If you ever wondered how to start an online blog for free, then don’t wonder any longer. Join me in this step-by-step tutorial, and I will walk you through what you need to know to start your free online blog.
This tutorial is for real people just like YOU! The end result will be a lovely themed website that is based on a secure, fast, and the most technologically advanced hosting platform. The best part is that the whole process takes only 30 seconds. And as an extra bonus it’s FREE!
Interested then read on…
How To Start A Free Online Blog
If you always wanted to start an online blog for free but don’t know what to do, or where to start, then don’t worry. Starting a WordPress blog with SiteRubix is quick and easy. It will only take 30 seconds. And you don’t need to know any coding or any tech stuff either. I am totally tech illiterate, so if I can do it, you can too!
So, let’s get started. I will break down each step so that soon you can have your very own blog.
List Niche Ideas
The first thing that you need to consider to start an online blog for free is what your niche or topic will be about. This is an important decision because the niche you choose will be what you will blog about.
Choosing a niche can be challenging, and can be the most difficult part of the process for many people. It definitely was for me as I had too many different ideas which resulted in confusion. Other people struggle when choosing a niche because they don’t know where their interests lie.
The best way to overcome this is to list your niche ideas. With over 1,000,000 different niches to choose from, your niche can be anything that you are passionate about. It is very important that your niche interests you. This is because in order to have a successful blog, you will have to write many, many posts about your niche and associated topics.
Writing blogs on a regular basis will help your blog grow exponentially! Regularly posting blogs attracts and increases your audience. Many people start with one idea for their blog. That idea then develops over time and takes them into other directions that they never initially thought of.
The best way to discover great niche ideas is for you to ask yourself the following questions.
1. What am I passionate about, or interested in?
2. What am I good at, or knowledgeable about?
3. Is there an interest or market for my niche?
4. Can I make money from this niche?
• What am I passionate about or interested in?
This question shouldn’t be too difficult to answer. There are hundreds of different things that you may be interested in. Your interests may lie in; fashion, parenting, music, food, hobbies, art, craft, sports, health, fitness, home decorating, gardening, finance, web design, apps, etc, or even a combination of these.
What is important to your blog’s success, is that you love or are interested in, the niche that you choose. Still unsure? Ask yourself and answer this question: “If I could choose anything, what would my dream job be?”
• What am I good at or knowable in?
Some people have trouble picking a niche topic. They feel that they aren’t all that passionate about anything in particular. Others are overwhelmed with all the possibilities. If this is the case with you, chose something that you are good at or are knowledgeable in.
This is a great opportunity to make use of your education, qualifications, work experience or even your life experiences. For example, profitable niches can be found within nursing, teaching, finance, science, technology, legal, admin, customer service, welfare, health, parenting, etc, etc.
Don’t be afraid to draw on your knowledge or experience and combine these with your passion. For example, if your background is in nursing and your interest is in sports, your blog might be about sports injuries. Or your qualifications might be in finance but your passion is in home decorating. In this case combine these to create an interesting niche such as: “How to make more money by styling a home for sale”.
• Is there an interest or market for my niche?
Over half of the world’s population has access to the internet. And in western countries, the percentage of people that have internet access is over 80%. Everyday there are millions of people searching the internet for advice, information, products, services and for entertainment.
Therefore, if you are interested in a niche or topic, then it’s likely that many other people are interested in the same topic too. Another way to measure the amount of interest in a niche, is to join forums or Facebook groups that are in the niche that you are interested in.
Or you could check Quora to see what kinds of questions people ask that relate to your chosen niche. Quora is a question-and-answer website. Just type in your niche or a keyword that is associated with your niche. Check to see if there are any questions surrounding that topic. If there are many, then you have a viable niche that will resonate with audiences.
Don’t worry if you aren’t an expert in your niche! You just need to have a desire to want to learn more about your niche. And you are in luck! Because the internet can provide you with endless opportunities to research anything your heart desires.
Over time you will build up your blog website with quality, informative content. If the content you provide to your readers is entertaining or helpful to them, then your audience will happily share your content.
Remember to choose a niche that you are interested in. Pick something that you will be happy to blog about for a long time to come. Your blog website will then become the place for readers to go to for information or advice about your niche topic.
• Can I make money from my niche?
Many people blog just for fun because they enjoy it. That’s fine if that is what you want to do. But your blog has the potential to earn money, so why won’t you monetize it?
Think of ways that you can make money through your blog. You can offer an e-book, a service, a training course, a discount, or an app. For most people that are starting out with their blog, the best way to monetize your blog online is through affiliate marketing.
What Is Affiliate Marketing Online
Affiliate marketing is when you promote and sell someone else’s products or services. This is the most cost-effective way of making money online. The reason is because it won’t cost you a dime to join an affiliate program such as Amazon, eBay, Clickbank etc.
Once you join as an affiliate, you will be able to promote all the top products and services in the world! You can choose from approximately 600 MILLION different products/services. With that amount of inventory, it should be easy for you to find items that relate to your niche and that you can easily promote on your website.
The best thing about affiliate marketing is that you don’t own any of the inventory that you promote. And because you don’t own any products or services, you don’t have to worry about production costs, hiring staff, or shipping costs.
Furthermore, you don’t have to concern yourself about any other problems that are associated with providing products and services such as shop fittings, insurances or refunds.
Click here to learn how to become an Affiliate Marketer for FREE!
Top Niche Markets
When choosing your niche, you need to be aware that the top niche markets are not necessarily the best choices for the novice. Choosing a popular niche market such as; “weight loss”, “beauty”, “fashion”, “sport”, “health” or “travel”, will hurt your blog’s chances of success.
The reason for this is because there are too many large companies competing in these top niche markets. So, if you choose a popular niche you will end up completing against these big budget companies. As a result, your blog will struggle to get any traffic.
Low Hanging Fruit
In order to ensure your blog’s success, choose the low hanging fruit. In other words, choose a niche that is easier to compete in. You do this by drilling down within your niche and narrowing the field. One way to gage the competition within a niche market is by using a keyword research tool such as Jaaxy.
For instance, if you want “beauty” as your niche, your blog will be sure to struggle for traffic. Instead, drill down and pick a less popular topic within this niche. Choose a niche such as “beautiful skin care tips” as there is less competition for this niche.
The table below has been complied using Jaaxy. The two most important columns in the table are “Monthly Searches” and “QSR” which shows the competing number of websites that use the same chosen keywords.
While the “beauty” niche gets a huge number of searches, the number of companies competing for this traffic is also high at 157. “Beautiful skin care tips” on the other hand, is low hanging fruit. This niche is easier for the novice to compete in as it only has 30 competitors.
Jaaxy is a brilliant tool! It generates words that people actually use when searching for products, services and information. You can use it gain real insights into the terms your audience are searching for.
Not only can you use Jaaxy to find the best niches, but you can also use it to find the best keywords for your blog content. You will then be able to create optimize your content for your blog by using those terms. Blog content that has targeted keywords will improve your websites ranking in Google! To learn more about how to use Jaaxy read my article “How To Find The Best Keywords For A Website”.
Best Free Blog Platforms
Now that you have chosen your niche, you need to choose a platform to place your content on. There are many different platforms to choose from such as WordPress, Wix and SquareSpace.
WordPress is one of the best content management platforms to have your content in. It is used by approximately 75 million websites. Many of these are well known brands such as Sony Playstation, ExpressJet Airlines, Boston University, as well as The Rolling Stones.
WordPress is free to install, and is easy to use! There are thousands of plugins and themes available to customize your website. These tools will help you to give your website the look and feel that you want. WordPress easily integrates with many hosting platforms. There is also a lot of support that will help you with your WordPress blog.
Create A Domain Name
In order to start an online blog for free, you first need to name your blog website. This is where the fun part begins! Let your creative juices flow when creating a domain name. The name that you create will become part of your URL, e.g.:– http://yourbestblogname.com. This is what people will type into the address bar in order to find your website.
It’s a good idea to have your niche mentioned somewhere in your website name. The best websites for search engine optimization end in “.com”. Websites that end in .com are the most common and are easier to remember.
Whilst you should be creative with your domain name, don’t make it too long. A good domain name should be:
• Simple and Memorable
• Unique
• Distinctive
• Pronounceable
• Brandable and relates to your overall brand
Make sure that you have a list of several name choices. This is in case the .com of the domain name that you have your heart set on is already taken. Just make a list of potential domain names for now as you will need them later on.
Start An Online Blog For Free
If you want a secure and reliable web host, then I recommend SiteRubix through Wealthy Affiliate as it’s one of the best free hosting companies.
At Wealthy Affiliate you can get two FREE websites that you can use for as long as you like. Or you can sign up for their premium program that offers the best training program in the world for making money online.
Wealthy Affiliate offers an enormous number of training programs and classes. There are also live webinars on a weekly basis that members can join. At Wealthy Affiliate you are taught the most current traffic generating techniques.
As a member of Wealthy Affiliate, the support, the live chat, and the accessibility to incredible mentors, result in the best training that anyone could wish for.
The community at WA exceeds expectations. The people are so friendly and helpful that you can always find someone to help you out. If you have a question or are unsure of what you are doing just ask and someone will assist you. The community is also great at providing ideas or encouragement if you need help in this way.
Why I Choose SiteRubix
Like me, if you sign up with SiteRubix and start an online blog for free, you won’t experience any technical problems. Instead you will be able to build a beautiful, revenue ready website for your blog in under 30 seconds!
SiteRubix provides users with very fast, ultra-powerful and secure hosting. This is because they have the latest state of the art servers. So, when your blog gets heaps of traffic your website will easily keep up. This is fantastic news for your blog because it sucks when websites go down. When websites go down, that’s when you end up missing out on potential subscribers, readers and/or customers.
The SiteRubix platform also automatically optimizes your website so that your blog is able to be viewed on mobiles phones. This is very handy as these days more and more people use their mobile instead of a laptop.
Technical support is available 24/7. So, if in a rare situation, you happen to experience some technical issues, there is always someone that can help you out. Plus, they very quickly sort out any issues.
Start your blog for free by using SiteRubix for your hosting. It has a lot of great features with zero risk and zero obligation!
How To Start A Free Online Blog With Siterubix
Okay! Now you are ready to start creating your blog. You are 30 seconds away from building your own blog website. It’s easy-peasy because with the SiteRubix platform, WordPress is automatically installed for you.
The best way to follow this tutorial is to do it with me. So, click to the SiteRubix platform in the box below and follow along with me. Enter a name for your free website in the box below and press the blue button that says “Build it now”.
You will be taken to the SiteRubix website where you will need to provide your details. Once you have done this click on the green button “Create Account & Continue”.
You will now be transported to the SiteRubix platform. Click on the word “Website” in the left-hand frame and then on “Site builder”. See the highlighted text in the image below.
Once you are in the Site Manager/ Build My Website;
Step 1: Choose what kind of website you want to build.
You can choose from 3 different options. For this tutorial I will choose the free option which is the first box. If you already have a paid domain name, you can use your existing domain name (choose the 2nd box). Or if you want a paid domain name you can choose the 3rd box.
Step 2: Choose Your Domain Name
Remember the list that you made up with your potential domain names? Now is the time to refer to it. Your domain name will set your brand apart and is what people will remember you by.
You will most probably also use the same name on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. So, make sure that your domain name is relevant to your niche topic that you want to blog about. Don’t put spaces in your domain name, if you do the system will warn you.
Once chosen, you can’t change your domain name, so choose carefully.
When you start an online blog for free you will end up with a subdomain. A subdomain is your website name followed by siterubix.com. For example, if you want to domain name to be “dogbiscuits” your subdomain will be “dogbiscuitssiterubix.com”.
A subdomain is fine especially when you are first learning how to set up your website. You can at a later date purchase your own domain name and easily transfer your free website over to it.
After you type in your domain name, the system will check to see if it’s available. If you want to purchase a domain name, you can pick a domain extension such as .com, .org, .net. I highly suggest you pick the .com extension since it’s better recognised by Google, it’s easier to brand and it’s simple for people to remember.
Step 3: Enter a title for your website.
The title can be the same as your domain name or it can be different. In the previous example, the subdomain is “dogbiscuitssiterubix.com”. the website title is “Dog Biscuits”. My domain for this website is “creatingwealtheasily.com”, my website’s title is “Creating Wealth Easily”.
Step 4: Choose a design for your website
There are 4076 themes to choose from if you have a paid domain. If you are going with the free option, you can choose from 12 free themes. Choose the theme that you like or one that reflects your niche topic. If you want, you can check out the demo for each theme before you choose it.
Don’t be overly concerned about which theme to choose. This is because with SiteRubix, you can choose a different theme at a later time if you want. The system will automatically transfer your content including all of your blogs, images, links, graphs, social media buttons, etc to your new theme.
Once you have chosen your theme, click on the Green button that says “Click here to build this site”.
Your website is now under construction on one of the most powerful platforms in the world. SiteRubix will take a little while to load as it is adding all the security, spam protection and speed to your site. Your website will be installed using all the latest technology and hosting so it will be optimized and running on a very fast server.
Step 5: Login to your website
After your website is built, the system takes you to the details page for your website. To login to your website click the blue “login now” button.
If you want to visit your website go to the “Domain details” (see above image), and click on your website’s URL
You will also be able to access your website from the Wealthy Affiliate platform. Click on “Websites” in the left hand column and then on the blue “Log in” button on the right hand side of the page. (See highlighted text in image below).
Once your website is ready it will open in your WordPress site. The website in the image below is called “Your Dieting Website”. As you can see from the image below it has some dummy data that you need to remove before adding your own content.
If you prefer to watch a video on how to build a website in 30 seconds you can by clicking here.
Congratulations On Creating Your Website
Congratulations, you did it! You now have your own very own website complete with WordPress already installed.
It’s so exciting that I bet you just want to get started publishing your post straight away. But before you do you will need to delete the dummy content that has been automatically installed by WordPress.
You can now start populating your website with awesome content, images, video’s, social elements etc. If you have a lot that you want to cover then go for it.
Want to know more about how to populate your WordPress website and get traffic? You can by signing up for FREE training with Wealthy Affiliate.
How To Monetize Blogs
One thing you might be wondering when you decided on learning how to start an online blog for free is; can a free blog can make money?
Yes, it can! Many free blogs websites at Wealthy Affiliate generate an income and yours can too. But, to get on that path, you need to realize that your blog is a business. The best way to make money with your blog is by creating blogs that help your audience.
Successful blogs solve problems, provide useful information or entertain. If your blogs resonate with your audience then they will become loyal followers and potential customers.
You can then add affiliate marketing links to your posts. When your audience clicks on these links and purchases the goods or services that you recommend, then you will be paid a commission. Learn more here.
What Now?
When you start an online blog for free it can sometimes be difficult to go it alone. You can have brilliant ideas and write amazing posts, but all will be for nothing if no one reads your blog. This is why you should invest time in learning how to use keyword search tools such as Jaaxy to optimize your blog for search engines.
If you want to learn more about how to start an online blog for free then the very best place to go, in my opinion, is Wealthy Affiliate. You can sign up for free without having to provide any payment details what so ever.
As a Starter member at Wealthy Affiliate you will be able to create 2 free websites, PLUS you get access to 2 totally free training courses that consist of 10 classes each. Here you will learn more about finding keywords and creating content for your websites. It’s totally free to join!
Want More Help?
Below are some posts that might help you:
The Secrets On How To Write Awesome Content For Your Website
How To Find The Best Keywords For A Website
The Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing Revealed
How To Sell Products Online From Home For Free
I would love to hear from you!
Leave me a comment or ask a question, I’m all ears!
