Are you a devout believer in the gospel? Do you live for God’s greater glory and humanity’s salvation? Maybe you’re just into Christianity and want to write about it.
There are many reasons why someone might want to start a Christian blog. The most common one is feeling passionate about a subject and feeling like you have something to say about it.
Well, guess what? Whether you are doing it as a service to humanity or want it to be a sustainable venture with a full-time income, you can learn some common things to improve your chances of success.
This article can build a strong foundation for starting on the right foot with this new project.
You can also better understand the actual work and process so you know what you’re getting into.
What is a Christian Blog?
First, let’s understand what we are trying to do with this project. By definition, a Christain blog is just an online blog on the subject of Christianity. Now what it does with the subject can vary a lot.
It can be an educational platform that discusses Theological literature and has an academic community. It can be an evangelical platform to spread the gospel, which takes donations from patrons.
I think it’s helpful to understand that as a blogger, you have two main options to consider: Are you writing a personal blog about yourself for your close friends and family? Or are you writing to build and grow a community?
If you plan to share your thoughts about the Bible with your immediate community, it’s unrealistic to expect the blog to grow online and get new readers.
That’s because people don’t necessarily care about you or your thoughts unless they know it benefits them. If you aim to spread the word of Christ through blogging, you need a better approach.
Can a Pastor Be a Blogger?
Don’t let the barrier to success slow you down, though, and don’t get disheartened. I’m sure you have a good reason why you want to start a Christian blog.
Every website on the net started from scratch and slowly built itself up. I can also guarantee that most of them were created by people who had no idea, just like you, and learned things through trial and error.
The truth is, anyone can become a blogger with some time, patience, and commitment. If your language skills are good, that’s even better, and if you have an idea that you are interested in and want to write about, that’s best!
Who can be a better Christian blogger than a Pastor? Pastors are also deeply connected with the community, which puts them in a position to succeed as bloggers once they get good at it.
Anyone interested in Christianity can do so using the process mentioned below.
Is it a Good Idea to Start a Christian Blog Considering the Competition?
Whether or not you should start a blog depends on you and your situation. It will also depend on who you are as a person. What do you want? What are your expectations?
If you have had unique life experiences that might give you an edge in writing good content, then it’s a good idea. If you know what the writing process is, and it’s something you can enjoy and be interested in, then it’s a great idea.
If you know little about Christianity and think that starting a blog about it can make money for you in six months using affiliate marketing, it might be a horrible idea.
Considering the competition is very important for success. A full view of the blogging process and prospects is even more important. So let me tell you all about that, and you can decide if it’s a good or a bad idea yourself.
How to Start a Christian Blog:
The best way to start a Christian blog is the same as any other blog. Certain crucial things always have to be considered in this kind of project. Doing your due diligence sets you up to achieve exactly what you want.
Rome wasn’t built in one day, and I promise you that it wasn’t built by accident. Considering that’s also where the Vatican is, you should also build your blog in the same way. So what’s the first step?
1. Do Your Niche Research
Market research is the first step for any kind of venture. The different niches in the blog world can be wildly different.
Look at other successful Christian blogs to get an overview of the market that you will be a part of. Learn from them by seeing how they reached their level, and think about what you can apply and improve upon.
Also, define more things like your target audience and the mediums you will engage with. Will you make databases and answer queries to get organic traffic from Google?
Will you write personal pieces and share them on social media? Or will you do a combination of both? You could also write for a journalism company as an experienced writer.
Doing your niche research properly can help you answer all these questions and build an educated plan of action.
You might have to do a lot of trial and error anyway to see what works, but having a good plan can make the process much smoother.
2. Decide A Name
Okay, now you have researched and seen what you are up against. You know how other people are blogging successfully; you know what kind of target audiences there are, along with typical monetization strategies.
I’m sure you might have gotten a ton of ideas for your blog too, on improving upon what’s out there. It’s important to be aware of your unique advantage at this point.
Developing your brand will help you decide what you will write about, the stand you will take on something controversial, and the tone you will use.
It will also help the audience determine what they can expect from you. Remember the experience you want to create through your blog and what problems you want to solve for which people.
With all this, you can come up with a great name. It doesn’t have to be complicated, especially for this niche, but a good one will definitely set you apart.
3. Get a Domain and Hosting
Now a little more technical stuff. You can’t run a blog on Blogspot and expect it to get tons of organic traffic.
That’s because Google knows anyone can start a blog like that in two minutes, so that’s not a trustworthy source.
Blog websites like Blogger don’t rank for that and many other reasons. If you are going to write regularly, you might as well do it properly so more people can get value out of it.
So buy a brand-appropriate Domain name and subscribe to a hosting service. This way, you can build your authority and have a better blog in general.
It’s better because you have more control over everything. It can be a lot of work, though, so it doesn’t work well for personal blogs.
4. Set Up WordPress
WordPress is by far the most popular website creator for good reason. WordPress websites are great for blogging and rank as good as it gets on Google.
Check out their plans and choose the right one for you. It’ll most likely be the cheapest one, to start off with. WordPress also has a ton of widgets, plug-ins, and apps that can give you more options.
On WordPress, you can have a lot of flexibility and better organic traffic, and you can keep things as big, small, dark, or bright as you want. So setting up your WordPress will be the next step.
5. Design Your Website
Okay, so I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed at this point; I’m sure this might seem like a lot of things to do just to start your blog. No need to get worked up about it, though.
Each of these points can be a lot of work, or they can be done away with very quickly. It’s important to get started and to start small. Things become clearer with time and experience.
Do the bare minimum to get started, then expand upon each step as you go and learn to enjoy the process. Learning everything will only take between 2 weeks and a month. So, it’s really not much.
Now WordPress has a ton of unique and attractive website templates that you can just choose from immediately. Then you just have to fill in the content with your own words and visuals.
Choose a design that fits your brand and will be appreciated by your audience. You can customize as much or as little as you want within all the options the templates and widgets give you.
6. Learn SEO
This is the most anxiety-inducing term for someone starting off a blog. It is also the next most crucial component of your blog’s success. If you are writing something on the Internet, your biggest advantage is that anyone else can access it for free.
To make full use of that advantage, you need to make content that can be found easily. People start to look into SEO and get overwhelmed with all the new words. That’s why they feel paralyzed and feel like they can’t do it themselves.
The truth is that SEO might have a lot of unique terms of its own, but it’s not something as complicated as math or science. Once you start to figure out what it really is, you will see that the terms are new, but the concepts are very familiar.
I think a lot of good SEO is common sense. Google freely shares the rest. Learning a practical working understanding of this can take between 1 to 3 days. After that, you can keep learning and refining content.
One place you can do this is – Coursera.
7. Start Writing Content/ Hire Freelancers/ In-House Team of Writers
“Six steps just to get to what you really want to do? What a drag!” you might be thinking. As I said, you don’t have to do all that just to start writing your content.
You do need all of them to be a successful blogger, though. What I mean is that you can start writing a personal blog immediately. You can write however you want, as much or as little, and whenever you feel like it.
But if you want other people to read your work, you need to make it accessible and presentable. So if you haven’t followed the six steps above, you can always start writing without it.
Then if you want to take your writing further, you can go back and follow the steps one by one. You can edit your old articles for SEO, and upload them to your new website.
The best thing is to have everything laid out, with a content plan and a publishing schedule. This level of organization will let people know when to expect new content. This will also make you more reliable and will likely give you the best results.
If you plan everything out very well, you can develop a standard process for the functioning of your blog. At this point, you can even expand by bringing in a team of writers to ramp up your production.
Outsourcing your content will help you scale better and will put your management skills to the test. If you organize everything properly, you can get a ton of articles that rank and generate traffic.
8. Start Publishing & Publish Tons of Content
Finally, everything is set up and taken care of. Time to actually launch the blog and go public. How exciting! Start publishing the content, one by one, as per your decided schedule, and start sharing it as much as possible.
Being a Christian, I’m sure you are connected to the local church and its community. Put up a poster with a QR code, right on your church’s noticeboard! Fully utilize word of mouth and social media as much as possible.
It can take an indefinite amount of time for your website to rank on Google and get organic traffic. It can take a month, eight months, two years, or even more. It all depends on how you size up to the competition.
That’s why competitive research is key.
9. Monetization
This final point ties everything together. By now, you must have seen that running a successful blog is a lot of work. That’s because it’s a great way to build a brand and a company.
It’s very effective for creating an online community, provided the content is high quality and has a healthy demand. If you’re going to go big, the project needs to be sustainable. For that, you need an income.
People get too worked up about monetization and worry about it way before launching their website. This is misguided as it gets the order backward.
The thing is, it’s next to impossible to monetize a brand-new website. For a website that already has decent traffic, it’s next to impossible not to make money off the traffic. That’s because people will keep pestering you to sell their stuff.
So once you have an audience, you can easily set up all kinds of monetization. You can have a digital product like a book, or you can sign-up for affiliate programs and promote other people’s products.
Running advertisements is the best option to start with, but I don’t think it works very well for a Christian blog. It’s very important to stay on-brand when it comes to monetization, especially.
You don’t want to scare off the audience you worked so hard to build.
I’ll Conclude Here
I think now that you know everything required to run a great blog, you are in a much better position to answer the question, “Is It A Good Idea To Start a Christian Blog?”.
After you’ve studied your competition and developed your brand, you have a better idea of what exactly you aim to do. Christianity is rich with lore and has so many different things worth talking about.
There are so many angles you can take, and you should find original ones that are uniquely authentic to you as a Christian blogger. Talk about your experiences and learn to deliver your content in a way that people can access easily.
So do response posts, write high-value content, and consider the things people search for on Google (Search Analysis). Also, mix in some personal, opinionated posts directly for your community.
I think you can rely more on word of mouth than your typical digital marketing strategies for this niche. You can think of a good marketing plan that works by thinking about who exactly you are targeting.
Those are the broad strokes of how anyone can start their own Christian blog.
If you are familiar with the niche and the audience, you should be able to implement these strategies far better than I could come up with.
Anirudh Gitai
Writer from the heart – whether it is affiliate marketing or fiction – and a proud member of Shivansh’s team! Big fan of combat sports, reading non-fiction, and watching the best of everything from anime and movies to TV and video games.
