How To Make A Successful Family Blog

Want to start a blog from home, mama?

I'm sure you read a lot of mom blogs, go on Facebook, and hang out on Pinterest when your little one is sleeping.

You see everyone online with their blog, and you want to know how to start a blog.

You want to join this awesome community. I can't blame you.

I've been blogging for almost four years years on this blog and let me tell you, starting a mom blog was the best decision I ever made.

I love blogging so much, and that's probably why five years ago I decided to become a freelance writer. I blog for a living, and it's been the best decision I made for my family and me.

You know why? My family has been sick. We've all had the flu, stomach flu, icky colds, low-grade fevers and more for over a month!

Because I have a blog, I was able to take care of my twins at home every day, and not have to worry about going back to work, hiring a babysitter or taking them to day care.

I can stay home, make an online income and pick up my twins from school every time. Do you want that mama? I know you do.

You can make money on your blog as long as you're willing to put in the time and effort to grow your blog. If you're not sure if you can, just look at these bloggers who started out just like you and grew their blog to thousands a month!

Abby from Just A Girl and Her Blog – $40,124 in one month
Rosemarie from The Busy Budgeter – $32,469 in one month
Lena from What Mommy Does – $9,997 in one month

I've had so many moms email me personally telling me their story for wanting to start a blog, but they had no idea what to do or where to go.

If you want to start a mom blog, don't worry, it's easy, quick and you don't need to know any tech stuff. Trust me. I'm tech illiterate, and I was able to start a blog with Bluehost in under 10 minutes!

Okay.

Let's break this down and start from the beginning!

1. Figure Out Your Niche

One thing you need to think about when starting your blog is what you plan to write about. This can be a challenge for a lot of people. I struggled too.

When I first started Twins Mommy, I decided to write for work-at-home moms with little ones.

But, this soon turned to mom bloggers who wanted to become mompreneurs. And even now, I'm honing my niche to make sure I focus on traffic growth, income growth, and email list growth. I will, of course, talk about my twins and being productive, but it's not my blog's focus.

You might be wondering,why do I even need a niche?

There's a lot of lifestyle blogs that talk about career, travel, beauty, parenting and DIY.

For your first blog, though, I suggest you find a niche. You know why?

It will help you grow your blog and your following quicker.

People will remember you when they can think of your whole blog and what you stand for.

So, to find your niche, ask these questions:

What am I passionate about?

What's that one thing that keeps you up at night? Look at your hobbies and find out what you enjoy and can write about it for a long time.

You can also look at previous experience to help you decide your niche.

My background is in education and being a mama, but my online experience is in digital marketing. When I created Twins Mommy I drew from those experiences.

Is there a need for my niche?

This is a little bit more challenging. How do you find out if there's a need when, on Pinterest, you see like a gazillion blogs that talk about the same thing?

One easy way is to check on Facebook. Go to a few groups you belong to and use their search function.

Just type in your niche or keyword that represents your blog and see if there are lots of questions surrounding that topic. If so, you have a viable niche!

Can you monetize it?

Listen, we all love blogging for fun, but if you really want to stay home with your little one or be able to quit that 9-5 job you hate, you need to find a way to monetize your niche. For some, that's doing sponsored posts, for others, it's affiliate marketing, and for others, it's starting a service (like me!).

Answer those three questions, and that should help you find your niche.

2. Choose a Blogging Platform

This site is a WordPress.org blog and while there are other blogging platforms to choose from – Squarespace for example – for the sake of this tutorial, I'll walk you through how to start a WordPress.org blog.

A WordPress.org blog requires hosting and this post walks you through how to set up your hosting using Bluehost.

I recommend starting a blog with WordPress because:

Most sites are WordPress sites (like The New Yorker and even Beyoncé!)
You have more options to customize your site with WordPress plugins and thousands of themes to choose from (both free and paid) to make your blog look the way you want it to.
There is a lot of support to help you with your WordPress blog. There are YouTube videos, blog posts and WordPress forums – not to mention me! – that can help you with your blog's theme and site.

3. Choose a Domain Name

This is the fun part, mamas! This is where your creativity comes out of the bag and can play It's time to create your website's name. What are you going to name your blog? This will be what you type in the address bar – http://yourblogname.com.

It's probably a good idea to have your niche somewhere in your website name.

But, if you take a look at my blog's name – Twins Mommy – this doesn't scream helping moms become mompreneurs!

So, don't spend days thinking of the perfect name.Make sure, though, to have a couple of names in case the .com is already taken. I also suggest trying to get a .com since that's the most common and easy to remember ( just make a list for now. Once we get into starting a mom blog, I'll show you how to get your domain name!).

As a rule, make sure your domain name is simple, short and easy to spell, and relates to your overall brand.

Some of my favorite mom blog names are:

Kids, Cash, Chaos

Crazy Life With Littles

Living For Naptime

Okay! Now it's time to create a blog.

4. Time to Start a Blog with Bluehost and WordPress

When I first started blogging I wanted to use a secure and reliable web host. Bluehost is one of the best hosting companies out there anda great value too, mamas!

Why Choose Bluehost?

There's a lot of hosts to choose from, so why choose Bluehost to host your blog? There are four main reasons to start your blog with Bluehost.

1. You Get a Free Domain

Bluehost gives you a completely free domain name for the entire year when you sign up using my special link.

That saves you $15 or more right up front! This is super important if you want to bootstrap your blogging expenses.

Most other web hosting providers don't offer a free domain to their customers.

2. They Have 24/7 Support For All of Your Questions

If you have a problem or question, you don't have to wait over an hour for a representative. Bluehost's fantastic tech support will answer your questions any time of the day or night, and do it quickly.

You can choose phone support or live – online – chat with their tech support team, and their support team is available 24/7.

I use their live chat all the time, but for kicks I picked up the phone and gave them a call one day. Within 2 minutes I had my entire issue resolved. Talk about fast!

Here are what my course students said about Bluehost tech support:

If you're a mom, I suggest the chat option in case your little one wants to test out their lungs

3. Automatically Installs WordPress For You

How great is this mama? No need to maneuverer clicking buttons or typing in cryptic commands to install WordPress anymore! Bluehost does it for you behind the scenes…automatically!

You can start your mom blog in minutes after you sign up to Bluehost.

4. Affordable for New Bloggers

I get you –

When starting a blog, you want to keep your costs down. Making money blogging is a journey so any savings you do up front will help you with blogging for a long time!

Bluehost has made it super affordable for new bloggers with their plans – when you use my special link. You can start a blog for as low as $2.95/month!

Compare that to down the road when your blog is hopefully making you thousands a month!

Starting a blog doesn't have to be a hard decision for you mama.

As a stay at home mom, it was absolutely the BEST decision I have made. I started blogging when my twins were taking one nap a day.

Now – my twins are in school! I side hustled my blogging to now become a full-time blogger!

And you can do this too mama – with baby in tow!

And one more reason why Bluehost is the most recommended and best blogging host for new bloggers – WordPress has officially recommended Bluehost as one of a very few "best and brightest hosts."

Let's get started!

Just click on over to Bluehost and follow along with me! And to help you even more, I have a tutorial video that walks you step-by-step on starting a blog!

Step 1: Choose Your Plan

Bluehost has three plans to choose from: Basic, Plus and Choice Plus. I recommend bloggers running WordPress start with either the Basic or Plus plan. The Basic plan has everything you need for a single blog, but I'm a serial blogger and I just can't stop making new blogs!

With the Plus plan you can host unlimited domains and you have unlimited storage space all on your one hosting account.

And let me tell you, you WILL want to start more blogs after your first 🙂

But, if you're just getting started with this blogging thing, then the Basic plan has you covered!

And if you use my special link, you can save up to 60% off the regular price!

Many people don't realize this, but if you can swing it, you should lock in the special discounted pricing for multiple years. Yup, that's right mamas.

Choose the 2-year or the 3-year term for big savings up front. And bonus points…you won't have to worry about a hosting bill for another 2 (or 3) years. Yay!

Click on theSelect button for any of the plans. This will take you to step 2.

Step 2: Choose Your Domain Name

Remember the list you made of potential website names? Your domain name is what people will remember you by when they are on Pinterest or Facebook.

It's also what will set your brand apart from others. So, when someone thinks of your site's name, it should represent your brand.

As I stated already, Twins Mommy isn't such a great domain name since I changed my niche and decided to talk more about business than twins.

But, I am still building a brand with Twins Mommy. People "know" me for my strategies to grow a blog.

When you get to this page, you can use your existing domain name or pick a new domain name.

Type in your website's name, and it will check if it's available. You can pick your domain extension like .com, .org, .net, but I highly suggest you stick with .com since it's easier to brand and remember.

If your website name isn't available, you can try picking a variation of your blog name.

If your website name is available, you can choose the "I'll create my domain later."

This is a great option if you're totally stuck with a blog name!

Step 3: Your Account/Package/Payment Info

Fill out your account and client information.

Remember, you will save the most money overall when you choose the 36 month plan. With that option, you don't have to think about paying for your hosting plan for 3 years!

Note: you can pay with credit card or PayPal.

Next is setting up your password for your Bluehost account.

Install WordPress

Remember when I said Bluehost installs WordPress for you!

So, for this step you can just walk into the WordPress platform. Easy peasy!

When Bluehost installs WordPress for you, they also install the default WordPress theme (if you don't pick one at first). Later you can change it, add a logo, and start your blog post!

This is a demo site I like to use with the Astra theme (that you can pick within setting up your Bluehost blog)!

Logging Into Your New WordPress Blog

The cool thing with Bluehost is that they made it super simple to login to your blog.

They created a user-friendly and beautiful control panel. With one click you login to your brand new Bluehost blog! How easy is that?

Boom! You Have Your Blog!

Are you excited? I know when I started my blog I had about a million topics to write about!! Ha…well maybe not that many. But, I was excited and raring to start publishing posts.

Now what?

Here are some posts in my Blogging Basics series that might help you:

Blogging Basics: Why Every Blogger Needs a Gravatar (And How to Set One Up)
Blogging Basics: The Best Types of Posts to Have on Your New Blog
Blogging Basics: How to Write a Blog Post That Gets a Ton of Comments

I want to hear from you!

When you set up your blog (don't forget my special link to save up to 60% off) tell me about it and make sure to give me your link! Email me or leave a comment or find me on Facebook or Pinterest!