How to Launch a Blog with No Experience (in Under a Week)

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Want to start a blog quickly? Here's exactly how to quickly launch a blog in less than a week with absolutely no experience.

I can actually say that it's possible to create a blog within a week with absolutely zero experience. That's right.

I did it myself! No website design experience, no SEO experience, and no marketing experience.

I was able to launch my blog (this one you're on right now) in just a week with no experience and a full-time job. Today I'll break down exactly what I did and discuss the mistakes to avoid if you're thinking about starting a blog.

This post discusses exactly what I did to launch my blog quickly and efficiently!

Why Start a Blog?

I started my blog because I have a passion for teaching women about finances. I know I can make a difference in the world and I'm on a mission to do just that!

Think about the things you're passionate about and consider starting a blog that talks about that topic.

Do You Need Experience to Start a Blog?

I knew absolutely nothing about website design. Nothing.

In fact, it's actually embarrassing how little I knew.

Many of you may be in the same boat.

That's perfectly okay because if I can do it, you can too!

I had zero experience with website building, SEO, etc. I’ve learned about CSS, SEO, marketing, Pinterest, plug-ins, hosting, and about a thousand more terms. It sure is a lot to take in, but if others can do, I knew I could too!

I’ve consolidated many of the things I learned to build and launch a full blog so quickly, to make it as easy as possible for you to create your own blog in 2020!

Related Blogging Posts:

How I Launched a Blog in Under 1 Week

I’m not going to lie. There’s a lot more involved in blogging than I realized. I’ve learned so much so quickly that I’m actually pretty proud of how I spent my extra time while I was injured (severe back injury).

Don’t get me wrong, I watched plenty of Netflix while on bed rest, but now I have a website to show for the time I spent in bed!

Since I knew absolutely nothing, I researched a LOT. YouTube and Google became my best friends and I learned so much, made well-thought-out decisions, and built a blog in only 1 week while having a full-time 60 hour per week job!

I thought I could put together my blog in a few minutes. WRONG! There’s actually quite a bit to learn, but if I can do it, you can do too!

So what did I do to build and launch my blog in only 1 week? I’ll walk you through the exact steps below.

The first 4 steps only took me a few hours. The rest of the steps took up the rest of the week before I launched it.

1. Pick a Domain Name

A domain name is your unique website address on the internet. (This one is www.thefinancialcookbook.com)

I actually started getting into the blogging world when I had read an article 6 months before about a side hustle of buying domain names. I started buying domain names for fun (but that’s a topic for another time).

You can buy domain names from several companies, but my favorite is NameCheap because it was the CHEAPEST for me to purchase websites. Your domain will be anywhere from $5-$15 for one year and is yours to keep as long as you continue renewing it. (If you keep reading, I will show a way to get a domain for FREE!)

I’m all about doing financially-friendly things, as we know, so buying my domains on NameCheap made the most sense for me (it’s about half the cost of other comparable sites) and I’ve been very pleased so far.

Anyways, to find my domain, I played around in the search engine of NameCheap until I found a website I liked that wasn’t taken.

Once you buy your domain, BOOM, you own it!

I see domains like I see real estate. There’s only 1 of each and once it’s off the market, it’s usually off the market for good (unless people sell their website or stop paying for their domain).

I recommend going with a “dot com (.com)” domain because Google will be able to find and rank your website easier. However, there are other options too like “dot net” or “dot blog” if you are set on a certain name.

Either way, pick something unique and memorable!

2. Get a Self-Hosted Web Host

Since I knew nothing about blogging, I did quite a bit of research on this topic of web hosting as well.

I found that every successful blog mentioned that you needed your website to be self-hosted in order for it to rank in Google and earn money with affiliates.

This will be one of the most important decisions you make as the performance and overall user experience of your site will come from your blog hosting. The hosting company is responsible for running your actual site and keeping it online to viewers.

In fact, the wrong host can cause many problems for your blog and even hurt your blog from making money!

A hosting company can help with technical issues, questions, and overall support. That’s why I use Bluehost.

Bluehost is the best web host for beginning bloggers, and for good reason.

They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and offer a strong host for my website as well as fantastic, quick customer service (I should know. I had to call them 7 times while building my website. I knew nothing about coding so they were very helpful!)

Bluehost is also the top choice among the blogging community.

They are SUPER INEXPENSIVE and even offer a FREE DOMAIN when you sign up. It's usually between $3-$5 a month to have your website hosted by them! What an amazing way to start a business!

Review of Bluehost: Beginner’s Guide for New Bloggers

3. Set up WordPress

For this step, I’m going to use Bluehost since that’s what is familiar to me and it made it very easy for me. You will be able to set up WordPress through the Bluehost site fairly easily.

Follow the steps to connect and open up WordPress through Bluehost. It is very straightforward.

For detailed instructions on how to do this, visit my blogging tutorial.

4. Pick a Theme

Next, I picked a theme.

This is a process that took longer than I thought.

There are plenty of free themes online, but my recommendation would be to import the demo and then change the colors, fonts, and content from there.

I tried to do it from scratch and it was a nightmare.

I was able to find a feminine paid theme that came with customer service and tutorials. Let me just say it was worth every single penny!!

You can see my full write-up and review on those feminine paid themes here.

Keep in mind these first 4 steps only took a few hours, BUT I had done massive amounts of research leading up to it. In fact, I had done months of research to figure out exactly what I'd need to do. I'm now (hopefully) saving you the trouble of having to do that research! =)

5. Write Content

The next thing I did was write content like a mad woman.

In fact, that first week, I was living and breathing this blog. I don't think I slept at all because I was so excited. In fact, I know I didn't sleep.

Once the website was set up, I couldn't wait to launch it with my own content!

I wrote about 10 blog posts before I launched my blog.

Now, they weren't all good. In fact, when I look back, they were bad. Very bad.

However, I didn't know what I was doing at all, and I'm still a newbie that is learning as I go! My priority is my full-time job so the website comes second.

All I knew was that I needed content on my site. I would end up figuring out the rest later!

After I had 10 blog posts, I launched my blog!

6. Market Your Blog

After I launched my blog, I thought I'd get traffic immediately.

I kid you not.

I was refreshing the analytics screen every couple of seconds to see if anyone had gone to my site. Ha, cute right?

I actually did this for days.

I had worked so hard to get the site up that I was exhausted, and borderline burnt out.

Therefore, when I didn't see anyone coming to my website, I realized this was going to be harder than I thought.

I had remembered reading about how important Pinterest was so I set out to make Pinterest pins to post about my blog.

I again thought I would get traffic immediately from my pins, which looked terrible by the way. Wrong again.

I spent weeks looking at the analytics and seeing 1 or 2 people go to the website. (That was probably me on my phone and then me on my computer. haha!)

I realized it would take strategy and that's when I decided to get serious about it.

I started taking courses, setting up my Pinterest correctly, and started marketing my blog posts on Pinterest consistently.

Starting a Blog in Under 1 Week

Starting a blog in less than 1 week was definitely doable, even with a full-time job. However, I will admit that it was HARD.

However, it's definitely doable! If I can do it with no experience, you definitely can too!

These posts will help you get started even quicker than I did as I discuss detailed steps and the mistakes I made:

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