Start A WordPress Blog On Bluehost With 4 Simple Steps

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When I decided to start a blog on WordPress, I began researching exactly what I needed to do. I knew I needed to purchase a hosting plan and I had heard a lot about Bluehost but I was a little skeptical. I figured that most of the bloggers who recommend Bluehost, probably do so because they get a commission for Bluehost if you sign up through their link.

Side note: I’m an affiliate of Bluehost and I do receive a commission if you sign up through any of the links on this page. However, I have had such a great experience with them so far that I would highly recommend them even if I didn’t earn a commission. Whether you go to Bluehost.com and sign up from there, or use my affiliate link the steps below will be the same.

After spending what seemed like way to much time researching different hosting services I decided that Bluehost was the best option for me. Not only did they have decent prices ($3.95/month for a basic plan) but they also had amazing reviews on their support and customer service.

These reviews were put to the test when I accidentally added an ‘s’ to the end of my URL and didn’t catch it in time. I started to freak out a little bit, thinking that I had just made a huge mistake. I called up Bluehost and was on the phone with an actual person in less than 2 minutes. He immediately found my problem and we got it fixed. Crisis diverted!

If you have any issues while signing up with Bluehost, I highly recommend calling them. So far, I have been really impressed with their customer service. They are always very helpful and have never made me feel dumb for asking (what I thought was) stupid questions.

Before I signed up with Bluehost I found a few tutorials on how to start a WordPress blog through Bluehost and to be honest, I was a little overwhelmed. Many of the tutorials went into extream detail and made the entire process seem really complicated.

These blogs will tell you, ‘Don’t trust those sites that say you can build a blog in 10 minutes!! It’s a lot more complicated than that!’

Well, they are partially correct.

There is a lot that goes into building a blog, but the majority of it you will learn as you go. Many tutorials will have you focusing on picking the perfect theme and making your website all pretty. If you get sucked into that as a beginning blogger, you will easily become overwhelmed and may decide to quit blogging altogether before you have even started.

Don’t fall for that trap!

The most important thing you need to focus on in the beginning is building an e-mail list and writing content for your blog. (More on this at the end of this post.) I suggest that you write at least 5 to 20 posts before trying to customize your WordPress blog and make it ‘pretty’.

When I finally decided to ignore all the complicated tutorials and just go for it, I was surprised to find that the entire process was actually really easy. My WordPress blog was up and running in just a few minutes.

If you’ve been thinking about starting a WordPress blog for a while but you’ve been overwhelmed by past tutorials, hopefully, this simple 4-step tutorial will be just the push you need to take action. Stop thinking about it and just do it.

Step 1: Purchase Hosting Plan That Fits Your Needs

The basic plan will fit most of the needs for beginning bloggers.

If you plan on blogging about multiple niches and want to have more than one domain, you may want to choose a more expensive plan. However, if you are just starting out, even if you think you might eventually want more then one domain, I suggest going with the basic plan. It will cost less money upfront and you can change your plan at any time.

*Tip: To get a cheaper price, check out my tip in step 3.

Step 2: Choose A Domain Name

All Bluehost plans come with at least 1 free domain (your domain name is the name in your URL) so don’t worry about purchasing a domain yet. If you already have a domain, no biggie, you can still use it with Bluehost

Some people get caught up in their domain name and spend days or even weeks trying to come up with the perfect URL. Don’t be one of those people. The content you produce will hold a lot more value than your domain name so try not to spend to much time on this.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when thinking of a domain name.

Pick a domain that is easy to remember. Short domain names work better than longer ones, and I don’t recommend choosing a crazy, unique name that your readers will forget as soon as they leave your page.
It must be easy to spell and easy to pronounce. Using miss-spelled words on purpose may be cute but no one is going to remember how to spell your domain when they search for it.
Use keywords related to your niche. If you have an organizing site, try using the word organize or organizing in your domain. This gives the impression that you are a professional in the field and prospective readers looking to get organized will trust that you can solve their problems.
Avoid using any numbers or hyphens in your domain. While Google says that they are ok to use, I have read that search engine crawlers get confused by hyphens and numbers so it’s probably best not to use them. Not only that but it makes your domain harder to read.

Step 3: Enter Your Payment Info

Now it’s time to enter your payment info. In order to get the best price, I suggest signing up for a 36-month plan. It does cost more upfront but it will get you the most bang for your buck.

Tip* When you get to the page to enter in all your payment information. Move your mouse up to the back arrow in the top, left corner of your screen. This will sometimes trigger a pop up offering you a cheaper price. However, I’ve found that if you exit out of the page or dismiss the popup then it may be several days before it shows up again. I should also note that your price might not be the same as in the photo above. It all depends on what specials Bluehost is offering at the time.

After you enter your payment info, go ahead and uncheck all the ‘package extras’ boxes. If you are worried about security or want SEO tools then you can do your research later on and purchase these separately. Bluehost offers these ‘extras’ because they get paid to do so, but I haven’t seen very many good reviews on them.

Step 4: Install Your WordPress Blog

After you submit your payment info, you’ll be taken to a screen that looks like the one above. Click on the “start building” button which will bring you to your WordPress blog.

You will then be asked to pick a theme. Don’t spend a lot of time deciding on a theme. You can always change it later and it’s easier to pick a theme once you have a few blog posts up. That way you can get a better feel of how the theme will work on your blog.

You can get to your WordPress site through the Bluehost portal but I prefer to go through WordPress itself. To do this just go to www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/

Congrats!! You now have a WordPress blog on Bluehost.

So now that you have created your blog, you may be thinking what next?

You might be eager to customize your site but I suggest working on your content first. Having a few posts live on your blog before you choose a theme will make it a lot easier to see what themes will work best with your content.

I made the mistake of choosing a theme and spending a lot of time trying to make my blog ‘perfect’ from the start, but once I started creating posts, I realized that the theme I had chosen didn’t work with my overall vision of my blog. It was a huge waste of my time and energy.

So, if you shouldn’t be working on your theme, what should you do?

Here are the top two priorities that you should be focusing on right now.

Side note: If you have not created your WordPress blog on Bluehost yet I highly suggest that you do so before you continue reading. The main purpose of this post is to not overwhelm you with too much information. Getting too far ahead can distract you from the main focus of creating a blog.

What are you waiting for? If you have not created a blog yet, click here to go to Bluehost and get started now.

If you still think you’re not ready to start a blog then bookmark this page and come back to it when you are.

Priority 1: Create An Opt-In For E-mail Subscribers

One of the biggest mistakes I made with my last blog was not collecting emails from the start.

When it comes to connecting with your readers, email wins, hands down, over any social media account. I’m sure that this is not the first time you heard someone say this.

In fact, when I started blogging, almost every blogging tutorial I read stressed the importance of creating an e-mail list. Guess what I did? Ignored them, of course.

After several months, I finally set up a subscription with FeedBurner that collected emails and automatically sent them any new posts I published and I was naive enough to think that that would be good enough.

I collected quite a few e-mails through FeedBurner but I had no idea what to do with them. I started thinking that all of the hype about collecting e-mails was wrong. It was just a waste of my time.

Then I started looking at my analytics.

I usually ignored the number of page views I was receiving from my e-mail because that number was so small, but when I actually looked at that number in comparison to the number of e-mail subscribers I had in total, the percentage was way more than any of my social media accounts.

Not only that but the majority of these clicks were coming from repeat customers.

These were not random people who found me on Pinterest, that read one post, then left to never return again. These were people who had been following me for months or even years. People who trusted the information that I gave to them, and viewed me as an authoritative figure in my niche.

These were also the same people who would be the first to buy a product if I ever want to sell one.

Note: If you’re serious about blogging and want to earn enough many to make a living off of your blog, then you must make a product. (More on this in another post)

The only problem was, FeedBurner is limited with what you can do with your e-mail subscribers. If you really want to be able to reach your readers, you have to have a good email marketing service. If you are just starting out, you can use a free service but keep in mind that you get what you pay for. Also note that if you ever decide to switch services, it is a huge pain. For that reason alone, I chose to use ConvertKit from the start. (I don’t have an affiliate with them, just love their service.)

One of the main reasons I chose ConvertKit over other marketing services, is that they don’t charge you twice for the same e-mail. This means that if you sign up for my newsletter, then you click on another page and enter your e-mail again to receive a free printable, ConvertKit will only see this as one subscriber. Most other marketing services will count each entry as a separate subscriber even if they use the same e-mail address.

When you are using a service that charges you based on how many subscribers you have, this can be a huge deal.

ConvertKit makes it super easy to create email opt-ins to start collecting e-mails. Once you sign up, you will click on the ‘Landing Pages & Forms’ option at the top of the page. Then click the ‘create new’ button, which will take you to the above screen. From here you can select if you want to create a form or a landing. To start with, you will want to select ‘form’.

On the display format page, choose ‘inline’. Then pick your template. From there you can change your image and text to customize your opt-in.

Once you have finished your opt-in, click on the ’embed’ link on the right of the screen to embed your form into your post.

Priority 2: Start Writing Your First Post

A lot of tutorials will tell you to wait on publishing any posts until you have 5-20 posts ready to publish. Those are the same tutorials that expect you to spend more time on how your blog looks than writing content for your readers. They will tell you that any visitors will leave if your blog is not professional looking and easy to navigate. This might be true if you are a seasoned blogger and have several dozen posts on your blog, but when you are just starting out, it’s easy to tell if you’re a beginner. Your readers aren’t stupid. You can have a professional-looking blog with pretty pictures but if you only have 10-20 posts, your readers will know that you are a new blogger, and most of them won’t care.

What readers do care about, is the quality of the information you provide and how easy it is to navigate your site. However, in the beginning, when you only have a few posts, don’t worry too much about your readers being able to navigate your site. This is something that you can work on after you have a dozen or so posts. Remember, you don’t want to get overwhelmed with information overload. The road to a successful blog is figuring out the one thing that you need to focus on now. The rest will come with time.

Also, don’t spend too much time thinking about what post you will write first. I’m sure you have a dozen ideas running around in your head and you may find it hard to choose one. Keep in mind that this is just the start of your journey. Picking one topic to write about doesn’t mean that you will dismiss all of the other ideas. You will eventually get to them all.

I hope this tutorial has helped you. If you would like me to write a more in-depth tutorial to create forms in ConvertKit or how to write your first post, please let me know in the comments below.

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