Congratulations on finally making up your mind to start your brand new blog!.

Launching a successful blog requires good planning and I have put together a 30 points check list to help you launch your site hitch free.

Let’s get rolling!

#1: Know why you want to start a blog.

Do you want to start a blog for business? In order words, do you want to make money from your blog, or would you rather blog for hobby. Whichever way you choose to go, have passion for what you do and be committed to it.

Because, you’ll soon get burned out, if you do not have passion for what you are doing. ”Passion is the energy that keeps us going, that keeps us filled with meaning, and happiness, and excitement, and anticipation. It’s a powerful force in accomplishing anything you set your mind to in life.

#2: Set a goal

what do you want to achieve.

When you have no goal, failure is inevitable

I have heard it being said several times, “ if you do not know where you are going to, any road will do.” This could rightly describe a goalless person.

Goal setting is knowing what you want to achieve or where you want to get to, and setting a time frame to accomplish it.

Therefore, what do you hope to achieve when you launch your brand new blog?

Take your time to think through what you want to achieve with your blog.

Perhaps you’ve decided you want to write 5 post every month? Write 2 guest post every month for another blogger?

Get traffic of …. for the first 6 months?

Ensure you have goals to motivate you to succeed.

After setting your goals, your next question may be, “how can I achieve these goals?” Employ these seven winning ways to achieve your business goals.

#3: Purchase a custom domain and hosting for you.

Next on your blog checklist is to Purchase a custom domain and hosting for you blog to avoid the limitation of a free one.

I usually recommend Bluehost to my readers and it comes with a free domain.

I also, advice against launching your blog on free blogging platform for the following reasons.

They come with all forms of restrictions, so you have no control over your blog.

The prominent restrictions are, you’ll not have a custom domain name, and monetisation of your blog is restricted. Worst still, the free platforms owners display unsolicited adverts on your blog indiscriminately.

WORDPRESS SELF HOSTED (wordpress.org), being the most versatile of the blogging platforms available, is the BEST to start your blog with.

It requires basic technical skills to set it up, it has a solid community support to help you, and it gives you total control of your blog or website. It allows you to customize and monetize your site as you wish.

This independence comes with a price, though. WordPress.org software is free, but you’ll need to buy a domain and hosting for your blog You may not see the need to incur this cost at present, but years down the line and with so much effort put into writing great content and building your blog, you’ll see the need to use a self hosted.

At that time you’ll need more advanced features for your blog, which will leave you with no other option, but to migrate to self hosted or pay for an upgrade in free blogging platforms (although it will still not give you the advanced features that wordpress has to offer).

Furthermore, migrating a blog to a new blogging platform has its complications. Your blog permalink will change, and consequently some of your site visitors may not be able to locate your blog.

However, if you want to simply launch a blog for leisure with no intention of making money from it, by all means start with a free blogging platfrom.

#4. Set up your blog on a wordpress.org blogging platform.

Next on your blog launch checklist is to set up your blog on the the world’s most popular self hosted blogging platform.

Word press.org can be used to build different types of sites ranging from blogs, ecommerce, directory, membership site, advert sites and magazine sites.

It requires basic technical skill to start a blog. In addition, it gives room you room to grow.

#5: Choose a responsive theme.

A theme that fits your purpose. Which may mean purchasing a premium one like elegant themes, or searching through some quality simple themes that have a focus on content.

#6.  On your blog launch checklist is to fix the Favicon of Your blog.

A new blog usually has your hosting provider’s Logo. Take steps to set up your own favicon. Your blog looks more professional that way.

To update your favicon, you’ll need to place a 16×16 pixel icon (named favicon.ico) into your website’s root folder. For WordPress users, that’s directly into your public_html folder.

You can create a picture file in Photoshop and simply rename it to favicon.ico, or you can create one easily for yourself on a website such as Favicon.cc..

#7. Change your permalink.

The permalink is the URL that your blog creates when you publish new blog posts.

By default, they usually come out looking ugly, like this:

http://theonlinecompass.com/?p=123 (where p=123 simply means post #123)

Before you write your first blog post, you should change the permalink settings to simply be the name of the post that you create.

#8: On the checklist is to create an editorial calendar for your blog.

This point is relevant even if you’ve launched your blog.

A blogger should have an editorial calender. Regardless of whether he is new to blogging or his is being in blogging.

An editorial calender is your time table for publishing your posts. It helps to ensure consistency, and consistency is key to success..

#9: Take care of the plugins before launching your brand new blog.

Have you installed the required plugins?

#10:

For your blog to look professional remove “howdy” This is just the default greeting WordPress comes with.

#11:

Create a site map. Go to google webmaster and submit the site map.

#12. Create your brand.

Choose a name that best describes your blog. This should be done before buying your domain. Also consider your brand colours.

#13

Check your typography. Ensure your font types and sizes are the same across your blog.

#14:

Change your tag line. Make it reflects what your blog is about using the necessary key words. To do this go to setting >general and set your tag line.

#15:

Sign up for an autoresponder service like convertkit.You can store your email subscribers’ addresses, create opt-in forms, analyze stats, etc.

#16

#17

Create lead magnet. In other words freebies to get people to sign into your subscriber’s list.

#18

Ensure your logo is good and installed.

#19

Create your contact page.

#20

Next on your blog launch checklist is to create a killer about me page.

#21

Consider adding a privacy policy page.

#22

Then next thing to do on your checklist before launching your brand new blog is to create your disclosure page.

#23

Create your category pages to group your post into.

#24:

Add your social media buttons and share buttons for your post.

#25: Set up your gravater

This is your little picture that goes with you everywhere you comment or engage in activities on the web

#26: Check the speed of your blog

Your site should be loading in less than 2 seconds. This is a big deal with search engines, especially google.

How to test and increase your site speed.

#27:

Create content for your blog. Make your content long with between 1,500 to 2000 words.

#28: Take care of SEO:

Take care of your onsite SEO by doing an effective keyword research. Sprinkle the keywords in the right places for search engine optimization. But, take care to write for your readers and not search engines.

#29:

Get at least a 40 post ideas and schedule it in your editorial calender.

#30:

Network and make blogging friends in your niche before launching your blog. One way to do this is by commenting on their blogs.

This brand new blog launch checklist was not presented in any particular order, but they are the essential for starting a successful blog.

Are there some that I have missed out? Please let me know in the comment below.

As usual, thanks for reading and don’t forget to share.