The Ultimate Blog Launch Checklist to Start a Blog

Starting a new blog (and business) is an exciting time. But before you launch your blog, make sure you’re ready!

Use this blog launch checklist to see what you need to have ready before you launch your blog.

Choose the right niche from the start

Before you ever start a blog, make sure and choose a niche that is profitable. If you choose the wrong niche, you’re going to struggle to monetize your blog.

You also want to choose a niche that is popular. If you don’t choose a popular niche, you will forever struggle to get traffic to your website.

When it comes to your blog niche, don’t choose a niche that’s too big or too small. I like to choose a niche that’s 3 levels deep.

For example, health is level 1, healthy eating is level 2, and healthy eating for moms is a level 3 niche.

Making money from your blog will always be an uphill journey if you don’t choose a profitable niche.

Identify your ideal reader

Before you start writing blog posts, you need to identify who it is you are writing to. Then, when you create content, you will write it with this ideal reader in mind.

Find out where they hang out online, their main problems, and what common questions they have. It will help figure out what type of content (and paid products) to create.

Find your why

Why are you starting a blog? If you want to be a successful blogger, there will be some tough times – especially at the start.

Find a few solid reasons why you want to become a blogger. Is it to share your story and help others? Is it to earn a passive income working from home?

Identify your reasons because they’re going to keep you motivated during the dark early days of starting your blog.

Set blogging goals

What do you want to accomplish with your blog? Set concrete goals you want to achieve. Rather than say you want to make a lot of money, make a specific goal. You’re more likely to grow your blog if you set smaller achievable goals.

Here are example goals you can set when starting your blog:

• Make $100 per month within 3 months
• Average 75 visitors per day this month
• Get 50 email subscribers in the next 2 weeks
• Publish 10 blog posts next month

Pick a catchy blog name

You shouldn’t take forever picking a blog name. Seriously, it’s not the most important thing in the world. There are countless successful bloggers with bad blog names. Ultimately, it’s the quality of your content that will matter – not your blog name.

With that said, you want to pick a catchy blog name that is easy to remember.

It doesn’t matter how long your blog name is – what matters is if it’s easy to say and remember.

Stuck on finding a good name for your blog? You can look at my guide on how to choose a blog name here.

Register your domain name

Next up is choosing a domain name. While there are thousands of domain extensions to choose from, stick to the dot com extension. You also want to avoid using numbers or dashes in your domain.

Just keep it simple, and don’t worry if it’s too long. The most important thing you should worry about is if it’s easy to say, easy to spell, and hard to forget!

You can check to see if the blog name you picked is available as a dot com below.

Get blog hosting

Don’t start on a free blog host if you’re serious about making money with your blog. Luckily it only costs a few bucks a month to get hosting for your website.

Here are your options for hosting your blog:

SiteGround – I started with SiteGround, used it for 3 solid years, and left with zero complaints!

HostGator – Another good option for new bloggers with competitive pricing.

DreamHost – Another low-cost hosting provider to look at.

WPX – DoSixFigures.com is currently hosted here – it’s beyond fast and support is the best.

HostGator

Great blog host for beginners to start with.

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Set up a custom email address

Now that you have a domain name and hosting, set up an email address such as yourname@yourdomain.com.

You can set this up in the admin area of your hosting account. Additionally, set up email forwarding, so emails going to this address get forwarded to your personal email account.

Get an SSL certificate

Even though you might not be handling sensitive customer data over your blog, you still need to have a secure website. With an SSL certificate, your website will start with HTTPS instead of HTTP, and you get the lock icon next to the URL in the address bar.

If you don’t do this step, browsers like Chrome will display a “Not Secure” message next to your URL.

Your hosting company may do this automatically. If not, look for the SSL certificates section in the admin area of your host.

Start a blog with WordPress

Now that you have a domain and hosting set up, we need a way to create your website. One of the easiest ways to get a website (or blog) set up is using the free WordPress blogging platform.

Most hosting companies have a one-click WordPress install, so getting WordPress set up in seconds is incredibly simple.

Once you’re in WordPress, familiarize yourself with how the backend works because you will be spending a lot of time here.

Here’s my review of the best platforms to start a blog.

Remove the default WordPress plugins

Plugins add extra functionality to your blog. However, the default WordPress plugins add a lot of unnecessary bloat to your site.

Whenever I start a new blog, I first log in to WordPress and delete all the default plugins.

Which plugins should you install? I’ll go over which ones in the next section.

Install important WordPress plugins

While you don’t need any plugins, there are a few that make your life easier.

Here are the plugins I have installed on my blog:

• Akismet – For getting rid of spam comments
• ExactMetrics – To check my stats and get insights from within WordPress.
• LinkWhisper – This plugin helps me add links to my previous posts.
• Redirection – When you change the URL of a page you’ll need this plugin to redirect the old page to the new page.
• Revision Control – WordPress by default saves unlimited post revisions, which can really bloat up your database. This plugin controls the number of revisions WordPress saves.
• Optimole – If you want a fast blog you should be optimizing your images with this plugin.
• Social Warfare – This is the plugin I use to add social sharing icons on my blog posts.
• ThirstyAffiliates – I use this to turn long affiliate links into shorter friendlier links.
• Thrive Architect – This is the page builder I use.
• Thrive Leads – I use this lead generation plugin to help grow my email list faster.
• W3 Total Cache – Caching your pages means they’re delivered faster to your visitors, and both Google and your readers want fast loading times.
• Yoast SEO – This is the SEO plugin I use and recommend. It’s important to optimize your posts for Google right from the start.

Go here for a list of WordPress plugins I recommend installing on your new blog.

Set your display name on WordPress

In WordPress, go to Users > Profile and add your name. Set it to display publicly instead of showing your username.

Set the correct link structure for friendly URLs

In WordPress, go to Settings > Permalinks and set it to display “Post Name.” This way, your URLs will be displayed like this: https://www.yourdomain.com/post-title/

Choose a blog theme

The good news about WordPress is that you don’t need to hire a web designer to design your blog – you just need to choose a good blog theme.

Rather than scroll through the countless available themes, I recommend choosing the Astra theme and installing the Elementor page builder.

With these two combinations, you can choose from countless templates and then edit the designs as you wish.

Astra

The blog theme I recommend is Astra. This theme is highly customizable, very user-friendly, and has a free version.

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Remove extra widgets from your sidebar

By default, your blog’s sidebar is pre-loaded with widgets you may not want to be displayed.

Keep your sidebar clean by removing unnecessary widgets such as the Meta log-in widget, calendar, categories, etc.

Design a logo and choose your brand colors

When you launch a blog, you’re building a brand too. Part of your branding is your logo, colors, font, and language style.

To start, create a logo first. You don’t need to hire this out; you can make one on your own. Then, head over to Canva and use their free logo maker.

Canva

I use Canva to design all of my blog images. This includes the social media images, Pinterest pins, and even the launch-your-blog checklist printable.

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Design a site icon

While you’re at it, create a site icon as well. A site icon is a square image (similar to the square Canva logo above).

My site icon is currently the number 6. You’ll want to keep this image simple because this image is resized down and used in browser tabs, bookmarks, etc.

Choose your brand font and colors

Another part of your brand is your brand colors. I chose a shade of blue as my only brand color to keep it simple.

You also want to choose a font or two that you will use throughout your website.

Choose two fonts at most—one for your headers/titles and one for your paragraph text.

Create the main pages of your blog

Before you start creating blog posts, you need to create the main pages of your website first.

Rather than just build a blog, I recommend and teach in my courses to build a complete website.

This means creating the following pages: Homepage, Blog page, About page, and Resources page.

Choose your blog categories

Create 3-5 main categories for your blog. To find out what your categories should be, identify your ideal reader’s top 3-5 biggest pain points – these will be your blog categories.

For example, I have 4 categories on this blog: start a blog, grow your blog, get more traffic, and make money blogging.

On my finance blog, I have just 3 categories: save money, make money, and get out of debt.

Set up Google Analytics

Checking your blog stats is not only fun but essential to running a successful blog. So head over to Google Analytics and sign up (it’s free).

When you’re done, you’ll need to add a bit of code to your site. But don’t worry, I recommend using the ExactMetrics plugin to set up Analytics.

Publish your first blog post

Okay, you are now finally ready to publish your first blog post.

Don’t overthink this step. You don’t have an audience, and nobody is reading it. The most important part of this is to just get this post published.

I wrote a guide on what to write for your first blog post here.

Write your about me page

Your about me page will be one of the most (if not the most) important pages of your website. It’s on this page that readers determine whether you are the person who can help them solve their problem.

Rather than making your about page all about you, make sure to connect your story to their problem.

For help writing your about me page, look at my about page template here.

Create content with a purpose

Now it’s time to fill up your blog with some awesome content. It’s important to start with a solid content strategy. This way, you don’t end up writing content that doesn’t work.

To get traffic to your blog posts, you should write about popular topics that people are already searching for. I use both Buzzsumo and UberSuggest to help me find article topic ideas.

You can also go to other bloggers in your niche and see what type of content they’re creating. If you can, see if you can find their most popular posts. Create similar content because if it worked for them, it could work for you.

To help write faster and better blog posts, check out my blog post template here.

Start an email list

To start your email list, to ConvertKit and create a free account. You’re going to want to start an email list to build your tribe.

Having a base of subscribers is important because most of your blog income will actually come from your email list – not your blog.

ConvertKit

This is the email marketing provider I use and recommend. I use them to collect email subscribers and start them on an email series.

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Create an opt-in incentive

If you want people to join your email list, you’re going to need something more than a basic opt-in form.

To get more subscribers, create an opt-in incentive (also known as a lead magnet).

You can make a checklist, cheatsheet, printable, template, etc., using Canva, then save it as a PDF.

Add opt-in forms on your blog

Here are some key places you should add your opt-in forms:

• In the header of your homepage
• In your about page
• In the sidebar
• In the middle and/or end of every blog post

Thrive Leads

I use Thrive Leads to build my opt-in forms and add them as welcome mats, exit-intent lightboxes, and more.

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Create a landing page

To help get more subscribers, create a page specifically for your opt-in incentive. Remove navigation and any other external links on this page. The call to action must be clear: join my email list.

Build this page using a page builder like Elementor or Thrive Architect.

You can add a link to this landing page on your main menu to give this page more attention.

Elementor

Visually design your blog posts using the most popular page builder for WordPress (over 4M users and counting).

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Register your blog name on social media

Let’s scoop up your blog name across social media – before anyone else does. You’re going to want to create accounts specifically for your blog – don’t use your personal account.

Even if you don’t plan to be active on a network, you should still create an account.

Create a Facebook page, a Twitter account, an Instagram, and a Pinterest business account. While you’re at it, create a YouTube account as well.

Figure out your monetization strategy

How do you plan to make money? Your monetization strategy will determine your content strategy.

If you plan to make money via ads, you’ll need to create popular content and write viral-type headlines.

If you plan to make money with affiliate marketing, you should create review-type articles or product comparisons.

If you plan to make money by selling your own products, you’ll need to write blog posts that show your expertise and directly relate to your paid products.

Set up a business account at Pinterest

Once your website is built and you have content, it’s time to get traffic to your blog posts. The best way I’ve found to get traffic is from Pinterest.

Other than Google and YouTube, Pinterest is the 3rd biggest search engine, so you’re going to want to make sure people can find you here.

Create a business account, claim your domain, and create a few boards relevant to your niche. Here’s my guide on getting started with Pinterest.

Make Pinterest pins to promote your content

Making pin images is simple using Canva’s pre-made templates.

Aim to pin a new image at least once per day. If this sounds like a lot of work, batch create your pins with Canva, then schedule them using Tailwind.

Tailwind

I use Tailwind every day to schedule my Pinterest pins to publish for months ahead of time.

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Ready… set… launch!

There you have it, your blog launch checklist!

Rather than wait until you’ve completed all of these steps, I recommend you start and launch your blog as soon as possible.

When your blog is new, it isn’t going to be “ready,” but let me tell you, it’s never going to be ready. Your blog will always be a work in progress, and that’s perfectly fine.

If you’ve found this post helpful, I’d appreciate it if you could save it on Pinterest!