Start Blogging in 2025

Blogging is a transient space. People come and go. Their businesses evolve, they niche down and leave other categories of blogging wide open for whoever comes next. I have to think that no matter what, there is space for anyone, if done well. Here’s exactly what I did to get started:

Exactly what I did to get my blog started:

• Ideate on topics I care about
• Decide on a name
• Secure the URL in Bluehost + connect to wordpress.ORG*
• Search for WordPress themes
• Construct the BASIC outline of my site
• Call CRA to arrange a business number and VAT number for monetization purposes
• Brainstorm list of categories
• Brainstorm list of posts
• Start planning a post: written content, formatting, visual content, thumbnail, sharing strategies, alternative media
• Create a valuable + free resource as a lead magnet = email list
• Research small business bank accounts
• Set up a business bank account and PayPal
• Apply for Amazon Associates
• Apply for site ads: Google, Mediavine
• Create a Pinterest account and TikTok account to share content on and sell on
• List possible affiliates to pitch based on initial posts

Ideation + Name

I often cannot wait to share what I learned from a podcast or to recap a specialist appointment with my husband. He already had a lot of ideas on what I’d be good at discussing online: psychology, raising a family, technology, a passion for travel and politics. He actually gave me the name “fighting 40” because I am forever telling people that I feel like we’re all stuck at 28 and will never age.

If you have someone who knows you well, bounce ideas off them! If not, try brainstorming with GPT. While I tend to get frustrated with AI because they are shitty at giving the answers I want sometimes, I always get my best ideas after a good brainstorm session. While their suggestions can be a bit generic, I find it a good trigger for new ideas in my own mind.

URL + Hosting + Templates: Bluehost and WordPress.org

I secured my URL and web hosting through Bluehost, for no reason exactly except it’s familiar to me. I have noticed it is recommended by other bloggers though, and so I guess I made a good choice. Fair warning though, the platform is a nightmare, unintuitive and beyond frustrating to get used to. But, with enough snooping around and trial-and-error, I’m getting the hang of it.

WordPress has made me very… unhappy. I’ll try to build for a few hours daily and am always hesitant to sit back at the computer because when I do, I just trash what I worked on yesterday. The free templates made me want to pull my hair out. I bought a premium one and same. (Tip: Create three blog posts and assign feature images and categories (right hand toolbar) first, to see how they’ll appear in the template! Templates generally come empty.)

I took the advice of another blogger and bought a template off of Etsy and that has been my saving grace. Buy one with sample material already built into the pages so you can see what the structure will really look like. Just swap information out. Many bloggers say that their first mistake was taking months to set up their site. So I’m fighting the urge to do the same and launching, knowing I will make many changes in the future. And that’s fine. A basic structure, and a basic knowledge of wordpress is all you need to get started. You can always edit later.

Business + VAT Numbers

I will avoid calling Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) for literally years, if I can. But this one is unavoidable. You need to have a Business Number and VAT number for tax purposes if you want to monetize your blog by adding advertisements and affiliate programs to your website.

A natural segway here is to discuss where you’ll stash all that dough, by setting up a business bank account and PayPal so you can manage your money online easily.

Categories, Post Ideas, Post Process

Everyone says to niche down, but I’m of the mindset that starting broad is fine because you’ll find your love, passion or zone of genius as you write and create content. Brands and audiences will have a natural affinity to you and then is when you decide how you will serve those audiences by focusing your efforts more on a certain topic or area of expertise.

You’ll want to categorize your blog into areas that make sense for you. Think in levels. Highest level for example is “Lifestyle blog for women approaching 40”, and second level would be areas of interest within the umbrella topic, like: Parenting, Wellness, Travel, Technology, and for me, Photography because I love it. Within those topics (or categories), you’ll assign individual posts, like: “Preparing for your First Solo Trip in our 30’s”, “My Favorite Fitness App for Women”, or “Dads, Here’s How to Take Mom’s Photo”.

Each post will require some thought and effort beyond simply writing about your experience or opinions for search engine optimization (SEO). You’ll want to consider:

• Formatting: Optimize for skimmability + affiliate opportunities
• Affiliate content: Source links, codes, images, etc
• Research + Backlinking: building authority by quoting + crediting (and supporting) others
• Imagery: Original is ideal, but stock sites like PEXELS can work too!
  • Alternative text for those images + naming for SEO
• Alternative media: Video, reels, audio options, etc.
• Special thumbnails or feature images for Pinterest, for example
• Editing: clarity, conciseness, grammar, spelling, target audience vocabulary
• Scheduling posts and social content to accompany it
• Plan time for engaging with your audience

Lead Magnet

Everything I have understood (and avoided for ages) about becoming a successful website revolves around building your email list. Without it, you don’t have control of who you are speaking to, building relationships with, or even have access to! It makes sense.

Building an email list will take some dedicated effort and a focus on offering free, valuable resources that benefit the reader more than you, for the moment, anyway.

I’m brainstorming deeper level content ideas that can solve a problem for my audience. You can too. Think of 10 things you’ve struggled with or researched over the last 6-12 months. Creating a resource around THOSE ideas will help you to provide value for a like-minded audience in exchange for their email.

Social Media

Social comes hand-in-hand with the idea of running an online business. There’s not much we can do to avoid it entirely. Social media can be free marketing if done right and with enough consistency and dedication. If nothing else, our audiences expect us to be there, if even just as a modern portfolio of our work.

Pinterest and Instagram are the areas in which I plan to focus but if you do your research, you can determine where your demographics are hanging out. For example, if you are aiming to talk to middle aged or older men, you might try X/Twitter. But if your are trying to get in touch with a younger audience, you’ll want to be on TikTok. If you are trying to build an interactive and engaged community with live sessions and courses, maybe Facebook is the place.

Set up an account on your preferred platform and at least simply push your content out to them with some relevant hashtags or keywords that will land in front of people with similar interests. Ideally, you’ll get more comfortable to show your face or voice and attract the kind of following we dream of, right? But, I get it isn’t for everyone.

Launch

My goal is to get enough traffic to qualify for Medivine. I will have to work carefully on SEOing the shit out of each post and using strategies on social to generate interest. I haven’t launched yet but when I do, I plan to have three well-written, well-seo’d posts under each of my categories, complete with an Amazon storefront to link any recommendations.

Next Steps

From there, I’ll pitch some of my favorite companies or locations along my travels to be a part of my content creation projects. I’ll use this content to generate more blog posts weekly, making sure to strategically plan how I will generate and use content beforehand. I’ll also focus on optimizing my workflows and consider how I might outsource some tasks as the blog builds out, possibly redesigning the site at a later time. I imagine I will open a YouTube channel to accompany the content so I can post videos with my written content and drive traffic to my site.

I hope this post becomes helpful to someone else who is looking to just get started. I really needed it spelled out for me tp unscramble my brain, and looked to others online to figure out exactly what to do, in what order.

One foot in front of the other. Literally, the hardest part is just getting started… and learning WordPress. 😉

Are you building a blog in 2025? Tell us, what are you doing differently that’s working well?