How To Know Whether You Should Ever Start A New Blog In 2021

Hello, my friend and a very warm welcome back. I’m going to go through with you Whether You Should Ever Start A New Blog.

Have you got what it takes to make a blog a success in 2021?

Blogs are 10 a penny you can find them everywhere, but not all blogs are created equal. Some don’t make any money at all while others make $10,000 a month and much more.

The first decision to make do you want a fun blog that you write whatever you feel like and don’t care if nobody ever reads it or this is your new business and readers are the road to success.

I know that creating a business blog can be a scary process because I have done it.

Not all that successfully for the first one either!

It got sold so not everything was lost. Yay!

This post will cover in-depth what you need to go through to make a blog successful as well as seeing if this is really for you?

I’m going to cover step by step exactly how to start a successful blog, the right blogging mindset required, the tools, how to create pages in WordPress, how to create your first blog post and the basics you need to get started from scratch.

This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you click a link and make a purchase I will receive a commission. The price you pay will not be affected.

1. Why Do You Want To Start A Blog

What is it about blogging that makes you think you would like to do it?

Is it people you know that have successful blogs they are always talking about?

Are you fed up with your corporate job so much that you will do anything to get away from it?

Do you wish to be able to work from anywhere with a wifi connection and no boss telling you what to do?

You really need to know your reason why so you can get through the tough times that will come with the territory.

Blogging isn’t plain sailing all of the time there will be many ups and downs. Just like any other business.

Whilst having a down day remember your why and that will keep you going! 

My personal why was getting out of the telemarketing industry that I had grown to hate.

Now I sit here happily blogging away full-time while my husband is on the phone to stroppy people.

very soon this blog will be bringing in enough income that he will be able to get off of the phone too!

That’s one goal met and the other soon to be.

There are a few things we need to have a successful blog:

2. The Right Mindset

There are introverts and extroverts everywhere and it doesn’t matter which one you are.

I know many introverts who run very successful blogs. They feel comfortable writing and shielded whereas they would not feel the same in front of a camera.

There are 3 tips I’m going to let you into the secret of to help you to be a confident blogger:

• Don’t Ever Compare Yourself To Others.

I know it is human nature to do that, but you must stop otherwise you will fall at the first hurdle.

You could be comparing yourself to a blogger who has been doing it for 3 years and you are 3 months in. There really is going to be no comparison.

Be on your own journey then you won’t lose confidence in your abilities like a lot of people do.

Being a blogger in the first year can be very hard and many don’t share their struggles with you.

They look serene on the surface like a swan gliding along but, they are paddling furiously underneath!

You will visit Pinterest and see pins ” How I made $5,000 in my first month. Don’t worry about that. Read what’s written and see if you can learn anything and move on!

Just because something works for one doesn’t mean it will work for another!

Believe that you can do it and you will be able to!

• Write With Authority

As a blogger, your main goals are to help your audience to answer their questions and the best way to do that is to know what you are talking about.

I can hear you saying I’m only a novice but, you know more than the person who posed the question Don’t you?

Once you start to get regular readers they will be looking up to you as a coach. As long as you carry out research on your subject you will be armed and ready.

You will soon earn the trust of your audience by showing you know all about your niche.

As the trust increases so will your audience grow accordingly.

• Education Is Unimportant

I did not go to college and I started blogging armed with a laptop, a Wifi connection and ideas that I couldn’t wait to write about.

Now hundreds of people read my posts every single day. Just like you are.

You don’t even need to know how to spell or use grammar correctly either!

Millions of bloggers use Grammarly that corrects most things for you. Even though I’m a native English speaker I still use it!

This is your blog, no one can take it away from you.

Having an English degree will obviously be an advantage but it is totally not required.

As long as you are confident in your abilities and you write awesome content you are good to go!

keep educating yourself about your chosen niche and people will keep coming back to read it.

Investment in your blog at some point will also be a necessity.

3. Blogging Tips You Need To Know

Things you need to know before you get started.

1. Blogging is hard work.

I’m not telling you this to put you off but I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t tell you the cold hard facts.

Starting any business is hard and blogging for a living is no different.

When I started blogging I already knew it was going to be hard, but, even so, I didn’t think it was going to be as hard as it was.

Have you seen reports saying other bloggers made money in their first month? I made $15.00, not the thousands that others claim.

After buying a course that made huge promises and no matter how much work I put in did not deliver.

I really wanted to Quit this blogging lark. But I kept on going with a different mindset.

Be aware you need to put time and energy into writing your posts for quite a few months and then the magic will start to happen.

Traffic will start appearing a little at a time and as your blog matures it will become a flood and the excitement this causes will keep you going.

2. Don’t Blog For Money.

Getting rich overnight is not going to happen!

It is going to take a lot of hard graft and heartache before the money starts to flow in.

All you see everywhere you look are successful bloggers but remember they had to go through the same process as you and it was just as hard for them.

Do you think they started and in a week they were earning 5 figures? No of course you don’t as that is totally unrealistic, isn’t it?

You can help the process along by sharing your posts on social media and writing content for other bloggers. (guest posting).

Just remember if you keep going the money will come!

3. You Will Make It.

Especially if you have a positive mindset.

If other bloggers can do it so can you!

You may start your blog today and still be working on it in 2 years time telling the story of everything you have been through in that time.

Many successful bloggers that you see now could have had 2 or 3 blogs that failed.

These are all points you need to take into consideration when the going gets hard.

Go on ask a few of them what they went through?

Having the belief that you can do it and you will see success will get you there in the long run.

We all make mistakes on this journey me included. 

I made plenty, but I still kept going and learning along the way.

Tell yourself quitting is not an option and have a 10-minute break and get back to it!

The more positive you are the more rewards will come your way.

4. Choosing A Niche

I briefly mentioned above my first blog was not a success and that was all down to choosing the wrong niche.

Some blogging friends of mine suggested I change and that’s what I did.

Got me a new domain and this time I am seeing success as this is that very blog!

Things to consider when choosing a niche:

• Write for a subject you like to do research on
  
• One that is not going to fizzle out in 3 years
  
• Make sure you can monetize it.
  

Don’t give a thought to the competition there is more than enough traffic to go around.

This Niche I’m in is fiercely competitive, however, it was a successful choice I made when I changed.

Learning from where it all went wrong on the first blog has stood me in good stead with this blog.

Helping people is a big passion of mine and the content for every post is designed to help the reader and I love writing it all.

Think about what you like to do, like to read, enjoy talking about?

Is it being a mum, doing the gardening, saving money and budgeting? Whichever is your passion will be your niche!

All of the above can make money in many different ways.

Researching affiliate programs that pay you to sell their products is a fun part of blogging.

You Have Got Your Niche Chosen What’s Next?

5. Setting Up Your Blog

This is the exciting part!

After having so many failures online in the past I was extremely careful when it came to choosing everything to start a blog.

There are lots of choices available and a lot of research was carried out before a decision was reached.

I chose a platform that had everything needed all in one place.

Firstly I joined on a 1-month trial. This allowed me to do all of the lessons of different training programs as well as see past live training that was recorded every week.

After a couple of days, I was hooked so I upgraded to the premium yearly membership Included in the price was a free domain of my choosing, Hosted WordPress website, free themes, and tons of recorded and live weekly training.

Before you build the blog you need to choose a domain name.

The domain name is what people type in when they search for your blog it will usually look like this: www.happytohelp.com

It is best to choose a custom domain as it looks more professional as well as telling others what your blog is about.

popular domains have .com at the end so try to go for that option if it is available.

Try to keep it short and easy to remember. Once you have one in mind go to the domain option and type it in to see if it is available:

If it is you can purchase it directly from the platform.

Now it’s time to build the blog. Yay! We have covered a lot, haven’t we?

In the included training you will find the blog set up lesson.

Follow the instructions and you will have a website in a few minutes. With premium, you can have 10 websites.

Add your menus and even make a custom email domain.

6. Choosing A Theme

You have the option to choose from some free themes and for a few months, I used one of them then I upgraded To Generate Press Premium.

 I LOVE Generate Press, It’s a simple, lightweight SEO friendly theme and has more customization options as compared to other themes.

Adding a theme is very simple and not technical in any way:

Go to your WordPress dashboard and click Appearance >> themes >> and click add new

7. Next Up Some Plugins

You have the choice of more than 50,000 free WordPress plugins available in the WordPress directory.

Plugins make it simpler to change the features on your blog as opposed to when you had to do it using code.

Some examples of what plugins can do for you:

• SEO your posts using all in one SEO or Yoast etc.
  
• Add Forms to your content for email collection etc.
  
• Add a table of contents.
  
• And, add widgets.
  

There really are plugins for everything, but don’t overload your site as it will cause it to run slowly and that is no good!

How to add a plugin?

To upload a plugin in WordPress: On your WordPress dashboard >> click plugins >> add new >> type in the name of the plugin in the search box >> click install and then activate.

It is that easy!

Which Plugins Do I Use?

Opt-in Forms To Collect email addresses.

Don’t be under the wrong impression of this. You can collect email addresses from day dot.

I hear you saying nobody looks at your blog yet! But, they do believe me.

my first subscriber came in the first month!

I didn’t know what to write to that person but I soon learned.

Other bloggers will also contact you in this way.

Is it hard to set up? No. There are videos to take you through the process. I’m not technical and I managed it!

All-In-One-SEO.

When blogging you need to write for your audience as well as the search engines.

And you need to optimize your post for search engine bots to ensure that people will find your post in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing.

The all-in-one-SEO plugin helps you with almost everything you need to optimize your blog for SEO and it’s free. You can upgrade but it is not necessary.

Another reason for choosing this plugin is the headline score it gives your title which is very handy.

You can read all about SEO in this related post. 10 Simple Ways To Rank Top Of The Search Engines With A New Blog.

Sassy Social Share (buttons to share your posts directly to social media)

The reason I use this plugin is that it is simple to set up and I love simple.

When reading this post you will see the buttons on the left-hand side and at the bottom.

You can use them to share a post on your own Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter profiles.

Some of them even have share counts that you can choose to set up.

There are plugins for backing up your content but that is automatically done for you on WA.

WP Rocket Caching Plugin.

Wp Rocket is a paid plugin. It is used to speed up your sites speed.

It is the easiest and most beginner-friendly caching plugin that you can use to optimize your site.

Cookie Notice and GDPR/CCPA

Bloggers and visitors come from all over the world and different rules apply in many countries so it is safer for your blog to have This plugin.

It shows you adhere to privacy laws.

8. Before Publishing A Post You Need Certain Pages

There are some very important pages you should have on your blog from day one.

To add pages to your blog, go to your WordPress dashboard >> click pages and click add new to create a page then hit publish.

You can create as many pages as you like using the same method.

Here are the key pages you should add straight away:

1. An About Me Page– Lets your audience know who you are and how you can help them.
2. Contact Me Page-This a page where you will add your contact form so that your readers, bloggers as well as brands can contact you.
3. A Privacy Policy Page– Protect your blog legally by creating a privacy policy page for your blog. You get this free from Wealth Affiliate.
4. An Affiliate Disclosure Page– This page notifies your readers you are an affiliate marketer and makes it clear you make money from the blog in accordance with the FTC rules.

9. Content Writing

We are now all set up to write our very first post!

Writing content can be done on 2 platforms, you can choose the classic editor and then publish to WordPress or directly onto WordPress.

Personally, I do it the way described above because I know my word count for each post and I have the ability to add images directly from the search which contains over 1000,000 images you can use for free.

Then I publish to WordPress and use the block editor.

The other way is to Login to your WordPress dashboard:

To create a post: on your WordPress dashboard >> click posts >> click add new and write your post then hit publish when you are finished.

10. What Steps To Take Before Publishing

There are a few things you should check every single time before you hit the publish button, it is good practice to start as you mean to go on!

• To show that you are a professional you should Proof Read your posts. Typos don’t look that good and can stand out like a sore thumb.
• This is especially important if you are not a native English speaker as you may use words in the wrong context and then it will not read correctly.
• As I mentioned above I use Grammarly. which is a very helpful proofreading tool that I recommend, it’s free and it corrects grammar and spelling errors.
• Make the posts easy to read. The vast majority of web users search using their mobiles so make sure to keep your sentences short.
• I try to keep mine to 2 sentences maximum. Also, put in plenty of headings to break up the text even more.
• Lastly, make use of Images that relate to what you are writing about. People tend to stay longer on your post if there are images to look at.

A word of warning about images searching Google and choosing any picture that takes your fancy can land you in hot water. You could even get sued!

The images in the classic editor that I write from in Wealthy Affiliate all come from genuine sources like Pixabay and Unsplash they are safe to use.

When using videos from Youtube make sure you get the embed code and insert it that way.

11. Traffic and How To Get It

SEO is a great way to get free organic traffic to your blog, however, it takes a while to come through.

In the meantime use your social media profiles to share your posts and your blog URL.

Before Google started to rank my posts on page 1 the majority of my traffic came from Pinterest. 

The reason Pinterest is my favourite is that it is a visual search engine as opposed to a social media site.

Having a business account is best for bloggers who want to monetize their blogs.

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are other good sources to attain traffic from.

I get quite a few clicks from them!

12. Get Expert Training On Blogging

All the way through this post I have mentioned a lot of things I have learned from the all-in-one-blogging platform that I chose to invest in to learn about blogging.

Even though this is a post full of very useful information it is not all there is to know! These are really just the basics.

What you really need for a successful blog is expert training.

Finding training that is not going to scam you out of your hard-earned money can be difficult.

Trust me when I say I wasted a ton of money on terrible courses when getting started.

To make the decision simple for you I recommend Wealthy Affiliate because it is an all in one platform where you get blogging training, social media, affiliate marketing training, and also network with like-minded people.

This is where I have learned everything from and so have thousands of others in the last 16 years.

I made money in my first 3 months and have been hooked ever since.

My income continues to grow each month!

Is Blogging For You?

Have I convinced you blogging is a great way to be your own boss and earn money or are you too afraid of the hard work involved?

I know you can do it if you put your mind to it!

You started reading this with the intention to start a blog so I wish you a happy blogging journey!

Leave your new website details in the comments and I will happily visit it and leave you some comments.

If you have any questions feel free to leave them below. I’m here to help you.

Did you get value from this post? Great, can you share it to help others Please?

Follow me on Pinterest for more blogging tips.

Lisa 🙂 Founder and CEO of mistakesbloggersmake.com