Depending on a government job or asking your friends – and family – for money can be frustrating at times.
That’s why many people in Nigeria have decided to start a profitable blog online. One that is easy to start (and sustain) which is also very scalable.
But as with every other thing, you’ll face one challenge or the other. And this challenge for most people is the cost of setting up their own blog.
If you are like me, you probably watch a lot of YouTube video that teach people how to start a blog. Most of those youtubers would tell you to use sites like dreamhost, bluehost or godaddy.
Yes those foreign companies are nice and very good too. But! They are expensive.
If you check one of these sites, you’ll see that you need about $38 to $100 to create a blog depending on the kind of themes and plugins you use. That’s 16K – N40K (or more)
This is a very big challenge for people, especially those who are just getting started. Wouldn’t it be nice to start with a cheaper platform to learn how blogging works and even start earning from it?
You’ll definitely make a lot of mistakes but when you start very cheaply, your mistakes would be cheaper and affordable. That’s why I’m writing this blog.
It’s divided into 2 easy-to-understand sections. If you follow the steps, you’ll have your own WordPress website up and running in no time. Let’s get started with section 1.
Section 1:
In this section we would go over the steps involved in purchasing a cheap website.
How to create a blog for less than 11k naira in Nigeria step by step [with pictures]
To create a cheap website, you have to visit an affordable web hosting company like truehost:
Step 1: visit truehost and create your account
The first step is to visit my #1 recommended cheap web hosting company. Yeah, I recommend them a lot. That’s because I’ve created more than 5 five different websites on the platform both for myself and others
When you visit the platform. Scroll down to their packages section
So as you can see above, you can host a website for as low as 400 naira per month. That’s if you already have a domain name.
You have three main options here. The difference between these 3 options is the disk space. The first option would give you 30GB of disk space. The second would offer you 50GB and the last one is 90GB.
If you are just getting started, the 30GB is more than enough for you. So select that one and let’s move to step 2. You’ll get all these options as shown below
Step 2: Register your domain name
After clicking on the first option, it would bring you to this page where you can choose a domain name for your business.
What is a domain name?
I know you already know this. But some don’t.
A domain name in simple terms is the name that’s typed into a browser when you are about to visit a particular website. Some examples of domain names are facebook.com, twitter.com and youtube.com.
Two people cannot use the same domain name. Do well to check if your desired domain name is still available.
This is going to be your new business name so take your time to choose a good one. You can find a lot of domain (or business) name generators online. A good one is instantdomainsearch.com. Use it to find a lovely domain name for your blog.
Step 3: add the domain to your cart
I searched for “mynewwebsitedomaintoday” to see if it was available. And it was, as you can see below
Once you find a suitable domain from that website I told you above. If you search for it here and it’s available. You’ll be greeted with a congratulations message.
If you look below the message, you’ll see that there are different extensions and different prices.
Personally, I like going with a dot com domain because it looks more professional and it ranks higher on search engines. And according hubspot dot com domains tends to rank better because of the trust people attach to dot com extensions.
Step 4: Configure your hosting package
Once you add your preferred domain (with the right extension) scroll down and click on “continue”. Your chosen domain name would be added to the cart.
It would bring you to this page where you can configure your hosting package.
On this page, you can chose your payment plan. This is where you’ll decide whether you want to pay monthly or yearly for your website hosting. If you decide to pay monthly that would be N500 every single month.
It’s good for those that want to get started but don’t have all the money now. In this case, you’ll have to renew your hosting every month. And in a year, that would be N6000/yr.
But if you pay for the yearly plan, you’ll get 20% off your first purchase. In this case, you’ll only pay N5000/yr. Just choose and option that is suitable for you and click on continue.
Again this hosting package would be added to your cart.
Step 5: Configure your domain name
On the next page you’ll be asked to configure your domain name. It would look like this
You can add some add-ons like DNS management, id protection and email forwarding. Just leave this for now. You can still add them on the checkout page. On this page, you won’t see the exact amount for adding them but on the checkout page, you’ll see the additional prices.
Click on continue and go to the next – and final – page
Step 6: confirm your order
Remember that our goal is to create a website for less than 11k. remember the addons we talked about on the previous step? You can now see their price tags. I added the two addons that are free and left the first option.
Adding whois protection is important if you don’t want other people to see your details as a website owner, though I don’t see this as a bad thing if you have nothing to hide.
On that same page, you’ll see the details of your hosting package and you’d be able to add some other add-ons too. Just leave them. Don’t add any other thing.
Step 7: Click on check out and create your account
As you can see the total amount for both the domain and the hosting is N10,800 which is less than 11K. Click on the green check out button.
This will bring you to the last and final page of this process. You’ll be asked to enter your personal details here. You’ll also be required to set a password. Make sure it’s a password you can easily remember because you’ll be using it to log into your account on truehost.
Lastly, to finish up the process, you need to pay. They accept different payment methods. You can even pay with PayPal.
On truehost you have many different options to make your payment. So pick one and pay.
Congratulations, you have successfully purchased your very first website on truehost. How hard was that? Not so hard right?
The only thing left now is to set up your website. The design, logo and other necessary settings. Don’t worry, it’s as easy as ABC. You don’t even need to any knowledge of coding to pull this off. Are you ready? Let’s go to section 2.
Section 2:
In this section we would go over the steps involved in setting up your newly purchased website
How to install WordPress on your website
Now that you’ve paid for your own WordPress website, let’s now see how you can customize it and make it user friendly for people to use.
Step 1: Login to your account on truehost
It would bring you to this page. You can see the number of domains and services you have on the platform. As you can see, I have 1 domain and 1 service (hosting)
You can hover around the client area to understand the platform and know how to navigate it. Now to set up your wordpress blog. Click on services. It would bring you to a new page showing your hosting package and other services you’ve bought on the platform.
Click on truehost silver hosting. Don’t click on your domain url otherwise it would take you to your site. Which (for now) would be empty.
Step 2: Go to the cPanel
After clicking on your hosting package. It would bring you to a new page with a lot of quick links. Scroll down until you get to the “one click login” section. Click on cPanel.
It would bring you to the cPanel page. It looks like this.
Step 3: visit softaculous apps installer page
Scroll down to the “softaculous apps installer” section. As you can see below
Next, click on WordPress. That’s if you want to use WordPress. As you can see above, there are other content management systems (CMS) that you can use. Since we are creating a WordPress website. I’m going to click on WordPress.
This would bring us to the softaculous installer page. Softaculous is just the install. They don’t own any of the CMS. So we can install WordPress on our website from here.
Since we clicked on WordPress from the previous page, it brings us directly to WordPress under blogs as you can see below
Step 4: Click on quick install
Click on quick install because we don’t want to waste much time here.
Step 5: setup the software
It would bring you to this page where you can setup the software.
As you can see, it has already written your domain name for you. But, it’s installing wordpress on your directory. Make sure you leave that directory empty. So remove wp and leave that space empty.
If you leave it as wp, it would install wordpress on only that particular directory. For instance, if your domain name is “gideonismyboss.com” and you install wordpress on your directory. Gideonismyboss.com would be empty. But if you visit gideonismyboss.com/wp you’d find a wordpress website. So leave that directory input field empty.
Step 6: Select a theme
On WordPress, there are a lot of free theme that you can use. If you are just getting started, just choose a theme you like and go with it.
Select any theme. And it would bring you to a page where you can preview all the pages. I already have a WordPress website. So I’m going to create a coming soon page. If you are a new business, you can use this coming soon page to prepare the minds of your customers.
Click on “select theme” and it would bring you back to the setup page. Scroll down and click on “install”
It takes less than 3 minutes to install wordpress.
Once it’s installed, you’ll receive this message.
Hurray!!! Our wordpress website is now live. Let’s click on our url and check it out.
As you can now see, the blog is live. And you can start telling people about it. You have successfully created a cheap website for yourself.
But! You need to setup some things on your new site. For example, you have to setup ssl, your logo, your site description and some other basic things.
The next section will walk you through all this. let’s go.
How to install SSL on your website
A website without ssl would warn visitors that the site is not secured. This can reduce the number of visitors your website gets. It can also prevent your website from ranking on google. So, let’s see the fastest way to install ssl on a wordpress website.
Step 1: Go back to cpanel and click on “Lets Encrypt SSL”
Go back to your cPanel. Scroll down to the “security” section. There you’ll find “Lets Encrypt SSl”
Step 2: Issue a free SSL certificate for yourself
To do that, click on the issue button is found on this page. You’d find it under actions as you can see in the image below.
Step 3: Go to plugins page
Go page to your wordpress website. At the left hand side on desktop, you’d find plugins. If you hover on plugins, you’d get three additional options. Click on “new” and it would take you to the plugins page.
Step 4: Install Really Simple SSL
Search for “really simple ssl”, install and activate it on your website.
Step 5: Activate SSL
It would bring you to a page that looks like this.
As you can see, it has automatically detected the ssl certificate we installed in “step 2”
The last thing left to do now is to activate the SSL certificate. Just click on “activate SSL” and it would log you out.
Now, your site has SSL as you can see below. You’ll need to login into you account again.
How hard was that? Simple right? I know.now you’ve successfully added an SSL certificate to your wordpress website.
Remember, we still need to add a site logo, site icon and description. Continue reading to learn how to do all that. Let’s go.
How to add a site logo, site icon and description to your wordpress website
Step 1: Go to appearance
Under appearance, click on customize.
Step 2: select site identity
Navigate to site identity, and click on it.
Step 3: add a site logo
There are different ways to get a logo.
- Get a logo from an expert
If you are a business and you want a custom one made for you, go to fiverr and find a good logo desinger. You can get a great logo for $5 on the platform.
- Use a free icon
If you just want to get any logo for your website, go to flaticon.com. You’ll find a lot of icons on the platform. Choose one and download it.
- Design a logo yourself
You can be creative and create the logo yourself. Just go to canva and you can create a very beautiful logo yourself there.
Once you have your desired logo. Come backe here and upload it.
Click on “Select Logo” and upload the logo to your website. You can also use that same logo as your site icon. Then change the tagline from “My WordPress Blog” to whatever you want it to be.
Conclusion
How hard was that? That’s how to create a super cheap website. Follow the steps above and create yours today. If you want me to help you set it up. Go to our services page.
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