Hello everybody, Today we're gonna talk about how to start a successful blog. You know for me it was it was 10 years ago, it's a decade ago,that Ryan and I first started theminimalists.com and we've learned awhole lot over the last decade not only have we gained millions of readers but Icould tell you it was it was honestly one of the best decisions that I've evermade. Since then we've produced a couple films,we've published four books, we've gone out on ten different tours, we started apodcast, and so much more but it all started because we started a blog and infact over the last decade we've helped over 20,000 people start their own blogover at theminimalists.com/blog And so today what we're going to do iswe're going to walk through that blog post on our blog step-by-step so youyourself can start a blog.
Throughout this video you're gonna see me bounce back and forth between the computer here and the camera if you want to followalong you can also do that over at theminimalists.com/blog now let'sdive in to our five steps alright so step one we need to pick our hostingcompany the hosting company I've been using for many years is a company calledBluehost and in fact I'll walk you through the signup process they makeeverything really easy and they also have really great customer support onthe back end and during this first step this is actually also when we're goingto pick the name of our blog so for example my blog is the minimalists command you'll be able to pick your URL as well so let's go ahead and go throughthose steps here I'm just gonna click here on Bluehostit's gonna take us over there and you just click the green button here thatsays get started now or we've got a few options here your basic plan is as lowas 275 a month that tends to work for most people especially when you're firstgetting started now keep in mind you can change any of these in the future if youdo need to upgrade or downgrade we're gonna go ahead and select thebasic all right now it's time for you to pick the name for your blog maybe youalready know what name you want to use maybe it's just your name com maybe youhave a business or you've figured out a creative title for your blog whatever itis the nice thing here is you get a free domain right here through Bluehostalright and because you're creative you figured out a very creative blog nameit's creative blog name com now if you already own a com maybe you register itfrom somewhere else that previous screen there you could have entered that aswell but since we're setting up a brand new one you're going to get that forfree and look your name is available creative blog name com is totallyavailable so now I just need to enter my own personal information here so thereare several extras you can choose from here I'm going to unselect those youdon't necessarily need them of course you can add them if you want get out my credit card here and mycredit card information alright simply agree to the Terms ofService and submit alright that was easy it says your purchase was a success Iwent ahead and sent me a confirmation email and now we go in to create theaccount all right now we're gonna log into the account alright so basicallyyou could be done right now I mean you've sort of created a blog butthere's a few things that I recommend before you get started creating so let'shop back on over to the minimalists comm slash blog and walk you through stepstwo through five alright so step two is install WordPress which sounds reallyoverwhelming right I don't know how to install something well guess what wealready took care of it Bluehost already did the work for us sowe can go ahead and skip step two altogether because we have WordPress infact WordPress is what the majority of serious bloggers I know who use a blogthey use WordPress of course there are other free templates out there butWordPress itself is actually free hosting it on Bluehost is relativelyinexpensive and so we've already taken care of step two let's go ahead andclick on over to step three alright so step three is picking your theme youhave a host you have your name and you have WordPress right but you want yourblog to be your own and your theme allows you to design your blog exactlythe way you want it to look and so what we're going to do and I'll do this onthe computer here we go on over to BYLT.co and we download the theme that we wantfor our blog alright from the main page you just click get started and we haveseveral themes to choose from here I'm gonna go ahead and pick the tru Themewhich is the theme that we use over at theminimalists.com but you have severalothers too choose from to make your blog lookunique so now I just need to enter my own personal information here all rightthat was really easy and you have purchased your theme so you have adesign for your website now and you own that theme of course we still need toinstall the theme that sounds really difficult but I assure you it's not allwe're gonna do is click on dashboard from the purchase page here that willtake you to BYLT.co/dashboard and from here we will download your themealright now that we've downloaded your theme we're just gonna head on over toBluehost there's a few steps that we can skip here because well we've downloadedour own theme so skip this step skip this step skip this step alright weskipped those steps we're gonna go ahead and get into WordPress here click getstarted we're gonna skip the dollar in 24 cents a month here so turn off domainprivacy and protection we're gonna go ahead and skip this step and then we goto my sites and you'll see your site pop up here if you don't see it you'llnotice some text at the top will let you know they're still creating your site itmight take a couple minutes for that to happen but once it does it's right hereso go ahead and click login to WordPress all right so this is WordPress and thisis your dashboard and this is where you install your theme again that soundsreally complicated but it's literally just a few clicks we're just gonna goover here to appearance and then themes and then you click upload here at thetop since you've already downloaded your theme you'll be able to upload thattheme that you just downloaded from built just select your file inside yourdownload folder you will find the theme that you downloaded just click open andclick install now alright now your theme has been successfully installed and youjust want to click activate or on this screen you will notice thatthere is a little red box that pops up that says your theme has not beenactivated don't worry about that there's a link right below it it says welcome toyour theme click here to complete the setup we're not going to go through thatright now but it's really easy for you to do you just click there to configureyour theme but we're gonna go ahead and move on to the next step and that isselecting the plugins for your blog all right so let's head back to theminimalists comm slash blog and take a look at the plugins that we want now wealready installed the monster insights for Google Analytics so you don't evenneed to install that plug-in but there's still one plug-in that we want so if wego back to your dashboard here within WordPress you click plugins and add newand we're just gonna search for SEO the first thing you see pop up is Yoast SEOSEO stands for search engine optimization that means when peoplesearch for your blog on Google or some other search engine they will be able tofind it very easily so we're gonna click install now and then we're gonna clickactivate all right so we have installed your plugins now there are a few optionsyou can go through with each plug-in I won't walk you through each of those butyou can configure them for your website and your own taste let's head on over tothe minimalists comm slash blog and I will walk you through the fifth step sohere we are step 5 write compelling content for yourblog that readers will love we hear this term content all the time I'm notinterested in content what I'm really interested in is producing meaningfulcreations writing to add value to other people's lives so you've identified thatyou wanted to start a blog you have everything you need now you have yourplugins you have WordPress you have your theme you have your host you have yourdomain name your URL but now come fun part you're going to begin writingfor your future audience before we do that though there are a few importantthings that I think you need to consider for your blog first off you want a photoof yourself on your blog why is that well because people connect with otherpeople they don't connect with brands you're not a brand you are you and sohave a photo of yourself on your blog second it's important to have some sortof logo so if someone can identify your blog for what it is and so you may notbe able to create your own logo you may not have the design chops to do that butdon't worry there are a few resources here on the minimalists com a slash blogwhere you can get your own logo designed relatively inexpensively also images onyour blog you'll notice that a lot of blogs and a lot of new sites they usedifferent images and most of those images you can actually find online forfree now I have several resources in the blog post here at the minimalists commslash blog where you can find free or cheap stock photos for your blog alsocomments do you want comments on your blog that's really up to you I don'thave comments on my blog anymore but they really help shape my blog the firsttwo or three years that I was blogging it allowed me to get feedback frompeople it allowed me to understand what was resonating with people and itallowed me to shift what I was creating to better serve and better solveproblems for the people who were reading my blog Oh social media social media issomething that's important to talk about although social media should not be thefocus of our blog it should simply augment what we're doing with our blogso yes you probably want a Twitter account or a Facebook account or even anInstagram account but they're not absolutely necessarythey simply enhance what you're doing on the blog the nice thing about your blogis you own your blog any of these other platforms whether it's Instagram orFacebook or or Twitter they could be gone tomorrow and everything that you'vecreated for those platforms will go along with it but on your blog you ownit and it is just for you so yeah sure use social media to promote your blogbut don't make it the main folk of what you're doing and then ultimatelythe last step is to publish it is time for you to write your first blog postnow I've got some more tips for you if you need some writing tips you candownload my free ebook it's called eleven ways to write better and you cando that over at how to write better org and that's it you're ready to startpublishing words to the world all right before we end this video today you canfinish this blog post at the very end of how to start a successful blog there are20 blogging tips to improve your right and you can find that here on the screenand you'll notice the very bottom of this blog post we also have 15 reasonsyou should start a blog three reasons you should not start a blog foradditional blogging resources and at the very end of the post you can tweet usand let us know what you think about this blog post about this video and youcan also ask additional questions so click the button here to ask yourquestion and that is it for this video you have five steps for how to start ablog today I hope you get started I'm wishing you way more than luck alrighty'all love people use things Sometimes we just pretend I'm on a roller coaster.
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