Haha, there are certainly times that the inspiration isn’t there. 😉 For me, considering the alternative — going back to a 9 to 5 — is all the motivation I need. There may be a day or two where I’m in a writer’s funk, but remembering why I do what I do is all the motivation I need.

That’s correct!

You’re welcome, best of luck Carla — we’re here (or in our Facebook group) to help!

Hey Jay Bee, on Hostgator you don’t have to start with the 36-month package. You could always go on a baby plan and do it monthly it might cost a little bit more in the long run (but at least instead of trying to come up with a few hundred dollars starting out you only need roughly $20 a month until you start making money). It would be a better option than WordPress.com as Ben says himself (it has very limited features). I know this could help you start out with a domain and hosting as I believe that you can get a free domain with your first hosting package. I really hope this helps you get a good start on your way to having a great blog.

Nice guide Ben, very detailed on how to get set up.

You make a good point at the very end about writing style. This is something that I need to get used to.This is especially true for mobile device views. More than a couple of sentences together and the block of text fills the whole screen.

Heyo!

First off, Supermarket Sweep was the best game show of all time, so I’m happy it made an appearance in one of your posts. Obviously you’ve chosen to remain anonymous (for now) on your blog so that will somewhat impact how you can market your brand as you begin to explore ways to get your content in front of readers.

You’ll need to lean heavily on organic search (Yoast can help with that), paid acquisition (down the road) and organic social (your traditional FB, Insta, Twitter, and Pinterest…and perhaps not so much the video laden ones like Snap, YT and Tik Tok…the later of which are super popular and may force you to perhaps maybe pivot away from anonymity in the future).

There’s no harm in getting started on the first few, though. Yoast is a great asset for checking the basics of on-page SEO. It’ll help you organize content so that Googlebot can clearly understand what the content on a page is about, but it’s literally just the very beginning of SEO (and definitely not sufficient to have content rank). To learn more about the basic principles, check out free resources like Brian Dean’s stuff at Backlinko. It’s a really good starting place for beginners itching to learn more about SEO, and then you can seek out more advanced material as you begin to understand the basics. This is a really good place to start: https://backlinko.com/google-seo-guide

Best of luck dude!