Blogging with the Pros – Starting out with WordPress

*This Blogging with the Pros series does include affiliate links for products I recommend.

If you are considering becoming a blogger, or are a blogger considering moving to WordPress – this post is for you!  I’m going to share what my experience has been, along with some of the dumbest mistakes I made, and I have invited Lesley from Chaotically Creative to share some tips, so you get can get started on WordPress, without spending the small fortune I spent doing it, and without the stress that had me pulling my hair out.

First off, you have to decide whether WordPress is right for you, and is it right for you NOW?  That’s a decision each blogger has to answer for themselves.  I will tell you that for about the first 2 months after moving to WordPress, I hated it.  I seriously hated it.  It wasn’t really WordPress that I hated, it was that when I was on Blogger, my options were pretty limited, but simple.  With more options, come more things to consider, and more expenses can be involved in doing it…and I was doing everything WRONG, which cost me so much time and money.

Before you make the decision, I personally would recommend starting a free blog with WordPress, so you have a chance to become familiar with WordPress (and blogging in general) before making the leap.  It doesn’t even have to be a blog that you publish for the world to see – just a practice blog to get your feet wet.  I wish I had done that.  You can upgrade it later to a regular blog later if you like it.

Once you decide you want your own self-hosted blog (which means your blog address doesn’t end with wordpress.com, or blogspot.com), don’t make ANY decisions, or spend any money, until you’ve done your research first…or you’ll waste a lot of money and time – like I did.  Educate yourself FIRST!

First, You’ll need to purchase your domain name, and you’ll need to purchase blog hosting.

You can purchase your domain name directly from WordPress, but you can get a free domain from Bluehost, when you sign up for hosting (more on that next).

One of your biggest expenses will be hosting, so you REALLY want to do research before selecting your hosting service.  Ask other bloggers who they use, how much they pay, and if they are happy with the customer service.  This is a super important decision, because if you buy the cheapest hosting service you can find, you may also end up with a blog that loads very slowly, and a slow-loading blog frustrates your readers, and lowers your ranking with Google (which means you’ll end up very low in search results). You pay by the month with some hosting service, and by 6-month or yearly options with others.  Bluehost is a great option for the newer blogger, with pageviews less than 3,000 per day.  They offer plans starting as low as $3.49 a month, and they offer a free domain name.

Once your blog exceeds more than 3,000 or so visitors per day, it will be time to look for a faster hosting service, like Media Temple, which is a good choice for intermediate size blogs.

CHOOSING A THEME

You’ll need to choose a theme for your blog.  A theme is basically just the layout and the options your blog will have.  You have to purchase your theme, so make sure you love it,  and that it offers exactly what you want, so you don’t have to buy a new theme later, and it’s a pain in the rear.

Decide how many columns you want your blog to have, what type of header area you want, what type of footer area you want, etc., and start shopping for one that best meets your needs.

At this point, you’ll start designing the look you want your blot to have.  Depending on your experience and understanding of working with html, coding, etc., you can either do the work yourself, and many bloggers do, or you can hire someone to help you.  I’ve done a combination of both.

My Dumb mistake #1 – I didn’t really understand what a theme was, because on blogger, you just select a layout, and there aren’t lots of options.  When I hired someone to move my blog from Blogger to WordPress, I just told them I wanted it to look the same as my Blogger blog, with a few modifications and additions.  I didn’t realize that meant he had to design a custom theme for me, so it would look the same as my Blogger blog.  I paid several hundred dollars for that mistake, because custom themes aren’t cheap.  I could have easily found a much less expensive theme that would have looked very similar to my existing blog, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know.  I paid a lot for that lack of knowledge!

There are 1,000’s of themes to choose from.  You can purchase a theme from WordPress, you can choose themes made by theme designers (which is what I have now), or you can have someone design one specially for you (most expensive option – but you get exactly the look and layout you want – generally, you pay by the hour for the work they do).

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE – KNOW WHAT YOU WANT!

Now, I want to share my personal experience, why it was costly, and what I’d do differently.  Other bloggers might disagree with me about what I’m about to say, but I wish I could turn the clock back a few months, and follow the advice I’m about to give you.

If you end up needing to hire someone to help you work on your blog:

1.  If you are a woman blogger, you may want to consider hiring a WOMAN to work on your blog.  Why would I say such a sexist thing?

I’ve hired 2 different men to work on my blog, and both times, I had real regrets.  That’s not to say I wasn’t happy with some of the work they’d done, but men and women communicate differently (which you already know if you are married!), and men perceive blogs from their male perspective.  Since the majority of my readers are female, I needed someone who understood that I wanted my website to appeal to women.  If I didn’t love the work they were doing for me, I knew the bulk of my readers wouldn’t love it either, and that made working with them difficult.  They were frustrating me, and I know I was frustrating them.  Both had a hard time just doing what I wanted them to do, not doing what they thought I should do.  I paid hundreds of dollars for work I didn’t love.  Lesson learned!  Conversely, if you are a male blogger, I think you would communicate and work better with a male blogger, but I’m not a guy…so what do I know about that?!

At the end of the day, it’s YOUR blog, and YOUR money paying someone to work on it.  Get someone who will help you achieve your vision for your blog – not their vision of what they think your blog should look like.

2.  I would also suggest that you hire a woman BLOGGER, not just a website developer.  Blogs have different needs than other types of websites, which I’ve discovered a fellow blogger understands best.  There are a lot of website developers out there who are fabulous at working on blogs, but in the future, I will only hire someone who actually has a blog themselves.  At the least, any blog website developer should also maintain a blog about their business.  Another lesson learned from experience.  Some charge by the hour, and some offer package deals – shop around and ask for recommendations from other bloggers.

So… I  went looking for a female blogger to help me undo all the things I didn’t like about my blog.  I asked OTHER bloggers for recommendations, and that is how I found Lesley, from Chaotically Creative.  I’ve been working with Lesley for several months now, and she’s been amazing.  Lesley was a blogger before she ever started helping others work on their blogs.  In fact, it’s from her blogging experience, that she learned how to help others.

Lesley was kind enough to share some tips that will be a benefit to anyone who is just starting out on WordPress.  Welcome, Lesley!!

Lesley, what must-have features do you think every blog should have?

Lesley answers – I think the most important elements of a blog home page, are a well organized menu bar, an obvious place for readers to subscribe to your newsletter, links to your social media networks, and your contact email in a highly visible location place.

What would you say are the most important/ best plugins a blog should have?  Which type should be avoided?

Lesley answers – Plugins can be a blogger’s best friend and worst enemy. I would suggest running your site with as few plugins as possible. The two most important plugins I would suggest are Aksimet to help catch spam comments, and WordPress SEO by Yoast. Remember plugins create additional code which is added to your site sometimes the code is well written sometimes it as not. And even more so, certain plugins work well together, while others do not. My advice is to avoid too many plugins, as they often conflict and are the leading cause for slow site speed.

Are there any plug-ins you do recommend and love?

Lesley answers – My new favorite gallery plugin would have to be Category Thumbnail Links. Although this plugin requires some customization, once it’s all set up it’s virtually maintenance free.  You select a category and that featured image will appear as a thumbnail in your gallery.

Thanks so much, Lesley!!

Lesley is part of a mother/daughter team that author Chaotically Creative.   We know life can be hectic but there are simple things we can do each day to have a little bit of sanity. Besides blogging, we also invented the product Fix A Bra which was featured on The Today Show. Lesley also provides blogging services such as blog technical help and consultations for the newbie to moderate bloggers.

So, in hindsight, would I still make the move to WordPress from Blogger – this move that has been so expensive, and exasperating for me?

YES.  It’s taken me a few months to finally feel like it was a good decision, because the first few months, I felt like I’d made a horrible and expensive mistake.

In the last several months though, I’ve seen a steady increase in the traffic coming to my blog.  I think there are several factors which have influenced that, because I’m doing some things differently now than I used to (more about that HERE), but I also think there has been a huge benefit of having the Yoast plugin that Lesley mentioned.  That plugin helps you do everything you can to make your blog posts SEO friendly – meaning, your blog posts will be found by search engines).

An increase in traffic, means an increase in income – which helps pay for all the expensive mistakes I made.  I don’t mean to sound tacky by talking about money, but I create projects and blog on a daily basis, which is incredibly time consuming, so I NEED to earn an income doing it.  I can see that becoming much more profitable now than it was when I was hosted on Blogger.

Well, I hope that by sharing my dumb mistakes, it’ll help you avoid making the same ones yourself!  If you’ve already moved from Blogger to WordPress, I’d love to hear your experiences – I just hope you made less expensive mistakes than I did!

If you missed parts 1, 2 or 3 of my Blogging with the Pros series, you can find them all HERE, or click on this image.

Happy Blogging!