How To Start A Blog On Bluehost

There was a time when Susan and I thought we’d never make ends meet. Susan was brilliant at saving money but somehow, we always ended up broke at the end of each month. Then the penny dropped. We couldn’t save our way out of debt exclusively. Almost nobody can.

You need more money coming in as well as less money going out. That’s the magical combination that brings financial freedom.

Now, we own a house. We own our cars. We travel when we want to.

That’s because Susan saves us a small fortune and blogging makes us a large fortune. Yup, blogging. That was the secret to our financial success. We make tens of thousands of dollars each month through our blogs. You can do it too.

You don’t need to be a poet. You don’t need to be a journalist. You do need a subject to talk about and you do need a blog.

Everyone in the industry uses WordPress for their blog platform. Why? Because it’s easy to learn and it’s to use. It can be customized when you need to customize it and it works right out of the box when you’re just getting started.

I recommend that you start your blog using WordPress too. Now all you need to do is choose a hosting platform.

Why Do I Recommend Bluehost For Your Blog Hosting?

I use Bluehost for my blogs. They’re one of the world’s best hosting companies with a wealth of experience in supporting bloggers and they’re not expensive. That’s a big plus when you’re just starting out.

If you sign up for at least one year’s hosting, you also get a free domain from my link too. That’s another $15 saving.

The best deal of all comes from signing up for 36 months which saves you a fortune but even if you just choose 12 months of Bluehost hosting, you’ll save a lot of cash and you’ll be ready to run your business for a whole year without spending any more money.

Beware Of Free Deals

At this point, people usually say to me, “But why pay for hosting at all? I can set up a blog with Blogger or on WordPress.com for free. Why not just do that until I make money?”

I’ll tell you why. There are a lot of reasons to use a paid host like Bluehost rather than free ones:

There’s no free domain name. You have to buy a domain name if you want to use mywesbite.com or you’re stuck with mywebsite.blogger.com or mywebsite.wordpress.com. Those are bad names for a website. People won’t remember them and that means you’ll have to work 10 times as hard for traffic. That’s work that could be spent creating content for readers, content that pays money.
People don’t trust the free sites. This is probably a little unfair but using a free host says “unprofessional” and people don’t trust sites hosted unprofessionally. It’s like using a gmail email rather than a Darren@moneynuts.net address. It’s not what pros do.
You lose revenue opportunities. Worse, to pay for those “free blogs” Blogger and WordPress inject advertising into your blog. That means you lose the opportunity to make money through advertising. Given that’s how most blogs make money… that’s really bad.
You can’t scale your website. If your blog becomes popular, you’re stuck with their hosting limits. You can’t grow the blog quickly and that means… lost revenue.
There’s no technical support. You get what you pay for and when that’s $0, you get no support.

So here’s why you should pay for hosting instead of using Bluehost:

It’s easy. Anyone can install a WordPress blog in an instant on Bluehost. It’s a one-click service.
It’s fully supported. Bluehost makes sure that you have full technical support.
It’s low cost. You can pay as much as you want for hosting but Bluehost offers affordable and as importantly, reliable, hosting.
It comes with a free domain name. That means a professional feel to your blog from the first point of contact on.
It comes with free e-mail. Again, yourname@yourblog.com is a professional way to work.
It comes with a satisfaction guarantee. Though, if you’re having problems – feel free to drop me a line, I’ll be happy to help you out.
It can be monetized fully from day one. Having your own adverts means your own revenue faster. And that’s why we blog, right? To make money?

I love Bluehost and that’s why I am so confident you will too. It’s also why I am happy for you to send me an e-mail if you get stuck with it, it’s so easy that I can quickly help you get to where you want to be with your hosting.

How To Start A WordPress Blog On BlueHost In 3 Easy Steps

Yes, there are only 3 steps to get your blogging business started on Bluehost and they’re so easy!

1. Register A Domain Name

You need to register a domain name on Bluehost and that’s easy enough.

Take some time to think about what you want to call your blog. Don’t rush this process. You ideally want something short and memorable, like Money Nuts. The longer the domain name, the more opportunity for people to make spelling mistakes or typos.

If you can’t think of something, ask friends and family for ideas. I know a lot of people who ask their Facebook friends when they want to start a new blog. 100 heads are definitely better than one when it comes to idea generation for names.

Don’t forget that as long as you buy 12 months or more of hosting from Bluehost the domain name is free. Given that you’d normally pay $15 for a domain, that’s a nice saving and you can use that money towards something else for your business.

Once you’ve picked your domain name. Sign up for your plan (12 months or more, remember) and they’ll take you straight to a screen where you can pick up your free domain.

I strongly urge you to take a 36-month hosting plan.You’re going to want to run a blog for at least 3 years before you sell it, so that’s the perfect length of time and it’s the cheapest way to host your blog.

2. Choose The Hosting Plan For Your Blog (And Any Other Options)

You’re going to use Bluehost for your hosting and here’s what you should keep in mind when you buy your hosting plan:

· If you only intend to run one blog (and that’s what I recommend, to begin with, more than one will just distract you and make it harder to make money) then you really only need Bluehost’s “Basic Plan”. That’s the cheapest plan they offer.
- 12 months is $4.95 a month
- 24 months is $3.95 a month
- 36 months if $2.95 a month – see why I recommend the 36-month plan, now?
You get a free domain with any 12-month plan or longer which saves you an extra $15. You must use my sign up link for this.
You don’t need the Plus or Business Pro plans unless you intend to run multiple blogs now (don’t, really don’t – you may grow into this but to start, it’s too much – take the cheapest package for now)
Consider taking Domain Privacy Protection. It’s cheap at an extra $0.99 a month and makes it harder for people to send you spam or to hack your website.
Uncheck everything else that Bluehost will try to sell you. You don’t need any of it, no matter how good they make it sound. At least not for now.

Just one last time, Money Nuts is all about making you money. That’s why I recommend the 36-month plan. It will save you a bundle of cash over 3 years and it’s not so expensive that you’re going to notice paying for it now.

That leaves you free to focus on your business for 3 years without paying anything more for your blog and at the same time, it gets you the best value.

Are you ready to sign up? Then follow these steps:
1. Use this link to visit Bluehost
2. Click the “Get Started Now” button
3. Choose the basic plan, 36 months and privacy protection (f you want it)
4. Then choose your domain name
5. Next, give your payment details
6. Finally, create a password (don’t forget this – it is essential for you to be able to use your hosting space)

Have any issues at all and you can email me at Darren @ MoneyNuts.net and I’ll either come back and help or I’ll get someone at Bluehost to help you. They know us pretty well over there now.

3. Install And Setup WordPress On The Hosting

Don’t panic! I don’t do technical stuff very well and I found this part to be very easy. That’s because Bluehost makes it easy to install WordPress. It’s also free. You won’t need to spend any more money to get your blog up and running.

After you create that password, Bluehost gives you the option to start your blog. Select that option. Then they’ll ask you to choose a theme for your blog.

It’s not too important what you choose here because you can always change it later but… why not get this out of the way now?

Scroll through the themes and look for one that you like and which, more importantly, you think that your customers and audience are going to enjoy looking at.

Pick a free theme which fits the bill. There’s no need to buy a theme at the moment. You can do that when your blog starts making money – it’s easy to change themes in WordPress at any time.

Then click on Start Building. Then select “Business” or “Personal” when asked. (This isn’t too important either – there’s no physical difference between a business and personal blog but Bluehost offers customized help for both applications of WordPress).

Then boom! Your blog will install itself. This process is very quick. It won’t take more than a minute. Then you can log on to WordPress and start creating content for your audience.

Once again, if you get stuck – Bluehost has an excellent help and support package, which is free to use, so don’t be afraid to ask them for help. But if that doesn’t work, drop me a line at Darren@MoneyNuts.net and I’ll be happy to get the ball rolling for you.

Bonus Tips For Running Your WordPress Blog

You’ll want to go slowly, to begin with, but you might find these tips helpful:

Blog posts are created on the left-hand side of the WordPress screen by clicking on “Posts”
Website pages are also created under “Pages”, easy right?
If you want to tweak the way that the whole site looks, you can go the “Appearance” options on the left to do so
I would take ten minutes to go through each option on the left-hand bar and see what they do, you don’t have to make changes now
If you want to install e-mail marketing functionality, the best available tool on the market is called ConvertKit and we use it to send out the emails for Money Nuts. You can sign up at their link to get started.
If you want to use a paid theme for a nicer design, you can buy them from Envato which is a very popular site or you can use the Internet marketer’s favorite Genesis theme.

That should be enough for now. There will be more tips soon to help you get even more out of your blogging business on Bluehost.