Crafting—it never gets old. As humanity becomes better and more efficient at creating high-quality goods at scale, the desire for hand-crafted goods, almost paradoxically, increases in proportion.
And no wonder—there’s nothing more meaningful and awe-inspiring than quality craftsmanship, especially in the backdrop of cheap, single-use “goods” flooding our daily lives.
I would know since I dropped over $400 on Etsy (a hand-crafted goods marketplace) before writing this post. You can’t beat handmade!
So perfect fodder for a blog, right? After all, people are clearly interested in it.
Yes, of course, it’s a great idea for a blog, but there’s a problem: many people had the same idea. There are a ton of craft blogs out there, and beating them requires an intelligent and well-informed approach.
Luckily, you’re in the exact right place to learn that approach. In this guide, I’ll teach you to create a craft blog that succeeds—without trying to offload cruddy affiliate products on you.
Let’s get started.
1. Find your niche (within crafting)
Crafting is an outrageously broad topic—go to Etsy, and you’ll find everything from paper crafts to woodworking to knitting. If your blog is going to succeed, you must zero in on a much smaller specialty.
Some examples of successful craft blogs with a specialty focus:
- Pretty Presets (specialty: Lightroom presets for photographers)
- So You Think You’re Crafty (specialty: handmade costumes)
- Skip to My Lou (specialty: kids’ crafts)
If you try to target everyone, you’ll end up with a blog that’s more like a catch-all general interest blog than a true specialist blog. And those general interest blogs usually don’t work very well.
How do you find your niche? Start by brainstorming a list of possible topics. Once you have that list, look at it and ask yourself a few questions:
- What do I enjoy making the most?
- What do I feel confident teaching others?
- What would I like to learn more about?
Answering these questions honestly will help you identify a focus for your blog. And if you still can’t decide, start by writing about crafting on Quora and see what topics you enjoy discussing the most.
2. Choose a domain name
Your domain name is your blog’s address on the internet. And just like with real estate, the specific location of your domain (in this case, the URL) matters quite a lot. That’s why I recommend that you choose a domain name that:
- Is easy to spell and pronounce
- Is short and memorable
- Includes your niche keyword
For instance, if you want to start a blog about paper crafts, a great domain name would be something like “PaperCraftingTips.com” or “PaperCraftingIdeas.com.”
If those domains are already taken, don’t worry—get creative and use a different keyword (“PaperCraftingProjects.com”).
You can check the availability of your desired domain name using Namecheap’s domain browser. Once you decide on a name, I recommend buying it from them, too (it’s where I bought mine).
3. Host a WordPress site
Crafting is a creative endeavor, so you want your blog to look good. But you also want it to be easy to use and maintain. That’s why I recommend using WordPress, the world’s most popular (and SEO-friendly) blog platform.
And when it comes to hosting WordPress, I recommend Cloudways.
They make it easy to set up and manage your blog (I’ve used them forever, and they’re fantastic). Plus, they give a free trial for three days.
Here’s how to set up your blog with Cloudways:
- First, create an account and choose your desired platform and server size. I recommend starting with the $12/mo DigitalOcean 1 GB plan.
- Next, choose a domain name for your blog. If you bought your domain name from Namecheap, you can select the “I will use my existing domain and update my DNS settings” option.
- Now, select your WordPress version and click “Launch Now.”
- On the next screen, give your blog a name and choose a username and password. Then, click “Launch Now.”
Finally, select your pricing plan and enter your billing information. Once you do that, your blog will be up and running!
4. Install a fast theme
Speaking of how your blog looks, it’s time to choose a WordPress theme. And when it comes to WordPress themes, I recommend Astra:
Here’s why:
- It’s super fast and lightweight (important for SEO)
- It comes with built-in templates for different types of blogs and websites (handy if you’re unsure about your blog format)
- It’s highly customizable (so you can make it look however you want)
You can get started with Astra for free using the WordPress theme repository, or you can buy the Agency Bundle to get access to even more templates and features.
Here’s how to install and activate Astra:
- First, log into your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance » Themes.
- Next, click the “Add New” button and use the search bar to find “Astra.”
- Now, click the “Install” button and then the “Activate” button.
- Finally, click on the “Astra Options” link under the Appearance menu to access Astra’s settings panel.
If you want to install a premium Astra theme (which I did), you can purchase a plan on their website.
5. Install essential plugins
Themes let you change how your blog looks (AKA, its frontend design), and plugins allow you to change how it works (AKA, its backend functionality).
Here are some of my favorite plugins (each of these has a free version):
WPRocket
WPRocket is the fastest WordPress caching plugin available (I use it for this blog). It speeds up your blog by storing static versions of your pages and posts and delivering them to your visitors without running your entire blog backend each time.
That’s crucial because load times can affect everything from your click-through rate to your conversions to your SEO.
Rank Math
Rank Math is a free SEO plugin that makes it easy to manage your title tags, metatags, and other important SEO settings (including XML sitemaps, social share buttons, etc).
It’s seriously versatile—and free.
Elementor
Elementor is a user-friendly drag-and-drop WordPress page builder plugin. You can use it to create your own custom blog layout using its dozens of pre-built content blocks. The Pro version comes with even more templates and features.
And it’s truly easy to use—even if you don’t know a ton about WordPress
Just a word of warning, the coding is a bit bloated, so I don’t recommend using it for blog pages—only unique pages. Otherwise, the load times can get annoying.
ShortPixel
ShortPixel is a fast and effective image compression and optimization plugin (I use it to compress the images on this blog). You can use it to automatically optimize all of your blog images (past, present, and future).
It’s important to use this plugin because even a slight reduction in image size can lead to faster load times. And like I said before, load times matter—a lot.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is an email marketing service designed for bloggers.
You can use it to collect leads, send automated emails, and send newsletters. In other words, it’s a super effective way to build an email list and notify your readers about new blog posts.
It’s also easy to install—there’s a dedicated WordPress plugin for it.
6. Create cornerstone pages
Once you’ve installed your theme and plugins, you’ll need to create a few essential pages.
These “cornerstones” are what I call the four pieces of content you should create before promoting your new blog:
- Your first blog post. This is what allows you to start publishing content on your blog (you can promote this post via social media)
- Your lead magnet. A free download you can use to encourage new visitors to sign up for your email list
- Your email opt-in form. A signup form that allows you to capture new subscribers (I recommend using ConvertKit to host your email list and create beautiful opt-in forms)
- Your about page. This page introduces readers to you and why you’re qualified to write about your blog’s niche
Along with your blog’s “cornerstone” content, you should also create a resources page. This page is where you link to all of your affiliate products and services.
It’s an essential page because it allows you to monetize your blog while promoting products you already use and love.
And finally, don’t forget to set up your contact page so people can reach out to you with questions, comments, or business inquiries.
7. Build your Domain Rating
Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs’s metric for how authoritative a website is in Google’s eyes (ignore Domain Authority (DA), it’s easily gamed). The higher your Domain Rating is, the more easily you’ll rank for your targeted terms because Google trusts your site more.
A new blog won’t have any Domain Rating, so you’ll have to start by building backlinks to your blog. Here are the most efficient ways to do so:
Guest posting
Reach out to bloggers in your niche and ask if you can contribute an article to their blog. If they say yes, publish an article on their blog with a link to your blog in the author bio or content (content is better).
You can use this Google search to find guest post opportunities: site:domain.com “write for us”. You can also use this keyword research tool to find blog posts that accept guest contributors.
Creating high-quality content
This is quite straightforward—create and publish the best content you can.
Content should be interesting, well-written, informative, and engaging. It should be awesome enough that other people will want to share and link to it voluntarily.
Create “link bait” content
Link bait is a piece of content specifically designed to get links. This can be any interesting content, but the most common examples are infographics, list posts, and viral videos.
Link bait is commonly confused with “great” content.
Great content is naturally shareable and will get links over time. You create it and publish it. Link bait, on the other hand, is something you create with the express purpose of getting links.
For example, let’s say create an attractive infographic about email marketing. Then you reach out to blogs and websites related to email marketing and offer it to them for free, so they can share it with their followers.
8. Create a content strategy
Before you start writing content, it’s important to have a clear content strategy. This will help you create the right articles, blog posts, and even social media posts to attract the right kind of traffic.
The best way to attract the right kind of traffic is by creating content that contains the right keywords—keywords that potential readers use to find articles like yours through Google.
How to do keyword research
Use an SEO tool like Ahrefs to find low-competition, decent-traffic keywords within your niche.
For example, “woodworking” is extremely competitive…
…but “how to start a woodworking business” is not.
I used Ahrefs in this example, and while it’s the best SEO tool, it’s highly expensive and may be out of your budget. Here are the best alternatives:
- Long-tail Pro
- KWFinder
- Moz Pro
- SpyFu
Ahrefs also has a free keyword generator you can use, though it’s not nearly as useful as their paid version.
9. Start publishing content consistently
Now you’re ready to start writing and publishing content—congrats! Now I’ll let you in on a secret: building website traffic is 80% pushing out as much content as possible.
The more content you write, the more traffic you’ll attract. And the more traffic you attract, the more money you make—it’s a simple equation.
Focus on quality over quantity
Google is not stupid—they can easily tell the difference between great and average content. And they will rank your content appropriately.
Moreover, even if your content ranks highly, people will quickly realize it’s not good and leave. Google notices this and ranks more “satisfying” content above you.
That’s why it’s imperative to focus on quality over quantity. Just because you write more blog posts doesn’t mean you end up with more traffic—they need to actually be useful to somebody.
10. Monetize!
Finally, once you’ve built up some traffic to your blog, you can start to generate revenue from your website.
And it’s pretty simple to do. There are several great ways to monetize your blog without infringing on the quality of your content:
Advertising
Advertising is fairly straightforward: you sign up for an advertising program like Ezoic and run ads on your site.
The downside of advertising is that it can compete with your content for clicks and can annoy users. Those are two main reasons we bloggers prefer the next option…
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of commission-based marketing where you promote other people’s products and services on your blog. Whenever somebody clicks your affiliate link and purchases something, you earn a commission.
This is a great way to monetize your blog without compromising your content. Just don’t sell cruddy products you don’t use yourself (most bloggers do), or you’ll destroy trust with your audience.
Digital product
This could be an eBook, an online course, a video series, a software tool—whatever.
The best thing about selling digital products is they’re usually priced higher than other monetization options on this list, so they have the potential to earn more per customer you attract.
Start crafting your blog now
And that’s it—you now know how to build a crafting log from scratch. If you put in the time and effort, you can start generating revenue from your blog within months.
Of course, this whole process takes time, but if you have the patience and perseverance, you’ll find that it’s well worth the wait.
Remember, the key to making it as a blogger is consistency. As long as you show up, you move closer to your goals.
Now get writing!
PS: If you want a more comprehensive, generalized guide for starting a blog, check out my full guide.
