Launching a New Blog: Your Simple 7-Step Framework for Blogging Success

Launching a new blog can be super exciting. But it also comes with some challenges that can slow you down.

You have to navigate things like:

Choosing the right niche. Staying motivated enough to write articles. Consistently coming up with content ideas. And staying ahead of the competition.

But the trick is not to get too caught up in getting everything right.

It's best to focus on some basic principles and mindset shifts to really propel you forward.

Let's get started.

Before Launching a New Blog: Know Your Why

Have you heard quotes like “remember why you started” and wondered what it really means?

You have to know why you want to start a blog, why you want to be an entrepreneur, and why you want to create something that will help others.

Here's the deal.

Blogging isn't a walk in the park. If you're already a successful blogger, you'll know what the challenges are.

There's the competition, choosing a good niche, writing quality content consistently, the list goes on.

Your why drives you to overcome hurdles you may face along the way.

Plus, you'll get a lot more out of your blogging experience if you have a clear idea of why you're launching a new blog.

If you're asking, “why start a blog?” here are a few reasons that might inspire you:

• To quit your day job
• Get out of debt
• To become a digital nomad
• Save for retirement (or retire early)
• Share your knowledge with the world
• Help people solve a problem
• Leave a legacy

Your why is probably unique to you or it could be a simple as wanting to make extra income.

Just make sure your why is strong enough to keep you going.

Treat it as a Business

It's perfectly fine to start a blog as a hobby, passion project, or online diary.

But, if you want a profitable blog, it's essential to treat it like a business.

Can you imagine starting your own coffee shop without a plan to get customers and turn a profit?

You'd need to open in a good location where there are lots of people and determine how much revenue you'll need to pay for business expenses and staff salaries.

Then, once you have your digital real estate online (your blog), all you need is content and traffic.

You can create content yourself for free or hire people to write for you using one of the best blog writing services.

Your blog traffic is like the customers in a coffee shop.

Instead of your traffic buying coffee, they spend time on your blog (good for ad revenue), and buy products through your affiliate marketing efforts.

The theory is that the more traffic you have, the more income you'll earn.

And your traffic will gradually increase as you add high-quality content.

Instead of getting caught up in making the blog all about yourself and getting everything right, you focus more on serving your audience and providing value.

Calculate Your Income First

Do you want to know how much money your blog can make?

Whether your goal is to generate 1 million visitors per month revenue or 1,000, you can calculate an estimate before you start.

Why calculate your income first?

Because it will help you know if your blog is worth pursuing. And help you gauge how many articles you'll need and how long it might take before hitting your income goals.

Here's how to do it.

Here's the equation: Monthly traffic / 1000 * RPM = Revenue

So, 30,000 / 1000 * 25 = 750

This might not seem like much revenue for 100 articles and a year's work, but remember, organic traffic can grow exponentially.

In many cases, you only need a handful of articles ranking between 1-3 in Google to catapult your earnings.

Play around with some numbers you would be happy with and motivate yourself by calculating your blog's potential revenue before you start.

Learn Copywriting Basics

Copywriting is the art of persuading someone to take action. That action can be anything from clicking an ad, joining an email list, or buying a product.

That's all well and good for sales pages, but what about blogs?

Here's the deal.

Copywriting is beneficial for anyone, especially bloggers. That's because a successful blog relies on excellent writing.

So what does good copywriting for blogs look like?

The most tried and true method is by using AIDA.

• A = Attention
• I = Interest
• D = Desire
• A = Action

Let's look at an example for a blog post titled, “how to stop a rabbit chewing” with emphasis on each part to really get the message across.

• Blog post headline (Attention) – Stop Your Rabbit Chewing Furniture and Your Precious Belongings in Less than 5 Days
• Blog post introduction (Interest) – Is your rabbit constantly chewing up furniture, important documents, or electrical cables around your home? There is a new solution that has the potential to protect your precious belongings in less than 5 days.
• Blog post body (Desire) – Rabbit Guard is a revolutionary new product that retrains a rabbit's behavior and protects items around the home at the same time.
• Call to action (Action) – For a limited time only, you can pick up Rabbit Guard for a huge 65% savings.

As cliche this example is, I'm sure your get the idea.

Because a blog post is typically long form content, you can use AIDA in a much more subtle way.

You want to grab the attention of the reader so they click on your article, keep them reading by building interest, add value by promoting desirable products and solutions, and tell them what to do next with a call to action.

If you use this formula in every blog post you write, you will see higher conversion rates and potentially higher Google rankings because time on site is a ranking signal.

Put these copywriting basics into practice and see your new blog grow faster than you thought possible.

Ignore the Competition

A challenge a lot of bloggers face is worrying about the competition. But, in reality, competition is a good thing.

Let me explain.

You can spend weeks or months searching for the perfect niche when launching a new blog where there's little competition, only to find that no one is searching for the terms within that niche.

Or, worse, people are searching keywords and you spend months growing your blog, only to realize that no one spends any money in the niche.

And that reason is usually because there's no money in it.

Also, if you had spent less time worrying about the competition and instead chosen a saturated market, you would have a lot more hands-on experience.

Choosing a competitive niche can also present you with more opportunities to pivot if you're finding it too hard to compete.

You can choose a different cluster of content to write about, or start a Facebook group or YouTube channel to find a different angle.

It's possible to beat the competition by bringing your own unique spin to your niche.

You just have to get started.

Develop a Process

There's no better way to complete tasks and achieve goals than making them a habit.

No one has to consciously put in the effort to brush their teeth every morning.

But, when it comes to keeping up with the demands of a blog, conscious effort is essential.

Until you develop a process, that is.

And when you repeat this over and over again, the process becomes a habit.

Instead of having to consciously will your way to success, develop a process and achieve your blogging goals with less effort.

Plan a Content Strategy

How do most people start a blog?

They find a list of blog post ideas and publish each one without any thought of how they relate to each other.

For example, this might look like:

• How to stop a rabbit from chewing
• Best rabbit cages
• Why does my rabbit poop everywhere

By themselves, these are excellent articles to write about. But, they're not so great for the blog as a whole.

That's because each one is unrelated to the next. They don't fit together.

Instead, you want to develop a blog content strategy that focuses on a group of related articles, and helps your readers achieve a specific outcome.

Niche Down Early and Often

An outcome like “how to stop a rabbit from chewing” could look like:

• How to stop a rabbit from chewing
• What can rabbits chew on for their teeth?
• Best rabbit chew toys
• Can rabbits chew cardboard?

…And so on.

These topics are hyper-related. That will help the reader prevent their rabbit from chewing things they aren't supposed to – a valuable outcome.

This will benefit you as a new blogger in several ways:

When you strategically plan your content in this way, it lays the foundation of a highly effective blog that grows exponentially.

Once you have a cluster of related articles, you only need to focus on publishing 1 article at a time, knowing that your blog will solve a desirable need in the market.

How to Launch a New Blog in 6 Simple Steps

Want to launch your new blog and publish your first batch of articles quickly?

Here are 7 steps to launch your blog with 6 published articles in less than 2 weeks.

1. Choose a Niche Fast by Limiting How Long it Takes – Day 1

What's the most efficient way to find your blog's niche?

Give yourself a deadline.

That's right. If you limit how long it will take you to choose a niche when launching a new blog, you'll spend less time trying to get it right.

There is no right or wrong niche. The only thing that will cause you to fail is not choosing one.

Want a little help with this step? Here are some niches to choose from:

• Tech
• Food
• Lifestyle
• Travel
• Hobbies
• Health and Fitness
• Pets
• Dating
• Parenting
• Fashion
• Career
• Personal Finance
• Business and Marketing

These are the only niches you really need to decide between. My advice would be to go with one that feels most interesting to you.

But aren't these too competitive?

Kind of, which is why you need to choose a sub-niche within one of these and pair it up with a type of person.

Here are a few examples:

• Tech (Entrepreneurs starting a podcast) – You could easily find 30+ articles helping new podcasters find the best equipment, how to set everything up, improve audio quality, and ways to grow a podcast.
• Food/Lifestyle (Biohackers eating clean) – This could list recipes with only organic ingredients, no added sugar, or preservatives, and help them live longer lives.
• Hobbies (Running after 40) – A blog like this could focus on helping runners over 40 win a marathon, review running shoes/clothes, running machines, and the best marathons around the world.

These 3 ideas took me no longer than 15 minutes to think about, but you could set yourself a time limit of 6 hours if you like.

Try narrowing down a niche you're interested in and use some creativity to make it less competitive.

You can get some help by looking at products on Amazon's Best Sellers list:

Or, using Google, find suggestions by typing things like “best tech for…”, “hobbies to…”, or “do pet…”:

Doing this can give you tons of ideas to think about when choosing your niche. Just don't get too caught up in the details.

2. Name Your Blog, Buy Your Domain – Day 2

Naming a blog is another sticking point for many bloggers. But it doesn't need to be.

Here's a simple process for choosing a domain name quickly.

For this example, I'm going with the podcast tech niche for online creators and entrepreneurs.

The first principle is to think of a brandable domain instead of something that looks like a typical niche affiliate site.

Choosing a domain with an exact match keyword doesn't look very professional.

Instead, think of a word that is broad and inspiring.

Here are a few examples: growth, surge, rise, guru, sage, mentor, advisor, hub, base, etc.

You can find words like these by using Thesaurus.com. Start with a cool-sounding word and click through to find something that stands out.

Then, I would pair these words with the word “podcast” and check to see if the domain is available.

If I wanted to go a step further, I could even change the niche word of “podcast” to something else.

Like, caster, podcasting, pod, host, radio, show, creator, or even combine them together like podhost or radiocast, etc.

Here are 4 domains I found that were available:

• radiocastrise.com
• podcasterrise.com
• podcastersurge.com
• creatorcocoon.com

I quite like the sound of podcasterrise.com and creatorcocoon.com.

If I wanted to focus entirely on podcasting, I'd go with Podcaster Rise. But if I wanted to allow some room to grow my blog into various types of content creation later on, then I would choose Creator Cocoon.

A blog name like Creator Cocoon would allow me to blog about podcast tech, YouTube tech, and other creative technology. I could even broaden monetization into online courses if I wanted.

This is an excellent strategy for choosing a domain name, because if adding 50-100 articles on podcasting tech doesn't work out, I can switch to something else.

Now, go and buy your domain name before someone else snaps it up.

An aged domain name is an active domain name that used to be an active website.

These domains usually have a good backlink profile, which often means you can grow your blog traffic faster than buying a fresh domain name.

3. Find your first batch of articles – Day 3-4

What most people do next is spend 2 weeks building their website. Not us.

I'll show you how to find 6 hyper-related articles so you can write them before you launch.

Doing it this way round will build excitement by delaying gratification of building the blog first, but feeling disappointed with the lack of published articles.

When you launch your blog and immediately publish a batch of articles, it builds momentum to continue adding content.

Here's how to find your first 6 articles:

First, list some products within your niche. I did a Google search for “podcast equipment” and found things like microphones, pop filters, headphones, and mixers.

Next, use a keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner and search for your seed keywords.

I'm using Keyword Chef, which you can get 1000 credits for free when you create an account (and to learn more, check out our full Keyword Chef review here).

I searched for the seed keyword “mics for podcasting” in Keyword Chef under the “best” dropdown and here are the results:

Then, when I click Get Keywords, it displays the search volume:

Your first 20-30 articles should have a low search volume, because these will be lower in competition.

You don't want to let the competition stop you from launching your blog, but you also don't want to target keywords with a search volume of 1000+ for at least the first 50-100 articles.

Try to aim around 30-250 search volume for the first 20-30 posts and then gradually target higher search volume as you reach 50+ articles.

The other 5 articles would center around 1-2 products with some informational posts.

Here are the others I found with their search volume:

• best budget podcast setup = 30
• do you need a mixer for a podcast = 30
• best type of mic for podcasting = 30
• how to use a mixer for podcast = 20
• how to record a podcast with two mics = 30

These are an excellent first batch of articles to publish on a new blog that I'm sure could be expanded on with another 20 articles.

I could review all the individual products separately and create question and how-to posts to help people choose the right equipment for their podcast.

Then, after focusing on mics and mixers, I could start the process again with headphones and audio software.

4. Write your articles – Day 5-10

Next is to spend 6 days writing each article. If you set yourself a time limit to write 1 article per day, you'll be forced to make them good enough instead of perfect.

Here's the exact process to write and edit your first article:

Include the keyword in the intro, h2 tag, and the conclusion.

Try to add value to your posts by talking about the benefits of product features, answer frequently asked questions, and weigh the pros and cons.

Write how-to posts in a step by step format and question posts should answer the question quickly and then elaborate on the details in the rest of the article.

You can write your articles in any text editor of choice. My editor of choice is Obsidian, but other options include Google Docs, Hemingway App, and AI-Writer.

5. Launch WordPress – Day 11

Now it's time to setup your blogging platform using WordPress.

The most straightforward way to do this is with your hosting platform. If you already have a blog, you probably already have web hosting.

If not, then go with something basic and affordable, like Namecheap hosting.

You can choose their Stellar package for $3.88 per month or for less than $25 when you pay for your first year upfront.

To install WordPress, login to your Namecheap account and launch cPanel (and in case you ever need we also have a guide on how to uninstall WordPress from cPanel). Then choose the WordPress logo under the Softaculous Apps Installer:

Enter your website details on the next page and click Install.

Once WordPress is installed, you'll be able to access your WordPress blog and admin by going to yourdomainname.com/wp-admin in the address bar.

Enter your username and password to access your WordPress dashboard.

6. Design Your Blog The Easy Way – Day 12

The design for a brand new blog doesn't need to be fancy.

If your blog takes off and exceeds all your expectations, you could be hitting around 45,000 page views per month as outlined in this video.

But achieving this kind of velocity won't happen if you spend too much time designing your blog.

Content really is king, especially in the early stages.

Therefore, choose one of these easiest WordPress themes to get you started and choose a premium theme once you make money blogging.

To suggest a few, the following themes are super simple to use and only need a few adjustments in the themes customizer settings.

• Astra
• Schema
• PixiGo
• Challenger
• BlogFeedly

All the above themes have free versions and are designed specifically for blogs.

To get everything set up, all you have to do is search for them in the WordPress theme directory and hit install.

Then you can make some changes to the available features from the Settings page.

As soon as you've set up your theme (the easy way), you can move onto the final step, publishing your prewritten articles.

7. Publish your articles – Day 13

In this last step, you can batch publish the articles you wrote before installing WordPress.

You can also format and optimize them for on-page SEO.

Here's the process:

First, copy your article text and paste into a new WordPress post and title your post with the keyword of your article:

Second, make your slug the main keyword and add a featured image with the keyword as the title and alt text:

Adding more images throughout the post will help break up the text. These images can be found on website like Pexels.com.

Next, format your subheadings with H2 and H3 tags. Add bullet points where necessary, and other ways to make the articles more engaging like quotes.

You can publish each article and all that's left to do is create internal links between each post.

This will help Google find each of your articles and build topical relevance for your blog.

What's Next? After Launching a New Blog

Here are a few extra things to look at after a successful blog launch. Really, these can be done at any stage, but they aren't essential in the beginning.

To learn more about these, I speak about them in more detail in my blogging process post.

WordPress plugins

WordPress plugins are great, but they will hardly be the defining factor of your blog's success.

With that being said, here are a few you might want to consider:

• An SEO plugin: This will help you customize your meta title and description of each post on your blog. Yoast SEO or RankMath are good options.
• Antispam plugin: Stop bots and spammers from leaving fake comments. Akismet or AntispamBee work great for this.
• Table of contents plugin: Adds a table of contents to your posts, which can help readers navigate your articles.
• Social share buttons: Adds social share buttons to your posts so people can share your content on social media.

Blog tracking and optimization

This is a little more important as your blog starts to grow because you'll need to track how many visitors you receive and which articles are more popular.

Read Google Analytics for blogs for all the scoop.

• Google Search Console: Previously known as webmaster tools, this free tool list which keywords your blog is showing up for in the search results and which articles get click on.
• Google Analytics: Another free tool which tracks your traffic and provides user insights and behavior.

Get active on social media

This is something that can be done at any stage in the process, although it's recommended once you've mastered the blogging process.

You can use any social media platform, but you might want to focus on one at first. Build it up and join others when you have more time to manage them.

Launching a New Blog: Conclusion

There you have it. A practical and effective way of launching a new blog. I hope you found this post helpful.

A large part of the process is to stay motivated, which you can do by developing habits to take off the pressure.

Try not to get too caught up in the details and focus on publishing new content every week by writing every day. Good luck!

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