What’s up, friend?
It’s day 3 of the course. Before getting into the lesson, I would like to congratulate you for completing the previous lessons.
By now, you already have a strong foundation to start your online business. However, you haven’t made the most crucial step that every successful entrepreneur makes yet: taking action.
Yes, you need to take action ASAP if you want to be successful with your blog business. You will not go anywhere if you stop here.
You need to get your blog online to implement what you have learned yesterday as well as what you will learn in the next lessons.
Good news. It takes less than an hour to get your blog online. I am not even kidding!
Another good news. You don’t need to have an IT background to get your blog online. All you need is a strong will to succeed.
There are three components you need to get your blog online:
- A domain (something like yourblog.com)
- WordPress (the software you need to create your blog)
- A web hosting (the server you need to install WordPress)
Remember what I said in the opening section of the course?
The main goal I want to achieve with this free course is to help you build a strong, sustainable online business foundation. And to help you achieve it, I have picked the best tools and services that you can use for your blog.
FYI, I also use all the tools and services I am going to recommend below.
I will let you know something before I go with the list.
Most blogging courses will tell you to buy a domain and hosting from the same service, the same company. They will likely recommend either Bluehost or SiteGround for two main reasons:
- You can buy a domain and hosting from the same place (which I don’t recommend)
- They offer a “cheap” hosting plan
I don’t recommend you buy a domain and hosting service from the same service (company) as you will never learn how to connect a domain if you do.
Connecting a domain is the basic skill you need to have to start an online business. You will need it to create a professional email address (something like email@yourdomain.com) and many other things in the future.
Once you understand, let’s go to the list.
1. Domain Registration Service: Hover
The first component you need to get your blog online is a domain name. It is the address typed on the address bar of a web browser to access your blog. Something like yourblog.com.
To get a domain name, you need the help of a domain registration service (also known as domain registrar). For this, I recommend Hover.
Hover is a domain registration company based in Canada. A .com domain starts from $18 at Hover. It’s a yearly fee, by the way.
So, every year you will be charged $18 for the domain renewal. $18 per year means $1.5 per month. Not a big deal!
What I love about Hover is that it has a super clean, simple control panel to make it easier for me to manage my domain.
Simply visit the Hover website and type your preferred domain name. You will be given a list of available domain extensions (I strongly recommend you go with a .com extension).
If the .com domain extension is not available, you can try a different domain name.
A little tip when picking a domain name. Make sure it has a correlation with your blog niche. For instance, if you want to blog about productivity, something like productivitymadeeasy.com would be nice.
Or you can simply use your nickname. It’s your brand, after all. You have an absolute right to pick it.
For more detailed instructions on how to register a domain name, you can read my blog post below.
2. Web Hosting Service: Rocket.net
Web hosting is an online service you need to host your application. In this case, your application is WordPress.
You can host your blog on a “cheap” hosting plan. But I bet you will struggle with performance as your blog grows bigger.
“How can you know, Aliko?”
Because I have been blogging for over a decade 🙂
I have tried popular hosting services like Bluehost, SiteGround, to HostGator before settling with Rocket.net.
Did you know why I put the quote marks on the “cheap” word?
Because they usually only apply the “cheap” price on the initial registration. On the service renewal, you will be charged with the normal price.
Also, “cheap” hosting services don’t offer built-in features like CDN, caching, WAF (firewall) and scheduled backups. These features are essential for a professional blog.
Instead of offering the features as the built-in features, they usually offer them as add-ons. And even worse, you will be charged an extra fee to use the add-ons. At the end of the day, you will give more money to your “cheap” hosting service than Rocket.net.
With Rocket.net, you only need to pay a single bill to use all the above-mentioned features. No extra fee will be charged.
The best thing about Rocket.net is that you only need to pay $1 for the first month of your subscription.
You can start your Rocket.net subscription from $30 per month for 250,000 visitors. Simply visit its website to register.
For detailed instructions on how to subscribe to a hosting plan on Rocket.net, you can click the link below.
Once your domain and hosting are ready, the next step is to set up WordPress and connect your domain with your hosting.
Here are the detailed instructions on how to do so:
Once you are done with all the above steps, you will get your blog online.
See, it takes less than an hour to get your blog online 🙂
However, your blog is not ready to release yet.
You need to make some basic settings such as site identity (logo and favicon) and link structure. Also, you need to set the design of your blog to make it look professional.
Designing Your Blog
Your blog has gone online. What’s next?
Since you want to use it for a professional purpose (business), of course you need to make it look professional. To do this, you need to apply a professional design to your blog.
No worries. You don’t need to be a professional web designer to design your blog. I will even give you free templates to fasten your process so you can start to focus on growing your business.
You can click this link to download the templates.
To use the above templates, you need to have the Divi theme installed and activated on your blog.
You can click the following links to learn how to install the Divi theme and how to import the Divi templates.
Why do I recommend Divi?
Divi is a perfect theme for a professional blog. It comes with the following features:
- Page builder
- Form builder
- Integration support with third-party email marketing tools
You need all those features to create a landing page, to create a form, and to integrate your blog with an email marketing tool.
Simply put, you need the features to grow your business.
Divi is a paid theme, by the way. You can get it with either a subscription-based payment ($7.4 per month, billed yearly at $89). Here is the link to get it.
Congratulations!
Your professional blog is now ready. But before you launch it, let’s populate it with some blog posts.
Tomorrow, you will learn how to find ideas for blog posts and execute them into blog posts.