So, you want to become a budding blogger, huh? Despite there being a variety of aspects to starting a successful blog, setting one up is actually very straightforward.

If you’re serious about becoming a blogger, you’ll just need to set aside an hour of your day and everything will be ready to go. But, of course, for the process to go seamlessly, you need to know exactly what you’re doing.

The first portion of building a blog is actually getting yourself a space on the web to upload your content. If you don’t have your own site, you won’t have a blog. Simple as that.

But, if it’s your first venture into blogging, you don’t need to break the bank and start purchasing everything under the sun.

There are plenty of sites that will allow you to test the waters and set up a professional blog for completely free of charge, such as Wix.

Like we’ve just mentioned, though, once you have got to grips with blogging, you do want to increase the professionalism with your own domain and hosting.

By having your own domain and hosting, you not only appear more authoritative to visitors, you also protect yourself in the long run. It’s your domain on your hosting; you don’t have to worry about things going wrong on someone else’s platform.

Once you have your site, you want to play around with the design so that your blog really is tailored to you. Have a design that makes it pleasant and easy to navigate for visitors, but a design that matches and expresses your personality.

Again, that doesn’t mean you have to start splashing the cash, because there’s an abundance of awesome themes that you can get for free. After tweaking your blog to a point where you absolutely love it, you can move to the next step.

This part is slightly more technical, but nothing that you won’t be able to understand. It’s all about installing a few plugins that will empower you to track how your blog is performing.

Things such as Google Analytics will provide you with information such as the number of visitors you’re attracting each month. There’s a couple more plugins that you’d benefit from, but we won’t overwhelm you with them right now.

Lastly, when your blog is set up and optimised just how you want it, it then comes down to bulking it out with quality content on a consistent basis
That doesn’t just refer to your blog section, though. You want to fill out the About, Contact and other pages to make sure your site isn’t lacking any substance. If you’re providing quality content and your blog looks amazing, you’ll build a following over time.

But, in order to give you some more help, we thought we’d find a step-by-step guide that you can follow to the tee. Check out what we found at the minimalists.com

 

We receive plenty of emails asking for advice about starting a blog, about how to blog, about blog topics, and about creating meaningful content—even a few questions about whether we wear boxers or briefs. These are the answers and recommendations we tend to give.

1. Find Your Niche. You needn’t have a niche, but it helps. When learning how to be a blogger, it’s important to ask yourself what you’re passionate about. Running? Cooking? Being a parent? Have you found your passion? If so, whatever it is, write about that. If not, then you must first find your passion. (Note: We generally recommend that people don’t start a blog about minimalism or the paleo diet or any other heavily saturated topic. But what we really mean when we say this is: don’t create a blog about something unless you have a unique perspective. If you’ve embraced simple living and have a unique perspective, then by all means have at it. Enjoy yourself.)

2. Define Your Ideal Readers. Once you’ve found your niche, you need to know who will be reading your blog. For example, we blog about living intentionally. Thus, our ideal readers are people who are interested in exploring minimalism so they can clear the path toward more meaningful lives. If you want to write about your newborn baby growing up, that’s wonderful: your ideal readers are probably your friends and family. If you want to write about restoring classic cars, that’s cool, too. Tailor your writing to your readers (whether it’s your family or local community or whoever else will read your blog).

3. Add Value. Your blog must add value to its readers’ lives. This is the only way you will get Great Quality Readers to your site (and keep them coming back). Adding value is the only way to get someone’s long-term buy-in. We both learned this after a decade of leading and managing people in the corporate world.

   
   
   
   

4. Be Original. Yes, there are other blogs out there about the same thing you want to write about. Question: So why is your blog different? Answer: Because of you. You are what makes your blog different. It’s about your perspective, yourcreativity, the value that you add.

5. Be Interesting. Write epic, awesome content. Especially if you want people to share it with others.

6. Be Yourself. Part of being interesting is telling your story. Every person is unique, and your story is an important one. The important part of storytelling, however, is removing the superfluous details that make the story uninteresting. A great storyteller removes 99% of what really happens—the absorptive details—and leaves the interesting 1% for the reader.

7. Be Honest. Your blog needs to be authentic—it needs to feelreal—if you want people to read it. You can be your blog, or your blog can be you. That is, do you really embody the stuff you write about? If not, people will see through you. “Be the change you want to see in the world,” is the famous Gandhi quote. Perhaps bloggers should build the blog they want to write for the world.

8. Transparency. Being transparent is different from being honest. You needn’t share every detail about your life just for the sake of being honest. Always be honest, and be transparent when it adds value to what you’re writing. (You won’t ever see pictures of us using the restroom on our site, because that’s just not relevant.)

9. Time. Once you’ve learned how to start a blog, you’ll learn that blogging takes a lot of time, especially if you’re as neurotic as we are (we spent over 10 hours testing the fonts on this site). And see those black Twitter and Facebook icons in the header? We spent hours on those, deciding what was right for us). That said, once you have your design set up, don’t tweak it too much. Instead, spend the time on your writing.

10. Vision. The reason our site design looks good is because we have a great host, we have a great theme, and most important, we had a vision of how we wanted our blog to look. Once we had the vision, we worked hard to make that vision a reality. (Note: neither of us had any design experience prior to starting a blog.) It’s hard to create a beautiful blog if you don’t know what you want it to look like.

11. Find Your Voice. Over time, good writers discover their voice and their writing tends to develop a certain aesthetic, one that is appealing to their readers. Finding your voice makes your writing feel more alive, more real, more urgent. For additional reading, check out Joshua’s essay about Finding Your Voice.

12. We Instead of You. Use the the first-person plural when possible. Statements of we and our are more powerful than than you and your, especially when talking about negative behaviors or tendencies. The first person comes off as far less accusatory. Think of it this way: we’re writing peer-to-peer—we are not gods.

13. When to Post. Question: When is the best day and time to publish a blog post? Answer: It doesn’t really matter. We don’t adhere to a particular schedule. Some weeks we post one essay; sometimes we post three. Yes, it is important to write consistently, but you needn’t get too bogged down in the details.

14. Social Media. Yes, we recommend using Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to help connect with your audience and other bloggers, but don’t get too caught up in it. Focus on the writing first, social media thereafter.

15. Ignore Negative Criticism and Stupidity. Sure, we get a lot of negative comments and stupid questions from ignorant people who aren’t really our readers (e.g., negative comments like “You’re not real minimalists” and stupid questions like “Are you guys gay?”). We call these people seagulls: they fly in, crap on your site, and fly away. But we pay them no mind, because we didn’t start our blog for them. Delete their comment and move on.

16. Research. Spend time researching what you’re writing about. The reason we are able to use so many helpful, relevant links in our essays is because we put in the time to research our topics.

17. Keep It Simple. This is where minimalism can be applied to starting any blog, irrespective of its genre. No need to place superfluous advertisements or widgets all over your site. Stick to the basics and remove anything you don’t need. Remove anything that doesn’t add value.

    
    
    
    

18. Picture. Put a picture of yourself on your blog. People identify with other people. If two goofy guys from Ohio aren’t too afraid to put their pictures on their site, then you have nothing to worry about.

19. Comments. If you’re going to have comments on your site, then read The Five Words That Kill Your Blog by Scott Stratten.

20. Live Your Life. You’re blogging about your life (or about certain aspects of your life, at least), so you still need to live your life. There are things that we always put before writing: exercise, health, relationships, experiences, personal growth, contribution.

This article is packed full of brilliant tips and you really should take the time to read the full post at theminimalists.com. Always remember what ever you choose for your blog content write from the heart and express you own feelings on the content, that's what makes the content unique. Feel like Starting a Successful Blog now?