How to create a blog for free | Simple and Easy Steps

Are you looking for an easy steps on how to create a blog for free?

In this guide, I have explained the step-by-step guide to create a blog in 15 minutes with minimum or zero web development skills.

After reading this post you will have an attractive blog that is ready to share with your friends or anybody else in the world.

This guide is made especially for beginners. Hence, I just have created steps on creating a blog but you should come up with an idea on what purpose you are creating a blog.

Steps to create a free blog

  1. Choose a blog name – First step is to pick a blog name.
  2. Select a best hosting provider – Choose a hosting provider and register your blog.
  3. Customize your blog – Select a free theme of your choice and modify it.
  4. How to publish your first post? – Think about your first content and share it to the world.
  5. How to monetize your blog? – Use appropriate marketing strategies and wise options to monetize your blog.
How to create a blog for free?

If you follow these steps, you can easily create a blog for free without any issues. Apparently, you can even monetize your blog in just couple of months.

1. Choose a blog name

This is the first and foremost step before thinking to create a free blog. Therefore, think deeply and make a list of names. Try to stick to 10 characters long. Take as much time as possible, even more than a month or two is fine. Take a deep thought and come up with questions like what is your blog about? what posts are you going to create? are you going to add new category to your blog? But once you create a blog name you will not be able to change it. Therefore, take your time and find a relevant blog name.

Try to get a .com extension to reach worldwide. If the .com version is already taken, you may still be able to get the .net or .org version of the domain name.

  • Add small words: ‘the’, ‘my’, ‘top’, ‘a’, ‘best’, ‘pro’ at the beginning or ‘hub’, ‘pac’, ‘guide’, ‘tips’, ‘blog’, ‘tool’ at the end. For example, you can choose myinfopac.com if infopac.com is not available.

You can check if your blog name is available or not in godaddy or bluehost websites.

Note: You can use only alphabets, numbers and dashes in a domain name. Spaces and other symbols are not allowed.

2. Select a best hosting provider

Now that you got a domain for your free blog but you need a server to store your blog posts, create images, get your blog up and running. This might sound technical, but the below steps help you to make the right process and easy.

Free blog in 20 minutes guaranteed

Firstly, you need the below two things for your blog to up and running.
Web hosting: The web host or blog host stores all of the files and delivers them to the visitor when they enter your blog.
Blogging software: You also need a software to develop your blog. In this guide you can learn how to build a blog using the WordPress blogging software, because it is the most popular, customizable and easy to use.

These two usually come up together.

You can use Wixsite, Shopify or Squarespace, which provides both hosting and software together. However, there are some restrictions and you cannot manage or install the plugins that you want. You can use only the available plugins in those websites.

The good web hosts that I conclude are BlueHost or Hostinger especially Bluehost is good when it comes to speed and optimisation. I personally use BlueHost and I recommend this for all new bloggers.

Bluehost register your domain name for free, install WordPress software, have 30 day money back guarantee and 24/7 customer service through web chat or phone.

Select your plan

You just need to login to BlueHost and select your plan. You don’t need any special discount as they already provide the discounted price. For the beginners I recommend to choose basic plan for 36 months. Don’t choose 12 months plan as you are going to run your blog for long term and permanently. Besides, if you plan to run more than one websites in the future then you can go for plus or choice plus option. Bluehost will recalculate the price when you upgrade your plan. For example, if you run your blog using basic plan for 15 months and if you plan to move to plus plan, then for the remaining days they will reduce the price of basic plan from plus plan.

Bluehost Plan

Register your domain

If you want to create a new domain for your free blog, enter it in the left box and click next. If you already created a domain through godaddy or any other providers then you can enter it in the right box.

Godaddy may provide you the domain for less price. And if you want to transfer your domain to Bluehost then you have to wait till the godaddy’s expiry date.

Register domain
Register domain

Create your account

Now that you have your domain and you need to create your account by filling the account information below.

Hosting Package Information

As I already mentioned, choose the plan for 36 months, which gets you the lowest monthly billing. Hardly, you will be spending around 70 USD every year. All three plans have WordPress software, hosting and free domain.

You can also enable custom email address with your domain name with some additional monthly charges (Eg: info@yourdomain.com). Enable the checkboxes whichever is applicable for your blog. Provide your card details and submit to purchase the hosting plan and domain.

Bluehost Package Information
Bluehost Package Information

Congrats, your purchase was successful. Now you have to setup your account using login details (username and password).

Bluehost purchase successful

You can skip the below step and can directly login to WordPress dashboard.

Bluehost skip step

Click on “Log into WordPress” to enter into WordPress platform.

Wordpress Login

Now you will be shifted to wordpress platform where you can design your blog using templates.

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3. Customize your blog

You hosting server and domain are ready now. Let us see how to create a beautiful blog step by step.

WordPress Dashboard

You can login to WordPress admin using your domain name as your user name and password either from Bluehost portal from the above step or directly using the link https://domainname.com/wp-admin.

How to create a blog for free | Simple and Easy Steps | WordPress Dashboard
WordPress Dashboard

Choose or buy a template

Click on Appearance –> Themes to set the theme for your blog. By default you can see many free themes including Twenty series. These are pre-designed themes suitable for just about any type of blogging. In fact, many of the top bloggers use one of these themes. Just select the theme and click on activate button. It’s that simple and the entire design of your blog will be changed with that one click. However, you can even get nice theme, which suits your blog from many sources. One such best theme provider is themeforest, which has tens of thousands of responsive templates and themes starting from $2.

Wordpress default theme

To upload and install a new WordPress theme, click on Add New Theme. Visit your blog to take a look on how it appears in real-time.

You need to create a nice logo for your brand. You can create this anytime but I recommend you create it just before you buy a domain. Because, the logo talks more about your brand. You can download any Android or IOS app and I personally suggest to use Logo Maker, which has many designs and easy to create. Once you setup your blog, you can add the logo in header and footer.

Install Plugins

WordPress plugins help you to add more features to your blog and make it more efficient and faster. You must install some of the important plugins to help your blog have some required features.

Click on Plugins on the left sidebar and click on Add New. Click on Install Now and then Activate button to install and activate the plugin. You can click on “More Details” to read the details about each plugin and “Screenshots” to understand clearly.

The below plugins are the recommended ones to keep your blog user friendly and optimised.

Free Plugins
Yoast SEO: You can do on-page SEO using this plugin.
Contact Form 7: The visitors can contact you by sending a message to your email id.
WP Super Cache: It helps to clear the cache and keep your website faster.
Smush Image Compression: It will compress the newly added images.

To take your blog to the next level, you have to consider the below paid plugins.

Paid Plugins:
Yoast SEO Premium: You can have multiple key phrases in your post and many more features.
WP Rocket: This plugin clears the cache, compress images, image lazy load and keep your website faster. This is recommended plugin as it always have the page speed more than 90 score.

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4. How to publish your posts?

Kuddos! your blog setup is ready and you can write a new post now.

Create your first post

Now that you have understood how to create a blog for free. The real fun starts here! Click on Posts in the left menu –> Add New to start writing your first post.

You should write in detail and publish regularly – at least 2-3 posts every week. This is how you engage your readers and keep them active. Post your content every week, which helps to drive traffic to these posts and build your brand.

Your post should be unique and recommended 1000 words per post with nice format (headings, paragraphs, images and videos) in order to satisfy your visitors. Your post will be ranked by google and get good traffic if it is in unique way and useful to your readers.

Add a nice title with different headings and paragraphs including related images. Once you finish writing, click on publish on the top right side of the screen to publish your first post.

How to create a blog for free | Simple and Easy Steps | WordPress New Post

Congratulations! You have created your first post and is live now to the world.

Mandatory Pages

The below pages are mandatory for your blog as it explains what is your blog about, how to contact you, disclaimer, privacy policy and terms & conditions. You have to design these pages before your blog is live.

About Me: This page helps the users to understand in details about your blog: purpose of the blog, categories, what do you deliver to your visitors etc. You have to think about this as well before you purchase the domain.

Contact Me: You have to create an attractive contact page or install a contact form plugin. The visitors will contact you through this page using their email address or phone number and your response should be prompt to keep your visitors connected. You can also add your domain/custom email address, phone number and address location. In addition, mention your social media links along with.

Disclaimer: If you would like to earn some money from your blog, then you should mention how you generate the income. As per FTC guidelines, this page is absolutely mandatory.

Privacy Policy: This is another important page if you would collect data from your visitors and tell your visitors on how you are collecting data, how you are planning to use it and if you share their data somewhere else. If you link your blog to Google Adsense account then you should add a Privacy Policy page for sure. As per CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) this page is required. You can see my blog’s privacy policy page to get a better understanding.

Terms and Conditions: If you run an ecommerce website, then it is better to have a Terms and Conditions page.

Add links to all these pages in the footer menu.

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5. How to monetize your blog?

Many bloggers are earning from $1000 to $100,000 per month. But you need some patience and dedicate yourself to keep on adding posts to your blog. You will not get this figure on day one itself. It will take some years to build your brand and earn some decent income. This is my second blog and started recently. PTE Protips is my first blog and I have started it on 2019. Believe me! when I linked my site to google Adsense, I was earning only $20 per month but now (October 2021) I am earning around $600. If you keep on posting some good content, you will get website traffic and ranked to first page itself. It helps to earn more.

Monetization depends upon good and well formatted content and how you bring traffic to your blog.

Search Engine Optimisation

A good content is not enough if it fails to reach out to a wider audience. You should write your content, in the way that google can index easily. You have to think about how should you write the content to bring the traffic. Here comes search engine optimisation. This term looks too technical but I have simplified it with easy steps.

On-page SEO: It is nothing but how you write your content with enough keywords, readability, image optimisation and the tools using which you can test your page speed, broken links etc.

Off-page SEO: Off page SEO is how you promote your blog and the number of qualified backlinks that you obtained. Ask your friends, who are already running a website to add links to your blog. You can also write a nice email to the qualified website owners to add links to your site.

Google Page Speed Insights
Google Page Speed Insights

Promote your blog

Now it’s time to spend some time to promote your blog, especially in the beginning. There are many ways to promote your website. Some of them are below.

Facebook Page: You need to create a page and share your posts. Invite all your Facebook friends to like your page.
Quora Space: Quora space is similar to forum where you can discuss your questions. Create a space and invite your friends to subscribe your Quora space.
Other Social Media: Share your posts in Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn and wherever you have your account. Even if you don’t have an account, create one and share your posts.

My favourite ways to get my visitors is to share my posts in many places. This way, your website traffic will be automatically increased and easy to make money.

Sponsors or Advertisers

When it comes to advertisement, Google Adsense is the best to place the ad and generate revenue. Google Adsense takes all the responsibilities to check the related ads and post it in your blog. On the other hand, if your blog is old enough, more popular and if you have many visitors every month, the sponsors will come to you to display their advertisement. You can earn more if you get sponsors to post their ad directly.

Affiliate Program

Through affiliate program you can earn a commission when the customer buys products through the link. Amazon Associate provides affiliate links without even checking your website whereas other affiliate associates will expect number of visitors and if your blog is related to their program.

Selling own products

You can sell your own products such as electronic items, ebooks, tutorials, which increase your income. Start with the small products and increase when you get an idea of what the customers expect. You will be amazed when your products are in demand.

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Conclusion

Using this complete guide and tips you can easily create a blog for free. However, keep in mind that you need to buy a domain and hosting server and renew it monthly or yearly. This is just for beginners perspective. If you have any queries you can very well contact me using the contact page.

All steps are very important, therefore, if you don’t understand then read it again until it is clear. Hope these simple steps are easy to create your first blog. Happy Blogging!

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