Want to work from home on your own schedule sharing information, lifestyle tips, tutorials and more? Start a mom blog in 2020 and earn income through ads, affiliate marketing, and selling your own products. This tutorial will show you how to start a mom blog in 2020 using the platforms we use to host this website.
This post contains affiliates links, including from our website hosting sponsor, BlueHost and website theme sponsor StudioPress. We have used both services since launching MompreneurAdvice.com in 2015 and promote these services because we use them to build all of our websites.
Why start a mom blog in 2020?
Have you read the book “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less
Ryan's mother was an entrepreneur and saved their family from poverty and hardship by winning countless contests and putting her words to great use. We just love this story! These days, mothers can do this same thing easily with blogging.
Here's 3 reasons to start a mom blog in 2020
- Creating a blog is fun and empowering
- Posting newsworthy, informational and educational content gives moms an outlet for sharing who we are with the world, our community, friends and documenting our journey
- Making money is possible with a blog if you connect with Google Ads, use Affiliate Marketing (like product or service recommendations), sell advertising, and more
What is a mom blog?
A mom blog is an website where you can share content, updates, photos, event announcements, and more in your news feed. It's kind of like an Instagram account on steroids. Also, a blog can help potential new customers find you via Google, Pinterest and other search engines.
A blog will let you:
- Have a web address
- Update your audience with news about your business
- Share your information
- Educate your customers
- Sell your products
- Share your thoughts
- Share photos
- Share your product and service recommendations
- Showcase your portfolio
- Tell your story
- Highlight your expertise
- …and so much more.
Let's get started!
Quick: How to start a mom blog in four easy steps
- Select your blog hosting package at BlueHost.com – choose “Shared Hosting”
- Choose your blog domain name (it's free with your hosting package!); Continue to checkout
- After checkout, install WordPress onto your domain name
- Design and launch your site!
In detail: How to start a mom blog
Step 1: Blog Hosting
This is where your blog will be housed and where you'll go when you need to make any back end changes. Bluehost is the company who will broadcast your web address and blog content onto the internet.
- Visit Bluehost.com.
- Choose “Shared Hosting“
- Choose the hosting package that is best for your business needs. If plan to have one website, stick with the least expensive plan. If you plan to have multiple websites, choose a higher up plan. You can choose to pay several years in advance, or just for one year.
Step 2: Choose Domain Name
Next you'll get to choose a free website address (domain name) for your blog.
Choose a web address that is:
- Easy to remember
- Easy to spell
- Easy to say
- Doesn't look funny
- Tells the customer what your business is about, or the name of your business
We like to choose domain names that are informational, educational, funny, catchy, fun to say, and/or search engine friendly (meaning the words match exactly what people are searching).
We suggest purchasing Private Domain Name Registration and paying the extra few dollars. This will protect your personal information from appearing on the internet.
Already have your domain?
If you already have your domain, you can point it to your Bluehost website hosting account by changing the domain name servers to:
- ns1.bluehost.com
- ns2.bluehost.com
Step 3: Install WordPress
Next, you'll install WordPress onto your website. WordPress.org is the backend of your website where you will write and post your content, design your website, manage your settings, and so much more. We like to use WordPress for all our websites because it lets us:
- Manage our websites easily
- Make changes, updates and improvements easily
- Allows us to use our own domain, instead of a basic subdomain (like: example.blogspot.com, we use MompreneurAdvice.com)
- Allows us to run ads from Google Adsense
How to install WordPress.org:
- Log into BlueHost.com
- Go to “My Sites” > “Create Site“
- Choose your website title and tag line, then choose your domain
- Your website will then be created and you'll be asked to create a User Name and Password. Save this information, you'll need it to log in to your website each time.
Now you have officially logged into your blog!
Step 4: Pick your theme
Your WordPress.org website comes with a few excellent and free blog themes that are prefect for getting started or more basic blogging.
However, we now only build our websites with:
- WordPress.org
- On the Genesis Framework
- With a Child Theme from StudioPress Themes for WordPress.
We absolutely love the clean lines and high functionality of the Genesis framework and StudioPress themes. You'll buy the Genesis Framework for just $59.95 and a child theme to use on top of the framework for $30-60. StudioPress has awesome step-by-step tutorials for using the Genesis Framework and all of their themes. They also offer great customer support for when you're stuck.
Choosing a child theme with StudioPress themes:
Once you've uploaded the Genesis Framework, you'll want to choose a theme that works best with your online business model. If your business is service based, you'll want a service-focused child theme. If you want to share updates and recipes, you'll want to choose a food-focused child theme.
MompreneurAdvice.com uses the Magazine Pro Theme.
Comply with FTC Guidelines and Legalities
In order to comply with the Federal Trade Commission's Guidelines and other legalities of having an online business, make sure to have the following pages published on your website and located in your Menu for easy reference. We suggest contacting a business lawyer for legal assistance and to prepare these website pages for you.
Launch your site!
When you're ready to launch your site, go to “Bluehost” in the top left corner of your WordPress screen > “Home” > “Launch your site!“.
Wondering why do we choose Bluehost as our website host?
- Money-back guarantee
- 1 FREE domain registration
- Unlimited domain hosting
- 1-Click MOJO Marketplace installations
- Free drag-and-drop site builder
- Unlimited disk storage
- Unlimited IMAP & POP3 e-mail support
- Technical support leads the industry and is located here in the USA.
- Offers 24/7 chat, email and phone support to our customers.
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