Ready to share your ideas with the world? Start your blog →
To start a personal blog, pick a platform, choose a template, secure a domain and publish your first post. The harder part is everything after that. A personal blog is where you write in your own voice about your own life, and unlike a social feed, it stays yours. Wix makes it easy to start a blog. A blog maker handles the templates, hosting and AI writing tools, so your first week goes to writing rather than setup. This guide covers how to make a blog in seven steps, from choosing a template when planning how to make your website to building an email list, plus real personal blog examples.
Starting a blog should feel exciting and effortless. With the Wix Blog Maker, you get everything you need to create, design and grow your blog from scratch. Explore how you can use Wix’s intuitive tools to share your ideas with the world.
TL;DR: how to start a personal blog
A personal blog is a self-owned site where one person publishes writing about their life, work or interests, and setting one up takes an afternoon rather than a technical background. What decides whether it lasts is picking a subject narrow enough to keep returning to and holding a publishing rhythm you can actually sustain. The steps below cover the setup, then the habits and the promotion that turn a live blog into a read one.
What you'll learn
The seven setup steps, from template to first published post
How to pick a niche narrow enough to sustain
Real personal blogs and what each one does well
Ways to make money from a personal blog once it has readers
What is a personal blog?
A personal blog is a website or online journal where you can share your thoughts, experiences and interests. Personal blogs can be about anything, from your daily life to your hobbies and passions. They are typically written in a first-person perspective and can be a great way to connect with others who share your interests.
How to start a personal blog
01. Pick a personal blog template
Ready-made and professionally-designed templates are a great way to ensure effective content and expressive design, and can also be a source of inspiration for this type of website. This is a result of carefully tailored templates created for a specific purpose or topic in mind.
Using a fully customizable personal blog template gives you the foundation from which you’ll be able to create a strong online presence and meet your audience’s needs and interests. You’ll want to consider the following when choosing a template of your own.
Define your blog’s goal and niche: Giving your site a purpose will help you take the necessary steps to ensure that you find the right template for you and your target audience. For example, if your personal blog focuses on food, think about adding a culinary vibe to your site, like a background resembling a dining cloth. Your readers will resonate with it. The same goes for starting a travel blog, think about the best travel scene to inspire your readers.
Define your audience: Consider who you're writing for and what they might be interested in. Start by researching your audience to gain insights into their demographics, interests and online behavior. Identify their needs, preferences and the topics that resonate with them. Pay attention to trends and discussions in your industry that might captivate their attention. With this information, you can tailor your content effectively.
Decide on a layout: Your layout has influence on the presentation of your blog. You can choose a template with a layout that will prioritize certain blog content over others. For example, using a magazine-style layout lets you draw attention to featured stories or images and can be suitable for someone creating lots of diverse content.
The tool itself is often what stops people before they start.
“I’ve seen so many people hesitate to start a blog because they feel it’s too technical. That’s why I always recommend tools with intuitive interfaces that make blogging less daunting. When you’re not wrestling with the tool, you can focus on your content.” - Sharon Hafuta, Managing Blog Editor, Wix
If a blank template still feels like a lot, you can describe the blog you want instead of building it. Wix's AI website builder helps you build websites quickly by using smart tools to create layouts, design pages and generate content tailored to your brand. You get a working personal blog to react to, then move things around by hand until it looks like you.
Not sure what type of personal blog to start? We've put together these examples and guides to help you decide:
02. Develop your brand
To make your personal blog truly your own, you’ll want to design it in a way that represents you, your values or goals. This is especially important if you're trying to build your own brand and eventually make money blogging.
Customizing your personal web space will give you an edge over other blogs, making it easier for you to stand out. Design also has a role in supporting the message of your content seen in the hierarchy or order of the ideas presented to your readers.
There are several elements of your blog to take into account when it comes to branding your blog. Here are the most important ones:
Logo: Create your own logo to be the face of your brand and make your blog recognizable. This graphic mark should reflect and embody your blog. Your blog logo can be featured in your social media channels, site’s favicon and other branding assets to increase your brand recognition and strengthen your online presence.
Header: This is the space above the fold of the homepage and a strategic part of your personal blog that people see in the first seconds of loading your page. Your header should be inviting, provide basic information and tell users exactly what is being offered. It includes essential web elements, such as a logo, call-to-action button, headline, navigation menu and any relevant text or image.
Website color scheme: Colors can inspire certain moods or bring up important associations for viewers. Spend time choosing the perfect color scheme for the type of topics you’ll be writing about and think about what tone you want to convey. For example, if you want to be bold and daring, you can use brighter tones like yellow and orange. Alternatively, if you want to be subtle, you can go for shades of beige.
Mobile design: Though not a branding element, mobile design plays a major role in how your brand is perceived. Your blog needs to work on a small screen to stay readable. To provide the best user experience, you'll need to include shorter paragraphs, scrollable content and images fit for a small screen.
03. Choose a hosting plan and domain name
A website without a hosting plan is all dressed up and nowhere to go. You’ll need to choose a reliable web hosting plan to make your personal blog visible to others online.
Wix’s free website hosting runs on global data centers powered by Google Cloud, AWS and Fastly, with 99.99% uptime that keeps your site up even during traffic spikes. It’s also protected with 24/7 security monitoring to keep your visitors safe and provides enough storage space for your pages, images and videos so that they can be seamlessly streamed and be downloaded by visitors.
After you’ve picked a web hosting plan, it’s time to choose a domain name, also known as your online address. When it comes to finding a domain name for your personal blog, you’ll need to come up with one that’s reflective of your content and style. So, here are a few things to keep in mind:
Be unique in order to set yourself apart from other bloggers who are writing about similar topics. Take the idea of parenting blogs; there are multiple existing domains adjoining words “mom” and “blog.” Instead, you can add another description that’s unique to your site and lets audiences know what they will get out of reading it.
Make it simple to say, type and spell so that your blog name will be shareable and memorable by all types of people.
Use your name to position yourself as a thought leader in your niche. If your goal is to establish yourself as a brand, you can choose your own name as your domain name.
Check availability by doing a quick domain name search before setting your heart on one that’s taken.
Finally, you’ll need to connect your domain name to a web hosting provider so visitors can find your blog on the internet.
Take a look at this curated list of best personal website builders.
04. Create a content calendar
At the core of every successful personal blog is original content. This is why personal blogs are also vessels of quality writing. After all, you are the expert of telling your own story.
To maximize these efforts, you’ll want to create an editorial calendar that will better manage all your content and help you measure your blog’s performance. An editorial calendar is a document that keeps all your blog posting information, such as topic ideas and publishing dates, organized and accessible in a centralized format.
Having a blogging schedule will help you find the best times to post, keep a record of all your content and let you track the progress of each post, from the moment it goes live to marketing it. Additionally, implementing this kind of content strategy can also help you determine your objectives, whether that’s increasing traffic or gaining new subscribers.
The planning part is what most personal blogs underestimate.
"Blogging started as a personal forum that felt casual and off-the-cuff. But don't be fooled, blogging takes a lot of work and planning. Create a content calendar that accounts for your schedule and goals, or you simply won't have a blog." - Kiera Carter, Editorial Director at Wix Studio
Keeping a calendar full is easier when drafting does not start from nothing. Wix helps you write on-brand blog posts fast with AI-generated outlines, titles and editable drafts. The draft is a starting point rather than the post, and the voice still has to be yours.
Pro tip: Make sure your blog offers something fresh and unique to captivate your audience. By providing new insights or perspectives, you engage readers and distinguish your blog from the rest, making it a go-to source of information and inspiration.
05. Optimize your content for SEO
All bloggers share a common goal: to increase the exposure of their writing. In order to drive traffic to your personal blog, you’ll need to think about search engine optimization, or SEO. This is the process of optimizing your web pages to boost your site’s position on search engines through organic searches. The better your site ranks within certain queries, the more likely you are to get visitors and widen your reach.
There are several ways to improve your SEO ranking. One of your priorities will be to conduct keyword research to find the most relevant words to implement on your blog. These keywords will help you understand how people are searching for things related to your niche or blog topic, as well as the type of content they expect to find. In turn, this will let you determine relevant topics for your audience and identify the best keywords to use in your writing. Then you can think about naturally fitting a keyword to the title of your blog post and other forms of content.
Other key practices of SEO for blogging include writing SEO-friendly alt text for images, creating an optimized meta description using your keywords and ensuring that your site is mobile friendly.
Wix helps you write SEO-ready blog posts with AI titles, meta descriptions and internal linking suggestions.
06. Build an email list
In our everyday life, we use email to check in with colleagues, friends and even spouses. For bloggers, emailing has become one of the most powerful tools for communicating with readers. Furthermore, the right email strategy can help you gain more followers thus lead to lucrative opportunities when monetizing a blog. To explore these email marketing opportunities further, you’ll need to first build a mailing list. In general, you can amass a list of email addresses from blog subscribers and people who have agreed to be updated via their inbox. It’s important to find inviting ways to draw people toward opting-in or subscribing to your mailing list. You can create a strong CTA button, such as “Subscribe Today” and place it strategically on your homepage, so others will see. You can also give an incentive to get people to sign up. Typically, this kind of offer comes in the form of a free ebook or downloadable content.
An email list can be used as an instrument for building a strong community around your blog. You’ll know that your subscribers want to hear from you because they’ve already given you permission to do so, which signals loyalty and trust. Subscribers are also more likely to share your content because they are interested in what you have to say.
Down the line, you can segment your email list based on specific factors, such as location and demographics, and send out personalized emails that will result in higher click-through rates.
07. Get the word out and promote your blog
If no one reads your personal blog, how could it be said to exist? To draw more attention to it, you’ll need to think about how to promote your blog and improve your online presence. You can combine marketing strategies or just stick to one that meets all your needs. The two most common types of promoting methods are social media and email marketing. Let’s dive deeper into the differences between them:
Email marketing is the act of sending emails with the aim to build loyalty, trust or brand awareness. Using the email list you’ve built in the previous step, you can run an array of effective email marketing campaigns targeting your audience, from welcome emails to follow-ups.
Social media marketing lets you gain access to diverse crowds by reaching out via new channels. Whether it's YouTube, Facebook or Instagram, you can use these platforms to further promote your content, better engage with audiences and create new forms of content, like stories and live streaming.
Best personal blog examples
Scarf Aid
After decades of world travel, Hazell Jacobs embarked on a different journey by starting a personal blog. Thus Scarf Aid was formed to serve the purpose of bringing that joy to others. At first glance, Jacobs informs her readers in humorous text that “A Scarf A Week Keeps Coronavirus Away,” as is prominently featured across the header. This proceeds to set the tone for an informal yet complete personal experience. As you navigate between her different blog post entries, you’ll always be able to find your way back to the homepage through its clickable title. You can scroll down to the subscription form at the bottom of the page and join a multitude of readers who’ve opted to receive email updates about Jacobs’s one-of-a-kind entries. In fact, she’s always straightforward with her audience as seen in her sign-up box. “Receive an email when there is a new blog, every Sunday at 8 am,” she promises.
Gloria Soverini
Photography is everything on Soverini’s site and based on the amount of blog content, it seems that there’s a lot of activity behind the scenes as well. Yet, with the integration of a clickable blog archive, visitors can easily navigate across the different posts, easing any fear of missing out.
There’s also a news feed on the right side of the page, which evolves to show the Soverini’s most recent posts. Additionally, every post has an accompanying CTA button, “Read More,” to ensure visitors get on it.
The Herb Somm
Jamie Evans founded The Herb Somm, a culinary-meets-cannabis blog and lifestyle brand, which houses both rich and fine recipes. In order to unlock her free kitchen secrets, she wants you to consider joining her newsletter (for adults 21+ only) first. By implementing a lightbox to draw attention to this vital first step, she is also able to build a strong email list along the process.
Evans’s Press page is dedicated to all the media mentions and screenshots of news articles that have been written about her flourishing CBD line. The choice of Masonry layout displayed on this page, based on columns without fixed height rows, also allows for the optimization of space usage by reducing any gaps. The layout is as tough as the bricks it emulates.
Learn more:
How to make money with a personal blog?
Affiliate marketing: Promote products and earn commissions for sales through unique affiliate links placed within your blog posts.
Sponsored content: Partner with brands for sponsored blog posts or reviews.
Ad revenue: Use ad networks like Google AdSense to display ads on your blog and earn revenue based on clicks or impressions.
Digital products: Create and sell e-books, online courses or other digital products related to your blog niche.
Membership or subscription model: Offer premium content or a membership area for exclusive access in exchange for a fee.
Freelance services: Showcase your expertise and offer freelance services or consulting.
Donations or crowdfunding: Allow readers to support your blog through donations or crowdfunding platforms.
Read also: How to create a review website
Why write a personal blog?
There are many reasons why you might want to write a personal blog. Here are a few:
To share your thoughts and ideas: A personal blog is a great way to share your thoughts and ideas with the world. You can write about anything you want, from your personal experiences to your thoughts on current events.
To connect with others: When you write about things that are important to you, you're likely to attract readers who are interested in the same things. Connect with other people who share your interests.
To learn and grow: When you take the time to reflect on your thoughts and experiences, you can gain a deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you.
To build a personal brand: A personal blog can help you build a personal brand. When you consistently publish high-quality content, you can establish yourself as an expert in your field and attract opportunities that you might not otherwise have.
Are personal blogs still relevant today?
The people who run Wix's own blog answer this the same way.
“Blogging is still relevant for building an online presence, establishing authority and demonstrating expertise on a topic. It is also great for managing a brand’s reputation, especially in markets, segments or geographies where fewer campaign resources are invested.” - Giorgia Foscarini, Blog Team Lead at Wix
Personal blogs are still relevant, even in an age of massive social media engagement. Personal blogs provide a space for in-depth content, creative expression and long-form storytelling, all of which are still popular. They allow bloggers to share unique perspectives, experiences and expertise, fostering a sense of authenticity and connection, while fostering a community. Blogs also help with personal branding, a benefit for professionals, creatives and entrepreneurs who often start a personal blog that morphs into a business venture of its own. Search engines value regularly updated, quality content, making personal blogs a valuable tool for ranking in search engine results.
Is blogging still worth it? Read more with our take on blogging's current and future relevance.
Personal blog FAQ
What are five things a great personal blog gets right?
There are a number of things great personal blogs get right. But if we had to prioritize five we'd probably focus on your blog platform and infrastructure (it should be easy to create, with reliable hosting and top notch security); finding your own personal niche for content and sharing experiences; building a stellar and consistent content calendar and publishing schedule; distribute your content as much as you can, through SEO optimization, social media shares; constantly look for ways for your blog to evolve and grow, whether in terms of its style, niche or community.
What makes a personal blog successful?
Probably the number one factor in the success of a personal blog is finding the right niche to write about, and making sure it's one that resonates with your own experiences. Write what you know, is always the recipe for success. But beyond this, generating traffic to a personal blog takes work and trying different distribution strategies. Great content is not always enough, you need to bring readers to it and your content to readers.
If I want to make a personal blog, where should I start?
Start with a website builder or blog maker as this will include all the essential website infrastructure you need, which covers hosting, domains and security. The best way to start is with a blog template. From there you can choose your own colors and other site elements. Once you have your blog design done, you can plan and write your first blog posts.
Who do I envision as my ideal reader and how will my content serve them?
First you'll need to think about who you do envision as your ideal reader. For example, something like this: "My ideal reader is curious, passionate and eager to learn or connect. They seek inspiration, practical insights or relatable stories that enrich their lives. My content will serve them by offering valuable, authentic and engaging material tailored to their needs, fostering a sense of community and sparking meaningful conversations."
How will I measure the success of my blog beyond traffic metrics?
You can measure it through the thoughtful comments, shared stories or collaborations sparked by your blog. Success will also be reflected in your own personal growth, the impact your posts have on your readers' lives and the connections you build within a community that resonates with your vision.
How can I foster a sense of community among my readers?
Engage readers with interactive content like polls, Q&A sessions and forums. It's important to encourage the sharing of personal stories or feedback from your readers as this is how you truly build a community. Highlight reader contributions, celebrate milestones and host virtual or in-person events to build connections.You can also create a newsletter or group to keep them connected regularly.
