Blogging has given a digital identity to numerous people across the world. I have met people who have taken blogging a a profession which not only gives them recognition but also serves as a source of passive residual income. Do you want to start your blog and attain this financial freedom and recognition? Well, this detailed guide will show you exactly how to start your trading blog. And not just trading, you can start a blog related to any domain following the same exact steps!

Why should you start a blog?

I assume you may be someone who just started exploring financial markets,  or your are an experienced trader who has a desire to learn new things. But, why should you start your trading blog? Isn’t it a overhead , given that your are already spending enough time learning about markets and trading.These are the obvious questions people ask me when I pitch this idea to them.

In my opinion, blogging supplements your learning, it is a way to document your learning and share with people. The more your share and discuss, more you would have authority on the topics you write about. I am a full-time trader and part-time blogger, and trust me, my trading skills has only improved after I started blogging. It makes me more confident when my readers appreciate and practice the strategies I post regularly. I get a sense of satisfaction when I can answer people’s queries. And I get overwhelmed to see my blog appearing on first page of Google search results.

Blogging can also help you to make some extra residual income, and who wouldn’t want that! I know people who earn a six digit income per month only through blogging. We will talk about it later in this article.

What can you write about?

This is the most careful aspect of blogging, you need to be very picky while selecting your blog topic. You should only write about something you are passionate about, or else you may lose interest in a long run. For ex: if you are a trader then don’t start a travel or food blog. Also, be specific on your blog niche, don’t write about multiple unrelated topics in a single blog. We, at TradingTuitions write about Algorithmic trading strategies and technical analysis. Below are few recommended topics you can start your trading blog with:

• Quantitative Finance
• Machine Learning in Trading
• High Frequency Trading
• Your own Trading Journal
• Fundamental Analysis
• Commodity Markets
• Option Strategies

Make sure that you select the topic that you are genuinely interested on. And do not share any trading tips in your blog unless you are a registered advisor.

Prerequisites for Blogging

Below are some of the per-requisites to start your trading blog:

• Working knowledge of computer
• Hold on any language (preferably English to reach max people)
• Minimal capital to setup your blog and go-live

We’ll cover rest of the required things in this article.

Step 1: Buy a Domain Name and Webspace

You will find numerous resources over internet which would guide you how to start a blog free of cost. But believe me, all free things are unsustainable. You definitely need to invest a small amount to start, which you can break-even in few months with proper plan and strategy. The very first investment you have to do is to buy a domain name and web-space. Domain name is the one through which your blog will be identified in the web (ex: www.tradingtuitions.com). Be thoughtful in selecting the domain name, as you cannot change it after. I would recommend to go for ‘.com’ domain name to have better authority and attract readers from all the geographies. Make it short and memorable, avoid hyphens and numbers. Web-space is kind of a digital storage where your website files would be stored.

I strongly recommend Bluehost to register your domain name as well as web-space. You may come across other vendors which may be cheaper, but nothing compares to bluehost in terms of stability and support. I have been using it for my multiple websites since a long time. Click on ‘Get Started’ below to register your web-space and domain name.

It will prompt you to select a plan. For beginners ‘basic‘ plan is suitable as it offers all the necessary features. You can always upgrade to other plans when you plan to scale-up your blog

Note that the prices mentioned are in US Dollars, it would be auto converted into your local currency during payment.

Click Select on the Basic plan and in the next screen check for the availability of your domain name.

If your domain name is available, you would be redirected to the payment page. Bluehost provides free domain name for the first year. Enter your KYC details and select the mode of payment. Remember to uncheck all the extra features which is not necessary for a starter blog. Once the payment is completed it takes few minutes to setup your account. You would receive a welcome email with the credentials to login to your cPanel.

Step 2: Install WordPress

WordPress in the most popular content management system (CMS). In simpler terms,  it is a blogging software which is absolutely free of cost. You need not to be a computer junkie to understand wordpress. It is simple, flexible  and very easy to maintain. Around 70% of blogs in the internet run on wordpress (including TradingTuitions).

Login to your cPanel through the credentials you would have received from Bluehost. From the very first section “Softaculous Apps Installer”, select WordPress.

In the next screen, select the Domain name you purchased in the previous step, and provide basic site details like Name and Description. You may select your Admin password, if not please make a note of auto-generated password. Leave all other fields as default and click on install.

The installation would take couple of minutes. That’s it, you have successfully setup your wordpress blog. In the next section we will learn how to publish your first article.

Step 3: Publish your First Article

You can access your wordpress dashboard using the following URL:

http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin

Enter your credentials and hit login button.

The dashboard screen will look something like below:

It may look complicated in the beginning, but slowly you will get a hold of it. All the things are customizable or drag and drop. You need not to write a single piece of code to maintain this blog.

Head on to Posts button and click on ‘Add New’. Enter the Post title and contents in the next screen. The content section is just like any text editor where you can add or format texts, images etc. Click on ‘Publish’ button towards the right to publish your article in the blog.

You would be able to see your article at your home page http://www.yourdomain.com/

I would not be able to cover all the wordpress features in a single post, but you can go through tutorials available all around the internet. If you want to learn in structured step by step fashion, I would recommend below Udemy courses. You would need to invest few bucks to subscribe for these courses:

The Complete WordPress Website Business Course

WordPress for Beginners – Master WordPress Quickly

Step 4: Install a Professional Theme

If you have completed Step 1 to 3, you would have noticed that the default wordpress theme is very basic. In order to stand out of crowd, you need to have a professional theme. You may find many free and paid themes through Google which you can easily install in your wordpress website. To explore free themes, goto Appearance–>Themes–>Add New from your wordpress dashboard. Select any of the themes and click on Install then Activate.

If you are seriously looking forward to publicize your blog and earn money through it, I would recommend to buy a premium theme. The benefit with premium themes is that they look very professional and gets updated from time to time. Check out the best selling themes from Themeforest here. These themes start from as low as 10$. You may want to start with free theme first and then upgrade later, but this is very risky from SEO standpoint. You should not change the website theme frequently as it can affect your website ranking. So chose wisely.

Step 5: Add Content to your Blog

Here comes the most important part. Once you are done with the installation and UI setup, you would need to add articles to start your trading blog.Follow the below guidelines for writing articles:

• Try to research what people are looking for in your domain and write the articles accordingly. Don’t try to re-write the same articles which are available all throughout the internet. This would make your blog unique.
• Supplement your articles with proper non-copyrighted images.
• Follow basic SEO guidelines to get visibility in search engines. You may want to install Yoast SEO plugin for this.
• Use simple language which can be understood by mass crowd.
• Strictly do not copy anything from anywhere. Google may ban you for doing this.

You can also outsource the content creation for as low as 3$ per article. There are many freelance writers who can do the job for you. I know many bloggers who regularly avail services from Contentmart  for articles.

Step 6: Publicize your Blog

There are multiple ways to publicize your blog and have a good presence in the internet. Once you have published few of the articles follow below steps to let people know about it:

• Create a Facebook page and Twitter account for your blog and share your article links there. Ask your friends or colleagues to join and promote this page. Alternatively, you may use Facebook ads for few days to promote your page.
• Join Q&A websites like Quora and Reddit, and answer other people’s queries. Paste your blog link in your answers as long as it does not look like spam.
• Join online forums and take part in discussions.
• Collect your subscribers email from your blog and send them regular newsletters.

All of the above are offsite SEO techniques where you are explicitly promoting your websites at third party platforms. But you would also have to work on your onsite SEO so that Google automatically discovers your blog in response to people’s search queries. This is more sustainable and improves your blog rank multi-fold.

In order to let your blog get indexed by Google, you would have to target low competition keywords and write articles around it. For ex: “Machine Learning for Trading” is a fairly low competition keyword which can help you to rank higher in Google search. While something like “Candlestick Chart” is a high competition keyword and you would have to wait for a long time to get ranked for this. I use SEMRUSH to find low competition keywords for my blog. It is a most popular digital marketing tool used by millions of bloggers across the world. Sign-up for a free trial using this link.

Use the below widget from SEMRUSH to analyze a particular keyword or domain. You can also see what keywords other websites are ranking for by entering their URL.

Step 7: Monetize your Blog

This is the last and important part of this article. It totally depends on you whether you want to monetize your blog or not. In case you want to make few extra bucks through your blog, there are many different ways you can do so. Below are few examples:-

• Signup for Google Adsense and start publishing ads on your blog. Each click on these ads from your visitors will fetch you money.
• Sell an e-book or tutorial related to your domain.
• Promote affiliate products or services on your blog. Whenever someone buys these products you would get commission.
• Conduct paid webinars for your subscribers.

There is no limit to this list. It all depends on your creativity how can you promote and monetize your blog. But do not expect to earn anything at-least for the first 3 months. Initially, just concentrate on promoting your blog and make it useful for your readers.

This marks an end to the tutorial on how to start your trading blog. I tried to cover the most I can, but still if you have any questions, shoot it in the comments section below. Try to follow each of the steps carefully and it would not take more than a weeks time to start your blog. Patience is the  key here, do not expect great results immediately. Blogging has now become more of a profession than hobby, and there is hell lot of competition out there. Good luck!