How to start a Christian Blog

You’re not really techy but you want to start your own Christian blog and write about the things God is putting into your heart. The problem is, how do you start? I had the same question years ago. By God’s generous grace, I have the rare chance of preaching to hundreds of people that go to our church. But there are times when God reveals something and I don’t want to limit that opportunity by just waiting for my next preaching assignment. So I started my journey of learning the hard stuff about blogging (which I found wasn’t really hard if you just love what you do.) and my online site has become my platform. Let me share some tips with you and I hope you could start your own, too.

How did I start a christian blog of my own

On February 14 this year, my blogging experience turns 1-year-old. I mean, I actually started to learn to blog in November 2017 thru WordPress.com, a site that offers free and paid website hosting service. After three months of learning WordPress and writing the blogger style, I decided to pay around P500.00 for my domain and web hosting. (What are these terms?! Later babe, hehe)

Learning it was a fun journey, but it was not easy. I had to unlearn my way of writing, read books and articles on writing, study how other bloggers write their ideas, join multiple support groups for Christian bloggers on Facebook, and just research any time I can. I hope these quick tips on starting a Christian blog will help you.

Things to prepare if you want to start a christian blog

Meditate and ask God to name your blog

The first thing you want to do you start a Christian blog is to decide for a name. This will be what your blog will be called and this could be your address (or domain or site name) as well.

You can have your blog named after yourself, like mine goes by “Angelittle” because my real name is Angelita (meaning little Angel). You know the likes of Joena San Diego and Lysa TerKeurst, right. While I am at it, I highly recommend Britt Lee Allen – her writings are deep and full of grace.

But you can also name it by what you want people to remember. A favorite blog site of mine is Whole Magazine, which is about helping women experience wholeness and goes by the site wholemagazine.com. You can think of blog names like “beautiful diadem” “a gospel story” “grace devotions”. You can check if that domain or website is still available at www.godaddy.com. (.com sites are usually at P700.00 if on promo.) Your blog name is so important as it will guide you to limit topics you would write and not just write about whatever you feel like.

Study about WordPress blogging

There are a lot of YouTube videos to teach you how to write via WordPress. I am not the techy type; I studied business courses so there are not much of ICT subjects there. I had to watch YouTube tutorials on how to do it and tried to do it on my own. You can start your blog writing for free when you make a WordPress.com account and learn how an article is posted by yourself.

My first free site was https://voiceofangelblog.wordpress.com/ – you can see how it was such a scratch site haha. But I learned blogging thru that site. Once you are familiar with WordPress dashboard, building your site, putting in themes and plug-ins, you can start to invest for a paid domain name and hosting service.

Before we continue, I hope you are not confused.. “wordpress” is a content and management system that is used to create and maintain websites. While “wordpress.com” is a hosting service provider which uses wordpress. The premium account for wordpress.com is quite pricey, that is why I suggest you get your domain and web hosting from other providers mentioned above.

Pick a web hosting service

When you feel like you’re ready to pay some amount for your blogging, it’s time to look for a web hosting service and pay for a domain name. On my first year, I only spent less than P500.00 since it was a promo by Crazydomains.ph. However, I had to pay for over P3,000.00 on my second year which I am not willing to do haha. So I asked my friends and they recommended http://web.com.ph/. Update: Right now, this site is hosted by an officemate who has the Webhosting service I’ve availed so far.

But I suggest that you start paying for an actual site once you’ve mastered your free wordpress.com site.

Design your Christian Blog

WordPress offers thousands of free designs or looks for your site which we call “Theme”. This will decide the appearance of your blog, its color schemes, the font, style, and presentation. You can learn this from your free wordpress.com site. However, the free account from wordpress.com offers very limited themes. But if you have a paid website, your hosting service will give you access to a wordpress dashboard where you can design and write on your site and pick from millions of themes.

Write your first post… And then write more!

Once you’ve created a wordpress account and have access to a dashboard, you can now start writing your first post. This photo here is how it looks like as I write this article.

Here are some tips to remember when you write a Christian blog article:

The title is everything. Make it catchy and creative. It should stir curiosity. You have to write compelling headlines.

Always speak in context and consistent with God’s truth. We don’t want to mislead our readers. We should always remain faithful to God’s word, even when we try to speak it in our language.

Don’t write too long articles. Cut it if necessary. An 800-word article is recommended for a blog post. You may write a series on that topic if it takes too long.

Know your audience. We have to think and pray for our readers even before writing the first word.

If ever this article helped you jump-start your own christian blog, please let me know. Or message me on social media should you have more questions!