How to Prepare for a Blog Launch

Are you getting ready to start a blog? First, congratulations!! You are taking a huge step toward your future career and financial goals. I’ve been blogging for almost two years now and am finally starting to see real, legitimate income coming in from my blog. You can view my latest income report here 🙂

How you launch your blog matters. Sure, you can definitely just start posting and not “prepare” for your blog launch. But, with a little preparation and know-how, you will gain a much bigger following right off the bat than you ever thought possible.

Get my FREE guide on how to start a profitable blog here! >>

And if you haven’t started a blog yet, first head over to my tutorial to get going!

Now, let’s get started.

How to Prepare for Your Blog Launch

Set up all of my new social media accounts

You can use some of your current social media accounts, but others you’ll want to change. Pinterest (follow me here!), for example, can stay the same; but everything else should be new so it matches your new blog name, including a new email address specifically for that blog.

Get your blog organized

Choose a theme, set up your pages and categories, and figuring out what you want to display on your sidebar. If you’re struggling with this part, I highly recommend my book – The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging – to get you started! I wrote this book with you (ie new bloggers) in mind.

Get your newsletter up and running

A newsletter was never a focus of mine for this blog until recently, and I do not want you to make that same mistake, too. Having a newsletter allows you to create an engaged audience. Whether you’re launching a product or showcasing your posts for the week, it’s a fantastic way to reach readers who know and love your blog in a matter of minutes. You can display your newsletter on your “coming soon” page to have subscribers before you even go live! (This is done with EZP Coming Soon plugin.)

Create content

When the blog goes live, aim to have 10 posts that you can start promoting on social media. If you want to grow a blog, you have to spend just as much time (if not more!) promoting your content than writing your content. You might be writing killer content, but if no one’s reading it, what’s the point?

Join more group boards on Pinterest

Group boards are a great way to get your blog exposure. Go to Pinterest.com and search for your blog’s topic, then select “Boards” at the top and only group boards will show up in your results. Then, when you find one you like and think your blog will be a good fit for, email the administrator and ask to join! I’m a huge fan of group boards – the more you join, the better!

To help with scheduling, I highly recommend Tailwind. I log on twice a week and schedule out all my pins for the week. I’m currently pinning almost 100 pins per day! This would not be possible without a scheduling tool. Tailwind is worth every penny! And, you can try it out for free!

Create an editorial calendar

Try to have your blog planned out for at least two months. Not everything needs to be written prior to that, but at least then you’ll have a game plan in place and a general direction for your blog. Think about what’s coming up in your own life and on the calendar when creating content. Are the holidays right around the corner? Is it back to school season? Are you going to be out of town on vacation for a few weeks coming up? It’s always best to plan out as much as you can – with blogging, you can always rearange as you go 🙂

Finalize your logo and theme

Blog themes can be the death of you! There are so many beautiful ones to choose from! I’m partial to Restored316 themes, but you can always use a free one to start out with!

Write a free guide to give to people who sign up for your newsletter

A fantastic way to get readers to sign up for your newsletter is by offering them something for free. You’ve probably noticed some of your favorite bloggers offer free guides in exchange for you giving them your email address. This is you actually signing up for their newsletter. The more contacts you get, the bigger your audience will be and the more products you’ll be able to sell!

I currently offer a free guide to starting a blog that’s found at the very top of my blog. I get quite a few subscribers each day and the guide only took a few hours to create 🙂

Are you ready to launch your blog?! If you haven’t signed up for hosting yet, I highly recommend Bluehost. You can view my tutorial on starting a profitable blog here; and as a thank you, I’ll send you my book – The Beginner’s Guide to Blogging – for free!

Make Money Blogging

I recently released a course designed to help you make thousands per month in passive income with your blog. That’s right, thousands. It’s called How to Make Money as a Web Hosting Affiliate and will walk you through step-by-step how to get other people to start a blog through your affiliate link. Web hosting affiliates pay $50-$65 per sign-up. That’s BIG MONEY. Check out my course here to get started!