Starting a blog or a website is really easy, whether it’s a shop or a simple blog. On this page, you will learn how to start a blog or any website in 4 easy steps. This guide is more about setting up the website and all you need to know before starting one.
This guide is not only written for beginners to learn what they need to do to start a blog, but also lots of tips from long experience for everyone out there.
Think About Your Goal and Niche
You may want to start just a simple blog or a complicated website. In any case, you have to do some research about your niche. Specially if your goal is to make money by creating a website or a blog. Starting a website without doing research is like starting a business and then deciding what you will do.
Starting a website requires some investment. I don’t mean like thousands of dollars, but you have to pay around a hundred dollars or less each month, depending on what you want to make. For example, creating a blog and writing articles will cost you around 30 dollars a month, but creating a video-sharing website may cost you around 100 dollars a month. In any case, it would be best to do all those calculations before starting your website/blog.
Think About How You Are Going to Build the Website
There are plenty of ways to create a website. But first, you have to find the right tool, unless you are a website developer and can make your website with codding. If you want to just create a blog or a website and publish articles, the best choice would be WordPress or Wix. And if you’re going to start an online shop, it is better to build it with Shopify or WordPress. You can find many website builders on the internet, and most of them are free, but before making your website, do some research to learn what tool is the best for you and your idea.
It would be best if you did research on how you are going to build a website because most host providers will only let you use only one specific website builder. Let’s say that you want to use Shopify to build an online shop, but after buying a subscription, you change your mind and find out that WordPress is better than Shopify( or vise versa). In that case, you will lose some of your investment money.
You can also hire someone to build it for you and do most of the hard work for you. But this may cost you more money. If you find it hard to find someone reliable to build a website, you can use Fiverr. There are many professional website developers in Fiverr.
Choosing a Domain Name
One of the most challenging steps is choosing a domain name. Finding your desired domain is hard because there are millions of websites there in the world with all kinds of domain names. When you think of a domain name, the domain name will most probably be already purchased by someone else, especially if it is just a simple word(for example, for dogs.com or website.com). But you can always check if it is available. Even if a simple word domain name is available for sale, that will cost you a lot of money. For example, a domain name like dogs.com or dogs.org may cost you over hundreds of thousands of dollars, which usually a .com domain costs around a maximum of 14 dollars.
Quick Tip: I have bought many domain names from different providers, but the best and cheapest of them is namecheap.com. They do not have ANY hidden fees, and they give a great discount on purchasing a domain. Also, all domains bought from Namecheap have a lifetime of Domain Privacy for free. Click here to go to namecheap.com.
Choosing your TLD
The most used TLD(Top-Level Domain) is .com. However, there are thousands of TLDs out there. The most known TLDs are .com, .net, .org, and, .xyz. While choosing a TLD, you need to think about how it may impact your visitors’ attention. For example, if I ever wanted to enter a website about dogs, and if I had two choices of entering to dogs.com or dogs.tk, I would most probably choose dogs.com. Why is it so? There is no logical answer to this. The only reason is that I would think entering a website with a .com domain is more legit and safe.
It is also said that .com domains are better for SEO and will help it to rank better. However, sometimes other TLDs may be a better choice for you. For example, if you create a website for a local business, it is better to buy a local TLD(for example, .us, .co.uk, etc.). Because country code TLDs will do a better ranking in the country with the same code as TLD.
Choosing Your Domain Name Wisely
Your domain name will impact your SEO, so it is better to choose it wisely. A domain name should have your main niche keyword in it. There are lots of tools out there that will help you pick a domain name that will have a good impact on the SEO of your website. You can check out the following tool to choose a good domain.
Another option is that you can always choose to get free domains, but it is not recommended because of security and SEO. You may not be able to have full control over the domain. There is also an alternative method to get a free domain by using sub-domain of other domains. For example, you can start blogging using blogger.com, and they will give you a free sub-domain. But in the case of using sub-domain, you have to forget about SEO.
Choose a Hosting Service
Choosing a hosting service is one of the most important steps. You don’t buy hosting from a service provider which they have lots of downtimes. You want to find a provider which is fast, reliable, and guarantees uptime. In my personal experience, I have used lots of hosting providers like HostGator, BlueHost, GoDaddy, etc. But our best experience was with Namecheap. If you used hostings other than Namecheap, you would see a huge difference in site speed when switching to their hosting(Website speed is one of the SEO’s vitals). Also, Namecheap offers hostings for a better price. To sign up and use Namecheap, click here.
Make sure that the hosting you choose has the website builder that you need. Do research about the hosting that you are going to buy. But never get fooled with the deals that hosting providers give. There could be lots of hidden fees after you start using them.
Important Conclusion on How to Start a Blog or a Website
Before you start creating a website or a blog, the most important step is to do research on the mentioned steps above. We have written the article based on our long-term experience with creating websites and blogs. Sometimes your worst ideas may be the greatest idea, and sometimes vice versa.
Always consider that you have to the SEO(you can read more about it here) of your website, or at least you have to hire someone to do it for you. Choose your domain and hosting service wisely because it will surely impact your SEO and website rank.