My first blog ever was about houseplants. I started it because I’d just kept a fiddle leaf fig alive for six whole months, which felt like a genuine achievement at the time, and I figured I had things to say about it.
I had no idea what I was doing. I set up a free WordPress.com site, wrote maybe five posts over two weeks, slapped together an AdSense application because I’d heard that’s just what you do once you have a blog, and got rejected within a few days.
At the time I had no framework for understanding why. I just assumed blogging with ads was harder than people made it sound, and kind of gave up on the site for a while.
Looking back now, with a few more sites and a lot more mistakes under my belt, that rejection makes complete sense. I skipped basically every foundational step because nobody had explained what those steps actually were. So this is the guide I wish I’d had back then — specifically for someone just starting out, not someone who’s already run a few blogs.
First, Understand What You’re Actually Applying For
When I started, I thought AdSense was just a formality you clicked through once your blog existed. It’s actually a review of whether your site is a real, complete, useful thing worth putting ads on.
That distinction matters a lot for a beginner, because it means the blog itself needs some groundwork before applying even crosses your mind.
Step 1: Pick a Topic You Can Actually Sustain
My houseplant blog fell apart because, honestly, I didn’t know that much about plants beyond my one fig tree. I ran out of things to say after five posts.
For a beginner, I’d genuinely recommend picking something you either already know a fair amount about, or something with enough built-in variety that you won’t run dry quickly. Things like tech gadgets, a specific hobby, local guides, or entertainment topics with regular new content (a show, a sport, an industry that keeps releasing new products) tend to work better than a narrow personal interest you’ve only dabbled in.
Step 2: Get Your Own Domain From the Start
I started on a free WordPress.com subdomain because it felt like the safe, no-commitment option. In hindsight, I think that hurt more than it helped.
For any blog going forward, I’d suggest buying an actual domain right away — Namecheap and GoDaddy are both fine, and it typically costs less than a streaming subscription for the year. It just makes the whole project look and feel more legitimate, both to visitors and apparently to Google’s review process too.
Step 3: Set Up a Simple, Working Blog
You don’t need anything fancy here. WordPress with a free, lightweight theme is genuinely enough. I’d recommend something like GeneratePress or Astra — both are beginner-friendly, load quickly, and don’t require touching any code.
Keep the menu simple at first:
- Home
- Blog
- About
- Contact
Don’t add ten categories before you have content to fill them. I made this mistake on a later site — created categories for topics I hadn’t written about yet, and they just sat there empty, looking unfinished.
Step 4: Write Fewer Posts, But Make Them Actually Good
This was my biggest mistake as a beginner. Five posts felt like enough because I was measuring against “did I publish something,” not “is this actually useful to someone.”
For a first blog, I’d aim for 8-10 posts before even thinking about AdSense, each one at least 800 words, covering its topic properly. Not padded with filler — genuinely thorough. If you’re writing about a topic, imagine a friend asking you that exact question out loud, and write the answer you’d actually give them.
A simple check: read your own post back and ask if it fully answers what the title promises. My old “How to Care for a Fiddle Leaf Fig” post, for example, never actually covered watering schedules in any real detail, which is probably the first thing someone searching that title wants to know.
Step 5: Add the Pages Beginners Usually Skip
I didn’t know these mattered at all when I started. Every blog needs:
- An About page that actually says something — who’s writing, why the blog exists.
- A Contact page with a real, working way to reach you.
- A Privacy Policy. I use a free generator from PrivacyPolicies.com, then edit the wording so it actually matches the site instead of leaving generic placeholder text.
This took me about half an hour on a later blog, and it’s honestly one of the easiest boxes to check off the list.
Step 6: Check Everything on Your Phone
I built my houseplant blog entirely on a laptop and never once looked at it on my phone. When I finally checked years later, out of curiosity, the layout was a mess on mobile.
Since a big chunk of any traffic you get will come from phones, this is worth checking early, not as an afterthought.
Step 7: Let the Blog Sit for a Couple of Weeks Before Applying
As a beginner, the instinct is to apply the moment things feel “done.” I get it, there’s a real excitement in reaching that point.
I’d suggest submitting your sitemap through Google Search Console first, and then waiting at least two weeks before applying. This gives your pages time to actually get indexed and pick up a small amount of organic traffic, instead of applying to a site that Google hasn’t really “seen” properly yet.
Step 8: Apply, and Try Not to Obsess Over It
I definitely didn’t manage this one well on my early attempts. Once you’ve applied, checking the status every hour doesn’t speed anything up. It just eats your week with anxiety.
Approval timelines seem to vary a fair bit — I’ve seen anywhere from about a week to a few weeks, without any obvious pattern.
A Simple Example of What Beginner-Friendly Content Actually Looks Like
Say your blog is about budget travel. A weak beginner post might be titled “Tips for Traveling on a Budget” with five generic bullet points everyone’s read a hundred times — book early, use budget airlines, pack light.
A stronger version would dig into specifics: which budget airline apps you’ve actually used and how their baggage fees compare, a real breakdown of a trip you took and what it cost, mistakes you made booking accommodation that cost you extra later. That’s the difference between technically covering a topic and actually being useful.
Common Mistakes Beginners Make (Because I Made Most of Them)
- Publishing too few posts too early, thinking a handful of quick posts counts as “having a blog.”
- Skipping the About, Contact, and Privacy Policy pages entirely, not realizing they matter.
- Choosing a topic you don’t actually know much about, then running out of things to say quickly.
- Never checking the site on mobile before applying.
- Applying the same day the site “feels” finished, without giving it any time to get indexed.
- Refreshing the application status obsessively, which changes nothing about the outcome.
Final Thoughts
If you’re just starting out, it’s genuinely okay that your first attempt at this might not go perfectly. Mine certainly didn’t, and I didn’t even understand why at the time.
The good news is none of this requires special skills or a big budget. It mostly comes down to slowing down, writing fewer but better posts, filling in the pages that feel unimportant but aren’t, and giving the whole thing a little time to breathe before you apply. Do that, and you’re already ahead of where I was on my first, very confused attempt.
