How to Start a Blog in 2025 | By Sophia Lee

how to start a blog in 2025 my most popular video all year my name is Sophie I started the blog by Sophia Lee which is a 7 figure blog so we make well over $100,000 a month on the blog and I have learned so many things since I started the blog I'm going to give you my top tips on what I would do now if I was starting to blog and I'm switching up this video a little bit the previous videos I kind of gave you like a to-do list like this is how you actually

start your blog which I'm going to Rapid Fire give you the most important things that you need to know when starting a blog but I'm keeping it really short and blunt because I want then want to get to the second part of the video which is my actual like top tips and these tips have changed from previous years because the blogging world is changing so much so I have a lot to talk about let's get into it so that you can also start a seven figure blog I'm doing these Rapid Fire for the actual steps

in starting your blog but these are really really really important I have a whole blog post going over these more in detail if you want to look into that but rapid fire you need to start a self-hosted WordPress blog and you need to have a host for it self-hosted basically means that you own it so it's not on blogs Bo it's not on Squarespace um it has to be a WordPress blog if you are looking to actually make money from it a lot of the ad plugins and just plugins in general that I use to

make money uh they only work on WordPress selfhosted blogs so that's really really important for the host part of it um you can do really affordable host I started with blue host and then I went to Big scoots big scoots is better their customer service is better um they're faster however big scoots is a lot more expensive so if you I always say like big scoots is like the target version and blue host is the Walmart version and then you can go to the nordom version which is your own host and that's like so expensive

so I started on blue host because I didn't have a lot of money to spend on a host which is what I would recommend if you don't want to spend a lot of money it's like $2 a month or something um I'll the link for that too but big scoots is better so if you are able to afford it I would go with big scoots Blu host can be your option if you can't not even if you can't afford it if you don't want to spend a lot of money which is another one of my

tips don't spend a lot of money in the beginning blogging because you need to make sure you're going to stick with it first okay so that was number one rapid fire number two you have to get on Pinterest and Tik Tok this is something that's shifting this year Pinterest I've always been a huge proponent on Pinterest is the only social media platform that you can strictly that you directly go to to then go back to a Blog so think about it like when you're on Instagram when you're even on Tik Tok okay which I'm going

to I'll talk about Tik Tac in two seconds but even when you're on those platforms how often are you actually jumping over to someone's website like I know for me it's probably once every 4 days but when I'm on Pinterest I am constantly going and clicking on on to someone's website whether it's for a recipe or for a design or for uh whatever it is and so that's why it's really important for you to get on Pinterest the first way that you're going to make money on your blog most likely is by teaming up with

an ad agency and to get into an ad agency so you know how like websites will have ads on their website um to get into one of those to have the ads you need to have a certain number of page views and the easiest way to get page views is by getting on Pinterest so so get on Pinterest it is my number one thing I have a Pinterest course that you can do to see exactly my strategy um but it is literally huge okay then Tik Tok the reason I'm saying Tik Tok is the rate

of people going from your Tik Tok to your website is really it's not um as crazy as Pinterest like if you went clicks to your website Pinterest is the way to go however Google and this is going to be another one of my points when I get to my tips Google is favoring videos so much and Tik Tok is by far the easiest platform where you can go to zero to 100,000 followers or whatever it is really really fast because of the for you page so you don't need to already have a following if Tik

Tok wants to show your videos it's going to show your videos whether you have two followers or whether you have 600,000 followers um so kind of a few reasons why I really am a proponent of Tik Tok one you can get so many eyes on your content you can become very credible in whatever Niche that you're getting into but two add those Tik toks in your blog post because Google will start favoring them a lot more and I know it is very scary to put yourself out there especially because people are just mean on Tik

Tok to start a bloger you have to have thick skin and um in this day and age I am more of a proponent on getting on social media earlier just because it will grow you a lot faster number three take courses I am the biggest course taker ever anytime I'm wanting to learn something I immediately Buy a course of course when I was first studying my blog I was in college I had literally no money um I would babysit on the side to make money for taking courses and so uh it was a really big

deal when I bought a course but my entire mindset and what you needs to be your mindset with courses too is that you are paying a small amount to learn something that would take you six months a year two years to learn so by me taking a course and learning from someone that was very successful in whatever I was trying to learn was able to help my blog grow so much faster so even though I was spending money on it I was making money a lot faster because something I would learn something in two weeks

versus me trying to spend six months a year you know that time frame trying to learn it so take courses I have all of my favorite courses that I've taken on my website too I'll link that below and then I plug have courses um read the comments in these YouTube videos people always are talking talking about the courses and you can get a lot of feedback on my personal courses I have one on my it's called perfecting blogging and it goes over the SEO how I actually set up my blog how I set up my

web page how I set up my blog post so that they're ranked how I do my content calendars Etc I also have perfecting Pinterest which goes over my whole entire Pinterest strategy and exactly how I do that perfecting email and then I just came out with a social media course as well so research courses there are so many out there um of course I'd love for you to take mine but if it's not what you're trying to learn go research other ones like I said I am the biggest proponent of courses ever and I think

that a course is so much more worth your money than spending it on something else stupid that's not going to make you money in the future okay fourth fast tip on actually setting up your website is get a WordPress theme so a WordPress theme is what will make your website look pretty from the outside unfortunately or fortunately however you want to look at it we live in a world where people do care about what things look like and the better your website looks like the better your website looks the more legit you're going to look

it is really really hard to navigate the back end of Wordpress and design a Blog unless you're a website designer I'm going to assume that you're not a website designer and I'm not a website designer either so go on Etsy um I also have a list of my favorite places that you can buy WordPress themes also in the description places where I bought my themes um but that is like the easiest way to do it so essentially you buy the theme exactly how you want it to look you can edit it so like you can

make it your own change the colors usually um I think like almost always you can change the colors but you can like you can customize it and some you can customize more than others but when you buy it you can get then get like the WordPress code and so basically all you do is take that code and put it into your own website and it will like magically design it in two seconds other than you trying to to buy or get a free WordPress theme and then edit it and then you mess something up and

then you have to revert your website it's just a mess so highly recommend you buying a WordPress theme they get they're really cheap you can either I mean there's a huge range of prices obviously but you can buy them for like $5 so you know I think probably standard pricing is more like $75 but if you don't want to spend a lot of money you can literally get one for $5 Which is less than like a coffee somewhere at this point so that is my fourth I think that was my fourth tip on actually setting

up your website now I'm going to get into my tips on blogging in general and like I said at the beginning of this video this has changed a lot in the last year I feel like my previous like 2021 2022 2023 2024 how to start a blog videos were decently similar and now over the last year just a lot of things have shifted on Google's interface on what they're liking um and so I have some opinions on how I would do it again if I was starting a new blog that I wanted to make money

off of okay so number one you got to figure out what direction and this isn't even one of my tips I'm just freeballing right now but this is going to lead into all my tips and it's really important you need to figure out what are you doing with your blog are you starting your blog to make money are you starting your blog to become credible are you starting your blog to um have an outlet for you to write on about something you're passionate about like what is it because you're going to handle the actual backend

process of it differently if you are looking to strictly start a blog to I should honestly do another video on this on what to do if you're looking to strictly start a blog that makes money versus what you're looking to start to do to start a blog that um you can start a business off of because I would handle it in two different ways so the number one thing is is that we are trying to make Google and the social medias like us um and right now Google is favoring video content so much so in

any V and on any post on my blog that I can add a video into I do which is why you will see a lot of our Tik Tok videos being put onto our actual blog post and you'll notice when you're searching in Google that when you search something a lot of times nowadays one of the first things that come up is literally Tik Tac videos it will be like I'll be like how to make chicken how to make fried chicken I don't know I don't know how that came to mind something random like that

and instead of it being a Blog post now it is the First videos are videos and so the thing with that is that we still want to get them directed to our blog so the way that I would handle that is I would make it really clear in my video because if people are going to be clicking like you want Google to like you and the way to get Google to like you is have a blog post and a video so first if you're going to video if your video is going to pop up first

you need to have a really clear call to action like for the Fried Chicken example on my website you can find this full right recipe and on the Tik Tok video how I would do it is I would do like a very I would still show everything but I might leave out the exact um measurements for the ingredients because then people are going to be like well what's the exact measurements I'm going be like it's all on this blog post and then you're redirecting people directly to your website but for even your website to rank

at this point you don't have to have videos but it is strongly encouraged by Google and I do think that you'll rank faster if you do have videos they don't even need to be on Tik Tok they can be on YouTube just like this um not really sure how it I guess why would you even film a video and just like upload it directly like you have so much better success if you put it on YouTube or Tik Tok so yeah do videos your content will rank a lot faster adjust to people's current attention span

which is essentially nothing okay people do not have attention spans even the attention span is just even different from when I started a Blog to what people will pay attention to now so in the beginning I try to make everything very very interesting whether it's including Graphics that are interesting whether it's including the video or I'll do call to actions where they can be like if you want to skip to this part of the post click here and it will literally like you can click on it and then it will go take you to the

most important part of the post so that people aren't just automatically clicking out of it but you have to keep your content very interesting otherwise we have no attention spans I have no attention span you probably don't have a long attention span and you have to think about that when writing a blog post oh my gosh this one is huge and if you follow me on anything else you know I am the biggest proponent of chat gbt on basically every aspect of my life besides a blog post I do not use chat gbt in any

way shape or for on my blog because Google knows and they have they have legitimately said we will we know and we will not show your content if you are using any type of AI or chat gbt on your website so this is really important I know it can make your life faster and I know it can technically write a blog post in like 2 seconds you cannot use it it will ruin your blog Google will not show you anything on your website for it um and they are prioritizing real life content more than ever

write your opinions say I use this this is how I use something this is what I like to do this is how I incorporate this into my life like make it very known in the blog post that you are a real human being that you are actually using the product that you know what you're talking about that you are not just saying something on AI and then hoping that it comes up with a response like you are proving to both people and honestly more to Google that you are a real life human being I even

do things which like I'm psycho about making sure that Google likes us like I will even like purposely like spell things wrong just like a little bit you know or like do something where it's like very obvious that this is a human being behind the screen writing this and this is not Ai and it is real valuable content something that I'm focusing on a lot this year is because and this is something more I think as you just get bigger is we have so many graphics and images on our website that we have seen our

website slowing down and so I um just purchased WordPress rocket a few weeks ago this is not something that you need to do right away but it is a tip if you're noticing that your website is slower um and it goes over all of the background it like looks at anything that you need to fix on your website and it just makes it it basically tells you like how can you make your website faster these are the things going wrong with it um and it has been immensely helpful so that is my latest plug-in that

I have added into it and um I'm hoping that can really help speed up our website because it is running a little slow right now and I think it's just because we have thousands and thousands and thousands of pictures which you need to have in it so it's kind of like a double-edged sword but just wanted to know WordPress rocket is one of the plugins that I'm adding into my routine this year next tip is on algorithm changes um I always am talking about algorithm changes because it is just a really big part of having

a Blog and being on social media but Google did go through its most brutal algorithm change this year that I have ever experienced and um you know I am always a proponent of don't freak out when an algorithm changes do not change everything that you're doing change one thing test it for a few weeks see if it adjusts anything and then you can decide if you want to keep doing it or not and then go change something else I often see people during an algorithm changed freak out and then change every single thing that they're

doing and you never know what was actually worth changing and what was not worth changing um what I have seen is that our traffic is not ranking as quickly as it used to on Google and so now we are really focusing on Pinterest and making sure that every single one of our blog posts has pins that we're updating our pin again I have Pinterest course where you can go over exactly your Pinterest strategy but um I'm just making sure that my Pinterest is right and tight because our Pinterest is ranking a lot faster and so

we're still able to get the views it's just we're kind of Shifting before we put such an emphasis on SEO and we're still putting such an emphasis on SEO because you never know like when is Google going to do another algorithm change where they're now going to go back or going to start focusing again on SEO and so we want to still have that but I'm also watching that when I write a post my pins are getting views on it much much faster than my blog post so you just kind of have to be aware

of that this will be an interesting year to see how the algorithm change plays out I know like even our stats like oh my gosh we had like a huge drop I think it was in July and then it went back up normal um like two weeks later and then it's just it's just you never know with algorithm changes and you have to be able to handle them as a blogger someone starting a blog because it is brutal and it is stressful but do not please do not go and change everything you're doing because you

will hate yourself in the future and Google will not like you either and lastly this is something that I have learned in the last few years I think one of the best things that you can do for your blog is having a like second plan when I say second phase plan you are going to use your website and I'm going to actually change this to what I did I use my website and my blog as something that gained me credibility in a certain Niche um and I did this actually in like I guess technically in

three ways cuz I started multiple businesses off of the blog one on this on blogging and on talking about how to start a blog I was able to successfully prove that I was I could start a successful blog that made millions of dollars and now I can go talk about it on here and I can create courses and I get ad money from these videos and I make money from the courses and that has made a lot of money for the blog okay same with we I like my biggest company that I started was a

daily planner brand I my whole blog started off of talking about home decor in organization and so I was really able to naturally capture an audience that cared a lot about the way that their home looked and a lot about their organization and they cared a lot about their planner and how they organized their day and how they were most efficient as possible so that when I started my planner line it was such a natural progression and it was like of course you started to planner online like she's been giving us her free planner principles

of what she was creating for years and years like I know I like those I know I'm going to like her actual planner and by starting by almost like branching off from the blog but making them work hand inand with each other like cuz now I have the daily the planner line and I have the blog but they're totally like correlating with each other I've been able to start a huge business that is way bigger than the blog and makes way more money than the blog honestly um but I could have never started if I

didn't have the blog so that is what I mean by a two-face thing and I also give the example of like dog like let's say you start a blog on dogs and you talk about blog about dogs and everything about dogs and you talk about your favorite food and you talk about your favorite walking routine and you talk about how your favorite toys and you talk about your the 10 Essentials you get when you have a puppy and whatever it is and then you become known in the industry one Google notes that you are you

know everything about dogs that you can know and you are someone strong that they can recommend to people when they search something you have your audience who also knows that you are a website about dogs you're credible you know what you're talking about they trust your opinion and then you go start a dog food brand or you start a dog toy line like you have people who have been following you for years or even for months or whatever it is and they're like I know I trust his content on dogs I have followed his recommendations

already my f dog's favorite toy is from the from this website because he recommended it whatever that makes so much sense that my favorite dog toy is the one he recommended if he's recommending if he started dog food line like that could be my favorite dog food now you know like and it goes hand in hand and then he could go sell the dog food company for millions and millions and millions of dollars so I just always am like I think now as I'm getting older and I'm just getting more St iic on how I'm

handling my businesses think about the second phase there is nothing I mean to have the relatability and to have the backing of a Blog and have Google knowing that you're good and have your audience knowing that you're credible I mean it can do Insane things for your businesses and um I'm a strong strong proponent on having like a second business phase that you can use off of your blog and really your blog at that point is just marketing your blog is just a marketing engine I always say that I'm like you might think that it's

weird that I'm on social media all the time and that I have a Blog but it's the same thing as 40 years ago going and putting a ad in the newspaper you know like that is my marketing engine that is how I get eyes on my products that is how I sell things that is how I do everything and then I have the business side of it but it wouldn't be anything if I didn't have the blog which is the marketing engine so that is my little T talk on that and that wraps up how

to start a blog in 2025 I know that video was slightly different than my previous videos um but this was a really fun video to film I cannot wait to see all the blogs that come out of 2025 make sure to subscribe to this channel I give really good vlogging tips and again check out our courses uh I have all of the things that I talked about in the description box but I cannot wait for 2025 I feel like the future is bright and and I'm so excited to see all of the successful blogs that

come out of the next year