WordPress Blog [11 Easy Steps to Build One with Low-Cost]

If you are starting a blogging business to earn in 2023.

You have to build a blog with wordpress.org.

According to research, many successful bloggers built their blogs with wordpress.org.

There are various reasons to build your blog with wordpress.org.

This includes ownership of your blog and content.

You can learn more about why you should start your blog with wordpress.org here.

In this article, I will walk you through how to build your blog at a low cost.

You will only pay for low-cost web hosting fees.

I will guide you through other free helpful resources.

I will also direct you to some other free good resources that will help you build a profitable blog.

Let’s get started:

1. Choose a Profitable  Business Niche

Build your WordPress blog on a profitable business niche.

A business niche is a focused area of the market for a particular kind of product or service.

You can go through these questions to guide you to choose a profitable niche for your site.

•    Do I have some interest in this niche?

•    What is the level of my knowledge about the niche?

•    Am I ready to update my knowledge about the niche?

•    How can I solve problems in an easy way in my niche?

•    Can I get traffic to my blog with this niche?

•  Am I ready to compete with the level of competition in my niche?

    Good research will guide you to choose a profitable business niche.

2. Domain Name

A domain name is a name that people type in the browser URL bar to visit your website.

It is the identity of your site.

For example, the identity of this site is bjeasyguide.com

There is a lot of controversy about choosing a domain name.

Some gurus say you should make sure your niche reflects around your domain name.

But we have seen so many examples of bloggers using a different name that is not related to their niche and they are very successful.

It is better to choose a unique name for your domain in case you want to broaden your site in the future, you will be able to do that without any problem.

For example, Amazon started with books and later they broaden up without any difficulty.

Imagine they name themself something related to a book,

It will be very difficult to expand their business.

But if you like to attach your niche with your domain name there is no harm with that, it depends on someone’s choice.

You can name your WordPress site any name of your choice as long as it is available.

This guide below can help you to choose a good name for your site.

• Avoid characters like hyphens and numbers in your domain name.

• Learn and understand the domain extensions ( .com, .Org, . net, and so on ) before you choose one for your blog.

• Make sure the domain name you choose for your blog will be easy for people to pronounce and avoid complicated ones.

• The domain name you choose should be easier for anyone to type with any type of keyboard.

• Choosing a shorter domain name will be more beneficial to your site than a longer one.

You can check your domain name if it is available with this free tool here

3. Register with a Good Webhosting Company

There are various Webhosting companies to signup with.

Before you should signup with any Webhosting company, you must make sure that they can provide you with the best features to help your website grow.

Some of the features include:

Uptime, Security, money-back guarantee, and others.

You can read more here to know factors to beware of before buying.

Or you can check this blog post about 13 best webhosting to choose your choice one.

I will recommend some good Webhosting you can choose from.

Each of this Webhosting will provide you with low-cost services which you can choose from.

They will provide you with a free SSL certificate, which is very important for your site security.

Each of them will also provide you with a free domain name for a year.

I will list them below, so click on them to learn about them.

Then you can choose anyone out of them, anyone you go for is okay.

Webhosting with low cost that will provide a free SSL certificate and free domain name are

• DreamHost

• Bluehost

• GreenGeeks

• HostGator

• Hostarmada

• Verpex

• HostPapa

Take advantage of this Webhosting company and start your blogging business in the correct way.

When your business grows you can always migrate to any other Webhosting company of your choice.

Don’t waste your effort by starting on free hosting platforms.

You can always upgrade later or migrate to another Webhosting in the future.

You don’t need to pay for a web builder or security.

There are free plugins that can do that, which I will explain later in the article.

pay for only the web hosting plan of your choice.

4. Choose a Good Theme for Your Blog

What is a theme?

A “theme” is a template that structures the layout and functionality of a blog.

How to choose a good theme?

There are tens of thousands of free and paid themes available for WordPress blogs.

Whether you are choosing a free theme or premium theme for your blog.

Make sure to choose a theme that the company update always,

because of security threats.

You should avoid anything that will lead to your WordPress blog being attacked by hackers.

Consider choosing a theme that loads fast both on a desktop and mobile.

You can check it out after installing the theme on your site at Google page speed insight.

By copying your domain URL name and placing it in the box at Google page speed Insight.

It will display the score of the performance, a score of 85+ is okay.

Note, you can always change a theme if you are not okay with the performance of any theme you are using at any moment.

I will recommend the Astra theme.

You can install the free Astra theme on your blog by clicking on the appearance icon on the dashboard of your WordPress.

Then click on the theme on the drop-down menu, from there

It will take you to where various themes are.

Type Astra on the search box there.

Once the Astra theme shows up, click on the installed on it.

It will change to activate, click on activate, it will install the Astra

theme on your WordPress blog.

Astra will send a message to you and welcome you to the Astra community.

The benefit of Installing the free Astra theme on your WordPress blog is that you will get free support from Astra.

They will send you free resources about blogging too.

5. Customizing a WordPress Theme and Designing a Blog

This is where most beginners find it difficult to move forward and start creating content.

I got stuck here too and wasted a lot of time customizing and designing my blog.

I want my blog to look perfect before creating content and start posting on it.

Your content is more important than the design.

So don’t waste unnecessary time designing your blog.

Most of the hard work is made easy for you when you choose and install a good theme.

Get yourself familiar with some basic design concepts and principles.

Which are:

• Make it Easy to Find Things on Your Blog

• Make your blog layout easy for your readers to use.

• Don’t use a complicated layout, so avoid the bounce rate.

• If your layout is difficult to figure out for visitors, they will leave your blog.

• Use Plenty of White Spaces

• Don’t use plenty of banners, messages, or others.

To distract visitors from consuming the information you create.

• Publish a Post with Images

A visual Post communicates your information much faster than only text.

• Content and Clarity

Clarity about what your blog is very important to visitors that will be visiting your blog.

Make sure there is a connection between your readers and your blog.

Most visitors view blogs from the top-left corner.

• The Readability and Typology

The readability and typology of your blog should be clear for visitors.

The text on your blog should be easy to read and beautiful.

You can use a large font like Roboto or any other good ones.

16px+/- 2px depending on your font.

Use short lines and lots of white spaces.

• Create a subheading in your blog post to make it skimmable.

• Avoid adding different Colours to theme your blog

In other not to hurt your visitor’s eyes when visiting your site.

You can try Adobe Kuler to guide you with a colour palette.

See your blog as a living breathing organism that can always be modified as it grows.

Your blog can’t be perfect from Day1 but you can always improve the design as you grow.

6. Logo and Site Icon

A logo of a site is the design you see at the header of a website, it can be a text or an icon.

It is a primary identifier of a website.

The ideal dimension pixel is 500px by 500px.

The site icon on a website makes the recognition of a website easy.

The ideal dimension pixel is 512 x 512.

Don’t waste your time creating a fancy logo at the beginning.

create a beautiful logo using text.

Pick a beautiful font and a background color you like for your logo and site icon.

You can use tools like Canva or Simplified to design it.

The free version is okay for you to design whatever design you wish.

But if you want to use some particular fonts or icons you may need to signup for their free trial for 1 month.

Then you can design anything you like for that period and you can cancel before your due date.

7. Choose Functioning WordPress Plugins

There are thousands of plugins for  WordPress blogs that you can choose from.

Plugins are computer software that adds new functions to a host program.

They make it easier to work with WordPress blogs, after installing the WordPress plugin make sure to activate them.

Set them to automatic and enable them to always update.

Make sure not to install unnecessary plugins that you will not need at the moment.

Unused WordPress plugins can attract hackers to be able to attack your blog.

WordPress plugins help to enhance the functionality of your blog.

But installing too many of them will make your WordPress slow down.

Below are some necessary WordPress plugins that will help with the functionality of your WordPress.

They have both the free version and the premium version.

The free version will be okay for you when you are starting out.

• Really Simple SSL WordPress Plugin

• Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg (Spectra) WordPress Plugin

• Updraftplus WordPress Plugin

• Wordfence Security WordPress Plugin

• Wp- optimize WordPress Plugin

• WPS Hide Login WordPress Plugin

• Rank Math SEO WordPress Plugin

• Cloudflare WordPress Plugin

• A3 Lazyload WordPress Plugin

• Monster Insight WordPress Plugin

• Insert Header and Footers WordPress Plugin You can read more about WordPress Plugins here

8. WordPress Dashboard

It is very important to get yourself to know more about the WordPress dashboard because that is where you will be doing the activities for your blog.

The WordPress Dashboard is the first screen that you will see when you sign in to the administration area of your site.

You will see a collection of blocks, they are gadgets.

By clicking each one of them, it will lead you to what function you want to use.

The following are categories of WordPress dashboard

• Dashboard menu

• Screen options

• Welcome

• Quick Draft

• WordPress New

• Activity

• At a Glance

Read more about the WordPress dashboard here

9. WordPress Editor

As a blogger, this is where you will be spending most of the time.

It is the area where you will create your blog posts and your blog pages.

It is a new publishing experience for publishers.

Most beginners find it difficult to use the WordPress editor,

Some even abandon WordPress .org and ran to other platforms to start their blogging business.

But you don’t need to do that, I will direct you to the article that will guide you step by step on how to use the Editor’s workspace without any difficulty.

You can read and learn about  WordPress editor here

10. Make your WordPress Blog Load Faster

Making your WordPress blog load faster is the number one factor for any blogger to be successful.

When visitors want to visit your site and your site is taking a long time to load.

They will leave your site for another one, this will hurt your site ranking in Search Engine Optimization.

To improve your loading time from anywhere around the World follow the steps in the video on the page here.

11. Secure Your WordPress Login Page From Hackers

When I  was starting with WordPress, I discovered that I have to be changing my WordPress login password and it was so frustrating at that time.

Later I was able to secure my site WordPress login from hackers.

Since then I can sign in to my site without frustration, so it is important to secure your WordPress login page from hackers.

You can follow the guide from the article here to secure your site.

Conclusion

It is important to build your profitable blog with wordpress.org.

I knew as a beginner when you are starting out it is not easy.

If you are on a tight budget to start a blogging business pay a lot on Webhosting and others.

That is why I wrote this article to guide anyone to start a profitable blogging business without breaking the bank.

If you ever need support on how to use some features, or any problem about WordPress.

You can seek for help from WordPress support Forum here

Check out this blog post about Narrow vs Broad Niche board which one is better for affiliate marketing business.

Disclosure: Some of the external links in this post are ” affiliate links”. This means if you click on the link,

and take action or buy the item, I will receive an affiliate commission directly from the vendor,

but there will be no additional charges to you.

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