Are you thinking about starting a blog or interested in learning more?
People ask me all the time how I blog part-time yet earn a full-time income. Blogging has afforded me the opportunity to be a Stay at Home Mom and still have a creative outlet that makes more than any of my full-time jobs before I had kids, ever did.
Why Do I Love Blogging?
- The flexibility of staying home with my kids and working when they’re at school or after bedtime.
- The ability to schedule my blog to run automatically so I can go on vacation or take a few days off without feeling guilty or like I’ll be behind when I jump back in.
- The blogging community is incredibly kind, supportive and always helpful!
- There are so many different directions you can explore to be creative and grow your blog that if you ever want to try something new, you can!
- My last two jobs before I had kids were mundane, not at all creative and not fulfilling. I feel so lucky to have found something I LOVE to do everyday.
If you’re thinking of starting a blog, but can’t decide what to blog about, consider these questions…
- What do you know a lot about?
- Love to do?
- Find yourself talking about most often?
- Do your friends come to you with advice or help in one area?
- Maybe you have a full-time job but your passion lies elsewhere and you want to start a blog to pursue it?
Whatever your interests are, blogging is a creative outlet to share what you know with the world!
Starting a website doesn’t involve huge start-up costs to begin your blogging journey. There are inexpensive resources and free options to get started.
Can’t I Just Start a Blog For Free?
You could, but if you have a goal to make money from your blog, you need to be self-hosted from the very beginning.
I highly recommend starting with wordpress.org (not wordpress.com).
This type of site gives you the most freedom to monetize your website and gives you complete control over your blog. There are small costs involved to starting a blog, but in the long-run it’ll all be worthwhile.
When you are not self-hosted (if you start with wordpress.com for example), you cannot have advertising on your website and when you’re first starting out, this is the easiest and quickest way to earn money while you build a loyal readership base.
The first thing you need to do to set-up your blog (your self-hosted blog on wordpress.org), is to decide on your domain name and buy hosting for it. Then we can walk through how to set this up on WordPress so you can begin to design your blog.
When you’re ready to take the leap, this tutorial will walk you through the steps to stetting up your domain name, choosing the right host, registering your website, setting up your blog and installing WordPress.