This year I wanted to push myself when it came to blogging. I found success last year with my Etsy shop that when I worked hard my shop turned into a business. I did little things that turned my hobby into something profitable. I created business cards, I spent time creating new product, I cleaned up my shop appearance, and I spent time promoting my self on social media. This year I decided to take that same initiative and put it into my blog. The most important thing I did was make my blog look more official. I switched from a “.blogspot.com” to a “.com”. I jumped from Blogger to WordPress and I became a self-hosted blog. Already I have seen an increase in page views and I credit that to my new look and being self hosted.
Today I want to share how quick it was was for me to become self hosted and set up my new blog. Honestly this all happened within minutes. When I make decisions I make them fast and within an hours time I had signed up for siteground, bought a WordPress template from Etsy, installed it, and was busy setting up my new “About Me”.
First, lets talk about self hosting. There are a lot of ways you can become a self-hosted blogger. I looked around and read a lot of reviews on a variety of websites, but found siteground to be the most liked amongst bloggers. This was important knowledge to me as I was going to be using this for blogging. The three main reasons I chose siteground was that they are fast, secure and provide online support. I am not good with technology at all and they have people available to chat with when any problem arrises! They protect against hacking and provide additional add on purchases if you would like to keep your site even safer. Lastly, they are fast. I hate logging onto a site and it not loading – instant click out.
Interested? Cool, lets get you set up. It will literally take 2 minutes.
Easy! I then popped on over to Etsy and looked around. I bought a WordPress template for $25. And here we are! Self-hosted, official looking, boss blog lady! You are only minutes away! If you have any questions leave them in the comments, I’d love to help you get stared.
Hey girl, love your blog!! Was it hard for you to install your own template through Etsy? I’ve been wanting to do it but I’m worried it’ll bee hard to figure out!
No! It was so easy. The place I ordered from provided a step by step guide on how to instal it, also some shops for an extra fee (like 5 dollars) will instal it for you!
Great post! I’m considering switching to a self-hosted blog this year as well.
I self hosted through bluehost when I made the switch back in November, but I’m having trouble getting people to move from my old blog to the new one. Any tips?
http://www.thechicmachine.com
Try editing some of your links to lead people to your new blog. I have a couple posts on Pinterest that are often repined, I changed my URL on those posts to lead people to my new blog. I also put a post on my main page of my old blog to check out my new blog.
Awesome tips, thank you!!