I have so many people in our Facebook group, Living Differently, who are about to start, or have recently started a blog or website that I thought a one off, comprehensive list or guide, a check list, would be a great idea to help them on their way. It will also help me stop repeating myself. These days everyone likes to have a printable pdf for lists and guides like this and that’s something we can do (see below).
Let’s start at the very beginning, it pops into your mind that documenting your experiences, ideas and images in a blog would be a nice thing to do. What next?
People start blogs for many reasons, I started for fun and because I wanted to help new homeschooling families with paperwork while spreading the word about what a great option home education was.
That first blog evolved into the huge global travel blog you’re looking at right now.
This blog, and several smaller ones, support our family’s travel lifestyle these days. Not only does it bring us much-needed cash, it also opens doors for us.
I received my first media pass in year 1, and in year 2 I was being asked to review hotels. So why do you want to start a blog?
as a hobby?
to stay in touch with distant friends and family?
to record your childhoods for when they have left home or you are long gone?
to document a special event or big trip?
as an educational tool for your kids?
to create an electronic photo album with words and pictures?
to make a little extra cash?
to make a lot of extra cash?
to enter the serious blogging world and become a professional, enjoying everything that entails?
to help publicise some other business?
I’ve been through all of the above steps over the last decade, starting with zero knowledge and know-how. All of the above reasons are valid and all are achievable.
Why am I a Blogger?
This is why I do it. I can work and provide for these two, anywhere in the world so long as there is a wifi signal. How do you like my office? If pyramids aren’t your thing, substitute a beach, a city, a co-working space, the options are fantastic and any one of them beats my old laboratory.
It happened by accident, a hobby became a business. I used to have a very respectable, serious career, I was a hospital scientist. Blogging is far more fun. I blog because I can do it anywhere, with my kids.
They’re the most important thing in the world to me and I’m incredibly blessed to have never been separated from them by work or school.
We’re not rich, we don’t always make one of those 6 figure incomes that a lot of bloggers talk about, (it happens sometimes) but I think we have a millionaire lifestyle. What more could I ask?
We could, maybe, make much more money, but I have realistic needs and goals, enough is all we need. That said, our income grows all the time (give or take COVID), it will be interesting to see where it leads us and how this evolves over coming years.
If you’re in our free Facebook group or you’re one of my Skype chat clients, you’ll know that I actually really do love helping people with all this stuff (as well as travel and homeschooling), I don’t sell it particularly, it’s just a thing I do.
How do Bloggers Make Money?
I make money from my websites every day of the year, 24 hours a day, awake or asleep, at my desk, on a beach, or in the Himalayas. This is what they call passive income, being location independent, I am a digital nomad.
I do not have to work at it every day, I can take breaks. I don’t produce content or write to a schedule. I work to fit my life and my family. I work hard, but I can do that where I like and when I like.
There are many, many ways to make money as a blogger, these include:
Advertising (Google, Mediavine, or Ezoic place advertisements on my sites in positions I can control. They pay me per view or per click, you’ll see some on this page)
Affiliate Links (I profit from between 50 and 100 different affiliate schemes, every day. There will be some on this page)
Creating and selling e-books or courses (Not something I’ve done so far but if I get inspired I might. I WILL NOT line my pockets through courses, ever.)
Sponsored posts
Banner advertising
Writing for other publications
Being paid for reviews
Being paid for social media promotions, campaigns and mentions.
Bloggers are also magnets for “free stuff”. This can be in the form of hotel stays, free admissions, and products to review. I’ve even had a free cruise.
Don’t start a blog because you want “free stuff.” It’s the worst reason I can imagine and you’ll quickly come unstuck. I just want you to be aware of the possibilities.
I will tell you now, that to take a blog to a high level, you have to love it, you have to be committed to it and you’ll have to work hard. Nobody ever got something for nothing in this industry.
We GENUINELY fund our life through blogging, not by selling courses. People will say it can’t be done. THEY ARE WRONG. We will not sell out and become course sellers, we love our travel and writing about it too much.
Why You Should Go Self-Hosted Rather Than a Free Blog
There’s a very simple reason to go self-hosted ( don’t be scared by that term!) right from day one. It’s a pain to switch your free blog to self-hosted further down the line. I know because I did it.
It’s quite likely you’ll want to take blogging further, particularly once you make a few dollars. Start the ball rolling professionally from the beginning and you’ll be on the right track.
We hosted through Site Ground, they were the third hosting company we tried and I wholeheartedly recommend them for beginner – intermediate bloggers. Their customer service was always superb and they’ve held my hand through many technical problems, fixing things for me in minutes.
This is an affiliate link to Site Ground, if you use it, we make a commission and we’ll be extremely grateful.
It’s was free for me to switch to Site Ground from your existing host if you’d enjoy a faster, better hosting company, other hosts will charge you to handle the move, Site Ground doesn’t. They also give out free SSL certificates ( http:// to https://) and deal with the migration for you.
Even if blogging remains a hobby, think about it, most people spend a few bucks on their hobbies, don’t they? Blogging is actually one of the cheaper pass times and it’s pretty easy to recoup initial outlay if you stick with it.
Initial costs:
Buying your domain name, roughly $10 per year.
Hosting, under $10 per month.
That’s it, there are no other costs unless you start buying professional blogging tools and plugins. You probably won’t need or want any straight away and we’ll talk about those later.
What is a Blog? What Will You Write About?
A blog should not be a diary. That’s a common wrong assumption.
I’m forever being asked how I feel comfortable with sharing my life so publicly. I actually share very little and we don’t do YouTube or posed photos for The Gram, we find that pretty cringe.
I write travel stories now and then, like this one where I talked about a string of bad luck in Egypt, or this one about the joy of trekking with my son, but if you read them you’ll see that there’s nothing really personal there.
I don’t share anything that I don’t want the world to know. This site has received over 300,000 views per month, I’m cool with those people reading the above, if I wasn’t I wouldn’t do it.
The bulk of the content on my sites is fact-based guides, resources and how-tos. Those guides are sprinkled with personality and real-life experiences, but there’s nothing that I’d hesitate to share with the world.
I’m particularly guarded with the kids, I see people over-sharing their kids’ health, emotions, and well-being. I don’t do that.
I also don’t let the world know exactly where we are at any given time and I schedule posts to conceal our whereabouts, just in case.
Also, who knows, maybe I’m just writing a fictional account from a desk somewhere in suburbia? I’ve been accused of that and of photoshopping all of our photos. It’s an interesting idea!
The New Blogger’s Checklist
Sign up to follow this website and you should receive a free, printable pdf, our New Blogger’s Checklist. Free pdf’s are in production on other topics too.
Or, if you have any issues, here it is below. Don’t forget also that there are certain legal requirements and terms and conditions to be met, such as your privacy policy, Amazon participation disclaimer and GDPR compliance.
I wrote this list a few years ago so some things will have changed but the basic outline remains the same.
We no longer run our bloggers’ group, (sorry, closed now), it cost peanuts and gives you a high level of personal help and support.
I was in that group with you, you won’t see scheduled, fake, updates, it’s me. Leave a comment below if you’d like to chat more about this.
Update: This post was first published quite a few years ago, but is kept updated, we are now hosted by Agathon purely because we outgrew SiteGround. Our checklist is still here and most of it is valid today, but a few things may be out of date. We still think it’s a good free resource for you.
Thanks for following. I can see the subscriber list and the first few names on it have been with us for 10 years, that’s pretty amazing. Thank you again, from all of us, and good luck with your blog.
Alyson Long is a British medical scientist who jumped ship to chase dreams. A former Chief Biomedical Scientist at London's West Middlesex Hospital she started in website creation and travel writing in 2011.
Alyson is a full-time blogger and travel writer, a published author, and owns several websites. World Travel Family is the biggest.
A lifetime of wanderlust and over 6 years of full-time travel, plus a separate 12 month gap year, has given Alyson and the family some travel expert smarts to share with you on this world travel site.
Today Alyson still travels extensively to update this site and continue her mission to visit every country, but she's often at home on her farm in Australia.
Hello! Thank you so much for the tips. I’ve been looking at starting my blog on Wix.com because they seem really user-friendly. Do you think that this is a good idea?
Hello! We are embarking on a gap year this fall and are going to try our hand at blogging the experience- mainly for friends and families to enjoy (and potentially help recruit them to join in on a leg of the journey)!
Mediavine gave all of their publishers a draft document to use. We just had to insert names. I believe you can get plugins to generate them and new sites seem to have one pre-installed in draft form.
Great tips! I wish I read this article before I started blogging. And to add, of course, you have to be you, people will recognize if you are faking it.
Following you almost from the srart. The Blog became much proffesional,much easier to rrad and enjoy.
Did you think of trying vlogging?
This is the new storytelling trend now spreading all over the web.
It is required prof. equipment as well as editing time (There are many companies/people would do it for you by sponsoring ext.).
In a short epizode we can actually see,feel,hear your daily stories. exiciting.
Just my opinion as a follower of many storytellers on the web. Those who added the Vlogg, found us ready for the new experiment. It is fantastic.
Anyway. your’e great .my kids love to follow you by your adventures(their words)
Keep doing what you love..
Iris
It’s not really me Iris, I do a few “lives” in the Facebook group, but I find photography far more interesting than video. Also it’s a massive time suck on top of everything else I need to do, but thanks.
What a great list – can’t wait to get ticking! I started my bullet journal 6 weeks ago, its a life changer – I’m actually getting stuff done and making small steps towards living differently – Thanks for sharing! ????
Hello! Thank you so much for the tips. I’ve been looking at starting my blog on Wix.com because they seem really user-friendly. Do you think that this is a good idea?
Go self-hosted WordPress.
Great tips. Stating my blog and monetisation journey. The check list is just what I was looking for. Thank you.
Hello! We are embarking on a gap year this fall and are going to try our hand at blogging the experience- mainly for friends and families to enjoy (and potentially help recruit them to join in on a leg of the journey)!
Sounds fun, hope it goes well for you! If it’s just for fun not to make money, you don’t have to worry about all this, just do what makes you happy.
Massive thanks for sharing your knowledge on blogging!!
I have a question about Privacy Statements/Disclaimer/Disclosures – did you write your own Privacy Statement or did you get legal advice??
Mediavine gave all of their publishers a draft document to use. We just had to insert names. I believe you can get plugins to generate them and new sites seem to have one pre-installed in draft form.
HI There,
Great article! Just in regards to not using free hosting. Does this mean that a WordPress.org site is not the best way to go?
Thanks,
Brendan
WordPress.com is the one to avoid Brendan. You need to be self hosted, but you will still use wordpress to create your posts.
Great tips! I wish I read this article before I started blogging. And to add, of course, you have to be you, people will recognize if you are faking it.
What a great tool. Thanks Alyson, it’s so helpful to have the entire list in one place instead of my haphazard system of lists-of-lists.
Following you almost from the srart. The Blog became much proffesional,much easier to rrad and enjoy.
Did you think of trying vlogging?
This is the new storytelling trend now spreading all over the web.
It is required prof. equipment as well as editing time (There are many companies/people would do it for you by sponsoring ext.).
In a short epizode we can actually see,feel,hear your daily stories. exiciting.
Just my opinion as a follower of many storytellers on the web. Those who added the Vlogg, found us ready for the new experiment. It is fantastic.
Anyway. your’e great .my kids love to follow you by your adventures(their words)
Keep doing what you love..
Iris
It’s not really me Iris, I do a few “lives” in the Facebook group, but I find photography far more interesting than video. Also it’s a massive time suck on top of everything else I need to do, but thanks.
What a great list – can’t wait to get ticking! I started my bullet journal 6 weeks ago, its a life changer – I’m actually getting stuff done and making small steps towards living differently – Thanks for sharing! ????
Really helpful stuff Alyson, thanks heaps for putting it all together.