How to Set Up a Brilliantly Looking Blog for Free

Do you want to create a blog for free and make money online? Do you have any idea how to set up a brilliantly looking blog for free?

The moment you become a blogger, you realize that you actually took several jobs at the same time. When you visualize this career path, you usually would think only of copywriting. However, a blogger has to also become a marketer, editor, designer, programmer, customer care agent, promoter, even accountant and much more.

And if you think that we are just kidding then you must follow this Blogging Skills guide to know what blogging skills you need to become a professional blogger or which kind of surprising skills blogging is teaching you.

(Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and images. I earn advertising/referral fees if you make a purchase by clicking them. There is no extra cost to you. See our full disclosure here. )

Today, we are going to discover the easy and free of charge way of putting on the designer’s hat. Let’s take a look at how to set up a brilliantly looking blog for free. Here we go.

You may also be interested in checking out:

Table of Contents:

How to Set Up a Brilliantly Looking Blog for Free

“How to start a blog for free” and “how to create a blog for free and make money online” are some of the most widely searched terms over the internet because everyone want to create a free website or blog to earn money online, but very few people really care about professional looking blog or attractive website design and that’s the main reason for us to bringing out this brilliantly looking free blog setup guide.

So, are you ready to know how to set up an attractive looking blog for free and start making money online? Here we go.

(1) Main Theme

In an ideal world, nobody would judge a book by its cover. However, today the typical modern person gets tens of newsletters in their inbox and thousands of reading recommendations through social media. But the millions of search pages you get when you google a keyword are living proof that there’s an overload of content.

In the end, your visitors will have to judge the main theme of your blog to take the decision of whether they want to stay or leave. So, your blog has one second to make a good impression. Let’s see how you can make the most of it.

Your blog design should be eye-catching, but it also should reflect the nature of your chosen topic. If you have an entertaining blog, you should not restrain yourself from choosing a fun theme. However, if your subjects are handling interesting scientific studies, you should go for a slick, classic look.

Now that you have chosen a suitable theme for your blog design, the next step is pretty simple. There’s a vast library of WordPress themes that are created by experienced professionals. The good news is that there are hundreds of beautiful choices that are free of charge.

Usually, a WordPress Theme comes with templates that you can customize the way you want, images in .jpg or .gif format, custom pages, and style sheets that gain functionality with a lot of code lines.

(2) Criteria for Theme Selection

However, the many options you have at your disposal may not feel like a blessing, but a curse. So, here are some simple criteria to guide you in the jungle of WordPress themes:

Keep it Simple – simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. You want to impress your visitors, but they might see a few elements that can disturb their reading time. So, go for a theme that represents your blog but doesn’t ruin usability.

Responsive – if your blog is not responsive, you will lose readers that come from many other devices than a computer. Such a theme can adapt its layout to fit any type of screen size.

Browser Compatibility – everybody has their preferences when it comes to the ideal browser. This is why it is important to consider that your readers don’t use the same browser as you do. The fact is that your blog might look impressive on Chrome, but a disaster on Opera. So, before settling for the one, you should test it on several browsers.

Page Builders – some free WordPress themes can support the lifesaving page builders. These allow you to create new layouts with simple drag and drop commands.

Site Speed – your visitors, will not access your blog to wait tens of seconds for a design they don’t care about to load. So, the site speed can make the difference between committed and annoyed readers. So, when you can’t decide between several themes, you can pick the fastest one as the winner.

(3) How to Activate a Theme

Once you finally selected your ideal theme, it is time to incorporate it into your blog. So, all you have to do is follow this path from your blog dashboard: My Sites – Themes. Find your chosen theme and click on the three dots from its preview. Afterward, click on Activate and your theme will become live on your blog.

You can customize the design of the theme and upload your logo directly from your dashboard. Simply click on My Site and under Personalize category you will find the Themes tag. Click on Customize button next to Themes, so you can customize your present theme.

Then you can choose to edit Site Identity by changing the title of your blog and also uploading your logo. The next option in line is to change Color & Backgrounds. Here you can pick your own color palette to represent your website. You can also choose to change your two fonts, one for the Header and the other one for body texts. The last customizable feature is your header image. You can choose one of their suggested images or upload a new visual file of your choice.

(4) Customize the Blog Theme

While some might advise you not to tweak with your newly installed theme, there are several reasons to continue customizing it. First of all, since it is a free product, the chances are that many other bloggers use it. So, to get away from an anonymity label as far as possible, you should make few changes to set yourself apart. Secondly, the theme as it is may not align yet with the purpose of your blog.

So, you can go ahead and make some small changes, like the color scheme. However, you can’t choose a new color for each feature. There are some rules of pairing that you should know before proceeding with customization:

Monologues – A monologue theme is good for readability boost, even other, other professionals find this dull. You can only pick one main color, and the variations can only be as different shades.

Analogous – an analogous theme consists of up to five colors. The rule here is that the ones you choose should stay next to each other on the color wheel. So, you can simply pick a combination of blue, green, and yellow plus some different shades to round up a set of five colors.

Complementary – you have only two colors to blend in a perfect blog design. However, these colors should stand opposite to each other in the same color wheel. This is when you get to be bold and go for compelling palettes like green and red, blue and yellow, or purple and green.

Triadic – you get to be even more adventurous as you can choose three complementary colors with a triadic theme. The resulting image is daring and definitely eye catching. So, you are safe to go for a mix of green, blue, and red or purple, yellow, and blue.

Once you choose your color scheme, there is no turning back. Ideally, all the designs that you will use in the future will enjoy the same combination of colors. For example, the guys from Ihop know this trick very well, and they use the same color palette everywhere. If you participate in their survey, you will see the same commitment to their primary branding colors and get a free serve of pancakes.

(5) Logo

Even though not all blogs have it, a Logo is a must have for any website. Businesses use this little clip art to represent their entire brand. Since it should use as little space as possible, a good logo relies on the power of suggestion to insert an idea in the long term memory of your readers.

Your logo will be visible on every post of your blog and also on the open tab of the users. So, its presence will be ubiquitous. First-time visitors will be more interested in one particular post. However, if after a few days, they came to realize that your blog was actually of quality, there are little chances that they will remember its name. However, a small image is easier to recollect. And this is how your logo can simply bring back your first-time visitors.

However, since you may not have the expertise of a logo designer, you may find yourself in a difficult situation. The good news is that there are plenty of free online logo maker websites and free logo maker software that can generate one for you. Even better news is that a logo shouldn’t be a work of art. Its only utility for a blog is to create recognition.

So, don’t fret over your non-existent designing skills. Services like “Design Mantic” and “Logomakr” offer you many clip arts, fonts, and shapes to create your own logo for free. The designs are highly customizable. You can change the colors to match your blog theme and also adjust the sizes any way you like.

Conclusion

So, these are the important steps you can follow to create a brilliantly looking blog for free. Once you decide all these little details after creating the blog, you can concentrate on writing and posting on a beautifully designed website.

Please feel free to suggest us if you have any other interesting thought about how to set up a beautiful blog for free and make money online.