Lesson 16: How To Start A Blog On Bluehost

In this lesson, I’m going to outline another essential component of your website: hosting. You’ll learn what shared hosting is, the best place to host your website, and why you should invest in unlimited domains.

NOTE: This is not at all required, but… if you’re signing up for hosting and you wouldn’t mind supporting what we’re doing at FIMP, please consider purchasing through the links at our Links & Resources page.

It won’t cost you anything extra (we’ve actually negotiated the best discounts possible), but these commissions help FIMP tremendously — and we have a lot of bonus content and community support that we’ll set you up with as a “thank you!”

Don’t feel remotely obligated or pressured, but it would help our project and community more than words can say if you find the contents of this training and the video training at FIMP helpful.

What Is Hosting?

Hosting is a service that companies provide to website owners. Simply put, hosting companies provide storage space and access for websites through the use of web servers, or computers that specifically store files that comprise websites.

How To Start A Blog On Bluehost: web hosting

The hosting company sells a specific amount of storage space, as well as access to that space, to website owners to store their files. Every time you fire up your internet browser and type in a website’s URL, your browser is accessing files from that website’s host server and displaying it to you.

What Is Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting means you’re sharing server space with a lot of other websites. This is the most basic service that a hosting company will provide, and the one you’ll start with. In time, when you reach a certain level of traffic, you can move to a virtual private server for improved performance, and eventually move to a dedicated server, where your website is the only one using that server. Dedicated servers make it possible for websites to load faster, and usually have additional features that improve your website’s security and performance. Don’t worry about that right now, though; that’s months or years away.

Why I Recommend Bluehost

There are hundreds of different hosting companies to choose from, and over the years, I’ve purchased hosting from over a dozen different companies. I’ve hosted with every single one of the absolute best brands available and I’ve had varying experiences with each. I’ve had experiences that were bad enough to make me never register or host my websites with that company again.

Bluehost has the best service and support over any other low-cost shared hosting company I’ve worked with, particularly because they’ve very deliberately gone out of their way to help FIMP community members. Based on my experience, they’re the best value hosting company for beginners/mid-stage website owners.

Bluehost

Are they the best hosting company ever? Absolutely not. But they’re the perfect combination of value, quality, and service until you’re getting at least a few hundred visitors to your website per day.

Why You Should Sign Up for Unlimited Domains

For now, you’re going to be signing up for a single domain, but you’re going to want to pay slightly more for unlimited domains; this will make your experience much easier down the road. Whether you register another domain two weeks from now and start a different site or abandon the niche you’re working in and want to host another site two months from now, you’re eventually going to need it.

How To Start A Blog On Bluehost

Note: This process can become quite complicated. If it’s easier for you to follow along in video format, watch the videos in Section 4 of the First-Time Internet Marketing Profits™ video training.

When you click on the “Get Started” button from the Bluehost.com homepage, you’ll be routed to the pricing page where you can choose from one of three hosting tiers: Basic, Plus, or Prime.

The Basic hosting tier offers hosting for one domain. The Plus tier offers hosting for unlimited websites. Although you get one domain for free, it’s best to host the first domain with Namecheap because only the first year is free with Bluehost. It’s going to be more expensive, at around $25 per year, after the first year.

The Prime tier offers domain privacy for your domains, which you won’t need to get from Bluehost if you registered your domain name with Namecheap (you can get domain privacy from them).

How To Start A Blog on Bluehost: Bluehost hosting tiers

Bluehost hosting tiers: Basic, Plus, and Prime

Clicking on the “Select” button under any of the hosting tiers will route you to a page where you can enter a domain name. After entering a domain name, you’re routed to the checkout page where you can select a tier and the duration of the service.

How To Start A Blog on Bluehost: Bluehost Plus Plan

Bluehost’s Plus Plan inclusions and upsells

At the checkout page, make sure to uncheck any upsells before completing your order. Site Backup Pro, Search Engine Jumpstart, and SiteLock Security are unnecessary at this point and provide little to no value.

Once you enter all the necessary information and check out, you’ll immediately receive a payment confirmation to your email inbox. There’s a waiting period involved while Bluehost sets up your hosting; once that’s done, you’ll receive an additional email with vital information. Print that email and mark it as important in your email account because it contains important information you’ll likely need while you’re with Bluehost.

Congratulations! You’ve signed up for hosting with Bluehost!


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