Can you build a blog in 2 weeks?
Of course.
Before I get into any detail, a blog is probably the quickest business to get started, but one that takes a long, long time to actually monetise.
So, whilst you can build a blog in 2 weeks (easily), I would say the timeline before you can start to call it a ‘business’ will be more like 2–3 years (and that’s with daily, quality posts, consistent marketing effort, and further development).
So don’t think blogging is the route to a quick, profitable online business.
It is definitely not!
But if you’re willing to dedicate a lot of time, effort, and a little money towards it, and you can commit to doing this over a long period of time, for little to no pay – then things can start to build momentum.
As with almost all businesses with low barriers to entry – the space is highly saturated, and therefore highly competitive.
This creates an ‘invisible’ barrier – one that allows you to get started, easily building your blog in 2 weeks, but makes it extremely difficult to turn it into a viable business.
Only those that commit a huge level of energy, consistency, and time to doing it will succeed.
Even then, if those successful bloggers could have sat down at the outset of starting their blog, and rationally assessed the level of time and energy that it would take before it started making any money, perhaps they may have reconsidered taking it on!
The takeaway from this (slightly depressing) reality is – make sure you start blogging about something you have a real passion for. Choose your topic carefully.
Is it something that motivates you?
Is it something that you have a thirst to learn more about?
Is it something you can dedicate most of your spare time to?
So, if you can find a topic you can dedicate yourself to – you’re ready to get started.
The best way to build an independent blog is to use WordPress – buy some cheap shared hosting, choose and buy your domain name, install WordPress (most hosting providers offer 1-click install), setup your DNS (so your hosting points to your domain), build a blog identity/logo (Fiverr is a good marketplace for this), implement a theme on your blog (Envato/theme forest is a good marketplace if you have a little money to spend on a premium theme) customise it, build the basic framework of the site (area for posts, widgets, header and footer, menus, other pages – about, contact, faq and so on), then get posting!
You’ll probably be able to build your blog in 2 weeks, or much less if you can dedicate full days to it.
And keep posting, consistently, for the foreseeable future.
To boost your chances with SEO, use Yoast (a popular SEO plugin for WordPress), to make sure you optimise all your posts around a chosen keyword term. And network with other blogs/complimentary websites, to share your posts with them and ask them if they can link to them in some way from their own sites – this will boost off-site SEO triggers, especially if you attain links from popular sites with good domain authority (news sites are good for this – so if you can attain any press coverage, this will help).
Make sure you setup social profiles too (Insta, FB, Twitter, as a minimum), and continually share any new posts or relevant information on here. Build your followings and awareness across these platforms as much as you can (we use a simple follow/unfollow service from Big Red Social for most of our businesses).
Then rinse and repeat. Research, post, share. Research, post, share.
Once you have attained a good level of traffic, you can start to look at methods of monetisation such as ads, affiliate links, and complimentary products/services. I wouldn’t bother even thinking about this stuff until you’ve got the traffic though. Gaining good traffic is the biggest challenge bloggers face – monetising traffic, once you have it, is the easy part.
Good luck!
PS If you need a more in-depth step-by-step guide for getting started with a WordPress site, I have a Udemy course Fasttrack Entrepreneur that takes people through every single stage of the process (plus covers the other essentials when setting up an online business)