How to Start a Blog in India (Ultimate Beginner Guide)

Before you learn how to start a blog in India know that:

There are more than 31.7 million bloggers just in the US alone.  

But don’t let that keep you down! ?

With this guide, you can (believe me when I say this) create a blog that helps you showcase your expertise and make money along the way. 

For that, I need three things from you:

• Your attention – I’m sharing my best tips with you ?
• 30 minutes of your time – Is that too much? ?
• Patience – organic traffic takes 3-6 months ⌛

To make it easy, I’m going to break this guide down into 5 easy-to-grasp steps.  

Just so you know how much Indian bloggers are making, one of the top blogger Amit Agarwal is earning over $100,000.

1. Pick a niche for your blog

The very first step to start blogging is to choose a topic. 

It doesn’t have to be the right topic! 

When I first started blogging in 2015, I had no clue about what I liked. So what did I do? 

Well, I wrote about nearly every topic there is…for dirt-cheap. It took me years to discover my love for WordPress and blogging, but I digress 😉

• Passion – Select a topic and eliminate the money equation from it. Still, like it? That’s a passion. 
• Knowledge – One thing that you know the most about.
• Interest – A topic that makes you interested even if the reason is money. 

I’m sure that your niche is one of the above. Since you’ve searched for how to start a blog in India, you already have a little something in mind. 

Every niche has an untapped potential 

Select a topic that you like. You can change it anytime anyway. Just don’t un-choose (if that’s a word) your niche just because you see someone else making money with it. 

You can also mix two different topics to give your niche a creative angle like Science + humor. 

Step-2 Name your blog 

Hurray! Once you know what to blog about, most of your work is done. 

Now you just have to name your blog. 

It’s pretty simple. All you have to do is make sure that it is not longer than 2 to 3 words. Short domain names tend to perform better (it indirectly affects your SERP).

There are four ways you can select a blog name:

Brand-based blog name – You can select a blog name that is both brandable and short. Some good examples of brand names are Amazon and Coca-Cola (they may not have or even need blogs, but that just shows the power of their short and simple names, which you readily recognize).  

Keyword-based blog – If possible, try to use the topic around which you are going to blog, like for example startheblog.com. Using relevant keywords in the domain name not only tells the audience what your blog is about, but it also helps with SEO.

Your name blog – If you want to share your expertise and build your brand around something you have a knack for, choose your own name as your blog name, like for example, Pulkitbhardwaj.co

Step-3 Choose your blogging platform

A blogging platform, aka CMS (content management system), will help you manage the content without knowing a single line of code. The top 3 blogging platforms right now are:

WordPress

WordPress is a free and open source content management system with tons of plugins (for functionality), free beautiful themes, and frequent updates. It is currently used by more than 36% sites on the internet (including non-blogging sites). And so, WordPress is my #1 recommendation in the guide on how to start a blog in India

Blogger

Blogger is a free blogging platform that is not a fit for you if you want to generate revenue with blogging. If you just want a place to publish something, then it could be a good choice, but even for that purpose, there are a lot of issues.

Medium

Medium is a third-party CMS for publishing written content with an existing community.

Tumblr 

Tumblr is similar to Medium, but more targeted towards visual content. 

For your purposes of creating a blog that could bring in cash while you write about something you love and are interested in, WordPress can’t be beaten. So, now that you know that for our intents and purposes it is the best blogging platform, let’s find out how to create a blog! 

Step-4 Get a domain name and hosting 

A domain name (your blog) name and hosting server (which makes your blog live on the web) are like the two pillars of your site. 

If one of them falls, your site won’t be live. 

One of the best places to register your domain name is NameCheap. You can register a domain for as low as $8.88 per year (.com TLD). 

If you buy from an external registrar, you’d have to copy the DNS record (available on cPanel on your hosting) and paste it on NameCheap. For that, log in to NameCheap, go to domain > manage > nameservers. Select custom DNS and enter the hosting DNS. It will take a few hours to get connected. 

Although the above will save you 7 bucks on domain registration, if you want you can also get both domain and hosting on SiteGround. 

You can get a domain registration and hosting plan on SiteGround for $99.83 for 1 year. 

You can also go for other hosting like Bluehost, but if you are new to blogging, I’d suggest you choose SiteGround. They will back you with an excellent support team and awesome hosting tools to  effortlessly take care of everything on the technical side. 

In most cases, their live chat team will take care of any problem you might have related to the blogging server. 

Plus, they will give you an SG optimizer that will optimize your blog for fast speed. You will have full control over what speed aids you’d like to have. 

But if you are just starting up and not want to invest a lot on your blog, you can select Hostinger for as low as ₹59 per month.

Step-5 Installing WordPress 

Once you have the SiteGround hosting, go to add a new website under the websites tab. 

Select existing domain and enter your domain name. 

Next, select the “Start ew Website” option and install the WordPress application. You will then have to enter your WordPress admin username and password. Make sure that you save it somewhere; it will help you log in to your WordPress blogs. 

Step-6 Design your blog 

After installing WordPress, you’ll have to log in to your admin panel. 

If you have registered your domain on an external domain server, then you need to wait a few hours after updating the DNS records. 

But if you have both the domain and hosting from SiteGround, you can get started right away.

Log in to yourblog.com/wp-admin and enter the login credentials that you used during the WordPress installation. 

You will be accompanied by SiteGround wizard, which will help you setup your website. 

Simply select your favorite WordPress theme (design) you like for your blog. 

And WordPress plugins to go along with it. 

At this point, your blog is officially ready. You can change the theme via Appearance > Themes and add posts or pages easily with Gutenberg block editor. You can also edit the menu via Appearance. 

Although the SiteGround wizard will install the necessary plugins, make sure that you have these installed: 

• Yoast SEO or Optimize for SEO – It will help you handle the on-page SEO. 
• Akismet AntiSpam – For handling spam and protecting your blog.
• Contact form 7 – For adding a contact page on your site. 

Congratulations! Your blog is now up and running. 

Step-7 Generating income on your blog (Bonus)

At this point, the how to start a blog in India guide is officially over. Next step is to generate income on your blog. For that, you will need a little patience and a strategy. If you work on your blog every day, you will start generating income in the first 5 to 7 months and scale it from there.

You will have to start by posting content around your niche, and this content should be optimized for high-traffic keywords. 

For finding high-traffic-keywords, simply find your niche competition by using strings like best ‘your niche’ keywords”. Simply enter the competition URLs on KwFinder and it will show you the list of keywords. 

Look for long tail keywords with high search rates and low competition. Next, use these keywords to create a better post than the existing one. 

Alternatively, you can just check for whatever topic you have in mind. For instance, if you run a food blog, you can search for a recipe you like. 

Use these keywords to create useful and amazing recipes. You can add affiliate links in the recipes to Amazon books or other relevant products. 

I created a blog using this exact strategy in October 2018, and it started generating revenue in the first three months with little to no efforts.

Once you start generating some traffic, you can start using one of the below for making money online:

• Adsense – Google ads on your blog will help you generate good income. 
• Affiliate marketing – For every sale made via your referral link, you will receive a small commission. 
• Sponsored promotion – You can post sponsored content, ads, and brand mentions on your blog for a price.
• E-Course – Create an e-course and sell it on your blog. 
• Consultancy – If you have expertise in something, you can provide paid consultancy to your visitors. 

How to start a blog in India and scale it?

There are a lot of SEO factors that Google considers before giving your blog the rankings it deserves. This is mainly because of black hat techniques and Private networks that many webmasters use for manipulating search engines. 

You have to write about something you genuinely like for a period of time. You don’t necessarily need to publish a lot of content, but try to publish high-quality posts that actually help the users. 

1. Perform SEO audits every few months to keep your SEO intact. 
2. Update your content every two months for a ranking boost. 
3. Promote your blog on various social media platforms – posts on Facebook/Instagram, paid promotions, and more. 
4. Use a free heatmap tool to find out which section of your articles visitors liked the most. 
5. Contribute posts to high-quality blogs in your niche. 

To sum up, your blog will take a while before it generates a huge revenue, and you have to try to enjoy your blogging journey instead of getting bored with it quickly.