Music—is there anything more certain?
No matter who you are, what your background is, or how you pronounce “tomato,” you like music. Nobody on this planet isn’t a “music person.”
So you figure that music’s a pretty good subject to start a blog on, right? Well, I’m pleased to announce that, yes, you are correct.
There’s just one caveat: many people had the same realization, creating a decent amount of competition. But lucky for you, most people have no clue what they’re doing—and I do!
And even better, I’ll tell you exactly how to start your music blog. You can skip all the malarkey and get straight to the good tunes, dig?
I know you do—let’s get started.
1. Find a Niche
“Music” isn’t niche enough by itself. It’s too broad for you just to have “a music blog.”
You need to find a specific angle. This enables you to be an authority on your focus, earning you authority both in the eyes of users and search engines.
Here are some ideas to get you started:
- A blog focused on new music releases
- A blog focused on a specific genre of music
- A blog focused on music news
- A blog focused on music history
- A blog focused on a specific instrument
- A blog focused on a specific artist or band
The sky’s the limit, but you have to zero in on something. Once you have your angle, you can start planning your content.
2. Plan Your Content
If you want people to read your blog, you need to give them a reason to visit. That reason is content—and not just any content, but great content.
The best way to produce great content is to plan it out. What topics will you cover? How often will you post? What format will your posts take?
You don’t need to have everything figured out before you start, but you should have a basic content strategy in place. This will give you a roadmap to follow as you start producing content.
How to Create a Content Strategy
Here’s the basic gist of creating a content strategy—this’ll enable you to start blogging much more intelligently than most:
1. Define your goals
What do you want to accomplish with your blog? Do you want to build a following? Drive traffic to your website? Sell a product? All of the above? Be specific.
2. Define your audience
Who are you writing for? Who are you trying to reach? The more specific you can be, the better.
3. Brainstorm content ideas
What topics will you cover? What type of content will you produce? Again, the more specific you can be, the better.
4. Create an editorial calendar
This is a tool that will help you organize and plan your content. You can use a simple spreadsheet or a more robust tool like CoSchedule.
3. Choose a Blogging Platform
There are a few different blogging platforms to choose from, each with its own pros and cons. Here are some of the most popular options:
WordPress.org (My Choice)
WordPress is the most popular blogging platform on the planet. It’s free to use and relatively easy to set up.
It’s also highly customizable, which is great if you plan to do more than just blogging with your site. While it does require some technical knowledge to start using, it’s nothing you can’t handle.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a microblogging platform that’s popular with creative types. It’s easy to use and comes with a built-in audience—Tumblr has over 350 million users.
However, it’s not as customizable as WordPress and can be challenging to use for anything other than blogging.
Medium
Medium is a blogging platform that’s popular with writers. It’s easy to use and has a clean, minimalistic design.
However, it’s not nearly as customizable as WordPress, and you don’t own your content—Medium does. That’s a “big oof,” as the kids say (they might also call it “sus”).
4. Choose a Domain Name and Hosting
Now that you know what platform you’ll use (WordPress—trust me on this one), it’s time to choose a domain name and hosting.
Domain
Your domain name is your website’s address—for example, my blog’s domain name is “startamusicblog.com.” Your hosting is where your website “lives” on the internet.
I recommend purchasing your domain from Namecheap, and most blogging experts will too. It’s cheap, easy, and has great customer support.
Hosting
There are a few different hosting options to choose from, each with its own set of pros and cons:
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is the most popular hosting option—and for good reason. It’s relatively cheap and easy to set up. You can get started with shared hosting for as little as $3.95/month.
The downside of shared hosting is that it’s…well, shared. That means you’re sharing a server with other websites, which can lead to some performance issues.
VPS Hosting
VPS hosting is more expensive than shared hosting, but it provides you with your own server, which leads to better performance. You can get started with VPS hosting for as little as $29.99/month.
Dedicated Hosting
Dedicated hosting is the most expensive hosting option, but it provides you with your own physical server.
That means even better performance than VPS hosting. You can get started with dedicated hosting for as little as $149/month.
Cloud Hosting (Best Choice)
Cloud hosting has become extremely popular in recently years since it offers the best performance of any hosting option and can easily scale as your website grows. Cloud hosting starts at around $10/month.
I recommend starting with cloud hosting, as it’s fairly priced, powerful, and extremely simple to scale as your traffic. More specifically, I recommend hosting a Digital Ocean server with CloudWays.
5. Choose a Theme
Your theme is what determines the design and layout of your blog. WordPress has thousands of themes to choose from, both free and paid, but I recommend going with Astra (it’s what I currently use).
Astra comes with many customization options and is fast, lightweight, and, most importantly, it’s super simple to use and get started with.
6. Write Your First Blog Post
Now it’s time to write your first blog post! As I mentioned earlier, it’s best to plan your content in advance so you know what you’re going to write about.
Once you have a topic in mind, sit down and write out your post. Don’t worry about making it perfect—just get your thoughts down on paper (or, er, screen).
Once you’re done, you can go back and edit it. Just remember to keep it simple—your readers don’t want to wade through a wall of text.
7. Choose and Install Plugins
WordPress plugins are basically like apps for your website—they add functionality and extend the capabilities of your site.
There are thousands of plugins to choose from, both free and paid. I recommend starting with these essential WordPress plugins:
- WPRocket. WPRocket is a caching plugin that will speed up your website by caching your pages and delivering them to your visitors much faster. It’s also super simple to use and configure.
- Rank Math. Rank Math is an all-in-one SEO plugin that makes it easy to optimize your site for search engines. It has a bunch of features that can help you rank higher in Google and other search engines.
- Short Pixel. Short Pixel is an image optimization plugin that will help you optimize your images for faster loading times. It’s important to optimize your images, so your website loads as fast as possible.
- UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus is a backup plugin that will help you create backups of your site in case something goes wrong. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have backups of your site—trust me, you’ll thank me later.
8. Grow Your Traffic
Finally, it’s time to start growing your traffic. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play.
Now, to be clear, people (who often have something to gain from it) love to make SEO complicated. But I’m pleased to report that they’re wrong, and SEO is literally just three things:
- A fast, functional website
- Domain authority
- Great content
Anyone telling you otherwise is either mistaken or a grifter—ignore them in either case.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk strategy:
Link Building
Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to your site. The more links you have pointing to your site, the higher you’ll rank in search engines and the more traffic you’ll get.
There are a few different ways to build links, but I recommend starting with guest blogging. Guest blogging is when you write a blog post for another website in exchange for a link back to your site.
Consistent Publishing
Consistent publishing is exactly what it sounds like—publishing content on a consistent basis. It’s important to be consistent with your content because it helps you build an audience and establish yourself as an authority in your niche.
More importantly, the more content you have out there, the more search impressions your site gets—it’s that simple.
9. Monetize Your Blog
Monetizing your blog is how you make money from your site. There are tons of ways to monetize your site, but I recommend starting with these:
Advertising
Advertising is the process of selling ad space on your blog to other businesses. This is a good option if you already have a sizable amount of traffic coming to your site.
You’ll need an ad network, and Ezoic and Google Ads are the top choices. Sign up, get confirmed, and place ads throughout your site—the money will roll in.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an easy way to make money from your blog by promoting other people’s products.
Basically, you find a product you like, sign up for their affiliate program, and then promote the product to your audience. When someone buys the product, you get a commission.
This is a great option because it’s an easy way to make money from your blog without having to create your own product. A few good affiliate networks to sign up for are Amazon Associates, ShareASale, and CJ Affiliate.
Online Courses
Right now, there’s never been a better time to create an online course. Millions of people are buying online courses to learn new skills, and music’s a top choice in this field.
Gumroad is a great platform for hosting your courses. It’s super simple to create and launch your course, and they offer great support.
Wrapping Up
And there you have it—everything you need to know about how to start a music blog. It really is simple to get started, and you can have your site up and running in less than an hour.
I hope this article has been helpful, and I wish you all the best in starting your own music blog. If you have any questions, drop ‘em in the comments, and I’ll try to respond ASAP.
PS: for a more comprehensive blogging guide for all niches, check out my full guide on starting a money-making blog.
