Start a Blog with me in 2024.

I’ve read my fair share of blogs, from general everyday blogs to blogs about how to start a blog, there is literally something for everyone under any topic you can think of.

Blogging has been around for years, right? Is it a dying business? Is it saturated? Who knows. But I’m going to test it and start one. Has it been easy up to this point? Absolutely not. I bought my domain in November ’23 and I’m finally writing my first post in March ’24, so it’s taken me 4 months just to actually post something.

Now, I have to admit, I didn’t think it was going to be as hard as it has been. I have read SO many blog posts and watched tonnes of YouTube videos telling me that they got their website set up within a day, and within a week they were posting multiple blogs.

That just hasn’t been the reality for me. Perhaps I am just a slow learner, or maybe I didn’t set everything up the same as everyone else, or am I just a perfectionist? Either way, I found creating the website to be rather tricky (I still do).

I’m having to learn things like;

• Domains
• Hosting
• WordPress
• Themes
• Plugins
• SEO
• Pinterest
• Links

If I’m completely honest, I still don’t know much about the majority of those! As blogging is an ongoing thing, I can tweak and change things whenever I like, nothing is set in stone and everything belongs to me (one of the benefits of owning the domain of course!).

I currently work full time for a small manufacturing company, and whilst I get some job satisfaction from it, it doesn’t give me the fulfilment I think I want/need. I’m a creative person at heart and I want to be able to have an output for that. So Ta-Dah… The Abbey Journal was born.

Here are the steps I took to get to this point..

• Research; I was constantly on blogs and websites, reading, learning and seeing the type of topics / niches that were out there. I was also looking at the theme and layout of their websites to see what ones I found hard to use, easy to use etc. Some can be very messy and difficult to navigate, which normally puts me off staying on that blog at all, so I kept that in mind for when I was ready to start a blog myself.

• Choose a domain name. Once I finally decided that I was going to give blogging a bash (what did I have to lose right?) I had to choose my domain name, which I actually found to be quite a hard task. I found a website that can help you generate a domain name – there are quite a few of them out there – and I chose mine from a big list of ideas it gave me. I decided to keep it broad and simple so if I change directions with my blog then I can. However, creating a domain based on your niche (if you have one) is probably more favourable.

• Choose a hosting platform. I had NO idea on this stuff before starting a blog, but based on my research I knew that I needed to be ‘self hosted’ if I ever wanted to take my blog further in the long run. Being self hosting means I own all my own content and my website. I went with DreamHost. This is a paid-for service (super affordable!) and super simple to set up. I bought my domain name from there too. I would advise going for .com over anything else, as this will always look the best in the search bar.

• Setting up WordPress.org. WordPress is a content management platform that blogs run on. Not to be confused with wordpress.com – this is not self hosting. DreamHost will install wordpress for you so everything is connected. This is where I started feeling out of my depth, so I had to do a lot of research (YouTube and other tutorials) to figure out what I was meant to do.

• Creating the theme/website. I followed a YouTube tutorial on everything to with creating the blog itself. So I can’t give a huge explanation on this part or take any credit! The video was about 2 hours long and with lots of stopping and starting it took me weeks to actually get to the end. Then I decided to change it anyway! But in fairness the tips I had learnt during the video did help me when I changed my theme last minute. The video I watched is this one here if you are interested! I chose a free Theme to start my blog – which is basically the design of your website, which you then customise with your own colours and pictures and content!

And this is where I am up to. I would say 90% of the ‘how to start a blog’ articles I read, never mentioned how difficult it can be or how long it can actually take to get here. I applaud those who do set up in less than a week, that’s amazing! It just wasn’t the reality for me and that’s ok, I’m here now!

In my 30s, starting a blog with no experience.. lets go!

Please leave a comment below if there is anything i’ve missed, or that you would like more info on. I’m happy to help any complete novice’s like myself!

More about me here.