In a previous video, Alston asked the Platform Proof community one simple question: do you want to see how to start a WordPress blog? The response was overwhelming. So this is the full walk-through, straight from zero. From finding a niche to publishing your first blog post live on the internet, this is the complete process, and ChatGPT is doing the heavy lifting at nearly every step.
The most important idea to carry through this entire guide is one Alston comes back to constantly: be faster than perfect. Perfect people do not make money. The people who move fast, get something live, and iterate are the ones who actually build something. Keep that idea front and center as you read through each step below.
What You’ll Walk Out With
- A niche picked in under 5 minutes using a single ChatGPT prompt
- A domain name chosen fast using InstantDomainSearch.com
- A live WordPress site hosted on Bluehost for $2.95 a month
- The critical settings configured so Google can actually index your posts
- A lean plugin setup that keeps your site fast
- A keyword research process for finding low-competition topics to rank for
- A first blog post written with ChatGPT and images generated with Midjourney, published and live
- A clear next move toward your first affiliate income, starting at finder.platformproof.com
Step 1: Use ChatGPT to Find a Niche
Most people spend weeks agonizing over a niche. Alston spent about 30 seconds. He opened ChatGPT and typed: “List niche ideas.” That is it. No elaborate prompt, no elaborate framework. ChatGPT returned a handful of options, and one stood out right away: pet accessories for specific dog breeds. Alston has a Doberman Pinscher, so the personal connection made that niche feel natural. He then ran a quick Google search for “pet accessories for Doberman Pinscher” to confirm real people were searching for it.
The lesson here is not that you should start a Doberman blog. The lesson is that ChatGPT is your brainstorming partner, not your final decision-maker. Use it to generate options fast, pick one that has some personal connection or genuine interest behind it, and confirm demand exists. Do not over-research. Pick one and move. You will learn more in three months of running a blog than you will in three months of planning one.
Step 2: Pick a Domain Name (Speed Over Perfection)
Old-school SEO advice said your domain name had to contain your primary keyword. That thinking is mostly outdated. Google now reads your entire website and figures out what it is about on its own. A keyword in the domain name still does not hurt, but it is nowhere near as critical as it once was. Alston makes this point with an example: Tom’s Guide. The name “Tom’s Guide” tells you absolutely nothing about what the site covers. In reality, it is a major tech review blog covering everything from vacuum cleaners to gaming consoles. The generic name did not hold it back at all.
To find an available domain, Alston uses InstantDomainSearch.com. He typed “dobermanpinscher” and it was taken. He tried “dobermanpinscherplanet” and it was also taken. He added “best” to the front and found “bestdobermanpinscher.com” available. He moved on immediately. Total time: under five minutes. That is the benchmark to hold yourself to. Pick something reasonable, check availability, and proceed. The domain is not the business. The content is the business.
Step 3: Get Web Hosting and a Free Domain
Web hosting is where your website lives. Without it, no one anywhere can reach your pages. For beginners, Alston recommends Bluehost. Here are the actual numbers from the video, not estimates:
- WordPress Basic plan: $2.95 per month
- 12-month commitment total: $35.40
- Free domain name included for year one
- Domain privacy and protection: recommended add-on
- SiteLock Essentials: optional
- Total with the two recommended add-ons: $83.16 for the first year
Alston specifically recommends domain privacy and protection because without it, registering a domain opens you up to a flood of spam emails offering SEO services, web design, and everything else. It is worth the few dollars to avoid that noise. The CodeGuard backup service and Yoast premium SEO add-ons that Bluehost offers during checkout are skippable, especially at the start. You can always add tools later once you know you are going to stick with the project.
During setup, Bluehost will push you to buy an SSL certificate as a separate purchase. Alston selected “No thanks, continue to account manager” because SSL is typically included in good hosting plans anyway. Do not feel pressured to buy everything they offer at checkout. Get the basic plan, add domain privacy, and move forward.
Step 4: Install WordPress and Pick a Theme
Once your Bluehost account is set up, you click “Log into WordPress” directly from the account dashboard. WordPress launches with a setup wizard. Alston clicked “I’ve never done this before” and worked through the prompts simply. When asked what the site was about, he typed “pets” rather than “Doberman accessories” to leave himself room to expand the site later. For the website description, he went back to ChatGPT and asked it to write a two-sentence description for the site under 160 characters, then copied and pasted it in.
WordPress themes control how your site looks. The setup wizard offers free themes you can pick immediately. Alston walked through several, searching terms like “pet blog” and “dog” to find relevant options. But his real recommendation is to invest in a premium theme if you are serious about blogging. Premium themes on marketplaces typically run between $40 and $99. Many come with built-in tools like OptinMonster for collecting email subscribers, WP Forms for contact forms, and page builders for more flexible layouts. Those add-ons alone can save you additional plugin installs and keep your site running lighter.
After purchasing a premium theme, you download it as a ZIP file. Inside WordPress, go to Appearance, then Themes, then Upload Theme. Choose your ZIP file and install it. If you get a file size error during the upload, contact your hosting company and ask them to increase the upload limit. After installation, click Activate. Then refresh your homepage and your site will look completely different.
One thing to do immediately after activating your theme: find the option to make your site publicly visible. Bluehost sets new sites to “Coming Soon” mode by default. Until you click the launch option in the account manager, visitors who try to reach your domain will hit an error screen. Alston turned this off right after theme activation so the site was actually live for anyone who visited.
Step 5: Configure the Settings That Actually Matter
WordPress has a long list of settings panels and most of them you can ignore for now. Four areas require attention before you start publishing:
Reading: By default, WordPress may show a static page as your homepage. Alston changed this to “Your latest posts” so that every new blog post automatically appears on the homepage as it is published. This keeps things simple and SEO-friendly from day one.
Search Engine Visibility: There is a checkbox in the Reading settings that says “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.” Do not check it. If it is checked, Google will not be able to find your pages and none of your content will rank. New WordPress installs sometimes have this checked by default. Verify yours is unchecked before you publish anything.
Permalinks: This controls what your post URLs look like. The setting you want is Post name. With this setting active, a post titled “Best Muzzles for Dobermans” will have a URL like domain.com/best-muzzles-for-dobermans. That is clean, readable, and search-engine friendly. Older WordPress setups defaulted to including the month and date in the URL, which creates cluttered links and makes posts feel outdated. Bluehost now defaults to Post name, but always verify it in Settings, then Permalinks.
Privacy Policy: WordPress generates a default privacy policy page during setup. Use it. It is already there and linking to it from your site meets basic legal requirements in most regions. You can customize it later.
Step 6: Manage Plugins and Keep Them Lean
Plugins add features and functionality to your WordPress site. A premium theme will often auto-install several when you activate it. The rule Alston gives here is clear: do not run more than five active plugins at a time. More plugins mean a slower site. A slower site means lower Google rankings and visitors leaving before your content loads.
When you look at the Plugins panel after a theme install, read through what is there. Some are worth keeping. In the video, Alston deactivated Hello Dolly (a legacy novelty plugin that does nothing useful for a real site) and considered removing Jetpack because it is a heavy plugin that duplicates features you may not need yet. He kept the anti-spam plugin active and left the MailChimp plugin inactive since email marketing is a later-stage focus.
The broader rule: only activate a plugin when you have a specific, immediate reason for it. “This looks useful” is not a reason. Activate what you need right now. Leave everything else off or delete it entirely.
Step 7: Know the Difference Between Posts and Pages
This is the piece that trips up almost every new WordPress user, and it is worth slowing down to understand it clearly. WordPress has two distinct content types: pages and posts.
Pages are static. Each URL can only have one page. Your About page, Contact page, and Privacy Policy are pages. They do not appear in your blog roll. They do not show up in RSS feeds. Google can index them, but they are not optimized for recurring content the way posts are.
Posts are dynamic. You can publish unlimited posts. They appear on your homepage in reverse chronological order. They are what Google is reading and ranking when you show up in search results. Every time you write blog content meant to rank for a keyword, you are creating a post, not a page.
To create new content, go to Posts, then Add New Post. Not Pages. Posts. That distinction matters every single time you sit down to write.
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Step 8: Find Low-Competition Keywords to Target
ChatGPT can give you a starting list of keyword ideas. Alston demonstrated this in the video by typing “List keyword ideas for my blog” directly into ChatGPT. It returned a broad set of ideas. That is a starting point, not an ending point.
For real keyword research, Alston uses a paid keyword research tool. The strategy is to find a competing site in your niche that is roughly your size and run it through a site explorer tool. In the video, he pulled up a Doberman-focused blog and scanned its entire domain. That single search returned over 2,000 keywords the site was ranking for. More importantly, it revealed specific low-competition opportunities his new site could target:
- “Muzzles for Dobermans” gets 200 searches per month with a keyword difficulty of 0
- “European vs American Doberman” gets approximately 2,400 searches per month
- “Red Doberman” gets approximately 8,000 searches per month with zero competition
When looking at keyword results in a site explorer, focus on pages where the competing site has a domain ranking of 30 or below. Those are sites close to the size of a new blog. If a small site with low authority is ranking in position one for a keyword, a well-written new post has a real shot at taking that spot over time.
Alston is direct about the value of paid tools here. Finding this level of insight manually and for free would take months. A paid keyword tool turns it into a 20-minute exercise. When you are an internet marketer, time is your most valuable asset. Tools that compress time pay for themselves fast.
Step 9: Use ChatGPT to Write Your First Blog Post
Once you have a keyword target, return to ChatGPT. Alston typed: “Write a 3,000 word SEO optimized blog post on Doberman tail. Please make sure the content is unique and not copied.” ChatGPT produced a full draft. One note from the video: sometimes ChatGPT tells you it cannot write the full length in a single response, then writes it anyway. Alston described it as “a little moody.” If ChatGPT gives you a partial response, just ask it to continue and it usually will.
After you have the draft, do not paste it in raw and publish immediately. Go through it. Add your own experiences. Correct anything that is factually off. Inject your personality and your voice into it. A blog post that sounds human performs better over time than one that reads like it came straight from an AI. ChatGPT gives you a solid foundation and a lot of saved time. You make it yours by adding the parts only you know.
To paste into WordPress, go to Posts, then Add New Post. Paste in the text. Then clean it up. Delete the introductory label ChatGPT puts at the top. Turn section headers into actual Heading blocks in the WordPress block editor. Make sure the formatting looks right in the editor preview before you move on.
Step 10: Add Images with Midjourney and Publish
While ChatGPT was drafting the blog post in the video, Alston opened Midjourney inside Discord. He typed “/imagine Doberman Pinscher tail” and generated a set of four AI images. He saved them locally, then returned to the WordPress editor and uploaded them into the post. He set one as the featured image for the post and resized the others to 50% width to use as in-line visuals throughout the content.
After a quick preview to confirm the layout looked right, Alston clicked Publish. The post went live. His homepage updated automatically to show the new article at the top. That is the full cycle: niche idea to live blog post, with ChatGPT and Midjourney doing the heavy work at every stage where AI can save time.
Honest Drawbacks to This Approach
This system works, but there are a few things worth being clear about before you start.
Blogging takes time to rank. Google typically takes three to six months to meaningfully rank a new domain. You will publish posts before you see traffic. That is normal. Stay consistent during that window and the results will come.
ChatGPT content needs human editing. AI-generated drafts sometimes include confident-sounding statements that are simply wrong. Always read what ChatGPT gives you and fact-check anything specific. Do not publish something you have not read yourself.
Premium themes add up. Between hosting ($83.16 first year) and a premium theme ($40 to $99), your first-year cost is roughly $125 to $180. That is genuinely low compared to most business starts, but it is real money. Plan for it.
Plugins creep up. Every time you need a new feature, the temptation is to install another plugin. Resist it. Keep that five-plugin ceiling in mind. A slower site will cost you more in lost rankings than any plugin will save you in time.
Quick-Start Checklist
- Open ChatGPT and type “List niche ideas” to brainstorm your topic
- Search Google to confirm people are actually looking for content in that niche
- Go to InstantDomainSearch.com and find an available domain name in under five minutes
- Sign up for Bluehost WordPress Basic hosting at $2.95 per month
- Add domain privacy and protection during checkout
- Log into WordPress from your Bluehost account manager
- Pick and upload a theme (free or premium, $40 to $99)
- Launch your site publicly in the Bluehost account manager
- Check Settings: set Reading to “Latest posts,” verify Search Engine Visibility is unchecked, set Permalinks to “Post name”
- Deactivate any plugins you do not have an immediate use for
- Find a competing site in your niche and run it through a keyword research tool
- Pick one keyword with KD 0 and domain difficulty under 30
- Ask ChatGPT to write a 3,000-word SEO post on that keyword
- Read it, edit it, add your own voice and experience
- Generate images in Midjourney, set a featured image, and hit Publish
Find Your X
A WordPress blog is one way to build income online, but it is not the only way and it may not be the fastest path for you specifically. If you are not sure whether blogging is the right fit or if another model would get you to your first dollar faster, take two minutes at finder.platformproof.com. Answer a few short questions about your skills, schedule, and starting budget, and you will get a clear recommendation on where to point your effort next.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to use Bluehost or will other hosts work?
Bluehost is Alston’s recommended starting point for beginners because the interface is straightforward, the pricing is low, and WordPress installs with one click. Other hosts like SiteGround and Hostinger offer comparable entry-level WordPress hosting. The setup process will be similar. What matters more than which host you pick is getting started rather than spending two weeks comparing options.
How much does it really cost to start a WordPress blog?
Based on the numbers in the video: $35.40 for 12 months of basic Bluehost hosting, plus around $48 for domain privacy and protection, puts your first year at roughly $83.16 without a premium theme. Add a theme and you are looking at $125 to $180 total for year one. After that, renewal rates on hosting are higher, typically $8 to $12 per month. Budget for that before you start so you are not surprised at renewal time.
Can I just publish what ChatGPT writes without editing it?
You can, but you should not. ChatGPT sometimes includes inaccurate facts stated confidently. It also writes in a recognizable AI tone that Google and readers are increasingly trained to notice. The best results come from using ChatGPT as a first draft and then going through it to correct errors, add specific details you know from personal experience, and write it in a voice that sounds like you. That extra step is the difference between content that ranks and content that sits.
How many plugins is too many?
Alston’s ceiling is five active plugins. Every plugin adds code that runs on every page load. More plugins mean more load time. More load time means lower Google rankings and higher bounce rates from visitors who do not wait. Audit your plugins regularly and deactivate anything you are not actively using. If a plugin adds a feature you have not used in three months, remove it.
What keyword difficulty should I target as a new blog?
Start with keywords that have a difficulty of 0 to 10 in your keyword research tool. Also look at the domain rankings of the sites already ranking for that keyword. If you are seeing sites with domain ratings of 30 or below holding the top spots, you have a real shot at competing there. Avoid going after keywords where the results page is dominated by established high-authority sites. Find the gaps where smaller sites are winning and write better content on those exact topics.
How long before a new WordPress blog starts getting traffic?
Realistically, three to six months before you see meaningful organic search traffic. Google needs time to crawl a new domain, index your posts, and build trust in your site. This is normal and expected. It is not a sign that something is wrong. The blogs that succeed are the ones that keep publishing consistently during those early months when the numbers are still flat. The traffic comes after the work, not before it.
Should I worry about the domain name matching my niche?
Much less than you used to need to. As Alston points out in the video, Tom’s Guide is one of the larger tech review sites online and the name tells you nothing about what it covers. Google reads your content, not just your domain name. Pick something available that is easy to remember and not awkward to say out loud, then move on. Spending a week trying to find the perfect keyword-rich domain name is a week you could have spent writing content that actually ranks.
What is the difference between a blog post and a page in WordPress?
Pages are static and do not appear in your blog roll or RSS feed. They are meant for content that does not change often: About, Contact, Privacy Policy. Posts are dynamic and are what Google indexes and ranks for search. When you are creating content to attract search traffic, always use Posts, not Pages. This is one of the most common mistakes new WordPress users make, and it means their content never gets indexed the way they intend.
Read Next
Once your WordPress blog is live and you have published your first post, the next step is learning how to write affiliate-optimized content that actually converts readers into buyers.
Read: How To Write an Affiliate Marketing Blog Post with AI
Sources
- Platform Proof YouTube: How To Start A WordPress Blog Using ChatGPT in 2023 (youtu.be/Jo1kks2N4LY)
- Bluehost WordPress Basic hosting plan pricing as shown in video: $2.95/month, 12-month commitment
- InstantDomainSearch.com for domain availability checking
- Keyword data from site explorer tool shown in video: “muzzles for Dobermans” (200/mo, KD 0), “red Doberman” (~8,000/mo, KD 0)
- ChatGPT (OpenAI) for niche research, website descriptions, and first-draft blog content
- Midjourney (Discord) for AI-generated blog images
Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.