How To Start A Fitness Blog

Want to start a fitness blog? If you’re serious about starting a blog and monetization is one of your goals, here is what you need to know.

I work on websites a lot both here at Fit & Awesome and in running my Digital Marketing Consultancy, LTM Digital. We have built websites for small businesses, large corporations, e-commerce, and content sites. I love it and it’s so much fun. A lot of people have asked me about blogging and how to start a fitness blog. Well, it’s not just how to start a fitness blog necessarily – I’ve had people ask about how to start all kinds of blogs. Here’s the good news – the basics of how to start a blog are the same no matter what your niche or genre is. Here are my tips on how to start a fitness blog broken down into four simple steps. If you guys find this information helpful, I would be more than happy to make this a regular recurring series here on Fit & Awesome. Enjoy!

How To Start A Fitness Blog in Four Simple Steps

Domain Names – First off, you’re going to want to decide on a domain name. This is the web address where people will find your blog. If you have plans to monetize your blog, then you are going to want to make sure your blog is self-hosted which means your blog lives on your own server versus a free blogging platform (BlogSpot, etc). A self-hosted blog will allow you more flexibility to control the theme design of your blog as well as the ad layout. You can check to see if your domain is available by using a domain checker. You can find domain checkers on most hosting company websites. Here’s an example of a domain checker from BlueHost:

Hosting- If you are going to have a self-hosted blog (which I recommend), you will need to decide on a hosting company. Hosting companies provide space on their services for their clients to host their websites and you pay a monthly fee for this service. There are many different hosting companies out there. Here are my two recommendations:

• Media Temple:  My sites (Fitandawesome.com, LTM-Digital.com, and others) are all hosted on a Grid Server through Media Temple. I can host up to 100 domains on my monthly server. The Grid Service is $20 a month, but I find it to be well worth it for the number of sites I have. I love Media Temple and they’ve been very good to me and are always able to quickly respond to any issues I am having.

• BlueHost: If you are just starting a website or blog and don’t want to commit to $20 a month, I recommend checking out BlueHost. They have hosting plans starting at $3.95 per month. I am very familiar with their platform because several of my clients host through BlueHost. It’s an affordable option, and their customer service is also great. Here’s a bit more about the $3.95 per month rate from BlueHost:

Install Wordpress – I am not going to get into different options for blogging platforms because WordPress is hands down the best way to get started. It’s really simple and you can get a WordPress blog set up in WordPress in just a few clicks if you use BlueHost. You don’t even need to hire a web developer. Here’s how:

Under the “Hosting” tab, click on “cpanel.” Then scroll down to ‘Website Builders” and click “Install WordPress.”

From there it will take you to the below screen. Click “Start A Brand New Install.”

You will then be prompted to choose which domain you want to install WordPress for. Enter the sweet new domain you just purchased. The final step will be to add your site name, an admin username, password, and email you’d like to have associated with WordPress. Note: Try not to have your username be “Admin” or “Your Site Name.” This could leave your site insecure so be a little bit more creative – maybe your first name perhaps? Here’s what this screen looks like:

After this WordPress will begin installing and you are on your way to getting your blog up and running. Once complete you will be prompted to a login screen. Bookmark this URL and enter your username and password you set up to log in. BOOM!

Write, Write, Write – When you first install WordPress, it will set up as a default template for your blog. I don’t recommend messing with the design at first. We can talk more about design later. Now is the time to start writing and getting content! Decide what you want to say to the world and put it all out there. You wanted to start a fitness blog, right? So start by writing about what you know – fitness! I could write several separate posts about how to start writing for a blog but I recommend writing as often as possible for the first 30 days of your blog’s life. This way you can start building up content and get your feet wet. Here’s how you create a new post using WordPress:

In your WordPress Dashboard go to “Posts” in the left hand side of the navigation and click “Add New”:

This will take you to a page where you can now publish your first post:

There it is! Have any questions? Post in the comments and I’d be more than happy to help you out. If you want someone to help you get this done for you instead of doing it yourself, contact me and I might be able to help you out.

Thanks so much and hope you found this post on how to start a fitness blog helpful. If you think there is anything confusing or missing I would love to hear about it. My goal is to be as helpful as I can in this process!

What about you? What challenges have you found in starting a blog? Post in the comments and let me know. 

*Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.