How to start & run a news blog successfully in 2022

Hi, I’m Praneeth Kumar.

I will walk you through a step-by-step on how you can start and run a news blog.

This is the ultimate guide you need to know in order to learn how to start a news blog in practical steps.

You will simply LOVE this ultimate guide I bet you on that.

So without further ado let’s get started.

Here is a 30000-foot view of the blog post.

What is a news blog?

A news blog is like any other blog as the name refers but it talks about news related to any topic or subject on a website.

Now let’s see how you can step by step start and run a news blog successfully.

Select a niche and industry for your news blog;

The most important part of starting any blogging Website is its niche selection process.

Whether it is a news website or blog that You want to create or a business website that You want to create.

Look let’s assume you want to start a news blog on the technology niche.

But what’s the problem with something as broad as a tech news website is there are so many topics You can cover.

Selecting a broad niche for your news website is bad for the following reasons.

• You don’t have a clear direction in which path you want to cover news about.
• You can’t be successful in such a broad niche with the brand new news website because it is very competitive, there are many large media sites like TechCrunch who will be your competitors.
• The audience who visit your website is not really targeted.

While selecting a niche for your website for your news blog I would highly recommend you to prefer starting from a micro niche news blog and slowly you can grow from there.

Let’s take the same example of a tech news blog.

In the technology niche, you can write and create news about many different sub-niches or micro-niches like,

• iPhone company products or any specific company products.
• You can talk about only specific devices like laptops or like mouses.
• You can cover news about releases and updates on different phone or computer accessories.

By covering and publishing news on a micro-niche, you can get more traffic and build trust and authority with both google and the audience as it wouldn’t be so competitive as well to succeed faster in such a small niche.

The point is that you need to dig down in the niche that you are trying to start a blog on where you can find low competition and high demand.

You can use Google trends to find out the trend of each topic and decide whether you should target that niche or not.

Niche selection for a news blog is quite different compared to a business blog.

In a news blog, you don’t have to do keyword research or do much SEO of your website to be able to drive traffic from search.

I will talk about how you can run a news blog effectively later in this blog.

But, if you have completed finding the right niche for your news blog.

Let’s move forward to learn how to start a news blog effectively.

Affiliate Disclosure:

Some of the links in this blog are affiliate links which means I get a commission whenever you purchase a product that I recommend from any one of my links in this blog at no additional cost to you.

This is how I have monetized my blog to earn money and this helps me keep producing such high-quality free resources to you guys consistently on this blog.

For more details, you can check my affiliate disclosure.

How to start a news blog.

Here are three steps to take to immediately start and launch your news blog as soon as possible.

I will walk you through all the steps in detail.

Let’s dive right in.

1. Buy Domain and web hosting.

For those of you who do not know what domain and hosting is.

A domain name is the name of your website on the internet.

Just like we human beings have different names which give us a unique identity from others.

A Domain name gives an identity to a website on the internet.

What is web hosting then?

Consider a web hosting as a rented place where you can store your website, all the files like text, images of the website on the internet so other people can access it.

I won’t get into much detail about web hosting and domain name because it will make the blog a lot longer.

Although I have published a lot of blogs on domain and hosting you can check them out below.

Related resources;

You can learn more about domain names here.

You can learn more about web hosting types and the benefits of web hosting service here.

You can learn here the best web hosting service for beginners.

Now let’s come to the blog.

You need to buy a domain name that can cost you around for 15$ a year.

You also need to invest money in buying a web hosting service for your website to be able to start a news blog,

there is no average rate for this because there are lots of different companies offering different prices which you can choose to start.

I would highly recommend you start your website on Bluehost hosting.

There are five main reasons why you should choose bluehost hosting for your news blog.

1. They offer a free domain name for a year for free.
2. They offer CDN and caching for absolutely free of cost which is a great offer for news websites especially because they get a lot of traffic on the internet.
3. They give web hosting services for as low as 2.95$ a month.
4. They give excellent 24/7 customer service.
5. They offer lots of additional features like free SSL, lots of disk space, easy WordPress installation, backups, etc.
6. They have a good website loading speed and uptime guarantee.

Over 2 million websites on the internet are hosted on Bluehost hosting so You know it is legit.

I have also written a detailed Bluehost web hosting review where I have discussed all the pros and cons of Bluehost, You can check it out here.

Before deciding a domain name for your website make sure you follow the things below.

1. Make sure the domain name you choose is short and sweet, easy to remember and read.
2. Make sure that you choose a top-level domain name which is like .com or .net or .org.
3. Avoid using hyphens or numbers in your domain name so that it makes it hard for people to remember your domain name.

Please don’t spend a lot of time figuring out the domain name for your website because it does not really affect your website performance much but make sure you follow the things mentioned above.

I will walk you through a step-by-step on how you can buy web hosting and domain name for your website and get started building your news blog on Bluehost.

First of all, visit the Bluehost using my special link here to be able to activate your discount for 65% off ( my affiliate link )

Now, you will visit the official page of Bluehost and click on get started as shown in the picture above.

Click on get started and you will see the list of plans to choose,

It is your wish which plans you want to choose but I personally would like to recommend you to go with a choice plus plan because it obviously gives lots of features like unlimited websites, free domain and along with that free backups as well.

After selecting the plan you can either choose the domain name right now or you can take the free domain offer later after buying the web hosting, it is your wish, if you wish to decide domain later, you can click on below arrow highlighted in the image below.

Now you need to fill in all the important details and buy the web hosting,

There are many upsells that Bluehost offers like Bluehost SEO tools which I personally would not recommend you to buy because,

they are not really worth the money and there are many free alternatives to such tools which you can get through WordPress.

Now that you have filled in the important details and buy the web hosting and you can signup for the account and get started.

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2. Install WordPress and set up your news blog.

Now that you have bought the domain and hosting for your website it’s time to install WordPress on your web hosting service and set up your news blog.

For those of you who do not know what WordPress is, it is a content management system where you can manage all of your website content files using this amazing software.

I would like to point out something clear that,

You can of course start your news blog without buying a domain name and hosting for your website like using a free website builder is like,

• Wix.
• Blogger.

But the problem with such free website builders is that they don’t give you complete control of your website,

they can delete your website at any time if you avoid or break any of their rules and regulations,

they have limited storage and bandwidth capacity( huge disadvantage for starting a news blog on these platforms),

you cannot actually grow and scale your news blog in the long-term using these free hosting and sub-domains these Website builders offer.

If you just wanted to start a niche-oriented blog, not a news blog then I would have recommended you to start on Wix or other if you do not want to invest money in WordPress.

• You can check out the best blogging platforms to make money.

Now let’s talk about why you should use WordPress over other content management systems.

• WordPress is Managing over 40% of the websites on the internet.
• WordPress is a highly powerful and open source content management system.
• Because we are starting a news blog, wordpress is a great option because you can add lots of people to your blog as contributors with different roles, there are lots of plugins and themes you can use to customize your blog.

I won’t talk about all of the pros and cons of using WordPress, I have written a detailed guide about WordPress review you can check it out here.

I will walk you through all the steps needed to take after installing wordpress on your hosting account and setting up your news blog and configuration of all the settings.

First signup to bluehost with your email address through which you created the account.

You will get to the dashboard, get to the cpanel of the bluehost and scroll to the bottom of the cpanel to install wordpress like this,

Now you will get something like this,

Click on the wordpress and install the wordpress.

Now you can get something like this,

Now you have successfully installed WordPress., by the way, you can also access your WordPress dashboard directly through this like,’

Yourdomainname.com/wp-admin, in your domain name you should place your present domain name and extension can be anything that you have chosen like .com or .net or, .in depending upon which domain you bought.

it is a shortcut link to access your WordPress.

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# Select a theme for your news blog.

A theme in WordPress is kind of a way to change the appearance and look of your website.

You can consider wordpress themes as something like wallpaper to your mobile phone.

Your wordpress website theme will decide how your website will look, its layout, and feel for users on the internet.

Now let’s see how you can select and change wordpress theme for your news blog.

Click on the appearance and select the themes and then click on add new,

Now you can search for your themes or sort the themes through the filters and install and activate the theme.

A quick note on the themes, make sure that you always install the themes which have the following things,

• The theme gets frequently updated.
• The theme has lots of positive reviews and ratings.
• The theme offers lots of customer support.

You can check all of these things in the official themes in WordPress here.

Now that you know how you can select and change the theme for your blog I highly recommend you to select one of the themes which are mentioned below for your news blog as all of these news blog themes are highly optimised for news websites.

1. Newsmag.
2. Newspaper.
3. Bimber.
4. Jnews.
5. Pixwell.

Some of these themes have free versions but I would highly recommend you to at least spend some money in buying premium versions of these themes because it will open up more room for customisation and Optimisation.

By the way, after using the following themes, you can customize your news blog theme further like changing the font color or increasing the font size and changing the logo size,

and many more things by clicking on the appearance and customize section and you are able to customize all like this,

# Install important plugins for your news blog.

A WordPress plugin is a simple line of code that you add to your WordPress website and these WordPress plugins help you add new functionality to your wordpress website without you ever touching and editing a line of code by yourself.

As a complete beginner to WordPress, I will walk you through a step-by-step on how you can install and activate plugins on your wordpress website and then,

I will recommend to you all the important plugins you need to install on your news blog to kickstart your news blogging journey.

In order to learn how to install and activate a plugin on your wordpress website.

First, go to plugins in the left-hand bar in WordPress which I explained in the image below and select the section of plugins and click on add new like,

In the search bar, search for any plugin and as I highlighted in the image above, I have searched for a plugin called updraft plus which is a backup plugin in WordPress which I highlighted in the box section, you should install and activate the plugin.

Now that you know how to install a plugin,

I highly recommend you to install the following plugins on your news blog.

1. 1. Amp-To make your blog load faster on mobile devices.
   2. Rankmath-To make your news blog SEO friendly.
   3. WProcket-Caching and performance booster plugin to boost the speed and performance of your WordPress website.
   4. Adinserter- it inserts ad codes into your header, footer, and other sections of your WordPress website.
   5. Akismet anti-spam-to removes all the spam comments on your blog.
   6. Smush-to compresses all the images and lazy load images and decreases the loading speed of your website.
   7. Sassy Social share-add social sharing buttons on your website.
   8. Updraftplus-take backups of your website.
   9. Contact form 7- add a contact form on your blog so that your audience can directly contact you.
   10. Simple author box- add an author box so your audience can learn about the person who covered and wrote the news on your blog.
   11. PushEngage-add web push notifications to your website.
   12. Wordfence-to improves the security of your website.

These are all the types of WordPress plugins to install and activate on your WordPress website, you can do a quick search in the plugin section and install and activate the plugin just like i have explained earlier.

Now let’s have a look at some important settings you need to configure after installing the plugins on your website.

# configure some important settings.

Now that you have installed your wordpress website, applied the theme and installed the necessary plugins on your website.

I will walk you through all the important things you need to configure before starting to publish news on your blog.

1. Permalinks.

As soon as to install wordpress on your web site hosting you need to configure the permalinks settings of your blog.

Select the permalinks structure i have shown below.

This is going to be the permalink of your website blogs like whenever you publish any blogs on your blog, your url will be like this,

yourdomainname.com/category/postname

We have selected this as your URL for the future of your posts.

You will have to click on save the changes.

2. Categories.

Read along with me to learn how to create categories to your wordpress blog step by step.

In order to learn how to create categories, you need to hover on posts section and click on categories option and start creating the categories.

You need to create multiple categories for your news blog depending upon your niche and the type of news you will cover in your blog.

As we have taken the example of Technology niche.

In technology niche, let’s assume you want to to create a news blog where you publish news about a specific topic related to Samsung company only.

I would create categories like the following.

• Samsung phones.
• Samsung tablets.
• Samsung laptops.
• Latest news.
• Samsung accessories.
• Interviews.

You got the point!

I just have taken the example of Samsung company to let you know what type of categories you should create on your news blog so that you can categorise your multiple news in different sections which makes it easy for audience to find and read the news on your blog.

Depending upon your niche you can create multiple categories so that you can divide your news in different sections.

3. Menu.

Now that you have created multiple categories for your news blog it’s time to add those categories into your menu section so that it can appear on your website header.

Let’s see how you can add all the categories that you have created in your menu.

First, go to appearance in the left bar in wordpress and click on menus and select any page, any category or any post that you want to get displayed as a menu for your news blog like this mentioned below in the image.

4. Tags.

Tags define what the different news blog on your blog is related to like the general topic.

Just like categories, you can create these tags in the posts section and click on tags and create these,

5. Un-click disable the Search index option.

Now, this is the most important section like you should make sure that you disable or unclick this section in WordPress,

If in case if you enable this option and click and save this option, this will let Google crawlers to stop crawling your website and your website will not be indexed in the google database,

I highly recommend you to uncheck this because I want your website to get crawled and indexed by google,

if not google would not know that you are a new news blog that is slowly building the blog and publishing it, this feature if enabled blocks google crawlers from indexing your website by google bots.

To check this, select the settings in WordPress left-hand bar,

Click on the reading section and scroll down where it says search engine visibility.

Don’t click on the button and save as this can stop your WordPress website from getting crawled and indexed by google’s spiders and bots.

6. Select the title and tagline of your website.

You need to select the title and tagline for your website like in general settings of your WordPress here.

7. Take care of your WordPress security.

I don’t want to discuss much on WordPress security, I have written a detailed guide about it here I can’t explain here because,

there are so many things in it, you can read the ultimate guide to WordPress security here.

Look WordPress is an open-source CMS which means it is the largest cms which have the highest vulnerability for attacks and hacks as per many studies so you need to keep your website with WordPress secure.

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3. Setup important tools and Publish important Pages.

Now you need to set up some important tools and connect them with your website like Google Analytics and Google search console.

Google Analytics – This is a tool that Google gives for you as the webmaster to analyze and see your website traffic sources, top pages, and much more amazing website information.

Google search console – This is a tool that Google gives for you to see all the keywords your blog ranks for with ctr, impressions, top linked pages, and much more useful data to make a blog successful.

Now it’s time to publish some important pages on your website before starting to publish news.

These are pages not posts you need to publish on your WordPress website like these are static pages which you don’t have to update regularly.

I want you to publish the following pages immediately on your website.

1. Privacy policy
2. Contact us
3. About us.
4. DMCA page.
5. Terms and conditions
6. Advertisement page
7. Disclosure pages

All these pages are very important for you to publish on your news blog so that you can stay safe both legally and publically while publishing news on your blog.

You can find many online resources where you can easily figure out and get your important pages like privacy policy, dmca, terms and conditions and disclosure pages ready for free of cost.

You can show all of these pages in the footer section of your website like this,

Source: Nytimes.com

All you need to do is to select widgets and add pages in the footer and save 

Select the appearance and then widgets and select the pages in the footer part of the widget and save the changes as shown in the image below.

So far you are going good and if you have completed your website setup till here then you are having a perfect start for your news blog now let have a look at how you can run a news blog, find and publish news, get traffic and make money.

How to run a news blog: 

Running a news blog is completely different from starting one, 

Running a news blog requires you to do the following things explained below.

1. Gather news from different sources.

Before publishing news on your website, you first have to gather news from different sources.

Let’s assume that you want to create a news blog on a technology-related sub-niche like any specific company niche.

In order to gather news about that niche, you can follow the techniques mentioned below.

1. You can follow all the social media accounts, blogs, websites of that particular company to receive regular updates and information so that you can publish on your news blog.
2. You can follow major technology media sites like TechCrunch, wired, etc to receive the latest and greatest information about technology-related news first.
3. Subscribe to press releases of your industry.

You can also cover news related to your industry from TV news channels if you want.

These are all the popular methods to gather news information related to your specific industry and now it’s time to publish news on your blog and drive traffic.

2. Publish news on your blog frequently and build an authority.

Now that you have gathered news from different sources on the Internet regarding your niche, it’s time to publish that news on your blog on a regular basis.

Unlike regular Blogging on a particular niche, if you want to run a successful news blog you need to constantly publish a lot of blog posts about news on your blog each and every day.

To get more specific you need to publish at least 20 to 25 pieces of news articles on your blog. 

It might sound very overwhelming but it is what it is.

Depending upon your niche and the competition in it.

You will have to publish a lot of news content on your blog because you are a new blog.

Here is a list of five types of news articles which you can publish on your blog.

• Comments and opinions- you can share your opinion and comment on any particular event in your news blog and give your audience a new perspective on the incident.

• Facts & Stories- you can share facts and stories about a particular event in your news blog so that your audience can get to know information pretty quickly.

• Analysis- you can write a detailed analysis of any particular event or accident that took place in your industry to let your audience know more about the incident.

• Interviews- you can do interviews of famous personalities in your industry and publish it on your blog so your audience can read it if they like.

• Ground reports- you can also do ground reports of news that convey your information with your audience through blogs.

These are different type of news articles you can publish on news blog.

The most important part of any news blog is publishing news on its blog.

It requires a lot of consistency, determination, and hard work to publish lots of news blogs every day and I do not recommend you to start a news blog if you are only a solitary guy.

To run a successful news blog you need to have a team of journalists who gather the news and writers who ORIGINAL published the news.

Now that you have learnt how to gather and publish news articles on your blog let’s see how you can drive traffic to your news blog.

By publishing news constantly on your blog you gain some authority and credibility from Google and build some audience on your blog.

3. Get traffic to your news blog.

Now that you have published news on your blog it’s time to bring traffic to your blog so that you can make money from it.

I have listed down below all the methods through which you can drive traffic to your news blog.

1. You can create a dedicated Facebook page and social media accounts related to your news blog and start sharing news that you publish on your blog on social media platforms so that other people can visit your blog from social media channels and visit your blog.
2. You can submit your news blog to Google news and get traffic from it.
3. You can guest post on other media sites related to your industry as a journalist and get traffic from their websites to your website through backlinks.
4. Use web push notifications to send notifications to your audience whenever you publish latest news on your blog to let them visit.
5. You can also collect email addresses of your audience and send them email notifications of important news that you publish on your website not all regular news because it might look spammy.

These are all the popular methods to drive traffic to your news blog.

Now let’s see how you can make money from your news blog.

4. Make Money.

You can make money from your news blog from the following ways explained below.

1. You can display AdSense or other ad network ads on your blog and make money depending on views and clicks on the ads.
2. You can accept and publish sponsored posts on your blog from companies and brands.
3. You can create a monthly membership blog like many large media sites do such as nytimes and Washingtonpost where users can get access to blog content and other exclusive content for monthly subscription fees.
4. You can sell Amazon affiliate products on your blog depending on your news niche if you want to.
5. Based on your blog performance, You can get hired to attend a meeting, seminar, events and conferences from where you can make money on hourly rates.

These are all the major popular ways to earn money from a news blog.

These are all the things you need to know about how you can start and run a news blog from scratch.

With that being said let’s conclude the blog post.

Ending remarks.

This is all you need to know in order to start and run a successful news blog.

Do comment down whether your starting a news blog taking my blog as a reference or not.

If you have already started a news blog, you can read my other guide on how to write a news blog step by step.

Share the blog post if you have found it helpful.

Sharing is caring.

I will catch you next time till then,

Keep learning and keep growing.