Starting a Blog Archives - Page 2 of 2

GeneratePress Review – The Only WordPress Theme You Need

October 23, 2020

I've worked on a half-dozen or so themes in my decade-plus blogging career, and I've finally settled on the one I'll be sticking with for the long run. This theme, the one you're seeing, is GeneratePress– one of the most customizable and fastest WordPress themes on the market today.

As I'm always seeking speed improvements for SEO goals, and I am just generally a nerd when it comes to optimization, it didn't take much more beyond hearing a few thumbs up from colleagues that GeneratePress is the way to go.

I bought access to the premium features, started a site design, and was blown away by both the functionality and the speed (and to be honest, I'm probably not even taking advantage of all the features, either!).

As such, I have a feeling I'll be sticking to this one for quite some time.

10 Things I Wish I Could’ve Told Myself When I Started Blogging

September 7, 2020

In August 2020, I celebrated my 12th anniversary of starting my first professional blog. Sure, I've had hobby blogs and journals since I was a teenager (and have been building websites for fun for 20+ years too), but 2008 was the year I finally decided to do something with a specific focus.

It was a long process full of trial and error, but it took me ten years to the day to turn that blog (plus others) into a proper business that I could rely on for my full-time income. It has been off to the races ever since.

In this one, I wanted to take a moment to reflect and share ten things I wish I could've told myself when I started blogging. Had I incorporated many of the below thoughts into my site(s), I can only imagine what sort of position I'd be in today instead.

35 Things You Need to Do When Starting a Blog

July 27, 2022August 10, 2020

When it comes to starting a new blog, what you do at the onset lays the foundation for your future success. To call these steps critical is a bit of an understatement as there are many ways where you can go down the wrong path before publishing a single post.

In an earlier article on our site, we talked about everything you need to consider when starting a niche blog. For the most part, that article focused on how to research a topic that you can truly own. What it did not do was dive into the technical aspects of launching a blog you need to consider at the same time.

In this article, we're going to highlight everything you may want to do to get your new site off the ground. While we tried to highlight only the most important tips, these should help put you on the best path to success. Some of these bullet points may be brief but likely require a fair bit of work. When available, detailed guides (both on our site and 3rd parties) will be linked to provide more information.

Best Practices for Using Stock Photos on Your Blog (Plus Sources)

July 29, 2022August 10, 2020

In our photography tips for bloggers interview with Kevin Wagar, we briefly touched on the practice of using stock photography on your blogs.

This practice almost always starts robust debates online between those who are open to using stock photos and those who share content exclusively created by themselves. For over a decade I was purely in the latter, but have recently started using stock photos on my blogs to illustrate points where I do not have a relevant image of my own (this is especially true on This Week in Blogging).

Unfortunately, using photography that you did not take yourself opens up a number of issues that must be considered, and before you use stock photography online there are some things you need to know.

*This article is written based on my understanding of US Copyright law. Other countries may have variations, especially around privacy rules. We are not lawyers and the below should not be considered legal advice.

A Breakdown of Blog Acronyms You Should Know

March 4, 2026July 16, 2020

Does monitoring KPIs in SERPs drive you mad? Or how about assessing the impact of CTR on CPA campaigns? Are you an expert in HTML, JS, or CSS for your blog?

We get it, blogging acronyms are confusing at the best of times. In fact, some of them make no sense what-so-ever.

To help with that, we've put together a guide of the most common blogging acronyms out there and hope that this glossary will help you understand the lingo just a bit better by the time you're finished!

Breaking Down WordPress Blogging Hosts You May Wish to Consider

February 20, 2023July 8, 2020

Hosting is often one of the most widely talked about items when it comes to blogging as it is crucial to your (and your readers') experience when on your site.

You often don't think about it, but every website on the internet takes up file space- generally on the order of 10s to 100s of gigabytes. This has to exist on a piece of hardware somewhere in the world (often multiple times over for redundancy). A host often manages this equipment (or has contracts with those who do) and does all the work necessary to ensure your site can be found at its respective domain. So when you opened up this link, everything that was required to deliver the page you're seeing to your computer screen is likely a function of our host.

We're not going to bore you with the details on how all that happens, but suffice it to say that hosting is one of the most important things every blogger must have because, well, your site simply wouldn't exist without it!

In this guide, we want to break down some of the biggest considerations you should look for in a host, and then give a few recommendations that may be helpful for all budgets.

The Best WordPress Plugins – Speed and Function First

June 18, 2024July 2, 2020

How to Get a Fast Website with Wordpress Plugins

One of the reasons we love blogging on WordPress so much is that the content management system is open source. Want a new theme? There are hundreds if not thousands of developers out there with a product. In the mood for a plugin upgrade? Tens of thousands exist.

While we love this flexibility to always be on the lookout for the next best thing, you can often be met with decision paralysis on what is best for you and why.

To help with that, we wanted to share our list of preferred WordPress plugins that we use and love. As we have prioritized site speed on all of our sites, we are also pretty happy with the below for being lightweight and letting our sites run lightning-fast (but we also have tip our hats to our host, BigScoots, for a bit of that too)!

What Does it Mean to Start a Niche Blog in 2023?

January 9, 2023June 2, 2020

For many years, blogging experts have been screaming “niche down, niche down” to encourage those looking to launch a new site to claim ownership of topics where they can shine as experts.

This was done for many reasons, with the biggest simply being that the internet is running out of space. I'm serious. Gone are the days where you can start a general blog, put a little effort in, and succeed. Today blogging is an organized industry, with established best practices, and successful blogs covering nearly every topic there is- often multiple times over.

To translate, this means that competition is fierce. Niching down is a way to stand out amongst the sea of bloggers and allows you to have a clear topical advantage right from the start.

If you're looking to start a niche site in 2023 (or even overhaul your existing site), this guide highlights the important points you must consider.