Starting a blog can be a great way to make money online by sharing your passion and expertise with others. With a blog, you can share content in written form. In recent time, blogging has become a great way to make passive income online.
In the beginning, you might have to work multiple hours every single day to create content for your blog and promote it. But later on, you can spend less than an hour everyday to keep it running. I know several bloggers who work less than 10 hours a week and make over $100,000 per year. That’s the power of blogging.
What is a Blog?
You’re in this post means you’ve definitely heard a lot about the term ‘blog’ and ‘blogging’. But what actually is a blog? In simple words, a blog is a website where you can share content in written form. A blogger is someone, who creates content for a blog. And this overall process is called blogging.
Why Should You Start a Blog?
Now, you know what a blog is, let’s see why you should start a blog in 2025.
1. Blog can be a great way to share your knowledge and expertise with others.
2. It can be a great way to make money online.
3. It can be a great way to connect with like-minded people. You get a chance to connect with people who have similar passion and interests like you.
4. It is easy to start and the start up cost is very low.
5. You can work on a blog from anywhere and anytime you want. All you need is an internet connection.
6. Blog can also be a great way to spend your spare time and improve your writing skills.
Please Note: This post contains affiliate links to products I use, trust, and recommend. If you choose to purchase a product using these links, I may receive a small commission for referring you – at no extra cost to you. These funds help me keep this blog up and running.
How to Start a Blog? (Step-by-Step Guide)
1. Choose a Niche
The first step to starting a successful blog is choosing a niche. A niche is basically the topic your blog will be about. The topic around which you’ll create content on your blog. It can be Personal Finance, Health & Wellness, Tech, or anything else.
While choosing a niche, make sure to keep these 3 things in mind.
1. Passion & Knowledge: You should choose a niche that you’re highly passionate about and have a good knowledge of. Doing so, you’ll never lack motivation to work and content ideas to create content about.
2. Market Demand: The second thing to consider while choosing a niche is it’s demand in the market. You need to ask this question to yourself, Are people searching for the topic I’m going to create content about? If the answer is yes, Congratulations. You’ve found a good niche.
To find if people are searching for your topic or not, you can use tools like Ahrefs, Ubersuggest or Google Trends. Using these tools, you can find out the search volume of your topic. If your topic has high amount of searches, then it’s a good niche to start a blog.
The next method can be to search your topic on Google. If multiple blogs are there creating similar content that you want to create, then that topic is definitely in demand and has some traction in it.
3. Monetization Potential: The third and the most important thing to consider while choosing a niche is it’s earning potential. Your niche must have multiple ways to monetize it. Niches like Finance, Tech, Health, etc. have high earning potential and multiple ways to make money from day 1 itself. So, make sure that your niche has multiple ways to make money from it.
Check out my blog post on 16 Best Blogging Niches to Start a Blog in 2025.
2. Decide Your Blog’s Name
After you’ve chosen your niche, you have to decide a name for your blog. The name must be short and simple. Your blog’s name should also describe what your blog is about. Some good name examples can be: travelwithlisa, katy’skitchen or gardenculture. These names are not too long and clearly tells what the blog is about. The first name has travel in it’s name so, it must be a travel blog. The second one has kitchen in it so, it’s must be a cooking blog and so on.
Make sure that the .com domain and social media handles of your blog’s name is available. If the social media handles are already taken, then that might not be a big problem. If the .com domain is already taken, then you need to find a new name for your blog. This is the most crucial step to keep in mind while choosing your blog’s name.
If you can’t decide a good name for your blog, then you can use a free business name generator tool like Namelix.
3. Get Your Domain & Hosting
Now, you’ve decided your niche and have a good name for your blog, you need to purchase your domain name and hosting to host your blog. A domain name is the name of your blog. For example: www.yourblogname .com. Mine is www.groinsights .com.
Likewise, hosting is the place where your blog lives on the internet. Buying a hosting means, you’re renting out a small space on a server for your blog. Everything from your blog posts to your blog theme to images used in the blog posts are stored in the same server. So, hosting is basically a storage to store your blog’s data.
I personally use HostGator to host my blog. Here’s the link to purchase hosting and domain from HostGator.
To Buy Hosting & Domain from HostGator, follow these steps.
1. First Click on the above link.
2. Then, select the Baby Plan as shown in the screenshot below.
3. Now, you’ll be taken to a page where you need to register your domain. Just type in the name you decided for your blog and click on ‘Search for Domain’.
4. Then, you’ll be taken to the checkout page. At the checkout page, keep only these two items in your cart as shown in the screenshot below. Remove every other item from the cart. Also choose, for how long you want to get the hosting for. By default, it is set to 3 years. If you want to get it for 1 year, then choose 1 year. (Don’t worry about adding a Promo Code. By using my link, you’re already getting a discounted price.)
5. After that, click on ‘Continue to Checkout’, add your details and pay for your packages. For just $70, you can get top class hosting and domain for an entire year.
4. Choose & Setup Your Theme
After you’ve purchased your domain and hosting, you need to install WordPress in it. Here’s a video tutorial on how to install WordPress with HostGator.
After, you’ve installed WordPress, you need to choose a good theme for your blog and set it up. While choosing a theme for your blog, make sure to consider these things:
1. The theme should be clean and clear.
Make sure that the theme looks professional and have a clean interface.
2. It should have a simple user interface and should not be laggy.
The theme should be easy to navigate and should not lag while using.
3. Never use the pirated version of a premium theme. Such themes contain links to unwanted sites and may transfer computer viruses.
4. The theme should be highly customizable.
The theme must have option to customize each and every part of it without coding.
5. It should be SEO friendly.
The theme you choose must be SEO friendly. Search engines like Google should easily be able to read content from your site.
If you don’t have any idea on which theme you should use on your blog, then use one of the pre-installed theme on WordPress. Even I used the free Astra theme for nearly 9 months on my blog before switching to a premium theme.
After you choose your theme, you need to customize it. Nowadays, you can easily customize most themes without any need for coding. You can find a YouTube video on customizing your particular theme and follow it accordingly. That’s the easiest way to do it.
5. Install Useful Plugins
At this point, you have created your blog and setup a theme for it. Now, you need to add some plugins to help you run your blog smoothly, check your analytics and make money from it. Here are some plugins you must have on your blog.
1. Google Site Kit – to check the analytics and monetize your blog
2. Yoast SEO – to improve your blog’s SEO
3. Elementor – to design your blog (specially the Home page of your blog)
4. WP Rocket – to improve your blog’s performance
5. Jetpack – to keep your blog safe and secure, to create backup of your blog
6. Grow for WordPress – to collect emails and build your email list
7. Contact form 7 – to create contact form for your blog
8. Akismet – to block spam comments and spam content in contact forms
These are 8 plugins you must have on your blog.
6. Create Important Blog Pages
You need to create some important pages for your blog. These pages tells your audience about your blog, it’s policies, legal stuffs and more. Pages like, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer, Terms & Conditions, About us, Contact us, etc. are a must on your blog.
You can create Privacy Policy, Disclaimer and Terms & Conditions for your blog at no cost from Privacy Policy Generator, Disclaimer Generator and Terms and Conditions Generator respectively.
In the About us page, tell what your blog is about, who you are, what’s the purpose of your blog and more. And in Contact us page, add the contact form that you created using Contact Form 7 plugin. You can also provide your email address and physical mailing address if you want.
If you have some money and want these legal pages created by an actual lawyer, then here’s a link to get them. If you don’t have money, use the above method to create them.
7. Write Blog Posts
Finally, your blog is ready to post content. Now, you can write and share blog posts on your blog. In the beginning, try to write blog post on such topics that interests you more than anything else. Doing this, you’ll always have motivation to create content. After sometime, it will become a habit that you can’t even break.
Make sure that the content you’re writing is both; useful and valuable to your audience. And the information you share through your blog is always genuine and authentic.
8. Promote Your Blog
No matter how good your content is, it is nothing without traffic. If there is no one to read your blogs, then it’s of no value to anyone and you can’t make any money from it. So, getting traffic to your blog is very very important. And to get traffic, you need to actively promote your blog.
According to successful bloggers, you need to follow the 80-20 rule to succeed in blogging. You need to spend 20% of your time writing blogs and 80% promoting them.
Here are 4 different ways to promote your blog in order to grow traffic.
1. Add Social Share button to your blogs. This way, readers can easily share your blog post to their social media handles or friends and family if they want.
2. Promote it on Social Media. Create social media handles for your blog and start sharing your blog posts on those platforms. Pinterest & Flipboard works the best to generate traffic to a blog. Here are 14 best platforms to share your blogs to generate traffic.
3. Write SEO friendly blogs. Make sure to add keywords throughout your blog post to make it SEO friendly. This way, you can increase your chances of ranking on Google search and get more traffic.
4. Cross promote your blog posts. It is also called internal linking, where you’re promoting your own blog posts in another of your own blog post.
Other than these, you can answer questions on Quora, join online communities and forums, write guest blog posts, etc. to promote your blog.
How to Make Money with a Blog?
There are several ways to make money with a blog. No matter how much traffic your blog gets, you can easily monetize your blog. Some popular ways to make money with a blog includes display ads, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, selling your own products, services and memberships.
If you’d like to learn more about different ways to make money with a blog, then check out my other blog post, 6 Ways to Make Money with a Blog. In that post, I’ve discussed about every method to make money with a blog in detail.
Tips to Become a Successful Blogger
1. Be Consistent
It doesn’t matter if you create a new blog post every single day, once every two days, once a week or month, do it consistently. Consistency is the key to success.
2. Promote it Effectively
With the rise of AI and frequent Google updates, you never know where your blog will get to. So, to ensure it’s growth, promote it as much as you can. Specially on social media.
3. Monetize Your Blog through Multiple Ways
The future can never be predicted. Even if you’re making money with your blog right now, it may not last forever. So, monetize your blog through multiple ways. If one source of income dries up, other will be there to make money for you.
4. Make it Reader Friendly
On whatever topic you write your blogs, make sure it’s easy to read and understand. Try to write your blogs in a conversational way thinking that you’re talking to the person reading the post.
This was all about starting a blog and making money from it in 2025. As I always say, the best time to start something is not today, it’s NOW itself. So, if you’re planning to start a blog, don’t just think about it. Take action immediately.
