hey there my name is Anastasia and in this video I will show you how to build your website and launch your blog for free and don't worry you don't need to know anything about coding to build a Blog I started my blog about 8 years ago and this decision changed my life and led me to starting this YouTube channel that you're watching now by the end of the first year of blogging I was able to quit my day job I am grateful for every day that I can spend spend more time with my toddler and be there for her whenever she needs me thanks to the flexibility of my online business which all started as just a Blog in this tutorial I will show you how you can start your own blog and online business and it is free for everyone you will get everything that you need Under One Roof and for free including web hosting a customizable podio.com subdomain something like I have here see Anastasia blogger.
Bod.com and the best part is that you will be able to build your blog on the same platform where you can also sell products as well as collect emails from your readers I'm not going only to show you how to set this up but I'll also show some customizations that could fit your needs okay so let's get into the tutorial to start you can click on the first link in the description below and you will will see this page that shows you how your blog can look like when you build it so we will just click on get your free account and then just submit your name email and the password that you want to set I will skip the step for privacy but once you get inside your pody account the first thing that you should do is verify your email address just go to your inbox and find the email from podia to verify your newly created account then you will see this blog tab in the top menu if I click on it we can check out my blog that I built on podia you see this is just an example of how your blog can also look like you can customize the colors to to match your brand like you see on my blog this blogging functionality has just recently been launched on podia so I've been trying and testing it to make this detail tutorial for you guys and just to show you how this blogging functionality integrated with everything else on podia if you click on website tab right next to the blog you will see my entire website homepage which was rebuilt on podum I have here all the same sections that were rebuilt as I have on my actual live website I have here some sections for my free Pinterest masterclass for my products and some of my existing content now getting back to the blog blog if we click on one of the read post buttons we can see how a blog post might look like lots of colors subheadings have great fonts a button um an embedded video and an Instagram post and even a sign up button at the bottom of the post this is to show you how many different ways to customize your blogging pages on podia now let me show you how it is easy to build these blog pages on the back end of AUM go back to the dashboard click on blog and this time click on blog post you will land on this backend dashboard with all the settings for your blog see here you can click to edit and design your main Blog Page the one that will show your most recent posts if you click to addit your blog post page that will bring you to the back end of the actual blog post you can also get access to editing this by clicking on the three dots and then choose whatever you would like to edit a bit lower you also have a list of all the blog posts that you have published or saved in drafts so you can go back to edit them at any time later there is also an interesting feature for those of you who already have a Blog elsewhere and you maybe want to quickly migrate your content to podia there is an importer tool but that probably won't be the majority of this video view viewers so I won't go into details on that just know that it is possible to import your content if it is your case now going back to editing the design on your main blog page once you are in the back end you can click on this pencil icon on the right side to start editing look at the top and you will see different devices so you can check how your page looks on mobile devices and usually everything will get into one column on smartphones now again if you click on the pencil on the left a window with all the settings will show up what you can do here in the design settings you can choose the aspect ratio for these featured images it can be square wide but I'm currently using this portrait format of 3:4 ratio a bit lower there is a setting for the layout or arrangement of these blog posts I'm using columns on my page if you click on style under appearance you can test different options too I have the split option right now but you can choose overlay for example and then your text will show up on top of the background image just click around and see which option you like the most you can also change the corners of your featured image here I use middle rounded but you can choose other options by the way any changes we make here are automatically Ally saved so you don't even need to worry about frequently saving the updates that you're making on the page and the structure of this page doesn't have to be only based on the recent posts if you want to add other sections you can click on this plus and add other sections like text image email form bio and more for example if I click on text the section shows up here and on the left you can change the text itself and make any kind of formatting now let's look at the back end of a particular blog post we can go through the three dots this time click on edit post page and then you can click on the left side of the screen or on the pencil icon on the right side to start editing first we will see here all the features that we can enable or disable for the blog Pages we have here these options featured image date author comment count and excerpt and if I disable it you will see that this short description below the post title will disappear these settings will be shared for all blog pages so whatever you save here will be applied to all your blog posts now if you want to edit the text over a particular post you need to go back to the list of posts then click on edit button on the right and here you go this looks like a simple text editor if you highlight any part of the text formatting options will show up and you can make some words to work as subheadings H2 or make the text bold add a color highlight add a link add a bullet list or insert a code block if you want to add an image to this blog post you just add a SL symbol and then you will see drop- down menu which allows you to select image from the list then you can easily add your image file or upload it from your computer you can add an image link and an ALT text if you'd like to you can also see other options that you could add here for example a button or an embedded code or if you wanted to add a YouTube video here all you need is just copy a link to your video actually podia makes it very easy to add and beds from over 1,900 sources which is not as easy in some other blogging platforms that I have used you can embed your latest YouTube video video a tweet a podcast a form or survey right into your blog post so let's say that you need to publish your text from a Google doc all you need to do is copy and paste the text it will move everything with a correct formatting like if you have an H1 in Google doc it will migrate to part A blogging page as an H1 well maybe you need to remove a few extra paragraphs but that's actually more of my problem because I had too many many spaces when I write my content you probably will have fewer spaces to delete anyway if you had a link added to the text it will also still be there you will have the H2S and bullet points and everything exactly as in your Google doc so you don't have to do the formatting from scratch also right here in the blog post settings you can choose a custom SEO title and description and toggle to make your uh posts visible in search you can also upload the featured image that you would like to show up with your post when someone shares it on social media it can be an image from your computer or you can even search in in a library of freest stock images on unsplash which is integrated right here in this little search bar see I'm searching for graphic design since it's the topic of this blog post and it gives me plenty of relevant images you can also connect your site with Google analytics to track your performance once you're happy with your blog post it's very easy to share it from the back end and you can click on the three dots select share and then you can either view the page or click here to copy the URL and then you can share it wherever you'd like to what I really like about this new blogging feature on podia is that this platform also has another feature called podia email and it is automatically connected to your podia website so you can send newsletters in the same place where you share your blog content this means that you don't need to pay a monthly fee for a separate email provider and I'll tell you honestly this saves you from a lot of Hecks first because Integrations between a website and an external email provider really go completely Flawless they often break and they require additional plugins if your website is on WordPress for example every time you update your WordPress theme something breaks so yes if you run your blog on podia you can also collect emails and do all of your email marketing here which removes a lot of friction between the tools and technical issues another reason why this is great is that it simply saves you a lot of money because these email providers become pretty costly with average monthly fees reaching about $80 a month if you have a relatively small email list of about 5,000 subscribers I think podia is a great option for those who want to create a blog build their email list and sell their products or services and you can do all of this in one place what makes it special is that even before you have products to sell you can start building your audience using podia blogging features for free for as long as you need them on the free podia plan you can host your entire website sell one one digital download product or one coaching product or run a community on this free plan you only pay a 10% commission from the products that you sell and if you see that at some point your sales volume justifies it you can switch to the paid plan and they're also very affordable by the way the most advanced plan costs only $59 a month which is below any other similar platforms on that plan you sell unlimited courses product bundles you can even use Affiliates to help you sell your product of course you also get the email marketing features on Podium so all of this makes it an all-in-one platform where you can build your audience using the blogging features you can nurture your leads with email marketing and sell your products in the same place again if you want to start a blog on podia for free use the first link in the description below if you found this video helpful give me a like subscribe for more tutorials like this and if you want to learn how I get about 880,000 monthly visitors to my website for free from Pinterest then watch the video that I linked for you up there so I'll see you in that next video