A couple of days back, I received an email from a guy who sounded dejected because he started a blog and was not making any money out of it.
Like many, he started with a domain name, web hosting, and every essential thing to build a new WordPress blog. But he was unable to get going or make money.
It appears like he didn’t focus much on blog marketing and eventually had to shut down his blog. I’m not disclosing the email here as it was not formatted properly.
Anyway, basically it’s yet another “I have started a blog but I’m not making money” kind of email that I see more often.
Whenever I get such emails, I get reminded of two things:
First, a good percentage of such beginners started a blog only to make money or at least hoping that they WILL make money (hopefully from the first month/year itself).
Secondly, there are a gazillion “How To Start A Blog In 5–15 Minutes” kind of tutorials on the blogosphere with many of them being written by the so-called “award-winning” bloggers.
It’s supposed to be a good thing, right? Well, yes it is — but only for the “award-winning” blogger and not necessarily for you.
Because they promote it so aggressively and cunningly to give an illusion that it’s easy to start a blog and make money so that they can make a lot of money via affiliate commissions (when you purchase a web hosting).
And then there are income reports which again inspires a lot more people to start a blog (because they are already convinced that blogging is a six-figure job and it’s super-easy to start a blog).
But the reality is that it doesn’t work that way. At all. Of course, blogging is simple. But it’s not easy.
However, if all you want to start is a personal blog (say, on Blogger.com or WordPress.com) then I would agree that blogging is easy because starting a personal (hobby) blog is just like having a presence on Facebook or Twitter.
But when you start a premium WordPress blog, there are a lot more things that you should know and do. And I’m not going to give you a lecture here. Instead, my goal is only to debunk the “How To Start A Blog In X Minutes” tutorials, guides, or videos.
First things first.
You CAN’T ‘Start’ A Blog In 10 Minutes. Period.
When they say, you can start a blog in just 10 minutes, what you really need to understand is that it’s basically all about buying a domain name (that is, your own .com address like matrics360.com) and web hosting plan (that is, your own web server space where you can upload files) and installing WordPress (that is, the blogging software) on your web server.
And they make a decent $100 (at least) bounty via web hosting affiliates when you do it.
The problem is… your new WordPress blog will look like this and never like this. (unless you already know what you want and how to get it).
If someone ask me how much time did I take to create Minterest then I would say 14 years — because apparently that’s the age of this blog.
Bottom Line
I didn’t mean in any way that all the “How To Start A Blog” tutorials are lame. There are some genuine tutorials as well. In fact, I may also publish one on my blog someday.
And if you argue with me and say that I’m wrong and it’s indeed possible to start a blog in less than 15 minutes then all I have to tell you is that 90% of such tutorials are about how to do the initial steps. And it’s nothing more than just filling up some forms.
I feel “starting a blog” should be compared with “starting a shop”. Just because you’ve rented a new retail space doesn’t make you a shop owner (right?). You need goods, you need customers, you need to manage its day-to-day operations, etc.
Likewise, starting a blog means you need a good design, essential pages, useful content, add-on features and functions (via plugins and coding), etc.
Happy Blogging! 🙂
P. S. Write Today; Monetize Tomorrow!
First Published: May 24, 2016; Last Updated: Monday, April 12, 2021.
