How to create a blog step by step (2024): complete guide

You’re thinking about create a blog but you don’t know where to start?

It’s normal, and no one is born knowing how to set up their first blog. You need a tutorial like this to do it.

In this guide we will accompany you step by step in the process you must follow to make a successful blog. And yes, you can rest assured because we have experience setting up blogs (we have created about 100 blogs in all these years).

If you want to be the next to create a blog that is the most read of the moment, you can continue reading. Let’s start!

Identify your market niche

When we think about creating a blog, questions related to the technical section come to mind: what platform do I do it on? How will they read me? What name I put it?

But more important than that is to know why do you want to do ity Who do you want to address?.

If you do it as a hobby, great; It will be just another hobby.

But if you do it for profit, then you have to think about how you will make money from it, and What is the target audience you want to address?.

Otherwise, you may upload content that is not aligned with your business model and reach people who are not interested in your products or services.

For this reason, we recommend that you ask yourself questions like the following before starting:

• Are you a professional dietician and want to reach people who care about their diet, to sell private advice?
• Are you a lawyer and want to reach people who are facing legal problems of some kind, to get clients?
• Are you an economist and want to reach people who invest their savings in assets, to sell them an investment course?

It does not mean that in each article on your blog you are going to sell something, but that, as a final objective, you have that economic objective. That of all the people who read you, some end up being clients.

Questions as basic as these will mark the contents of your blog, and will help you stay on track with what you want and who you should reach.

Choose a name for the domain

Now that we have a purpose, it’s time to decide on a name for our blog.

Technically, in the world of digital marketing we know that name as domain.

That is, a domain is the web address that we have acquired so that people enter our blog. For example, our domain is “marketingandweb.es”.

However, this is not free, and you must purchase it through companies like Namecheap.

The domains .com They usually cost about €12 per year. It is the ending that we recommend you acquire, because the .com is the one that everyone knows. There are other endings such as .net or .info, but they are less known.

As you can see, they are very economical, although the price varies slightly depending on the company you hire it from, or if you purchase a .net, .info, .es, etc.

Important: Some blog platforms, like WordPress.com, give you the first year of the domain if you contract their service for a year, so you wouldn’t have to buy it separately.

I still remember the happiness it gave me when I bought my first domain. I have to admit that it is exciting to see that you already have a web address that belongs to you.

The negative part is that, as you can imagine, in all these years that the Internet has existed, many domains have been purchased.

This means that not all domains are available. Many people have bought domains, so we have to look for a domain that is still free.

Any domain purchasing company offers a large search engine where you can enter the desired domain, and it notifies you in a matter of seconds whether that domain is free or is already registered by someone else.

Finally, some recommendations for choosing a good domain for your blog is that do not include hyphens or numbersto make it easier to write and remember, although if you want, you can include them.

Choose a platform to create your blog

Alright, we have a name and a domain for our blog.

Now comes the time to set up our blog within that domainbecause even if you have bought the “miblog.com” domain, you don’t have anything inside it yet!

There are many platforms to create a blog, some free and others paid. In this section I am going to summarize the most popular ones, and at the end I will tell you which one I would choose.

Normally, these platforms usually offer a free plan for those who do not want to spend money, but they have many limitations, such as the domain always starting from yours and the customization options being low.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is one of the options that has gained greater popularity since has a free planalthough with many limitations:

• Does not include own domain. Your web address will be of the style “tublog.wordpress.com” (that is, it will always end in *.wordpress.com)
• Your blog will have advertisingbut you won’t earn money for it.
• You will be able to customize the design very littleand only with free templates.

Therefore, if you want to start with something free it can be a start, but it is preferable to go for one of their paid options if you want to get serious.

If we go to their payment plans, we find something more interesting in the “Starter” plan, where For €4/month you will have a free domain for the first year (if you pay annually; if not, €9/month) and they will not put ads on your blog.

Finally, if you want to customize the design of your blog as much as possible and use premium templates, you would have to go to the next payment plan, which is €8/month if you pay for the entire year at once (if not, €18/month ).

My honest opinion is that, if you want an easy and simple option, you can choose this one. But if you want something really professional and that all of us who are dedicated to this world use, it is better that you look at WordPress.org, our next option.

If you opt for this option, we have a post about how to create a blog on WordPress.com.

WordPress.org

WordPress.org is not the same as WordPress.com. The previous one was an online platform where you created an easy blog in exchange for paying a monthly fee.

In this case, WordPress.org is a free open source manager. This means that you can create your blog for free, with a lot of customization capacity, but you have to set it up yourself and host it on your own server.

This has many advantages, such as:

• Total control over your website. You have all the files of your website on your server.
• You don’t have to pay anything to anyone. You only have to pay what it costs for the domain (approximately €12/year) and the server (approximately €5/month) where you will host your blog’s WordPress files.
• Endless free customization options with templates and extensions (known as plugins) for WordPress.org.

If you opt for this option, we have an article on how to create a blog on WordPress.orgsince it is somewhat more technical and may require a step by step, but we assure you that it will be worth it if you want to have everything under control and customize it (including the design) completely.

Wix

Like our first WordPress.org option, this Wix option is somewhat similar.

It’s not that it’s a bad platform (in fact, it provides many customization possibilities and it is very easy to use), but its free plan also has several limitations:

• Does not include own domainand you will receive one under the dominion of Wix.
• They can include advertising and add the Wix logo on your website, something that you probably don’t like.

If you want your own domain, you must purchase an annual plan that starts at €10 per month.

Medium

What I like most about Medium is that it is very easy to create a blogand they all stand out for having a minimalist templateas you can see in the screenshot above.

The customization options are very basic (not to say non-existent), but that is what makes these blogs special: focus on readingwithout dizzying the reader with other elements.

A white background, dark text, and nothing else.

You can create your blog for free with a web address that will always be tunombre.medium.comunless you want to buy a custom domain.

Therefore, If what you are looking for is something free, fast and simplethis may be your best option.

Ghost

The next option, Ghost, reminds us of Medium because it offers us very basic but highly effective templates for reading.

In addition to this, it offers a series of very interesting integrations such as the possibility of get paid readers to earn money.

This way, if you accumulate a critical mass of loyal readers, some may pay you to read exclusive content.

Much to our regret, this platform has a cost. They only give 14 days free, and the most basic plan starts at $9/month.

However, it is an excellent option if you want to make money with paid readersor create a blog without complications and with very good designs, but knowing that it will cost you a monthly fee.

What is the best platform in my opinion?

Now that we have seen several options, I would recommend the following:

• If you want to create a blog for free and without complicationsusa Medium o WordPress.com.
• If you want to create a professional blogalthough you must invest in a domain and hosting, use WordPress.org.

As I said, if you want to seriously invest in a professional blog, where you have total control of your files and can customize it to the maximum, it will be worth hiring a domain and hosting to install WordPress.org there.

Get your first readers

Creating a blog and having it available on the Internet is just the first step on our path as bloggers.

From here, we must gather a community of readers who want to constantly read our contentand for that we have a recommendation that you will love.

That recommendation is that you visit our article on how to get visits to your website, since there we explain what are the best strategies to start making yourself known.

For example, we mention ideas like making collaborations with other professionals, diversify trafficking with channels such as social networks, how to do seo to position your website on Google and receive non-stop traffic, among others.

Our main advice is that you put yourself in the user’s shoes and analyze What do you search for on Google, to come out first? in their searches and get a visit every time they do it.

Imagine that the term “how to make a paper flower” is searched 1,000 times a month on Google: you have 1,000 potential monthly readers who could discover your blog if you position it.

Now that you know this, It’s time to get to work: Think about your niche, a name, the platform to host your blog, and make more people know you.

SEO Podcaster at Campamento Web, the most listened to SEO news and interview program in Spanish. Graduated in Communication from Loyola University, teacher and SEO consultant, he has focused his areas of specialization in the field of communication and web positioning for more than 10 years.