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In this post, you will learn how to start a self-hosted Wordpress blog on Siteground, a website host. You will be given step-by-step instructions with video included to guide you along the way.

Starting a blog is a legitimate way to make an income online from home. In today’s tutorial, I’ll take you behind the mechanics of setting up your blog. It takes less than 20 minutes to get a professional blog up and running and I will then teach you how to find profitable content, how to make money as a blogger and how to get traffic to your brand new blog.

Why You Should Start a Blog Right Now

Blogging is still an excellent way to make money online even today. In fact, I’d argue that it’s easier to make money now as a blogger than it was in the past when I started almost 10 years ago because there are many more streams of income being added to the blogging pool now.

Brands and businesses are working with bloggers and influencers more and more to help them advertise their products and services and will be spending much more this year on this form of advertising than any previous year.

More and more people are also coming online and turning to the internet for information, entertainment and social communication so the audience you can build is actually growing day by day.

Don’t think for a minute that this field is saturated or that you won’t be able to make money because you’re “not an expert.” Every one of us is unique. We have unique experiences and ideas and we have people wanting to hear our unique spin on our passion.

Now is the time to monetize your passion. Whether you want to start a blog on cooking, fashion, being a mom, gardening, personal finance, travel or a plethora or other options, you can make a real income online by sharing your stories, solutions and ideas. Today I will teach you how to get your blog up and running in minutes.

Don’t allow another year to pass thinking what if, jump in now and maybe change your whole life in very little time.

Related: How long does it take to make money as a blogger? 10 Professional bloggers weigh in.

My Very Honest Siteground Review

In order to start a blog, you will need to find a host who will literally house your blog and all the files that will be associated with it (images, blog posts, PDFs, emails, etc)

There are free hosts and there are paid hosts. Free hosts limit your earning ability greatly while paid hosts offer greater ownership over your blogging business. Paid hosts are what is referred to as a self-hosted blog. It means you’re the owner of your blog and its contents and can do anything you want with it.

I advocate 100% for starting a self-hosted blog from jump and I break down all the reasons why it can be dangerous to blog on a free site here. If you’re not sure about blogging for income and just want to test things out, then a free platform can help you to decide if this path is right for you. Once you have decided that you love to blog and want to make money from it, you definitely need to become self-hosted.

I also wrote a blog post breaking down how to start a blog, giving you all the steps from idea to creation. Today, I will be getting really granular to help my beginner bloggers to install WordPress blogs on the blog host I use and love, Siteground.

I have been with Siteground since 2010, so believe me when I say I am experienced enough to recommend them. I started out on free WordPress like many of you and then moved to Blogger.com thinking it was better because I could put ads on it even though it was free.

I quickly realised that I was going to get nowhere fast if I didn’t move to self-hosting and in my research even back then, Siteground stood out to me.

My site has been down a grand total of one time since I have been with them and as soon as I noticed, they had it back up in no time.

Their customer service is around the clock which is super great for people like me who like to fiddle with codes in the backend of my blog and then mess around and break the whole thing and need it restored ASAP.

Security is also big for me as well because I have had my site hacked before but once I figured out what was making my site vulnerable, I was able to quickly clean my site and secure it with plugins I recommend in my how to start a blog post.

Now, Siteground keeps track of malicious code being added to my site and will even tell me where it is so if I’m hacked, I can easily go in and remove any code left behind by the hackers.

I have been around the blogosphere seeing other bloggers recommending Bluehost but if you’ve perused blogging Facebook groups then you’ve also seen widespread complaints about how sucky their customer service is.

If you’re a new blogger, you want to go with a company who will be there for you. I wholeheartedly recommend Siteground.

How to Set Up SiteGround and Install WordPress

The first part of this tutorial assumes you’re brand new to Siteground and want to know how to start your WordPress blog with their hosting. The first thing you want to do is head over to Siteground.

1 Select Your Plan

As a new blogger, the StartUp plan is perfect for you. It allows you to host one blog/website with up to roughly 10,000 monthly visits. You can always scale up if you need to, which would be a great problem to have.

I currently have the middle plan, GrowBig, not because my blog is booming out of space, which I wish it was, but because I have multiple blogs.

Select the plan that is right for you and click on Get Started.

2 Select Your Domain Name

Your domain name is free with your hosting plan on Siteground. Sweet! If you have one already, you can select the “I already have a domain” option and they will help you to bring it over to work with your new hosting account.

Once you’ve selected an available name, click proceed.

3 Complete Registration

Enter your registration information here and proceed.

Now you’ll get a chance to lock in your very low price for up to three years if you’d like. This is super sweet guys because I currently don’t pay these prices anymore per year. I pay the regular annual price now that my three years are up so if you really feel like blogging is for you, lock in this price for three years. If that intimidates you a little bit, then go ahead and select one year.

If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough.

On this screen, you’ll also get a chance to add any extras if you’d like. The one I recommend is domain privacy. This hides the information that you just entered into registration as this information is actually public.

Anyone can look up who the owner of a domain name is and get your name, email address and phone number without purchasing domain privacy so consider this addon if that bothers you.

On the next screen you’ll enter your credit card information and you’re all set up! Now let’s go inside of Siteground to install WordPress.

4 Using the Siteground Website Wizard

The wizard will walk you through installing WordPress quite easily. Click on get WordPress preinstalled on this account and hit proceed.

Here you will select a username and password for your WordPress blog. You can enter your personal email here or you can create a new one later like myname@yournewblog.com

I recommend creating an email like that as it is more professional. Isn’t it cool to have an email that is at your new blog’s domain? Don’t worry that it isn’t created yet, you can do this after as your email account is also free with Siteground just like your domain name.

Enter a username but do not use admin and do not use the name of your blog. It makes it too easy for hackers to guess what your username is and possibly hack into your site. Select a strong password and move on.

Select a theme. Don’t stress over a theme right now, you will install a better one later. Just select any theme for now.

Congrats! Your new blog is already created and you’re ready to start blogging! The admin URL is where you will now access your blog. You won’t need to head to Siteground anymore to access your blog. Now, you’re ready to post!

How to Use WordPress in Siteground to Create Your Blog Posts

When you click on that admin URL and log in using the username and password you just entered, this is what your WordPress backend will look like. Your dashboard will have a few things at the stop that you can do to begin designing your new blog.

Maybe you want to install a theme first or install a few plugins. Maybe you want to immediately start creating posts so that your site will have content when you’re ready to launch.

On the left-hand side where all your options are, you’ll click on post and add new to write a post. If you do this then you’ll be taken to a screen to write and you’re well on your way.

How to Install WordPress Via the Cpanel

If you’re not using the installation wizard to install WordPress on your blog then this video I created will walk you through the process of installing Siteground via the Cpanel area. It’s a good one to watch because you will need to get comfortable in your Cpanel area as there are lots of cool features there to compliment your new blog, like a brand new email. How to create your new email is next.

In the video you see I select the username that’s the same name as the blog. Don’t do this. I’ve already changed it, it was just for the video.

How to Create Your Email Address for Your Blog in Siteground

In the video above you saw how to access the Cpanel area in Siteground. It’s a big red button at the top of your account area in Siteground, you can’t miss it. Scroll down to mail and click on Email Accounts.

You will be taken to this screen where you can select an email to create and a password for your new email. Once you do this and click on create account, your new email address is created. You can access it always at yoursite.com/webmail but let’s take that a step further.

Scroll down to your new email address and click on more. You will see the option to configure an email client. Click that.

On this screen, you will see the settings that you can use to install your new email address on your Mac, PC or smartphone.

You can also integrate this email into your Gmail or other email service provider so that you won’t have to deal with multiple emails on your phone, if you’d like.

Now, you’re a Siteground blogging WordPress master! Go you!

Remember to go to this post next to get my suggestions for themes and plugins.

This post will help you to craft blog posts that sell and this post will help you to get traffic to your brand new blog.

I hope you found this helpful! If you did, please share this post to your favourite social media channel and I hope you will accept my invitation to my Help a Blogger Out Facebook Group where we share our best blogging tips and share each other’s posts.

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