How to Start a Blog With No Money?

Do you want to start a blog? But don’t know where to begin? With so much information on the internet, there is no denying that it leaves you quite overwhelmed. Blogging surprisingly is now one of the most popular ways to communicate and spread information. In fact, you can even make money out of your blogs.

In this article, we will outline exactly what you need to get started and set your blog at no cost at all. With millions of blogs online, you can still make yours stand out and be noticed. If followed step by step, you will have your blog set up in less than 30 minutes. So, let’s get started.

Step 1: Choose a blogging platform

This is a very critical step. WordPress is among the most widely used platforms for blogging and offers a lot of plug-ins and add-ons, including many designs, and layout options to make your blog attractive. To add more emphasis to this, WordPress has more than 82 million active users.

However, if you are looking for alternatives, you can opt for Blogger, which is the next best platform for WordPress. Tumblr is a great choice, too, if you want a blend of social networking and blogging. Nevertheless, WordPress still wins heart over a lot of alternatives because

• It is free and easy to set up.
• It offers free themes and layouts.
• The WordPress support team is always available, and there are tons of resources available online.
• Your blog pages perform faster.
• Your audiences can share, comment, like, and engage with you.

Step 2: Deciding between self-hosting and a free alternative.

This is a huge decision! You need to decide whether you should pay for your blog or get a free one. If you are not  serious and wish to invest in blogging or are just testing the waters, then the platforms that we discussed above (WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger) are great for you.

However, if you are serious about blogging these free service platform may have some restrictions like

You cannot own the domain name

With a free platform, your blog’s web address would be something like

yourblog.wordpress.com

yourblog.blogspot.com

Restriction on the monetization of blogs

You may have certain restrictions and limitations on the uploading of videos and other media files. You might also not have access to all the themes by WordPress. However, if you are just starting out, the services you get for free are quite enough to get you set up.

You cannot own your blog.

When you upload your blogs on free platforms, it is essentially hosted on someone else’s web property, and your blogs can be deleted if it goes against their rules.

On the other hand, having a self-hosted blog on your own domain name makes you the owner of your blog. In fact, you are free to name your domain as your like. You can even choose to have it end with .co, .uk, .net, .org, etc. In addition to this, you have unlimited bandwidth for videos, images, content along with endless theme libraries.

However, as we stated above, if you are just starting off with writing blogs, you can opt for the many free alternatives and later opt for self-hosting once you are well-invested.

Step 3: Design your blog.

We hope you decide to choose WordPress, if so, now comes the fun part! It’s time to make your blog look exactly the way you want it. To choose a theme for your page, you can head to the appearance tab, click on themes, and choose from the list of free themes. You can opt to choose something that looks professional and easy to customize. In fact, with WordPress, you can easily change themes in one click. So you can try them all without losing your content and media files.

Your blog’s design should reflect your personality and also be relevant to your niche. But if navigating to your page is not easy, your audiences may drop out. So keep it simple and professional.

Step 4: Publish your first blog.

Now that your blog page is customized the way you want to go ahead and publish your first blog. To do so, you can simply click on ‘add a new post’ and then publish it when you have added images and videos. There is always an area of improvement. If at any time you do not wish to have your initial posts on the platform, simply edit and turn it into something beautiful instead of deleting it.

Conclusion

If you have followed these steps, your blog set up should be good to go! Blogs have the power to be extremely lucrative. But if making money from blogging is your aim, then you need to be patient as it may even take more than a year for you to have a steady stream of earning. Nevertheless, with no spending, this guide gives you everything you need to get started. So, what are you waiting for!