So, you’ve finally decided to start a (profitable) blog. I’m so glad to hear this!

Starting your own blog could be the most life-changing thing you could ever do for yourself. I’m sure you already see hundreds of bloggers, new and old, thriving and kicking butt online in their niches. Not to mention the income they’re creating for themselves!

For me, starting a blog was the BEST decision I could have ever made for myself. Within 6 months of launching House of Brazen I was making a full-time income from my blog and was able to quit my job – woohoo!

I know most people tell us it’s not possible to make money off your passion or you have to be the best at what you do to make any real money, but I just can’t believe that anymore. You don’t have to be the smartest, prettiest, funniest or even the skinniest to be successful in blogging. You don’t even need to know what you’re doing initially! All you need is the willingness to learn, an action-taking attitude and an unshakable belief in yourself.

The reason I started blogging in the first place was that I believed that there was more to life than sitting shacked up in an office hustling 9-to-5 for someone else. I knew it was such a wasted effort to be investing all of your time, energy and skills into making someone else rich.

I wanted be able to spend more quality time with my family, I wanted to have the freedom to live my days any way I pleased, and I wanted to be able to travel and explore this incredible world with my partner, Scott. So I took the chance on myself and it paid off!

It took me less than 3 months to make my first dollar!

And each and every month since then my income has grown and grown and grown and grown and grown! I mean, I make over $500 per month from affiliate marketing alone!

What I love about blogging is that I earn my money passively. That means I don’t have to be physically in front of a person trying to sell something. It means I can be snoring my head off till 10am, down at the trampoline park with Scott or having afternoon tea at Nan’s scoffing down her freshly baked ginger crunch and still be making sales.

How amazing is that????? Fifty years ago this would have been a dream to people, especially women! Now look at the opportunities there are for us! Incredible.

If you’ve been wondering whether you should start a blog, my answer is YES.

In this post, I’m going to show you just how easy it is to start a WordPress blog with Bluehost for cheap and make it a profitable one in less than 15 minutes. Yep, it’s literally that quick!

You’ll might be asking yourself A LOT of questions you can’t answer yet like.. Where do I start? What’s a domain? What’s hosting? What’s the difference between .org and .com? Why are words being pressed and the host coloured blue? What the hell is a plugin?! And why am I hosting myself? Did no one come to my party???

It can be really overwhelming and confusing, but you don’t need to worry because starting a blog with Bluehost is easy and will only cost you a few dollars a month. So let me take you by the hand and show you exactly how I created my profitable blog in this step-by-step tutorial! 😊

This post contains affiliate links.

How to Create a WordPress Website with Bluehost

Before we get into it, this tutorial is for creating a self-hosted wordpress blog/website, which is under wordpress.org and not .com. And the main reason you want to choose self-hosted is because when you choose .org, you’re hosting your own blog, whereas with wordpress.com you’re hosting your content on their server, which can cause problems if the site decides to crash. Plus with self-hosted, it’s a lot easier to monetize your blog once you’re ready.

What’s a domain and web hosting?

Your domain name is the name of your site that you type into your web address bar. i.e https://www.houseofbrazen.com. It’s also known as your url and can be purchased by going to a domain name registrar. Price wise, domain names tend to range from $10+ per year depending on the extension. i.e .com is more expensive than .xyz.

Now for hosting, in order for your website to show up on the internet, all of your files, databases and images need to be uploaded to a server. These files can be “hosted” at a hosting company. So when someone types in your domain name into their search address bar, your server gets called up and shows them your blog. The hosting companies that we will be using specializes in shared servers which just means that somewhere in the USA there’s a massive building that houses millions of servers and our blogs sit in them waiting to be “called up.” Crazy, I know!

Hosting is usually billed monthly or annually at a rate between $10 – $50, but through my special link you can start your blog for as low as $3.45 per month and get your domain name FREE for the first year.

Note: Domain names can be purchased anywhere, but it’s convenient to buy the domain and set up hosting in the same location.

What is Bluehost?

Bluehost is a world renowned domain & web hosting company that millions of bloggers use to run their online businesses. I love how easy Bluehost has been to use for me, the 24/7 support chat was a godsend when I was trying to switch my blog over from Blogger and then once that was all settled, setting up WordPress literally took a 1-click effort and boom, I had a new blog!

In my honest opinion, it’s not a risky investment. Spending $70 dollars for a 12-month plan gives you a website you can start profiting from almost instantly. You’ll make your money back before the year is even up! I made my investment back by the 6th month of running this blog.

What should I do if I’m new to business?

If you’re just starting out and you’re nervous about making the investment, go for the 12-month plan. There are no contracts and if you decide you don’t want to continue with your blog you can get a full refund after 30 days.

What if I’m using a free website service like wix?

It’s entirely up to you if you want to switch. The biggest reason I switched over from Blogger to WordPress was because I wanted to monetize my blog any way I wanted i.e ads, affiliates, my own products etc. by using different plugins, and Blogger made it impossible to do this. Plus I also read somewhere that advertising companies won’t work with Blogger websites because they’re not “professional.” I’m not sure whether that’s true, but all I can say is that since I made the switch, I have been making consistent money from House of Brazen since my third month of running the blog. So in my opinion it’s safe to say that if you want to build a profitable blog, self-hosted is the way.

How to Set Up Your WordPress Website Through Bluehost

First things first, head over to Bluehost and click the ‘Get Started Now’ button.

You’ll then come to a page that looks like this:

Select your plan

For new bloggers, choose the basic plan. You’re not going to need the plus or pro plans until you have substantial content on your blog. I’m on the basic plan too.

Once you’ve chosen your plan you’ll be taken to a page that looks like this:

Choosing your domain name

You need to choose your domain name before you can progress, so make sure you know what you want before you get to this step. I chose House of Brazen literally because I was sick of using my name as the url and wanted to change it to something cool. Haha! 😂

Next you’ll come to this page:

Add account info, choose package & enter payment details.

This is where you enter all of your personal information. Like I said earlier, if you’re nervous about making the investment, go for the 12-month package. It works out to be $71.40 total. If you’re quite confident about creating your profitable blog, then go for the 24 or 36-month packages.

As you scroll down there will be some pre-ticked add-ons. The only one I would consider keeping is the ‘Domain Privacy Protection’ because it hides your private information from the public domain records as well as limits the amount of spam and junk you’ll receive. The rest are pretty unnecessary and most of them have plugins you can download once your site is installed.

Click ‘Submit’ and you’ve officially set up your domain name and hosting plan! Woohoo!

Now you’re all set up and you’ve logged in to your Bluehost account, you’ll be on the Bluehost dashboard.

Use this tutorial below to help you get your WordPress website installed on Bluehost.

Logging onto WordPress

Now that you’ve created your password, you can log into WordPress here: http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin which will take you to the dashboard. At first you will think you’re learning a foreign language, but in a very short amount of time you will come to know this hallowed halls like the back of your hand.

While you’re here, spend some time browsing, reading and clicking the different navigation options and settings and getting to know where things are.