How To Start A Successful Blog And Grow For FREE (Super Easy)

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Today I’m going to show you the best way to create a blog then grow it to your first 20,000 visitors!.

Have you ever wanted to get into blogging?

I’ll take you through the steps I’ve used to grow multiple websites. This also includes a blog that’s making more than $50,000 a month in passive income.

I’m part of quite a few Facebook groups and recently helped a Mommy Blogger triple her traffic. She wrote some articles for me so I helped her in return.

I want to show you exactly how to start a blog that will bring you lot’s of traffic.

Let’s look at some stats

The website in the picture below (another one I run), I started last year, I did nothing after that since I got caught up in other projects. I did a few things but nothing major. That all changed in February.

I started my usual traffic methods and now the traffic has easily doubled.

As for Online Dimes, it’s now getting thousands of visitors.

The trick is to get quality engaging traffic. You could have all the traffic in the world but if they don’t do anything like sharing your articles then it’s going to make things harder.

All you’ll have is numbers and that’s it.

I use 4 simple steps when starting my own blog.

This is very straightforward and I work off these steps when starting out. Don’t use free hosting, always get your own domain and hosting.

• Find hosting & a good domain name
• Create the site and customize it
• Fill it with good content that’s keyword optimized
• Promote

Starting Your Site With BlueHost

In this particular example, I’ll use BlueHost for the hosting and show you how to set it up. It’s cheap and works well.

Good for people on a tight budget.

You will need to buy some hosting to host your website online. Luckily, I managed to get a great deal for you and a free domain name!

The domain is going to be the name of your website if you don’t have one already.

To receive the best deal right now you can get my special deal here that’s going to be $2.95 a month.

Choosing The Right Plan And Domain

I would suggest going with the $2.95 plan, This is the more affordable plan online today!

BlueHost can do free migrations if you aren’t happy with your current host or looking for a change. The other plans do come with marketing extras. However, I don’t use them so I just go with the basic plan.

Choosing the domain name can be a challenge and I’ve written an article to help you with that. I use Flame Domain to find mine.

Think about the domain name for a while because you can’t change it once you’re on the other side.

If you’re doing a blog that’s going to be very active and you want to build awesome amounts of traffic to it then make it brandable. Something weird or something people will remember.

All you really need to do is head over to flame Domain and start clicking. You will know when you’ve found the right domain, it will stand out to you.

BlueHost will take you to the domain section after you have chosen a plan. If you already have a domain name then you can transfer it quick and easy.

See if your domain name is free!

Once you have done all that you will be asked to put in your details and payment details.

Once you’ve done that the next page will give you some options, The only one I go with is domain privacy.

It’s not needed though I just like to use it.

So that’s quite simple, right? Just follow the instructions and you’re on your way to making a great blog.

I don’t want to complicate things because it’s very easy to do this. I could go on about options and pricing but there is no reason for that. Blue Host is good cheap hosting and that’s all you need if you’re on a budget.

Installing WordPress And A Few Basic Settings

This step is very easy with a few clicks of a button to get started.

Bluehost will install WordPress for you!

The first thing you need to do is create a password.

Now you choose a theme for your website.

Don’t worry you can change this later if you need to change it.

Once you have done that it’s all done!

You will be taken to a screen that says “Start Building” Click that button.

You will end up here.

Now we just need to launch the website.

Follow the instructions in the picture below by clicking “BlueHost” then “Home” Then “Launch”.

Now all you need to do is name the blog and click “Next Step”

Congratulations! You have just created an amazing website where you can now start blogging!

Once this is done you will be taken to the backend that will look like this.

This is where you can do things like Live Chat and some other options as you can see from the image above.

I love using BlueHost because they have the automatic wordpress install.

Other hosting providers make you install it yourself and it can be time consuming and confusing.

Now that you have the blog setup it’s time to grow it!

Getting Traffic Flowing To Your Blog

Now the fun begins! 

I’m going to show you all the steps I take to bring in large amounts of good engaging traffic to my blog.

All of these methods are free and won’t cost you a cent.

If you’re just learning about blogging then you will find out that traffic is very important. Without it the website is dead.

Ranking For Small Volume Keywords

I’m going to cover this first since it should be done when creating the articles.

This is a huge traffic source for me and it’s often overlooked. When writing articles most people want to target a specific keyword and they usually stick with one keyword.

I choose multiple small volume keywords that will get me to the front page without any backlinks.

I choose keywords that have small search volume, something like 300 a month.

Why?

Well, I choose a bunch of them then sprinkle them throughout the article. If I get to the front page for 5 of those keywords and they have 300 searches a month each then that adds up to 1500 a month.

So my article is now in front of 1500 potential readers a month and that’s just one article.

If you have multiple articles doing this can you see the potential?

Once your domain gets stronger they will rank better and faster.

This is what I mean.

The site has nearly 4000 keywords showing up in Google and a large number of them are on the front page.

Even though the volume is small per keyword it all adds up.

Let’s say for example I’m on the front page for 100 keywords that have a search volume of 300 a month each. That comes to 30,000 searches a month and I’m somewhere on the front page for them.

I also show up for some large search terms but the point is you don’t need to target them, you can target smaller easier ones.

This is how you do it.

When you write an article head over to the Google Keyword Planner. You can find this by searching for it on Google.

There will be a section where you can put in a keyword. I put a keyword in about trout, the planner started spitting out trout keywords for me.

So now what I would do is mention those keywords in my trout article where they fit in the best. I would do each keyword 2 or 3 times depending on how long the article was.

Over time, Google will recognize your article and keep bumping you up. If you wrote a good article you will get to the front page for most of the small volume keywords you have chosen.

There is no time frame when this will happen but the stronger your website gets and the more articles you put out the faster it will happen in the long run.

Organic targeted traffic is the best traffic, it always has been.

Niche Related Comments

Find related blogs to comment on, it’s slow traffic but it all adds up.

You will get a nice consistent flow of traffic with the more you do.

Head over to Google and find some websites. I just do a basic search string.

Here’s a trick to increase traffic. Find articles that are new, so a week old and comment on those or even 24 hours old.

If the post gets very popular your comment will be at the top, you will get really good traffic if the post gets popular or they rank for some good keywords.

When you leave the comment there should be a section where you can put your website address. When people click on your name it will take them to your website or page you put in the website section.

Keep things natural, don’t just go around spamming.

Become Active On Niche Related Forums

Find forums about your niche topic then become active on them. Write engaging tutorials and reply to people on the forum.

It’s never a good idea to go around spamming your website on the forums so just enter it into the signature section.

The more active you are the more traffic you get. Try and use a username that’s related to your website or even the site name itself because people will search it in Google.

Answering Niche Related Questions

This is a great way to get traffic when starting a blog, I do this on my sites and YouTube Channel.

Head over to Quora and type in your keyword, find questions to answer.

In the picture below I found someone looking for free traffic methods so I would go in there and link them to this article.

I would explain to them why these methods would work then drop a link.

This is a very effective way of getting traffic to your blog when starting out. It will become a consistent flow of traffic forever since there is a good chance of the topics ranking in Google.

Niche Related Guest Post

This is where you get really good amounts of traffic and Google will start to love you.

Writing on other people’s pages will do just that.

Guest posting is when you write an article on another website then link back to yours. This will get you backlinks and traffic.

I did a guest post on Matthew Woodward’s website and it became popular with over 250 comments.

It gave me a large traffic boost.

To find guest post opportunities you can do that with Google by entering the search string from this image.

Most websites will have a section where you can submit a guest post or contact them to get more information.

This is still one of the strongest ways to grow a blog and will be for a long time.

Have you noticed a trend yet?

This is all niche related stuff, that’s the key here. Niche related traffic will be more engaged in your content.

Use The RIGHT Social Media Platforms

Everyone will tell you to use social media but what platform is best for you?

Find 1 or 2 platforms that fit your niche then work on those hard.

I used Twitter when I first started my blog, I worked on that hard and it brought in so much traffic.

Why Twitter?

Twitter fitted my niche the best since it was about making money and online marketing.

Here’s another great example…

Pinch of Yum is a food blog that was started by a teacher, she found that Pinterest is where her audience hands out. Pinterest now brings in a HUGE amount of traffic for her.

That’s nearly 55,000 pins, can you imagine how much traffic that brings to her blog? Ridiculous amounts.

She was smart and went with the right social media platform to promote her content then concentrated on that.

Posting On Facebook And Google+ Groups

I’ve kept this separate from the social media method above because that was more about building up your social media accounts.

This method is about becoming active in Groups.

On Facebook, there are groups for almost any topic and niche.

By using the search bar you can find groups to join, once you’re in the group become active by adding value. You will soon become a valued member then you can drop links to your articles.

Google+ works the same but it has communities you can join.

Click the home button to get started. This will bring up a page where you can search for communities to post in.

To post in the community just do a normal post then select the community from the drop down menu at the bottom of the post.

Growing An Email List

This is a must!

When you grow an email list you can then send out your new blog content, your returning visitors will share it. This will put the new content in front of new readers for you.

I use Get Response for my email list management. This method isn’t free I’ve added it as a bit of a bonus but Get Response is free for 30 days.

These are all potential return readers as it’s a must to build something like this when you make a blog so you can send out newsletters and let them know what’s going on.

To collect the emails you should create some sort of optin form or popup on your page. I use a plugin called Thrive Leads to do this. It’s a common plugin and you would have seen it around before on other blogs.

You can create good looking forms like this. (you have probably seen this before)

Final Words

I’m going to end it here because that’s all there really is to it, that’s my tutorial showing you how to start a blog. Anyone can try the methods above that’s how easy they are.

You can grow your blog to thousands of visits a month even if you’re just learning to create your own website.

You just need to be active in your niche and make sure you optimize those articles for a bunch of small volume keywords as well as any high volume ones you plan to target.

Sure… building up a blog with these tips will take time with these methods but as the old saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day and this also works great in 2019!