This is part one that I’m writing at the beginning of my journey. I plan to create more blog posts with updates of how this adventure is going for me. At the end of the day, I wish I started years ago when I first wanted to. So my advice to you: If you are toying with the idea – give it a go! Bet on yourself. You got this! **This post may contain affiliate links. A small commission may be earned.**
I had been toying with the idea of a blog and content creation for a long time – like ten years! I’ve really always loved social media and connecting with others. Prior to 2024, I always gave myself a reason as to why I shouldn’t do it or why I was too late to the game – or gave up way too soon (If I’ve learned anything in content creation and blogging in this short amount of time it’s that consistency is key and it takes time). After I had my second baby in 2023, I really wanted to be able to stay home with my babies. I saw so many people still making money on social media and blogging, I wanted to really give it a go.
Where did I start?
Personally I started with my Instagram because I already had a small following (2,000 in August 2023 when I really started this journey) and I enjoyed posting over there but you could totally start with the blog aspect! I’ll explain more in my blog strategy, but it does NOT rely on an instagram following.
In August 2023, I told myself I was going to be consistent on Instagram for 3 months and then go from there. After the first 3 months, I felt a good groove going and had gained some more of a following. I decided to keep posting and started to reach out to brands for collaborations. In February of 2024 I had my first PAID COLLABORATION (with only 5,000 followers). By April I had found a passion in toddler activities I was setting up with my 2 year old and broke the big 10k followers that seems like such a big milestone on Instagram.
In my Instagram growth I found my niche of posting and creating toddler activities – which was perfect because the former teacher in me loves this stuff. I tried to keep my posts on instagram organized, but it wasn’t the best platform for people to look up past ideas and videos, so the blog was born. I knew this was the perfect time for me to create a blog to house all these activities and I know had the knowledge of how to make money on social media and blogging (I definitely didn’t know all the ways you could make money prior to 2024).
3 month update of my blogging journey.
3 Ways to Make Money:
– Ad Revenue is the big goal for me. This is when you make money from people just coming to your blog. Think when you go to a blog and there are a few ads placed on there as you scroll. Your viewing of that page counts towards the total views and in turn to Ad Revenue for that blogger! This can be a great way to make money when you have lots of views to your blog (obviously the goal). So making content people want to read more about or want to come back to is crucial.
– Affiliate links. You may notice this blog and many other blogs have affiliate links within them. This basically just means the person may earn a small commission when someones purchases from their link. I personally use Amazon Affiliate links, LTK, and Mavely. I think Mavely has the least requirements to join and start linking your favorite items from everyday brands (think Target, Walmart, etc).
– Brand Deals/Sponsored Posts: Just like you see collaborations on Instagram you will also see sponsored posts on blogs! This is when you connect with a brand and come to terms of a payment for your opinion and/or review on a blog post or several posts.
I’m sure there are other ways, but these are the three I am most familiar with! Now to discuss how to start the blog, I’ll give you the step by step what I did!
Okay so the big question – how to start a blog? And how to start a successful blog! I’ll keep saying this, but I am in the beginning of my journey – but I can already see the potential and it is INSANE to me how much potential there is in this space. If you are thinking about it at all, DO IT. But if you’re going to do it, GIVE IT YOUR ALL. Don’t expect full results with half effort.
How To Start A Blog
Here I’ll tell you everything I did, how much it costs, and any tips/advice I have now that it’s set up.
- What is your why?
Decide why you are doing this blog. Do you want to make money? Is this just for pleasure? This is an important factor to decide before you go through the set up of the blog. Setting up a blog just as a space for your content (without the goal of making money) can be done in less steps.
My goal was always to make money on the blog – via the three ways mentioned above.
Below are the steps I took to start to make that happen. - What is your niche?
I believe this can evolve so don’t get too caught up in it, but you do want to have some kind of focus in your blog. For me, my main focus is toddler activities, but I also post DIYs, recipes, solo parenting, and more. - What are you going to call it?
Decide on what your blog name is going to be. This will also become your domain and your URL (you’ll want to be sure the domain is available too. You can check it easily on somewhere like domain.com).
You may want to check your name ideas on social media too. Eventually you’ll want to have the ability to post on social media (Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok) and you don’t want your name to already be associated with someone else!
Also, it can be helpful to run the name by some close friends or family. Write it down to get a visual. Sometimes our ideas sound great, but accidentally look like something you do not want (think like those prank names Ben Dover, for example). You’re naming another baby here – yell it out the back door, say it three times fast, whatever tricks you have!
Don’t worry about purchasing it at this point, you will do that with your host! - Choose a hosting site.
I don’t have much knowledge of the various hosting sites but I can tell you about Bluehost, which is who I use! You can get a discount on Bluehost with my referral link!
Bluehost uses WordPress – so you will have a WordPress site that is hosted by Bluehost.
Bluehost was very affordable – I chose to pay for the entire year of my blog and paid $108. This included my domain name!
With Bluehost, I will be able to place ads into the blog to earn ad revenue (this is true for other hosting sites, but it was very important to me that my site was able to have ad placement at some point).
Bluehost has been so easy to use and set up my blog. I 100% recommend them, especially after conversations and frustrations I’ve heard from my other friends.
If you choose to go with a different hosting site you’ll want to be sure to download and install WordPress. With Bluehost – this is just a one click and it’s installed. So easy! - Find and Install a Theme.
For this part I chose to go to Creative Market. The theme I chose was $40, but there are so many options!
I don’t have the WordPress knowledge to create my own theme and the basics one offered are… basic. Buying a theme is a one time purchase and gives your website a little personality right off the bat. - Design Your Logo
I used Canva for this! I pay for the Pro and find it to be so helpful between my blog, affiliate link collages, and toddler activities. It’s not necessary, but it is nice to have all the cute fonts and the Pro Tools. - Build Your Sites Legal Pages.
Disclaimer
You’ll want to have a disclaimer legal page on your site to protect you. Basically you are saying that these are all your honest thoughts and/or experiences, but if someone gets a different result that’s not your fault.
You can build a free disclaimer page here!
Privacy Policy
If you plan to collect any personal information such as emails for a newsletter, you’ll want to have a privacy policy posted. This will just state what you’re doing with the emails.
You can build a free privacy policy here!
Terms of Service
This is basically just a legal page that say you are not responsible for what people do with your content.
You can build a free Terms of Service document here.
You’ll want to have each of these displayed in a menu on your blog site. Mine are in the footer. - Set up Social Media for your blog.
This doesn’t mean you have to start posting and building these right away – but I would definitely reserve the handles! You want to be sure no one else takes the usernames and you might eventually post on them (think Pinterest, Instagram, Tiktok). - Set up your Categories and Subcategories.
This can be a work in progress and can be changed, but think about what your main categories are going to be. Those main items that you will have across your main menu and will always have content for.
Then think about what categories might go beneath them.
For example – one of my main categories is Toddler Activities – beneath that I have indoor, outdoor, holiday, etc. I’m one month into my blog as I write this and I am still perfecting these subcategories. Don’t feel like that has to be perfect before you launch!
Noteworthy: Setting up everything in WordPress was the most challenging part of this process. I watched many youtube videos and read many how to’s on different aspects of it. If I can leave you with anything – do not give up at this stage. It gets so much easier (and MORE FUN) once you have the backend of your site all laid out.
**If you ever need words of encouragement at this stage feel free to DM me on Instagram, seriously. I am writing this whole blog because I want YOU to succeed! - Start writing blogs!
This is of course the fun part. You may even have some content written already.
Some pages I think are important to have before you launch – Main Landing Page (think of this as your directory to your blog), About Me, 3-5 posts (TOTAL) in your various categories. Your blog will not be completed before you launch. It will 100% still be a work in progress and that’s okay! - Set up Google Analytics to track your blogs site visitors, page visits, etc.
This will allow you to see all the stats of your page and is extra helpful once you want to place ads on your page. Even if you don’t want to place ads, this will allow you to see what pages are getting the most views and visitors (and then you can create more posts like that one or more pins like the ones that are sending people that way).
The google support page I used to set up my Analytics is here! - Launch your blog!
Announce it to your social media pages and start driving traffic. This is where I really started to utilize Pinterest. I can talk about that more in another post, but essentially I started created 2-4 Pins for every blog post I wrote and started posting on Pinterest daily.
Big Note: You do not need to have a ton of posts to launch! I launched in August of 2024 with 8 posts. Don’t get caught up in trying to have tons of content before you post. Just launch it and then keep posting! - Keep Writing.
My initial goal was to continue to write 2-4 blog posts weekly in the beginning. I’ll slow down eventually, but I am trying to get my blog full of content. This helps with traffic and with ad potential down the line.
The beauty of the blog is you can really make this work for the time you have. My biggest advice here is to still be consistent with Pinterest as best you can. - Ad Placement
To be continued! In all seriousness though. I am a few months into blogging as I write this. I am currently trying to be approved on Google Adsense for my first attempt at Ad Revenue. I will happily share an update when I have one. For now I am in the “Keep Writing” step and sharing DAILY to Pinterest.
Reminders:
– This space of blogging is NOT FULL. There is so much potential still and plenty of room for you to be successful.
– Give yourself time and give 100% of what you can give to this space. There is plenty of room, but it is not easy work!
THE HARDEST PART
I am a pretty tech savvy person, but I am no means a computer programmer. So the HARDEST part for me was the backend of my blog. I spent lots of time on youtube watching videos and reading lots of how to posts. Do not give up at the backend step! Take a break if you need to, but try to come back to it every day or every few days.
You only have to do the backend of your blog once!!! After that it’s all the fun posting and driving people to your blog. Don’t give up!
In a few months I’ll give an update on my journey, but if you have the itch for this space… don’t wait for that update! Take the leap. Take the chance. You can do this! xx Ciara
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