Before I talk about how to build a blog on WordPress, I want to address the question: “Why blog?” To me, blogging, in its simplest form, is basically online journaling where you can document your life while expressing your ideas, opinions, facts, and experiences. It’s more enjoyable than sitting down and writing in a journal. Who does that consistently anyway? I know I don’t, and I actually know few people that do.
I find it therapeutic to get my thoughts and feelings down in words. You can add pictures and images, videos, and graphics to make your post come alive, and be more dynamic and appealing. Yes, it takes effort, but can actually be quite addictive when you get a comfort level with it. Think of it this way – when you write, you are creating something lasting and meaningful.
And, no, you don’t have to be a professional writer. Most platforms these days come with spell and grammar checkers that can help polish your posts. WordPress streamlines the process of writing, editing, and publishing. Yes, it’s a little bit of a learning curve, but with a little time and effort, your comfort level with producing blog posts will increase exponentially.
Another important reason to blog is to build relationships, connection, and foster interaction with others. Produce consistent, interesting and useful content, and you will attract readers to your blog that will want to interact. You can even turn your blog into a marketing tool to bring in income.
Disclaimer: this post contains affiliate links
Table of Contents
Why Blog?
Whether you’re building a blog or a website, WordPress is a great tool that will allow you to create stunning, professional looking sites. You’ll need to choose and purchase a domain name, related to your niche, along with a hosting plan. If you want domain, hosting, and website support all in one place, at no cost, check this out.
Once you have your domain and hosting, you can dig into WordPress and start building your site – whether the purpose is strictly for blogging or you want to have a full website with many pages, the process is the same.
The next step would be to pick a theme. There are thousands of free and premium themes to choose from, and you can view a demo of various ones before you install them on your site to get a feel for how they’ll look.
After you’ve decided on a theme, you can personalize the look and feel by adding images and text, and you can change your theme at any time if you change your mind. You can check out the video above to watch a blog tutorial for beginners.
[Read More: Want To Build A Beauty Blog? [Follow These 6 Steps]
How To Build A Blog On WordPress
To summarize:
Choose a domain name
Select a hosting platform
Decide on a theme and start building your site
Begin writing – Yahoo!
Why WordPress Rocks
Below are the reasons I use WordPress:
1. It is free – you can’t beat that! However, you will need to purchase your domain name for under $20.00.
2. It’s very versatile, and once you get a feel for it, easy to use.
3. It can support many kinds of sites – whether it’s a blog, an eCommerce site, or a visually appealing-photography site.
4. WordPress is SEO-friendly which is a really big deal as the goal of any site is to drive traffic to it.
5. 100s of free themes and plugins are available that make designing and customizing your site fun.
6. The WordPress platform gives you the ability to add media, such as, images, videos, and audio to enhance your posts
Blogs As A Marketing Tool
Now that you have your site set up, you are ready to begin writing. The goal of content creation is to drive traffic to your website. But what are you going to do with that traffic? Well, that’s up to you. Do you want to create relationships and interact with people, or is the purpose of your site to generate revenue?
If that’s your goal, then there are some strategies you can implement in order to make this a reality. Having a call-to-action on your website is a great idea. Visitors have the option to click on that, and are then taken to a page where they are presented with a free offer in exchange for their name and email address.
You can choose what that offer is. It can be a free article or eBook outlining your top ten tips for (you fill in the blank) or a coupon, for instance. This is called email marketing – where you start to build your email list in exchange for a free offering. Get creative and start building your list!
[Read More: How To Skyrocket Your Email Marketing Campaigns And Grow Your List [7 Steps]
Passive Income And Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is another tool used to generate income. You can sign up to be an affiliate for different merchants depending on your niche and target audience. An affiliate is someone who sells, through links, a merchant’s products, and receives a commission for doing so. WordPress makes it easy to add affiliate links to your posts and pages. When visitors click on these links and buy, you get paid.
Passive income is money you make without being directly involved. For example, you wrote a blog post in May that you’ve forgotten about that contained affiliate links. You write another post today. Someone reading your current post, clicks on an internal link that takes them to the May post – where, they then, click on an affiliate link. If they purchase something from that merchant, you receive a commission. It’s that simple.
Learn Affiliate Marketing?
If you’d like to learn more about affiliate marketing, READ MY REVIEW or click the banner below. Learn the skills you’ll need to create a thriving online business.
Key Points
Blogs are a great online tool whether you are strictly a blogger, an affiliate marketer, or you have an eCommerce site to sell your own products. The opportunities of what you can create are limitless. WordPress is a wonderful platform that will allow you to achieve your online goals of creating community, as a marketing tool, or as a place where you can jot down your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
The choice is yours, and the sky’s the limit! Take advantage of what this platform has to offer.
Do you have experience with WordPress? Let me know in the comments:)
1 in 3 websites are built using WordPress and I love using it – as you say it is free although you must of course put it to a domain name and if you learn the skills needed to blog like an expert I highly recommend you take a look at what Holly is offering as I am a member of this platform and have built 2 truly successful WordPress websites and continue to build every chance I get.
WordPress is so easy to use and the people who developed this are amazing so go use WordPress and build a great presence online
Hi Vicki,
Your comment is very much appreciated. I build all my sites on WordPress. It’s true you will have to buy a domain name, at least it’s under $20.00 for a year. I host my sites through Wealthy Affiliate which is included in the membership. You can host two sites for free with a starter account, which is an amazing deal.
There’s not a better way to build an online presence than with WordPress.
I’m glad you wrote this – I’m just starting affiliate marketing and to be honest, I’m getting bogged down by WordPress. I don’t know which themes to choose (and they all look different than the preview when I load them up with my content). My pictures keep disappearing. I’m just generally confused.
I’m really glad you added that video. I’m going to have to watch more from there.
Also – do you mind if I ask what theme you’re using?
Hi Jason,
I’m remember feeling that same way when I first got started with affiliate marketing. Choosing a theme certainly takes some experimentation and troubleshooting. I’m not sure what’s going on with your pictures disappearing. I’m sorry, being confused is not fun.
Check out StudioPress themes
and watch tutorials on YouTube on how to customize them. Good luck to you and thanks for reading my article.
Word Press is ultimately the best software to use for any blogging site. What I like most about it is that it doesn’t require HTML in editing or formatting your text and uploading images. With Word Press, you can create a lot of pages without compromising your website. They also have a great customer service that responds quickly to address your problem.
WordPress really is great and is easy for beginners to use because no coding experience is necessary. So many of the themes, including the one on this site, allows for font customization and size. I’ve used themes before that didn’t have this capability, and I sure enjoy it!
The themes continue to get better and the customizations options are extensive. Thanks so much for reading!
WordPress has been able to gain many users’ trust because of its dynamic update ever since its more than 15 years in operation. This is one of the major reason, I build my websites user their platform. I started as a free user and I can boldly say I own an SEO friendly website today.
They have good customer relations and they are cost effective. They provide good security and provide amazing ground for internet marketing. Their themes are superb. To crown everything up, they provide a good experience for the users. This is a useful review about WordPress. And it would go a long way in helping people looking for information about WordPress.
Thanks Stella,
WordPress has so many amazing features, the regular updates, the extensive library of themes and plugins, and the fact that its SEO-friendly are just some of the advantages of using WordPress. Not to mention, you can build a website for free and it’s easy to customize once you get the hang of the dashboard, which isn’t a steep learning curve.
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment!