START A BLOGStep-by-Step, How To

bloggingleaders.com

Build your brand and your business. Position yourself as an industry leader.

Grow a community and generate leads. Expand your influence in the digital space.

Generate substantial passive online income.

By Brandon Cox

It’s time. You know it. In fact, it’s past due.

I’m Brandon Cox, and I started blogging sometime in the year 2004.

Of course back then, everything was manually managed and I lost the first year or two of posts after changing platforms and eventually moving to a self-hosted Wordpress blog (version 1.7!).

I’ve been blogging at BrandonACox.com for the last decade and have built a solid readership and even made some money from it along the way.

About eight years ago, I was invited to manage an online magazine all about blogging, which sort of led to joining the staff of one of America’s largest churches and helping to relaunch pastors.com, Pastor Rick Warren’s online community (blog, of sorts) for church leaders around the world.

I also designed blogs and websites, secured freelance and consulting gigs, spoke, wrote, and made some passive income as well.

So I believe in blogging.

And even more importantly, I believe in you!

I believe that leadership is influence.Everyone influences someone.So, everyone is a leader to one degree or another.

Including you.

And I also believe that every leader ought to be blogging for several big reasons:

• To build a brand and influence people.

• To leave a legacy.

• To join some global conversations.

• To earn an income.

• To do good. LOTS of good!

So, let’s get started, shall we?

Disclosure!

Please know that when you see a link to a product of some kind in this free guide, it is most likely an affiliate link. That doesn’t affect your price at all. It just means that I would earn a small commission from your purchase.

By the time you get set up, you’ll be sharing affiliate links and earning some passive income too!

So get started…

The Big Stuff

bloggingleaders.com

THREE STEPS TO GET READY

Most guides like this start with something like “get some website hosting” or “pick a topic.” But don’t skip the all-important first step of figuring out why you want to start a blog in the first place.

If you don’t know why you need a blog, you won’t keep going, and the only blogs that ever have an influence or make any money are run by people who stick around and manage them for a long time.

So, why do you want to blog?

It could be that you want to build a brand.Or influence people. Or sell stuff.Or sell other people’s stuff. Or generate leads for your business. Or represent a cause. Or participate in a hobby’s online community.

Whatever it is, write down your why. ➤

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

Step 1. Answer the Question: Why?

What are your goals for blogging? Want to make a million dollars? That was my grandfather’s goal with a communication business he started back in the 1980’s. He did it, sold it, and spent his remaining years trading pocket knives for fun.

Maybe it’s to recruit a thousand volunteers or donors for your nonprofit.

Or generate interest in your hobby and grow an email list to a b’zillion addresses.

You can quantify your goals, but you don’t have to.

Whatever your goals are, write them down. ➤

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

Step 2. Set Some Audacious Goals

You can’t blog about everything. I mean, you can, but people who came for your posts about making great coffee will leave when you write about training bunnies to dance.

Pick a niche. Make it as narrow as possible. “Leadership” is okay. Leading a team is better. Leading a real estate sales team is best.

Make it something you’re passionate about, and something that’s personal to you. What do you love to talk about? To teach about?

What keeps you up at night?

Write it down. ➤

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

_________________________________________________

Step 3. Pick a Niche

The Tech Stuff

bloggingleaders.com

THREE STEPS TO GET GOING

There are certainly plenty of free blogging platforms, but they don’t allow you much freedom and are really, really hard to use when you want to earn income.

I’m going to point you toward what I believe to be the easiest, fastest, and most powerful way to get started. You’re going to need three things:

• A domain name (like www.bloggingleaders.com) • Web hosting (like a remote computer) • Wordpress (the engine behind the blog)

And you can get it all in one spot in just a few clicks with SiteRubix! Choose a domain and install your Wordpress-powered website in seconds! SiteRubix is fast, secure, reliable, and allows you to host up to 50 websites for $49 per month. PLUS you get tons of educational content and an 850,000-member community of bloggers! More about that later…

For now, start your website for free. ➤

1. Click the graphic below.

2. Choose your domain name.

3. Click the “Build My Free Website” button and you’ll be guided through the rest.

Step 4. Get Web Hosting

Depending on what niche you’ve chosen to blog about, there are tons of affiliate programs to choose from. And, now that you’ve joined the Wealthy Affiliate community, you are automatically set up to invite others and create a recurring stream of income!

Here are several places to find and sign up for affiliate programs. Just be sure to read their terms and conditions as you go and you will often be applying with one vendor at a time within these networks.

• Amazon Associates (the easiest) • Affiliate, by Conversant (formerly CJ.com) • Rakuten (includes Walmart!) • ShareASale • ClickBank • PepperJam

There are many vendors who run their own affiliate programs.

Here are a few pointers when it comes to sharing your affiliate links on your website and on social media:

1. Don’t make every link an affiliate link. Google likes sites that are useful, not just commercial.

2. Cloak your links with a plugin like Thirsty Affiliates to make them look nicer.

3. Focus on referring people to relevant products and resources within your content rather than on banner ads. People tend to be “banner blind.”

4. Start building a mailing list. Your best sales will happen as you develop a long term trust-based relationship with your readers.

5. Give it time. You can earn immediately, but the beauty of affiliate marketing is in its longer term scalability.

Step 5. Sign Up for Affiliate Programs

Not only is Wordpress free, powerful, and easy to use, it’s also the perfect platform for a beautifully designed website using Wordpress themes. Themes are like templates - pre-designed websites ready for your content. And SiteRubix has collected together 1,500 or so of the very best!

In other words, you could build an awesome, beautiful blog with hundreds or thousands of pages and posts and never mess with any code at all.

In your Wordpress dashboard, under Appearance, select Themes and you’ll see some ready-to-install with a single click. Currently, the default theme for a newly installed Wordpress-powered site is called Twenty Seventeen. It’s sweet! It’s responsive to mobile devices (so it looks good on a phone and a tablet). And it features content well.

Having said that, I would highly recommend considering going with a premium theme.

There are thousands of premium Wordpress themes available through such online marketplaces as Themeforest, ThemeTrust, Themedy, DesignWall, Thesis, Elegant Themes, and many more.

But I’m personally a huge advocate for a special Wordpress theme framework called Genesis, which is developed by a company called Studiopress. Visit their site and browse through their collection.

Step 6. Make Your Blog Beautiful

Once you’ve joined the Wealthy Affiliate community, you will have access to an amazing training library that will lead you step-by-step through every aspect of building a great affiliate-income-generating website.

And also check out…

Chris Dixon’s Udemy course Wordpress Academy: Master Wordpress Step by Step

Mary Jaksch’s Blog Writer’s Bootcamp

And finally, don’t forget to stay tuned into BloggingLeaders.com for a stream of inspiring, informative content concerning building a blog.

If you haven’t signed up yet, sign up for Wealthy Affiliate today!

Keep Going! Learning Wordpress

Consider me a resource!

I’m here to help. I’d love to hear your success stories, help you in you struggles, and suggest resources along the way!

Brandon Cox

bloggingleaders.combrandonacox.com brandonacox@gmail.com

twitter.com/brandonacox facebook.com/pastorbrandoncox