Starting a Blog in Retirement – All the Information You’ll Need to Quickly Get Started and Tips for Survival

So, you are contemplating starting a blog in retirement. Good for you!

Blogging can be an excellent hobby to take up. Here are a few reasons why you should start a blog (whether or not in retirement!). You can …

• Learn new skills
• Improve your writing ability
• Channel your creativity
• Document your life in an online diary
• Meet new people
• Make a difference by helping people
• Gain confidence
• Even earn a little money
• And, above all, have fun!

I know, all of that sounds very attractive but you have reservations:

Isn’t it just for young people? No.

Don’t you need to be able to write computer code? No.

Doesn’t it cost a lot? No.

I don’t know how to start a blog. Don’t worry. I’ve been blogging for a while now and I’ll guide you through the whole process. Let’s go!

1. How to Start a Blog in Retirement

OK, let’s start with a quick overview of what we are going to be looking at.

It may be helpful to consider an analogy for blogging first and then look at the blogging equivalents.

Essentially, what you want to do is to put into writing the knowledge that you hold on a particular topic and then share that written content with people who will benefit from reading it.

So, the analogy would be that you:

• Write a book or magazine article
• Store that book in a library
• Give your library a name so that people can find it
• Employ a librarian to archive your work and help people find what they want

In blogging terms, this equates to:

• Use software called a Content Management System (CMS) to write your content
• Store that content on servers provided by a Hosting Provider
• Obtain a Domain Name
• Share your content with Search Engines

To make it easy to follow I’ll split the guide into sections and then further split those sections into smaller, more manageable, chunks.

2. Starting Your Blog

1.1 Find Your Niche

You’re sitting in that uncomfortable black leather and chrome chair. The studio lights are shining down on you, seeming to give off as much heat as they do light. And that ominous music is playing.

And then the Mastermind host says those immortal words “And your chosen subject is?“

What would your chosen subject be?

Your blog can be about anything that you want but you may find it easier if you at least have some ideas at the outset. This will help you to ‘hit the ground running’ when you start.

That is, think about what your niche may be.

1.2 Choose a Domain Name

What’s in a name?

Well, it depends on who you ask!

Remember the niche section above? Well, many bloggers believe that it is best to try to incorporate your niche into your domain name as this makes it clearer for people searching for information and may help improve the blog’s authority.

For example, the (fairly broad) niche that this blog is focused on is retirement. So I chose a name that incorporated that topic – RetiringRichie.com.

Others believe that you shouldn’t immediately restrict your blog to a particular niche and that you may want to test the waters of a few different topics first. If this sounds like you then you may wish to consider going for something more generic like JohnSmith.com.

Some tips to consider when choosing your domain name:

• Choose a name that is easy to remember (so that people will find you more easily!)
• Don’t use special characters (#, !, £, $, -, _, &, *, etc)
• Avoid weird-looking names – johnsshoes (double ‘s’ in the middle doesn’t scan easily)

You’ll also need to decide what sort of domain you want to have.

Generally, a .com type is the preferred option as people seem to assume that all domain names end like this – they don’t!

You could also consider types like:

.co.uk	.us	.org	.net
.club	.me	.site	.icu
.biz	.ltd	.eu	.tv

Note that not all domain suffixes have the same price.

You have two choices when it comes to acquiring your domain name:

• Buy from a specialist provider of domain names (eg Names.co.uk), or
• Buy from your hosting provider (see the section below)

Note that domain registration needs to be renewed (typically on an annual basis) so you can always change providers at a later date.

1.3 Pick a Hosting Provider

OK, this one is more important.

These are the key factors to consider when choosing:

• Cost
  For many people, especially those on a tight budget, this is a very important consideration. The cost will depend on the type of service that you choose (see below) and the deals available from the hosting company.
  
  If you are just looking to have a little fun and don’t expect to be overrun by visitors then the cheapest plan is likely to suffice. You can always upgrade later if the need, or desire, arises.
• Support
  To be fair, it’s rare that things go wrong.
  
  However, if they do then you’ll obviously want quick and reliable help from your host’s support team.
• Features
  These are the things to look for in this category:
  
  Reliability – What is the company’s guaranteed uptime? (That is, how often will there be times when your blog isn’t available to your audience because of technical issues with your hosting company?)
  
  Backups – If you are prudent then you will make your own backups. However, it’s nice to have the added layer of protection that comes with knowing that the hosting company also has backups in case something should happen to your blog. Look to see how often these take place.
  
  Current software – Make sure that the most recent version of PHP is available (it doesn’t always make sense to immediately update it but you want to know that the option is there when you decide to do it).
  
  https support – Google now looks more favourably on so-called secure sites (those that start https rather than just HTTP). Make sure that your hosting company provides support for this – there needn’t be a cost attached, there is a free service provided by Lets Encrypt to provide this feature.
  
  Email – Does the hosting company allow you to have email addresses linked to your blog’s domain? You’d think that this would be a given – it isn’t!
  
  Control Panel – Or cPanel as it’s often referred to. This is an application, provided by some hosting companies, that allows you to manage various aspects of your site. It isn’t essential (and many bloggers will happily carry on completely oblivious to its existence) but it is a ‘nice to have’.

Types of hosting services available

You’ll see many different services mentioned by potential candidates for your business. the main ones are as follows:

• Shared hosting
  As you may gather from the name, this service entails you sharing a single server with other customers. Each customer is allocated a certain proportion of the available resources.
  
  You are also prohibited from making any server-wide changes (understandably as you don’t want your blog being influenced by changes that somebody else wants to make).
  
  Shared hosting is usually the cheapest option available because the costs are shared over a group of customers.
  
  As long as the support is good, shared hosting is perfectly suitable for most bloggers at the outset (and can be upgraded later).
• Virtual Private Server (VPS)
  A VPS system uses some technical wizardry to create a number of virtual servers on one real server.
  
  This means that you can have your own dedicated server (ie not shared with others) and this allows for greater control.
• Dedicated hosting
  Again, the name gives away the nature of this service – you have your own physical server solely dedicated to your blog.
  
  You have complete control over the server.
  
  This is the highest performance option. And, of course, the most expensive.

Making your choice

You should do some research (like reading this blog post!) and pick the option that suits you best.

I’ll give you two recommendations based on experience:

• DO NOT, under any circumstances, pick Bluehost (or any other Newfold Digital / EIG company for that matter).
  
  This was the first company that I used. The speeds provided were relatively poor but by far the biggest issue was the support – or lack thereof!
  
  I don’t know how the support staff are remunerated but their main objective was always to persuade you to give them a 10/10 rating, regardless of whether that had actually resolved the issue!
  
  Why did I pick them?
  
  Because a number of blogs recommended them and they were cheap. And because I didn’t do enough research – don’t repeat my mistake!
  
  Why were they, and why do they continue to be, recommended by so many bloggers?
  
  Simple – because they pay very high commission rates. I’m not prepared to make a poor recommendation to you solely because of a high fee.
• DO, give serious consideration to using the company that I use – Krystal.
  
  Why?
  
  Let’s look back at the criteria list above and let’s see how they do.

Krystal Hosting

• Cost – Plans start from £4.99 per month (2 months free if you pay annually)
• Support – Yes, support is available through an in-house online ticket system for the shared hosting package that I use.
  
  I have used the support a number of times and they are, frankly, excellent. Telephone support is available for higher-level plans.
• Features
  Reliability – Guaranteed uptime of 99.99%
  
  Backups – Yes. Daily for the shared hosting plan. 4-hourly for the higher-level plans.
  
  Current software – Yes. PHP 8.1 is available.
  
  https support – Yes. Free SSL certificates via LetsEncrypt.
  
  Email – Yes. Email addresses are available using the blog domain name.
  
  Control Panel – Yes, cPanel is provided.

And, as if all of that wasn’t enough, Krystal uses Litespeed servers (which are faster than Apache/Nginx servers). And that means that you can use the fantastic LiteSpeed Cache plugin to speed up your site. And you can use QUIC, one of the top CDNs (Content Distribution Network).

See below for a performance benchmark from Litespeed.com.

And we all like to look at reviews to see what other people think about a particular product, don’t we?

On Trustpilot, Krystal Hosting is rated 5 (Excellent).

All in all, Krystal provides one of the fastest and best value set-ups that you can get.

If you are the type of person that likes to consider a number of options before making a choice (like I do) then you may like to take a look at the post that I’ve written about The Best Web Hosting for Beginners.

There you’ll see a number of hosts, some focused on cost others focused on performance, any one of which would be an ideal blog hosting choice for a beginner.

1.4 Content Management System

What is a Content Management System (CMS)?

Years ago, if you wanted to have a blog then you needed to learn how to code too. You’d have programming languages and acronyms coming out of your ears! HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript … and on, and on.

Fortunately, a CMS takes away that particular task. It allows you to type your content and add images and then seamlessly present it all to your audience. (It does far more than that but that’s all you really need to know).

There are a large number of CMSs available for blogging. The most popular are:

• WordPress
• Wix
• Squarespace
• Drupal

The one that I use, and that I recommend that you use, is WordPress.org. It is the most popular CMS in the world – and for good reason:

• It’s free!
• It’s Open Source
• A huge number of themes
• An extensive library of plugins
• It’s SEO-friendly
• It enables mobile-responsive content

1.5 Theme Factors

What is a WordPress theme?

A theme is an add-on to WordPress that decides the overall appearance of your blog It helps you choose major factors like the blog layout and also relatively minor factors like which font size you want.

When you install WordPress you will automatically have a default theme installed. These are imaginatively named after the year of release – so the current theme is “Twenty Twenty-Two”.

You are free to stick with the default theme or you can pick one of your own. For the latter, navigate to the Themes page as below:

Click on the ‘Add New’ button and you will be presented with a choice of available (free) themes.

Note that premium themes may be downloaded directly from the designer. These versions offer enhanced functionality and features in return for a fee (usually with a choice of an annual payment or a one-off lifetime payment).

Theme choice is a bit of a trade-off – an ‘all the bells and whistles’ theme will offer an array of presentation options but at the price of reduced speed performance, whereas a ‘bare bones’ theme will be blisteringly fast but not have as much in the way of features.

You will have to choose which is most important to you.

The theme that I use and recommend is GeneratePress. This is because:

• There is a free version
• The premium version is reasonably priced
• It is widely regarded as one of the fastest themes available
• It has a 5-star rating on WordPress.org
• It has an excellent support forum for any queries that you may have
• It’s written by the hugely talented Tom Usborne

1.6 Plugins – Adding Features and Functionality

Just below the Appearance menu item that you’ve just seen above is the Plugins menu item. Plugins offer an almost limitless source of additional functionality for your blog.

I would caution you to take things slowly and only add a few initially and then add more as you need them.

Below is a short list of some of the plugins that I use and which I would recommend to you as part of your starting collection of plugins (I’ve added the developer name in brackets to aid with identification):

• BBQ Firewall and Blackhole for Bad Bots (Jeff Starr)
  These two security plugins are both by the hugely knowledgeable developer Jeff Starr, an expert in security aspects of WordPress.
• GenerateBlocks (Tom Usborne)
  This is written by the author of the GeneratePress Theme detailed above. It complements the theme and provides the key building blocks necessary for constructing your blog content.
• LiteSpeed Cache (LiteSpeed Technologies)
  Speed is a major factor for websites – a fast one will keep readers happy as they browse the site, and a slow one will have them leaving the site never to return. Caching plugins like this one help to make your blog faster. This is the ideal choice if you are using a LiteSpeed server.
• The SEO Framework (The SEO Framework Team)
  We’ll discuss SEO in more detail in a later section. For now, just know that plugins like this help to rank your content with search engines like Google.

Once you have been up and running for a while and are a little more confident in what you are doing and what you want to achieve, I would suggest the following as potential additions to the list above.

• Forget Spam Comment (Gulshan Kumar)
  Junk mail through your letterbox, nuisance ‘phone calls, phishing emails – we are inundated with unwanted rubbish (some of it malicious) at every turn. Sadly, that extends to blog post comments too. Fortunately, this plugin will stop the vast majority for you.
• GDPR Cookie Consent (WebToffee)
  We can thank the bureaucrats at the EU for GDPR. On the plus side, we can thank the developers of this plugin for helping to keep us compliant.
• Limit log in attempts reloaded (Limit log in attempts reloaded)
  Internet security is an important issue. There are a great many malicious individuals who try to gain access to sites that they don’t own. This is one of the ways in which you can make that task more difficult for them – put a limit on many times they can try to log in to your site within a given period of time.
• ShortPixel Image Optimizer (ShortPixel)
  I’ve already mentioned the importance of having a fast site. One of the major factors in a site’s speed is the size of the images that it shows. You can greatly reduce any ‘image drag’ by optimising your images using a plugin like this.
  
  If you sign-up for a free account (which provides 100 images per month) through this ShortPixel link you and I will both receive an additional 100 image credits.
• WP 2FA (WP White Security)
  Another security plugin. This one implements 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) for your blog – once the WordPress login details are correctly entered you must also enter a numeric code from your mobile phone. Easy for you to do – virtually impossible for anybody else.

3. Creating and Publishing Content

OK, you’ve got your blog all set up and ready to go. What now?

Well, your objective was starting a blog in retirement so you could just dive straight in at this point and start experimenting. And that would be fine – that’s what many people do.

Or, you could read on, continue your blogging education a little further, and potentially make things a little easier for yourself.

3.1 Pages vs Posts

You may have noticed as you scanned through the WordPress menu that there are options for Pages and for Posts.

What’s the difference?

Well, pages are for static content – stuff that isn’t likely to change once you’ve done it. Typical pages on a blog site include:

• Home – a place to tell people about your blog
• About – a place to tell people about you (have you looked at my About page yet?)
• Privacy Policy – let people know how you will handle any data you have about them
• Cookie Policy – yes, it’s our friendly bureaucrats at the EU again

Posts are where you put your actual blogging content.

If possible you may want to help people navigate your content by putting it into broad Categories and adding those to your Main Menu.

3.2 It’s all in the Presentation!

You’ve put a lot of effort into your content so you want people to read it, right?

Of course, you do.

So, how do you do that?

• Realise that blogs are not books. Most blog readers will skim-read the content.
• Use headings and sub-headings to break the content into sections.
• Do NOT write lengthy paragraphs – aim for no more than 4 lines.
• Use bullet points to list key items of information (like this one!).
• Use bold and/or CAPITALS for emphasis (or use a coloured section like the one above).
• Consider text visuals – font size, line height, text colour, and background colour.
• Consider the use of pictures.

In short, if your blog looks like an online book people probably won’t read it. Sorry!

And give careful consideration to the headline that you choose for each post. After all, you want to make it appealing to your potential readers.

You may find it useful to put the proposed headline in a Headline Analyser tool. Theoretically, these indicate how popular a headline is likely to be.

I would also highly recommend the use of a utility called Grammarly.

We all like to think that we know how to spell and use grammar – but it never hurts to have somebody, or something, look over your work for you!

3.3 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO could take up a whole post on its own. Or a number of posts. Or a small book. Or even a large book.

In short, it is a huge subject and I will just be making you aware of it so that you can do further research if you wish.

What is SEO?

Put simply, it is the means by which you look to improve your posts, and your blog as a whole, to increase visibility to people who use a search engine to find content related to your blog.

The more visible your content is the more likely it is that people will find it.

How do search engines like Google know what results to deliver to their users?

Well, they use things called bots to crawl the internet looking for content and indexing it. Think of it as being like a librarian making a record of all of the books in the library.

They then use very specialised algorithms to analyse the data collected and rank it according to how useful it is likely to be for a particular search query.

These algorithms make use of various ranking factors.

The exact factors aren’t publicised because that would leave them open to manipulation by people looking to rank highly. However, SEO experts try to deduce what is likely to be a ranking factor and then modify the content accordingly.

Backlinks

Backlinks (or just links) are really useful ways of directing a reader’s attention to another site to read about something that is associated with the material being read on your site.

And WordPress makes it really easy to add them.

Let’s add a link to the word “Backlinks“.

• Highlight the part of the text that we want to be the target (anchor text)
• Click on the link icon (I’ve added a red arrow to show where in the image below)
• Add the URL for the page being linked to (I’ve used a Wiki reference)
• Select ‘Open in new tab’ (we don’t want to lose our reader!)
• Click the curly arrow at the end of the URL to submit the link
• Done!

Backlinks are widely regarded as one of the most important ranking factors.

Consequently, they can be pretty difficult to obtain.

The first thing that you should do is focus on creating quality content that people will want to link to. (I know, it’s obvious but some people overlook this point)

The second thing that you could look at is writing guest posts for other websites. This is a ‘win-win’ scenario – the site that you write for gets some quality content for its readers, and you get a backlink for your site (and will hopefully gain some additional readers).

Another way of getting backlinks is to add your site to a blog directory. Now, these directories are not all of equal quality. And you probably shouldn’t join too many.

One that I particularly like is the MK Blog Directory. It’s free to join (many directories want to charge you a fee) and the site looks like a quality site when you check the Moz statistics: Domain Authority (DA) of 55 and a Spam score of 0 (which is very rare!).

Keywords

When (if?) you start your SEO research you are going to see lots of references to keywords and long-tail keywords. What are they?

A keyword is basically a term that you want your blog to rank well for when people search for it. So, let’s say that you want to operate an online sports equipment shop – a keyword that you might want to rank for is ‘running shoe’.

Now, with a term that broad there are going to be a huge number of competing sites – meaning that it will be difficult for you to rank for that keyword.

But what if you modified it to ‘Nike running shoe’? Better.

Or ‘Nike size 10 men’s running shoe’? Much better.

Or ‘Nike size 10 men’s trail running shoe green UK’? Do you see where I’m going with this?

If you are looking to rank for a particular keyword, it’s probably best to make it a long-tail one.

SEO Help from a Plugin

There are a number of plugins that can help with various aspects of SEO.

If you’ve followed my recommendation from the Plugins section above you’ll already have The SEO Framework.

Take some time to have a look at the various settings. Then, each time that you write some content, spend a couple of minutes at the bottom of the page completing the Meta Title and Meta Description.

3.4 The Need for Speed!

OK, fire up Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone”, turn the volume up, and say after me:

“I feel the need …. the need for speed!”

We live in an age of instant gratification and impatience. Research by Google revealed that 53% of users would leave a page that fails to load within 3 seconds.

We don’t want that happening to us, do we? No, we don’t!

So, how will you know whether or not your site is fast, slow, or somewhere in between? Well, there are lots of sites that will measure it for you. One of the main ones is GTMetrix.

One of the things that I like about GTMetrix is the waterfall tab that shows you how long the various elements of your chosen page are taking to load – very useful for identifying any problem areas that need work.

The image below is the GTMetrix result for my Home page.

As you can see, it’s fully loaded in 0.5 seconds. That’s what we want – a page that appears to load instantly.

Here are the main elements that I attribute that speed to:

• Good hosting on LiteSpeed servers (Krystal)
• Caching plugin designed for LiteSpeed servers (LiteSpeed Cache)
• Theme built for speed (GeneratePress)
• Lightweight images (ShortPixel Image Optimizer)

Two further tips that I would add for boosting your speed:

1. Page builders (eg Elementor).
   You don’t need one.
   
   I promise you, everything that you want to do you can do without a page builder. All they are good for is slowing your site down.
   
   A great many sites are now paying large fees to web designers to help them remove the page builders that they have used. Save yourself this heartache and expense!
2. Image dimensions
   We’ve discussed the size of an image in terms of the amount of disk space it takes up but what about its dimensions (width x height)?
   
   Well, you can make speed gains by re-sizing a large image to the size needed for your blog.
   
   For example, the width of my blog content is 800 pixels. If I have an image that is 6000 x 4000 pixels then I will scale this image (to 800 x 533) before uploading it to WordPress.
   
   There are many free programs that will do this for you. The one that I use is called GIMP.

3.5 Getting Help

In my experience, there are few things more frustrating than IT programs that aren’t working.

So, who can you turn to?

Well, it helps greatly if you can identify the area that is causing problems.

If the problem relates to your hosting then you can most definitely get in touch with the Support team at Krystal. They really are exceptionally good (and friendly, and prompt).

Likewise, if the issue is related to the GeneratePress theme then you can use the Support forums for both the free version and the premium version.

Similarly, if the issue is related to a particular plugin then look for the support forum associated with it on WordPress.org.

You might also want to join a few relevant FaceBook groups to provide another avenue of support. For example:

• GeneratePress Group
• LiteSpeed WordPress Community
• WordPress UK&I Help and Support
• WordPress Security Group

If you are desperate and can’t find the answer elsewhere, feel free to drop the query in the Comments section below. I’ll do my best to help out if I can!

4. Show Me The Money!

So, you want to make some money from your blog, do you?

OK, I’ll outline below some of the potential ways of doing this. I would suggest, though, that you run your blog for 3-6 months first and then look at monetisation. Learn to walk before you attempt running!

4.1 Affiliate Schemes

Become a middleman between a supplier of a product or service and the reader of your blog that is interested in buying that item.

Sign-up for the affiliate plan with brands that you would be happy to recommend, they will provide you with the appropriate links to use on your blog.

Then, when a reader clicks on your affiliate link they get a recommended product (at no extra cost to them), the supplier gets a sale that they may not have got otherwise, and you get a small commission.

I would advise that you concentrate on looking out for your readers rather than focusing on your commission. You’ll notice in the hosting section that I specifically haven’t recommended a company that is renowned for paying high commissions because I had a bad experience with the product. Earn the trust of your readers.

You should also include a disclosure on each page with affiliate links (you’ll see mine highlighted at the top of the sidebar) and, ideally, have an Affiliate Policy page that provides more detail.

4.2 Advertising

Selling advertising space on your blog can be lucrative.

However, keep in mind that this is very much a numbers game – you will need high levels of traffic to your site to make any decent money.

There are various Ad Networks available but they won’t accept you until you have sufficient traffic. They include:

• Google Adsense
• Media.net
• AdThrive
• Mediavine
• Ezoic

4.3 Consultancy

Depending on your particular area of expertise, you may be able to sell your consultancy services through your blog.

4.4 Sponsored Posts

Once your blog becomes established, brands may ask you to write a ‘review post’ about one of their products.

Typically you receive the product to be reviewed free of charge and receive a flat fee in addition. They may ask for details of your traffic levels before proceeding. The higher your traffic the higher the fee that you can command.

4.5 Membership-only Sites

There are plugins that you can get that will enable you to make your site only available to readers who pay you a monthly (or yearly) fee.

Or you could have a blog that is largely free to view but then create additional content for a ‘members only’ section.

4.6 Building Traffic Levels

This takes time.

The older your blog site and the more content that you have produced, the better your chances of getting more traffic.

You can also boost traffic by making use of social media. You can do this in 2 ways:

1. Open social media accounts and each time you make a new post on your blog – post it to your social media accounts too. Don’t overwhelm yourself at the outset – just pick one, like Twitter, and focus on that.
2. Add Social Share buttons to your blog (like the ones that you’ll see at the end of this post). These give readers the option to let their contacts know about the content if they enjoyed it. I like Scriptless Social Sharing as it is very fast.

5. FAQ

How do I start a blog with no experience?

You don’t need experience in order to start a blog. It really is very easy these days. The basic steps are:

1. Choose your preferred topic (or niche)
2. Purchase an appropriate domain name
3. Pick a hosting provider
4. Install your Content Management System (eg WordPress)
5. Add a theme that suits your requirements
6. And some plugins for increased functionality
7. … Go, go, go!

How do beginner bloggers make money?

Keep in mind that the various advertising networks will want your site to have a minimum level of monthly visitors before they will team up with you to place ads on your website.

As a beginner blogger, a better route to blogging money would be affiliate marketing. You sign-up with a particular brand and include links on your blog – then when a reader clicks on the link and buys something, you receive a small commission (at no extra cost to the reader).

Which niche is best for blogging?

The best niche is the one that is most appropriate for you – one that you have any interest in and knowledge about. You want to be able to inform, educate, and entertain your readers – this is most easily done with a topic that means something to you.

Why do most blogs fail?

A lack of staying power. Some bloggers are like the marathon runners who have done no training – they set off full of enthusiasm, thinking that this marathon lark is easy. Then, after a comparatively short distance, reality sets in – their pace gets slower and slower until … they give up.

Don’t try to publish a post every day if that isn’t going to work with your other commitments. Post once a week, fortnight, month … whatever works for you.

What is the ideal length for a blog post?

All posts should be precisely 2,693 words long – that is the perfect length!

Seriously though, don’t aim for a certain post length, aim for a post that is sufficiently detailed to provide the information that your readers are looking for. If you can do that in 1,200 words, great. If it needs 3,000 or 5,000 then produce a post of that length.

What features should a good blog contain?

1. Lots of white space!
   Seriously, far too many blog posts contain huge blocks of text that don’t encourage readers to continue. Make it pleasant to read your posts – use headings, short paragraphs, bullet-point lists, and pictures.
2. Table of contents
   Let your readers see what content is to follow. It gives them a brief overview and may let them more quickly get to a particular area of interest.
3. About
   People are inquisitive – they want to know a little more about the person writing the blog. So, tell them!

How much does it cost to start a blog?

If you just want to give blogging a try to see whether you like it then you could go for one of the free-of-charge blogging options like WordPress.com.

That said, you can have a ‘proper’ blog by buying your own domain name and paying for a hosting provider that is not hugely expensive. A basic package should cost well under £100 per year.

6. Conclusion

OK, that brings us to the end of this guide.

I sincerely hope that starting a blog in retirement is now a much less daunting prospect than it may have appeared before you read the post.

If you have any questions or comments please leave them below. And if you have found the post useful and you think that it may help others, please use the sharing buttons below.

I’ll finish by leaving you with a brief action plan:

• Decide what subject matter you want to cover
• Choose a domain name (have a few in mind in case your preferred option is taken)
• Purchase your hosting plan. (Recommendation: Krystal)
• Install your CMS (eg WordPress)
• Pick your theme (Recommendation: GeneratePress)
• Install some key plugins
• Start blogging in retirement!