How To Start A WordPress Blog On Bluehost in 2022 [Detailed Guide]

Do you want to know how to start a WordPress blog on Bluehost and make money from it?

In fact, in this detailed guide, I will show you how you can start a WordPress blog on Bluehost and make money from it in just a few simple steps.

Trust me after reading this guide you can’t stop yourself from starting a blog.

I know you are excited!

So, Without much further ado, Let’s dive in.

Why you should use WordPress for your blog?

Before creating your WordPress blog I want you to understand why you should use WordPress for your blog over other CMS (Content management system).

More than 74 million websites use WordPress which means 19% of all websites on the internet use WordPress.

There’s no doubt that this is the most popular content management system on the internet.

Besides popularity, you’ll also get various benefits like:-

How to start a WordPress blog on Bluehost in simple steps

Trust me it’s super easy to start a WordPress blog with Bluehost. I will show you how you can build your WordPress blog in just a few simple steps.

Step 1: Choose a Niche for your blog

Choosing a niche is very important for any blog. You have to choose a niche before starting your blog.

There are three things you need to keep in mind while choosing you are choosing a niche:

1. Your interest – Choose a niche according to your interest because you can’t survive in the long run if you don’t have an interest in what you are doing.
2. Income potential – Always choose a topic by their income potential not just looking at their traffic. If you want to turn your blog into business then you have to see the income potential of the niche before starting your blog.
3. Whether people are interested in your topic or not – What if no one has an interest in your topic? Besides your interest, you also have to see if people are interested in your topic or not.

So, these are the three key things you have to remember before choosing a niche.

Now you have chosen a niche for your blog so let’s jump to the second step.

Step 2: Purchase your hosting on Bluehost

A good web hosting is a backbone for any WordPress blog.

So, you might be thinking why I should use Bluehost for my WordPress blog?

Well, Bluehost is one of the biggest web hosting company in the world. It is also an official WordPress recommended hosting. It was founded in 1996 which also makes it one of the oldest web hosting company in the world.

More than 2 Million websites are using Bluehost and it is the most popular hosting provider.

Some of the features of Bluehost hosting:

Bluehost hosting plans with prices

Bluehost provides high-quality web hosting at a very affordable price. Basic plan on Bluehost starts from a $2.95/Per month, which is cheaper than a burger.

Bluehost provides various kinds of hosting like Shared hosting, VPS hosting, Dedicated hosting and WordPress hosting.

You can choose any of the hostings which you want. But I would suggest you go with the shared hosting as it is sufficient for a new blog and the prices are also low.

Okay, let’s see the plans of shared hosting.

• Basic plan – In the basic plan, you can host 1 website. This plan includes 50GB website space, unlimited bandwidth, a free domain, a free SSL certificate, 5 email accounts with 100 MB storage for each.
• Plus plan – You can host unlimited websites in this plan. This plan includes unlimited website space, unlimited bandwidth, 1 free domain, a free SSL certificate, unlimited email accounts and storage, 1 Spam Experts and $200 in marketing offers.
• Choice plus – In this plan, you can host unlimited websites. You’ll also get unlimited website space, unlimited bandwidth, free SSL certificate, 1 free domain, you can create unlimited email accounts with unlimited storage, $200 worth of marketing offers, 1 domain privacy, 1 spam expert and Code guard basic.

Okay now let’s purchase the hosting.

Choose any plans and click on “Select”.

Use this link to start your WordPress blog in $2.95/Month (Special offer for our users)

And, now let’s jump to the third step to get your free domain.

Step 3: Grab your free Domain

Now it’s time to grab your free domain and confirm your order.

Put your desirable domain name and click on next.

It’s time to confirm your order now.

Or you can also check if your domain is available or not here:

And then, put your personal details and fill-up the form.

Now select the Bluehost hosting package.

Bluehost offers three types of packages 12 months, 24 months and 36 months.

But wait! the prices are different for different hosting packages:

• The basic plan of 12 Month – $4.95/month
• The basic plan of 24 Month – $3.95/month
• The basic plan of 36 Month – $2.95/month

You can see the difference. You need to pay more $2 each month if you select the 12-month plan. So, I would definitely recommend you to select the 36-month package of Bluehost hosting as you’ll save lots of money.

You can also buy the package extras but it’s not necessary. Still, if you wish to buy then you can buy the domain privacy protection, site lock security, codeguard basic. Avoid the Bluehost SEO tools start and office 365 email essential.

Remember if you buy the Bluehost choice plus plan you’ll get domain privacy protection, codeguard basic and spam experts for free.

After selecting all of these let’s make the payment.

You can pay either by credit card or Paypal.

After filling up your payment details read and accept the terms of service and hit submit.

It’s time to set up  your WordPress blog.

Step 4: Install wordpress on Bluehost hosting

After purchasing the hosting plan you’ll get access to cpanel where you can actually create your WordPress site.

To create your first WordPress blog on Bluehost, simply login to your Bluehost Cpanel and click on install WordPress.

Then on the next page, you have to fill up login information like username and password and you’ll get URL to your WordPress admin panel.

Congratulations you’ve set up your first WordPress blog on Bluehost.

Choose and install a theme for your blog

Bow you’ve installed WordPress on your Bluehost hosting

The theme plays a big role in any website or blog. A good theme not just improves the design and user experience it also improves the SEO.

After Google introduced mobile-first indexing you have to make sure that your blog is mobile friendly as Google gives priority to mobile-friendly sites in the mobile search ranking.

More than 60% of Google users operate from a mobile device.

You can imagine how many users you’ll lose if you don’t use a mobile-friendly theme on your blog.

So, if you don’t select a mobile-friendly theme then you can say GOODBYE to your search engine rankings.

There are many mobile-friendly paid and free themes available. So, you can choose any theme which you like but I would definitely recommend you to try out generatepress theme as it is mobile friendly and also SEO optimized.

But before buying or installing any theme always remember:

• The theme must be mobile-friendly
• Go for lightweight and optimized themes
• check the loading speed of the theme
• The UI should be good
• How much customization options you’ll get on the theme

I’ll show you how you can install any theme on your WordPress blog.

Log in to your WordPress dashboard. Then go to “appearance” and then click on “themes”

After that click on “Add New” at the top corner and select any theme and install. Your theme will be installed instantly.

You’ll also get an option to upload a premium or free theme.

Customize your WordPress blog

You need to make your blog visually appealing.

Remember when a visitor comes in your blog they first see the design of your blog.

Usually, themes come with their default style and menus, so you need to edit the menu and style according to your need.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to know coding languages to customize your blog. You can do it just by some clicks.

Okay, let me show you how you can customize your WordPress blog according to your style and need.

Head over to customize option which you get under the theme option.

Then you’ll get a page like this:

For example, I will show you how you can change the colors of your theme.

Select the colors option.

As you can see, I’ve changed the background color of the blog.

Similarly, you can also change any color of your blog like the background, link color, text color, etc.

But, remember free themes won’t give that much customization option as you get on a paid theme.

So, till now you’ve understood how you can start your WordPress blog using Bluehost and how to customize it.

Submit your WordPress blog in google

Organic traffic is like gold.

Many big companies spend millions and billions of dollar just rank high and get organic traffic from Google.

Have you ever think about why these companies spend that much money on this?

Well, because this is the highest quality traffic compare to any other source.

Yes I agree that there are also other sources available to get quality traffic still, organic traffic is most preferable among all of them

Quality traffic from Google = More Conversation = More money.

But, the thing is you have to rank high in search engine ranking to get those benefits. 

Wait wait wait!

How do you rank on google search engine and get traffic if you don’t even exist on Google’s database?

Yes, you heard it right.

Eventually, Google and other search engine don’t even know that your blog or website exists but you have to tell Google that your blog or website exists.

“Take a sit and hold tight because I’m going to tell you how you can call Google and tell them that your blog exists” – Haha actually I was kidding.

Okay, let’s come to the point.

So, you might be thinking “how can I submit my blog” right?

Don’t worry I’ll show you how you can do this under 3 Minutes.

First, head over to google search console and click on “start now”.

Then you’ll get a page like this:

In the URL Prefix put your blog URL and click on continue.

Now you have to verify the ownership of your blog.

You can do this process in three different ways, but I will show you the easiest step.

First of all, just copy the code after content between quotes.

And then go to your WordPress dashboard and search for a plugin called “Yoast SEO”

Then go to Webmaster tools.

Now put that code which you have copied from search console verify ownership and click on save.

Go back to search console and click on verify.

Your website will be verified immediately.

Okay, it’s time to submit your blog to google or in other words submit sitemap of your blog.

You’ve installed Yoast SEO so your sitemap will be generated automatically. You don’t need to manually create it.

You can find your sitemap in “www.yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml”

Now you’ve found your sitemap.

So, simply copy the URL of your sitemap and go search console.

Paste the Url of your sitemap and hit submit and you’re done.

It usually takes some days to index the website in google and after that, your blog will be on google.

How to start a blog on Bluehost (Infographic)

Want to use this infographic on your site? Contact me I’ll give you this infographic to you.

Install important plugins for your blog

There are more than 50,000 plugins available on WordPress to make your work easier. With the help of plugins, you can add anything to your blog without having any coding knowledge.

Actually, plugins are one of the main reasons why people love WordPress over other CMS.

1. Yoast SEO

It is a very popular plugin for SEO. Over 3 million people use this plugin on their site. This plugin especially helps to improve on-page SEO.

Yoast SEO analyzes your content and gives suggestions to improve on-page SEO in real-time.

More features of Yoast Seo:

And many more…

This is the must-have tool for your blog.

You can also try rank math as it is also a really good SEO plugin and you’ll get lots of features also and the best thing is it’s totally free.

2. Easy Table of Contents

This is the best plugin to create a table of content.

Google wants to give the best users experience to their users and with the help of a table of content, your users can jump to any topics they want thus it will improve your site user experience.

I personally use this plugin in this blog. You can see a table of content at the beginning of every of my content.

3. Classic Editor

If you’re having a problem using the Gutenberg editor on WordPress then don’t worry.

You can also use classic editor even if you’re on the latest version of WordPress. This plugin will help you to do so.

4. W3 Total Cache

It is a very popular cache plugin which helps to improve the loading time of the WordPress website. More than 1 million users are using W3 Total Cache.

In this plugin, you’ll get lots of amazing features like:

And lots of more features…

Overall this is the best free cache plugin to improve your WordPress blog speed.

But, if you can invest a little money then you should definitely go with wp rocket.

Wp Rocket is beyond comparison and this is the best cache plugin for WordPress right now.

5. Wordfence Security

Website’s security should be the first priority for any website or blog owner.

Wordfence is a total security plugin which helps to secure your WordPress site from attacks. It will secure your site from attacks like brute force attacks.

It automatically detects malicious files, malware, login attempts and block them immediately.

6. UpdraftPlus

You can’t just ignore to backup your site.

You and I both don’t know the future.

Updraftplus WordPress backup plugin helps to backup your WordPress site. You can automatically backup your site by the help of this plugin.

You can backup your site to Dropbox, google drive, email or you could even download and store it in your computer.

7. Smush Image Compression

You simply can’t skip this plugin if you want to decrease your blog loading time. It’s a great WordPress plugin which helps to compress image without losing its quality.

Images take a lot of space and it increases the loading time of the site. But, you can compress the size of the image to decrease the loading time.

Smush automatically compress the image without losing its quality.

So, overall it’s a great tool to decrease the loading time.

9. WPForms

WPForms is a popular contact form builder which is growing rapidly for amazing advanced features.

You can easily create a contact form for your blog with the help of their easy drag and drop builder.

Most importantly it’s a beginner-friendly contact form builder so if you’re a complete beginner still you can make attractive contact form very easily.

10. OptinMonster

One of the biggest assets for a blog is Email and you should always collect email of your readers from day one of your blogging.

OptinMonster is a powerful lead generation plugin which helps to create awesome looking popups and lead capture forms. Over 700,000+ websites and blogs are using this plugin to capture the email of their readers.

With their drag and drop editor, you can easily design your popups and lead capture forms to capture your reader’s email.

You can check out this page to know more about its features.

11. MonsterInsights

Setting up analytics for your blog if really important to track the progress of your blog.

But if you’re a newbie then there is a chance you don’t know how to add google analytics tracking id manually so the simple solution for this is a google analytics plugin.

MonsterInsights is by far one of the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress.

It helps to insert your analytics tracking id without any coding.

And one of the best features of this plugin is that you can access your google analytics right into your WordPress dashboard.

12. WP Mail SMTP

Configuring email and contact forms are really important for any blog.

You should always check that your contact form and emails are working or not.

Sometimes due to some issues, WordPress can’t send emails and contact form also doesn’t work.

And WP Mail SMTP is the best solution for this problem.

It helps to fix email delivery issues and ensure every email reach perfectly.

How to Monetize your WordPress blog

Want to make money from your blog?

In the end, everyone wants to make money right?

But, remember your goal shouldn’t be just money.

Your main goal should be solving people’s problems through your content.

Still, many people make great content but failed to make money through their blog. Because they don’t know how to monetize their blog.

Every blog has its own monetization strategy. You need to find out which strategy works for you and which not.

Let’s see some of the monetization strategies which you can use on your blog.

1. Adsense

Google Adsense is the easiest monetization strategy you can use on your blog. It’s a PPC network by Google. You’ll be paid on a pay per click basis.

If you are targeting europian countries, USA, UK and Canada then Adsense will a good option for you because the CPC (Cost per click) on these countries are really high.

The threshold limit of Google Adsense is $100. So, after you reach the $100 mark you can you’ll get your payment through wire transfer.

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the best way to make money from a blog. Many big bloggers are making money from affiliate marketing.

You can earn anywhere between $100 to $10,000 or even more per month.

It is my favorite monetization method.

There are lots of high paying affiliate marketing programs available which you can promote on your blog.

3. Direct ads or sponsored post

You can also place direct ads on your blog. You can contact brands directly to advertise on your blog or you can also create an advertisement page on your blog.

In most of the case, your blog needs to be a high authority to get direct advertisement. So, as you are new in blogging then you can implement the first two methods. This method will be helpful when you have high authority.

Conclusion

Okay let’s remind the main points of starting a WordPress blog

• Choose a niche
• Purchase your web hosting
• Get your free domain
• Install WordPress on Bluehost hosting
• Choose and install a theme
• Customize your WordPress blog
• Submit your blog to search engines
• Install important plugin
• Monetize your blog

Alright, now you’ve understood how to start a blog on Bluehost and make passive income from it.

If you’re thinking of starting blogging to then always choose WordPress.

Do you have any question related to blogging? Are you having any problem to set up your first WordPress blog? Do let me know in the comment section below I’d be happy to answer your questions.