogger.
In today’s social media world you will find lots of opportunities to use Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and other platforms to generate some more traffic for your blogger time.
With social media, your best tactic is original and unique looking content.
Try creating photos with text that are eye–catching.
Try to make your photos professional looking. Remember that you are competing with the millions, no, billions of other eye candy photos that pop up every mili-second on social media.
Get creative, find groups and pages on social media that are interactive and where you can cut through the white noise to 1,000 to 10,000 active users all at one time.
Be careful not to give in to the temptation to use spam tactics. Google is smart and they will blacklist you. Even if you get your link posted on 1000 pages in one day, your ranking will go down so fast and your affiliate programs won’t appreciate it (and may drop you) and if you want to be a respected blogger you will only be shooting yourself in the foot long before you learn how to become a blogger.
As you are learning how to become a blogger, just make sure you avoid being spammy and make sure to spend time promoting yourself as a well-respected blogger by being helpful and adding value wherever you bring your presence.
11. Learning How to Become a Blogger Takes Work (Don’t Be Fooled. This is NOT a “get rich quick” scheme)
Let me repeat: learning how to become a blogger will take a good amount of work on your part.
But don’t despair. That work will be worth it. Even if you fail dramatically, which I have read about others doing. You will have learned something new about yourself. Or you will have gained some new skills for the work from home, freelance market place.
Possible skills you can immediately put to use and earn money as a freelancer from starting your own blog:
- Blogging
- WordPress Development (If you used WordPress)
- VA (Virtual Assistant for clients building their own sites)
- Writing
- Marketing
- Copywriting
And this is not an exhaustive list.
Taking the time to learn how to become a blogger could benefit your future in ways that you can’t see yet.
Don’t worry that it will be work to do what you dream of doing.
Anything worth doing will take up your time and energy.
And whatever you decide to do, don’t be afraid to tell the world:
12. BONUS: Recommended Plugins
- Rank Math SEO
- Content Views
- Social Snap
- Black Studio TinyMCE Widget
Rank Math SEO is like SEO made easy for bloggers on WordPress. I’m not sure if it works for other platforms, but WE LOVE IT!
Content Views allows you to make extra widgets for any page or post fast and easy!
Social Snap allows you to have beautiful and professional social share buttons and extra control over what they do and how the share comes out.
Black Studio TinyMCE Widget Crazy long weird name; GREAT plugin. I have yet to take total advantage of, but it is amazing. One of the features I love about it right now is the ability to create “Paragraph” content in my header, footer, and sidebar. Game changer for me!
Tell us if you’re learning how to become a blogger.
Leave a comment.
What are some things you’ve learned in how to become a blogger?
Have you had your own personal journey in learning how to become a blogger?
Did like this Guide and Tutorial on how to become a blogger?
What would you add to this guide?
Other Resources You Might Enjoy:
Become a Better Writer in 30 Days or LESS
How to Make Money Blogging with Affiliate Marketing
6 Work From Home Opportunities for Making Money Online
How to Make Money as a Blogger
How to Make Your Blog Profitable in Year One
MASSIVE Guide: How to Write a Book
Want to get paid to write? Check out Writing Paychecks
- There is a simple method over 30,000 people use to get paid for freelance writing online.
- Opportunities can get started in just minutes a day, all from your home couch.
- It’s easy to get started! No previous experience or degree required to start.
- Exclusive job listings for writers, updated daily.
Check out Writing Paychecks to see if you can start getting paid to write today.
Check out these FREE trial resources from Amazon for when you work from home (or are stuck at home 🙂 ) As an Amazon associate, if you do sign up or buy anything using Amazon links from our site we make a commission at no extra cost to you.
Free Prime Membership Trial:
Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial
Try Prime Discounted (Free Trial)
Get Unlimited Music for Free (30-day free trial):
Free Baby Registry:
Shop Amazon – Create an Amazon Baby Registry
Make your Free Amazon Wedding Registry:
Create an Amazon Wedding Registry
Great post! We adore this blog and This information is very good.
Thanks for the encouragement Luminous! I’ll leave the lights on for you to browse when you please!
Great post! We adore this blog and This information is very good.
Hey! Thanks so much!