How to Start a Programming Blog (Total Beginner’s Guide)
If you are a programmer or are interested in picking up programming, starting a blog has many interesting benefits.
Everyone can start a blog. You don’t need to do any coding or any complicated technical stuff. Also, starting a blog is quite cheap.
In this article, I will cover everything you need to start and grow your blog. Even if this is your first time creating a blog, you will be up and running in no time.
Here are some of the topics I will cover in the article.
- Why you need to start a blog as a programmer.
- The correct steps you need to take to start a blog from scratch.
- The kind of posts you need to write for your blog.
- How to attract visitors to your blog.
- How to make money from your blog.
1. Why Should You Start a Programming Blog?
Starting and growing a successful blog can consume a lot of your time and energy. You are probably already busy with a million other things in your life so before you start a blog, you have to be certain that it is worth your time.
Here are a couple of reasons why starting a programming blog can be great for your programming career.
#1. It will help you in learning programming
If you are learning how to program, blogging can be a great way to document your learning journey. You will forget a lot of what you learn in programming unless you write it down somewhere.
And by making your notes public, you can help other beginners avoid the mistakes you made as a beginner.
#2. You can earn some money.
Blogs are a great way of earning passive income. The income may range from a few hundred dollars every month to thousands of dollars. It just depends on how much work you put in. Once your articles start getting traffic, the easiest way to start earning money is to sign up for an ad network like Ezoic.
#3. You can use your blog to showcase your projects.
Any coding project you create should be documented somewhere. A GitHub repository is great but in addition, you should also showcase your projects in your blog so that they can be easily found on Google. Also, your blog can act as a hub that links all your online activities (projects, repositories, social media, YouTube, etc). The great thing about having your own blog is that it is totally under your control and you don’t have to worry about getting kicked out of a platform.
#4. You can use it to get a job.
A blog is a great way to market yourself and your skills. When you consistently provide helpful and valuable content, people start to see you as an authority in your field. Some will contact you through your blog to offer you jobs, freelance opportunities, or a chance to collaborate on various ventures. Make sure to include a link to your blog in your CV or LinkedIn profile.
2. Examples of Successful Programming Bloggers
To see the benefits of a blog in practice, it helps to look at successful bloggers and examine how their blogs are working for them
There are plenty of successful programmers that you can look at but here are a few examples to get you started.
#1. Mosh (Moshfegh) Hamedani
Mosh is a popular YouTuber and course content creator. He started his blog (Programming with Mosh) in 2014 as a way of providing information on web development to his students.
His blog complements his popular YouTube channel and showcases his various courses.
#2. Laurence Bradford
Laurence is a self-taught programmer who started her blog (Learn to Code with me) in 2014 and was able to quit her job in 2018 to concentrate on her blog.
Laurence uses her blog to teach beginners how to get into programming. She appears to monetize her blog mainly through affiliate marketing.
#3. Scott Hanselman
Scott started his blog (Scott Hanselman) in 1998 and he blogs about technology, coding, culture, and various other topics.
Scott uses his blog to build authority and market his speaking engagements. His blog also serves as a hub for his podcast, YouTube channel, and newsletter.
>> How to tell if a blog is successful
These are just a few examples but you can do your research and come up with many other successful blogs. But how do you tell if a blog is successful?
You can use a keyword tool (like Semrush) to snoop on other blogs. Once you sign up for a free account, you can enter the domain name of any blog and find out how many visitors they get as well as which type of articles bring them the most visitors.
3. Can You Really Make Money from a Programming Blog? How to Calculate Potential Earnings
Blogging can be quite profitable if you do things the right way. The three main things that will determine how much you can earn from your blog are:
- The number of visitors you get.
- The method you choose to earn money.
- Your ability to convince people to buy your products or use your services.
To calculate how much money you can make, you need two things:
- The number of visitors you get to your site and the number of pages they read (i.e. the PageViews).
- The RPM (Revenue Per Mille). RPM stands for Revenue per 1,000 visitors. It is a metric that is frequently used by display ad networks to calculate how much they can pay you. However, you can use it as a measure to estimate and compare your blog’s earning potential.
An RPM of $30 is quite achievable for most tech blogs (i.e. $15 RPM from display ads and $15 RPM from affiliate commissions).
If you get 35,000 visitors to your blog every month, you can reasonably expect to earn roughly $1,000 a month ([35,000/1,000]* $30). Not a bad side income.
The higher the RPM or Traffic, the more you earn. You can increase your RPM by tapping more revenue sources or increasing your conversion rate. You can increase your visitors by using various SEO strategies.
A great thing about blogs is that you can sell them at sites like Motion Invest, Flippa, or Empire Flippers. Typically you can sell your blog for 30 to 40 times the value of your monthly income. For example, if you earn $1,000 every month, you can sell it for between $30,000 and $40,000.
4. How much does it cost to start and run a programming blog?
You can start your blog cheaply. Your main cost will be web hosting.
If you go with a hosting company like FastComet, you can get discounts that can bring down your costs to less than $3 a month or $40 a year (see current price).
If you are a beginner blogger, you can get away with using free themes and plugins. This can save you a lot of money. Once your blog starts earning money, you can re-invest back into your blog. Some of the things you invest in are:
- More powerful web hosting. (Check FastComet’s FastCloud Extra). You will need more computing resources to cater to the extra traffic you get.
- A paid theme with greater customization and flexibility (Check out the Kadence theme). A great design is important especially if you want to brand yourself.
- Paid plugins such as WP Rocket will help to increase the speed of your website.
When you decide to invest in paid resources, it can cost you roughly $100 a month but it can be more depending on how much you wish to re-invest.
For this article, we shall stick with affordable hosting and free themes and plugins.
5. How to Choose a Programming Niche
The first thing you need to do is to decide what your blog will be about. This is your niche.
A niche is important because, as a new blogger, it can be difficult to get your articles to rank on search engines like Google. For you to gain trust with search engines, you need to show that you are an expert in a particular field (i.e. niche).
When you narrow down your focus to a particular niche (e.g. Web development) and write many articles on it, you can gain topical authority and your visitors (as well as Google) see you as an expert.
There are several ways you can niche down including:
- Focusing on a programming language: Python, JavaScript, HTML& CSS, etc
- Focus on a career programming path: Web development, Blockchain Development, Mobile App Development, DevOps, or Data Science.
- Focus on sub-niches within a programming path. For Web development, you can focus on either front-end or back-end web development.
- Focus on a particular technology or software: AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Mongo DB, etc
There are three main things you should consider when choosing a niche:
- Ensure that people are interested in the niche. You can use a keyword tool like Semrush to see if people are searching for keywords in your niche. If people are not interested, you will be writing to a ghost town and this can be quite demoralizing.
- Ensure that you are interested in the niche or can grow to love the niche. If you don’t like what you are doing, it will be difficult to motivate yourself to write.
- Ensure that you can get traffic. If you go for topics or keywords that are too competitive as a beginner, it will be difficult to get traffic. Use a keyword tool to check the keyword difficulty of a particular keyword you are targeting.
6. Steps in Starting a Programming Blog
You don’t need to code your own blog when you start blogging. There are blogging platforms out there that will provide you with free tools that are much better than any you could ever come up with.
The best platform on which to start a blog is WordPress. WordPress powers over 50% of all the websites in the world. The reason why it is so popular is that:
- It is free and open-source.
- You can easily customize it with themes and plugins.
- There are lots of resources to help you start.
- You are in control of your blog and your content.
In this section, I will go through the main steps required to create a WordPress website or blog. It should take you less than 30 minutes to completely set up your website.
Step 1: Choose a domain name
A domain name is the name of your website, that is, the name that people type into a browser e.g. technipodia.com. It acts like your address on the internet. Choosing a good domain name will help with branding and discoverability.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a domain name.
- Keep it short. Shorter domain names are easier to remember and seem more professional.
- Get a .com domain if you can. When people can’t remember a website’s extension, they simply assume that it is a .com. If your competitors have a similar name and a .com extension, they could potentially poach your traffic.
- Avoid numbers, hyphens, or special characters. These make your blog look spammy and insecure. Would you trust a domain name that looks like x34yz.com?
- Avoid copyrighted or trademarked terms. It might be tempting to piggyback on a well-known brand but you risk getting sued and losing your domain.
Step 2: Register for a web hosting account
Your blog needs a place to live. Web hosting companies provide you with the infrastructure to host your blog. They manage the server for you and they have customer care departments to help you out in case you get stuck.
When choosing a web hosting company, it is important to ensure that they have a good reputation, especially regarding resources allocated and customer service.
If you choose a bad hosting company, your blog can be slow and vulnerable to hacking. I would recommend using a company like FastComet. They are rated 5 stars on review sites like Trustpilot and have great discounts.
If you get stuck during the registration process, FastComet has a chat box where you can contact customer support for help and they will guide you through your problem.
#1. Choose hosting type
Go to the FastComet website and choose shared hosting. If you have a new blog, shared hosting will be sufficient until you start getting decent traffic.
#2. Choose a web hosting package.
If you plan to only have one website, you can choose FastCloud. If you plan to have more than one website, choose either FastCloud Plus or FastCloud Extra depending on your budget, resources required, and expected traffic.
#3. Get the domain name
For any of the options, click Get Started and it will take you to a page where you can register your domain name. Enter the domain name you have picked in Step 1 then click Use this domain. If your domain name is already taken, choose another one.
#4. Fill in account information
Once you click Use this domain, you will be taken to another page where you will be required to fill in your account information (name, email, password, address, phone) as well as the product information (the hosting plan (eg FastCloud), the data center and hosting period).
#5. Choose a data center and hosting period
Choose a data center that is closest to where you expect to receive most of your visitors. Also, I would recommend choosing a hosting period that is at least a year long so that you can lock in the discounts. If you have the budget, FastComet allows you to lock in your discounts for as long as 3 years. This can save you a lot of money.
#6. Choose Extras
Under the extras section, choose Domain Privacy. It will add a small cost but it is worth it since it will prevent your private information (eg. email address) from being displayed in Who.is records. If you don’t do this, you might start getting a lot of spam in your email or home address.
#7. Check Out
Fill in your payment information and finalize the purchase.
Check out this short 4-minute video that will take you through the process of registering for FastComet.
Step 3: Install and Configure WordPress
Once you complete the purchase, FastComet will send you an email with your account details including the master password you created during the signup process. They will also send you a link for you to log in. You can also log in through their website (Look for Client Login) and log in with your master password. This will take you to the FastComet Account page.
To access the Control Panel, navigate to the Active Products section and then the Quick actions tab. Click on the CP icon. Enter your master password again.
#1. Install an SSL certificate.
An SSL certificate is important because it secures your visitors’ data by encrypting it. It also helps with rankings on Google. With FastComet, you can install an SSL certificate for free using Let’s Encrypt SSL.
In the CPanel, navigate to Let’s Encrypt SSL (under security) and click Issue new certificate (under Actions). Once your site is secured, your domain address should change from ‘HTTP’ to ‘HTTPS’.
#2. Install WordPress.
In CPanel, navigate to the Softaculous Apps Installer section and click on WordPress. This will take you to a page where you can install WordPress. You will need to enter details like your site name, site description, admin username, and admin password.
#3. Configure WordPress.
There are several configurations you can do on your WordPress installation such as:
- Deleting pre-installed themes and plugins that you don’t need.
- Installing any updates that need updating.
- You can set a nickname to display publicly on your posts (under the users tab)
- Setting the Permalinks to Post name (under Settings then Permalinks tab)
Checkout this short video on how to configure WordPress (7 minutes)
Step 4: Install a WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme helps you to design your website. With a good theme, you don’t need a designer to do it for you, you can do it all by yourself.
A good theme you can consider is the Kadence theme. Kadence theme is one of the most popular free themes on the WordPress repository because of its customization and speed.
They have a free and a paid version. The free version is sufficient for general blogging. If you want extra functionalities like extra design features, an online store or you need support, you can use their paid theme. Check out their affordable lifetime deal here.
To install a theme, go to Appearance then Themes then Add New. From here, you can search for any free theme on the WordPress repository. If you want the free Kadence theme, search for it in the search bar and then click Install and then Activate.
Step 5. Install WordPress Plugins
WordPress plugins add functionality to your blog. To add a plugin, go to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins then Add New.
Some of the plugins you can consider adding to your site include:
- A plugin to speed up your site such as WP Rocket (paid).
- A plugin to back up your site, for example, WP Vivid (free)
- An SEO plugin like Rank Math (free)
- A plugin to help you install Google Analytics such as Site Kit (free).
Step 6. Create Pages and Posts
With a WordPress blog, you have the option of creating either Pages or Posts.
A page is used for content that does not change very often. Here are the important pages you need to create:
- Homepage
- Blog page
- About page
- Legal pages (privacy policy, terms, and disclaimer)
To create a page, go to your WordPress dashboard then navigate to Pages then Add New.
A post contains information that changes often. It differs from a page in several ways. It has a post author and date of publication. You can also add comments to a post. Most of the content you write on your blog will be in posts.
To create a post, go to your WordPress dashboard then navigate to Posts then Add New.
Step 7. Create a Navigation Menu
To access your important pages, you need to create a navigation menu. Usually, the menu appears at the top of your website but you can also have it at the footer.
You can add pages to your menu by going to your WordPress dashboard and selecting Appearance then Menus.
From the Menu pages, you can create a new menu, add pages to a menu, delete a menu, or specify where you want a menu to appear.
7. What Types of Articles Should You Write in Your Programming Blog? (Programming Blog Ideas)
If you have followed these steps, you are now ready to create content.
If you are new to blogging, finding the right types of articles can be challenging. You have to strike a fine balance between writing what you are passionate about and writing what people want.
Here are some important tips you can use when writing blog posts.
- Look at popular programming blogs and see which kinds of articles they write.
- Do proper keyword research to come up with keywords that you can easily rank for in Google.
- Use a keyword tool (like Semrush) to snoop on your competitors’ blogs and see what posts are doing well for them.
- Look at the types of articles that are ranking in Google’s top ten when you search for a particular keyword.
Here are examples of the types of posts you can write.
#1. Tutorials and How-to articles
Tutorial or how-to posts teach your readers how to do something. These types of posts work very well with programming blogs because many people, especially beginners, struggle with programming concepts.
Examples of how-to-articles
- How to Start a Programming Blog
- How to Create a Blockchain App (Step-by-Step)
#2. Reviews
You can write a review of services and products that may be useful to other programmers. These can be software, apps, courses, or books.
Examples of review posts
- FastComet Hosting Review: The Pros and Cons
- Why You Should Use the Coursera Course Platform
#3. Lists
List posts help you to pass as much information as you can without losing engagement. A lot of list posts tend to be numbered list posts and these indicate how much value a reader is going to get.
Examples of list posts
8. How to Get Visitors to Your Blog
Getting visitors to your site is probably going to be the most challenging aspect of blogging. Even if you have the best articles, you can still struggle to get visitors. But there are ways you can overcome this hurdle.
The three main ways are SEO, Outreach, and Social media.
#1. Use SEO strategies to get visitors to your programming blog
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the best way to get visitors to your site. SEO entails optimizing your blog so that it can be easily found and ranked in search engines like Google.
SEO is a huge topic and there are entire courses and blogs dedicated to it. However, here are some quick SEO tips you can use immediately
- Do proper keyword research. This will help you to get topics and questions that people are searching for. Use a good keyword tool like Semrush for this.
- Write keyword-optimized titles. SEO-optimized titles will help your articles get found by search engines for relevant terms.
- Optimize your blog for speed. To make your site fast, use a good hosting company (like Fast comet) and a speed optimization plugin (like WP Rocket).
- Optimize your blog for security. To secure your site, install an SSL certificate and create a strong password. You can use a password manager like 1password to do this.
#2. Use outreach to connect with other bloggers and players in your niche
Outreach means connecting with other people in your industry to look for ways to collaborate for mutual benefit. The key word here is ‘mutual benefit’.
You need to be able to provide value to others before you can expect to receive value.
Here are some ideas on how you can do outreach.
- Reach out to fellow bloggers and offer to promote their products or services on your blog. In return, they can share your articles.
- You can reach out to social media influencers with huge followings and offer to create websites for them and they can share your content in return.
- You can write guest posts on other people’s websites. They benefit by getting good quality articles on their sites and you benefit by inserting backlinks back to your blog.
#3. Promote your posts on social media
Social media can be a huge waste of time for bloggers because most social media companies try to keep people on their platforms for as long as possible. However, the two platforms that can drive some good traffic at the moment are:
- YouTube
Pinterest is an image-sharing platform. Go to Pinterest and search for programming boards and see what kind of content they share. Also, it is better to use a tool like Tailwind to automate the sharing of your images to Pinterest so that you don’t spend too much time there.
For YouTube, there are many channels dedicated to coding that you can draw inspiration from. Look at channels like Traversy Media, freeCodeCamp, or Coding with Mosh to see what I mean.
9. Ways to Make Money with Your Programming Blog
If you are getting a good number of visitors to your blog, making money with your blog will not be too difficult. Therefore, your priority should be getting visitors.
Once you start getting some visitors, think of what additional value you can provide to them. This will help you have an idea of what kinds of products and services you can provide.
There are many ways to make money from a blog but here are the easiest ways for a beginner.
#1. Display Ads
Display Ads are the easiest way to start making money from your blog since you don’t have to sell anything. All you need to do is to sign up for an ad network and start earning (provided you have traffic).
There are many ad networks around but if you want to earn good money from your visitors, you should sign up with a premium ad network.
Premium ad networks tend to be picky about who they accept. For example, they may require that you have a minimum amount of traffic from certain countries. The most popular premium ad networks are Ezoic, Mediavine, and Ad Thrive.
Of these, Ezoic is the easiest to get into as a beginner since they don’t have minimum traffic requirements. They also accept traffic from all countries. In addition, they have lots of tools and support to help you get set up. You can check out Ezoic here.
#2. Affiliate marketing
In affiliate marketing, you promote other people’s products in your blog and you get a commission if they buy.
If there is a product or service you regularly use in your programming hobby or career, you can check to see whether they offer an affiliate program. Besides display ads, affiliate marketing is the easiest to implement.
The main thing with affiliate marketing is to ensure that you tailor your recommendations to what your audience needs. You also need to recommend products and services that you trust so that your visitors don’t get ripped off.
#3. Offering services
You can use your blog to promote the services you offer such as:
- Tutoring and coaching.
- Consulting.
- Skills-based services such as web design, app development, or data analysis.
On your menu bar, you can include a button that says ‘Hire Me’. That should lead your visitor to your landing page which explains in detail what you can do for them.
You can also register to offer your services on platforms. Some of the more popular ones are:
Platforms tend to get a lot of visitors that you can direct back to your blog.
10. Free Learning Resources for Creating Your Blog
If you want to go deeper into the process of creating your blog, there are plenty of free tutorials on YouTube that can help you out.
Here is a collection of tutorials that will take you through the entire process. They have a total runtime of about 2 hours 44 minutes. They will help you to create a beautiful professional site by yourself even if you don’t consider yourself to be a techy person.
#1. How to Register for FastComet
FastComet is an excellent web hosting company with fast reliable service and cheap prices. The video below will show you how to get set up quickly.
- Platform: YouTube
- Channel: Top Hosting Guide Channel
- Time: 4 minutes
#2. Kadence Theme and Gutenberg Tutorial
This tutorial will take you through the entire process of creating a website using the Kadence theme and Gutenberg. It covers the installation and configuration of WordPress as well as the installation and configuration of WordPress plugins.
- Platform: YouTube
- Channel: Stratos Tutorials
- Time: 2 hours 40 minutes
Wrapping Up
If you have made it this far, then you now have the knowledge and skill to set up your own website or blog. Once you go through the process once, the second time becomes much easier and you can set up as many websites as you wish.
All that is left now is for you to create content consistently. The success of a blog depends on having many high-quality blog posts that address people’s needs.
What to read next
If you are looking for something to read next, check out the following articles.