Tag Archives | blogging

How to Set Up a WordPress Blog For Profit

How to Set Up a WordPress Blog For Profit

Blogging can be an amazing way help you to make money on the net. It enables you to get messages out to potential customers, get messages out to existing customers, and does great things for the SEO (search engine optimisation) of your site. I’m not feeding you hype when I tell you that you should be blogging. Search engines love blogs so you’ll save loads on your advertising costs, too.

The articles bring people in and your articles, as well as banners in your sidebar, can sell to people that arrive on your site.

Setting up a WP Blog

Setting up a blog isn’t difficult. WordPress is really easy, really customisable, and works amazingly well for bringing you traffic. It has got to be the favourite blogging platform for the most successful online marketers. You can set it up on its own as the root of a domain or you can create a yourdomain.com/blog as well and add it to an existing site. If you’re with a webhost that offers cPanel hosting (most large webhosts do), you’ve already got the ability to add a free WordPress blog onto your existing website.

I would recommend that you host your blog with someone other than WordPress. For a small fee this way you have more control of your blog and cannot be shutdown anytime Worpress feels like it.

I used to use Go-Daddy but now use My Express Site. Very simple to use with great tutorials and excellent customer service.

Here are some non-technical overviews of how to set up WordPress blogs on their own as well as on your existing website. If you run into trouble, you’ll find loads of free online tutorials and your webhost probably has free support and can guide you through as well but it’s really quite easy.

In cPanel, there’s an icon called Fantastico or Fantastico DeLuxe. It’s a little happy face. By clicking on it, you can add all sorts of programs. Install WordPress from here. When you do, it’ll ask you where to do a new install and here’s where you can choose a URL such as yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com/blog. (If you don’t already have a domain and webhosting, you’ll want to set those up first.)

You’ll go through self-guided boxes that ask you for information such as your username and password and then with the click of your mouse, your blog is created. After it’s installed, you can login at: yournewblog.com/wp-admin.

Here, you’ll use the credentials you’ve set up and then you can go ahead and start blogging. You’ll find many free templates and tools to customise your blog and once you start blogging, you’ll find you get more traffic than ever to your website. Blog with search engine optimisation in mind and that’ll bring you plenty of organic traffic.

It’s a good idea to learn all you can about optimising a blog as well as monetising it. There are some great tutorials and tips that can help you unleash the potential of blogging with your target audience. Subscribe to my newsletter (in the sidebar) to learn more.

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Blogging With WordPress

Blogging With WordPress

WordPress is a popular open source blog publishing application. First available to the blogging public in 2003, the current release of WordPress is 2.7.1 as of February 2009. Open source means that it is available free of charge for the people to use. It is therefore very common for people to do blogging with WordPress.

WordPress has evolved around the years with introduction of themes, plugins and widgets into the blogosphere. Those additions really made WordPress very popular with bloggers due to the flexibility and ease to modify and customize the blogs. They could produce very professional-looking blogs in a short time frame with WordPress compared to when they had to do it using the HTML codes.

Theme is a way to “”skin”” a blog. It provides control of the look and presentation of the blogs. Without changing the core software, bloggers have the flexibility to change the display of posts and the blogs. By simply modifying some template files included in a particular theme, we can customize the blog’s look on-the-fly without having to worry about compatibility with the application and other components used by WordPress.

Since it is an open-source application, there are many people willingly working on and sharing the WordPress theme with everyone. Most of the blog themes are available free of charge. You can just use search engines to find WordPress theme with whatever additional attributes you want to have. You will be presented with hundreds if not thousands of websites that have more information on themes. You can also visit WordPress Theme Directory for a complete listing of officially recognized blogging themes.

Plugins are used extensively to extend the capability of WordPress blogs. There are just too many things to list down what you can do with WordPress plugins. I guess you can find just about anything you want to do available. If you can’t find it, it is relatively quite easy to make one if you have some basic programming skills. Just like the themes, there are many plugins available. Most of them are also available freely on the web. Beside using search engines, WordPress plugins are also available at WordPress Plugins Directory.

Another benefit of using readily available themes is that many people have designed adsense-ready themes. Adsense is a way to monetize your blog. Adsense is simply an opportunity for bloggers to display google ads on their blogs. They will earn money when people click on the displayed adsense. With adsense-ready theme, it means bloggers can configure adsense easily just by entering their adsense pub-id into some parts of the theme files.

A good resource to learn about blogging with WordPress is available on the web. Using normal search engines to search for WordPress tutorial, there are many resources available. You can choose to do the blogging directly on http://www.WordPress.com Otherwise, you can choose to host the WordPress on your own web hosting.

Installing WordPress can pose a challenge. However, nowadays WordPress is included in Fantastico that you can use to install with just one press. If you don’t have Fantastico in your web hosting, you should be able to do an install following the instructions provided when you download WordPress.

Although WordPress is very easy to use, for first time users who are not technically savvy, it is advisable to start with some basic tutorials to understand the structure of how blogging can be done with WordPress. Once you get the basic, using WordPress will be just like using a normal word processor.

Happy Blogging!

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Tips for Building Links for your Blog

Tips for Building Links for your Blog

Once you start blogging and want to become more serious about making money off of your blog you’re going to need to know how to build links for your blog. Links and content are the two most important things you’ll need to do for your blog and they’ll both take lots of time. In this article we’re going to look at some tips you can use when building links to your blog. Try implementing as many of these tips as you possibly can because they will all help you out.

Tip #1

• Make sure that you build links to your blog on a consistent basis. This means you should build links to your blog on a weekly basis and nothing longer then that. Don’t build a bunch of links one day and then stop for a couple weeks because the search engines will think your links are unnatural. As your blog ages you can build more links just make sure there all natural links.

Tip #2

• Always spread your anchor texts around and use a lot of different ones when building links. You want to use your main ones more often then others, but don’t just use a couple anchor texts. The search engines will think you’re trying to rank for the keyword unnaturally and punish your blog. If you use different anchor texts when building links you shouldn’t face this problem.

Tip #3

• Use as many different types of websites you can for your link building campaign. There are thousands of different websites where you can build links to your blog and you should spread your links around so they seem like there just coming naturally. The more variety you use when building your links the stronger rankings you’ll start experiencing.

Tip #4

• Don’t build links on link farms or anything that looks like a link farm. The search engines are very capable of finding these link farms and will ban your site from their listings. Most blog networks selling posts with duplicate content are considered link farms so be weary when buying these links for your blog.

Tip #5

• You can use automated software for building links to directories and social bookmarking websites, but there is a possibility of being banned in the search engine listings so be aware of this. There are plenty of people using these software programs without issues though so you can try them at your own risk.

There are plenty of other tips I could list for building links but you can implement these into your daily life and you’ll be well on your way. Always make sure you’re careful about building links because if you build links in a bad area you could get punished months down the road and all your work would be down the drain. I typically stick with directory submissions, social bookmarking and links from other blogs. I also use forum signatures for building quick links to my blogs and getting them indexed in the search engines. Make sure it’s a respected forum before using it for signature links because if you don’t then it could hurt your site instead of help your website.

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How to Set Up a Purchased WordPress Website on Your Hosting Server – Part 1 of 2

How to Set Up a Purchased WordPress Website on Your Hosting Server – Part 1 of 2

This is a two part article describing how to move and set up a purchased WordPress website on your hosting server. The first part explains why you may want to purchased a WordPress site, how to transfer the domain and setting up the domain on your hosting server. Part two will take a closer look on how to install the websites database and configure some important WordPress settings.

Have you ever tried moving and setting up a purchased WordPress Website on Your Hosting Server. In case you purchased an existing WordPress website and domain and has no clue on how to move and set up WordPress website on my Hostgator hosting account, read on…

The reason you may not want to setup your own WordPress website from scratch may be because you want to speed up implementation time and take advantage of the fact that the domain has already some age and AdSense monetization working. So you would only have to use your SEO experience to improve Search Engine ranking for the niche keywords.

Lets take a real example but change the names. Bob is the guy who purchased the domain and blog and the lady, lets name her Maria, that had sold Bob the domain and corresponding WordPress website told him she would send him all the information needed, but what Bob received were two zipped backup files, one with the database sql import file and the other was the WordPress domain directory. The only indications regarding setting up the WordPress website Bob got were that he had to upload the files to his server. Was this all he needed to do? What do you think?

Even though WordPress is very easy to install and manage, moving an existing WordPress Website to your hosting server should be a little more complex than that. So Bob thought that there must be more to it, especially as the MySQL database file had another database prefix, which is usually your hosting account ID. The format is something like MYHOSTID_MYDBNAME; so let’s name Maria’s database file maria89_wpbd123.sql. Bob’s Database prefix is bob58.

I know that when you restore a MySQL database in cpanel that it takes the sql file name to import the tables it into the same-named database, or creates a new one. Bob tried it out and as a result a MySQL database named bob58_maria89wpbd123 was created. The database restore had stripped out the underscore and added Bob’s database prefix. Not very nice:-(

Bob then wrote Maria back asking for more details, and whether there were any specifics that he needed to take into account for moving, setting up or configuring her specific the WordPress website. She apologized and replied that she did not know how to handle this and suggested having a live chat with my hosting support provider. Maria probably thought that moving a WordPress website from one hosting server to another would be as easy as she initially said, so Bob could not count on her and did not insist futher. Bob’s hosting provider has an outstanding support, so this was not a too bad idea, but then he decided that he would first have a go on his own.

So here comes how Bob proceeded for moving, setting up and configuring her WordPress website on his hosting server…There may be a quicker way, but it worked great for him and, in the end, if you know some simple but important details, the set up is pretty straight forward. Let’s first outline the basic steps required to transfer the domain to and set up the WordPress website on your hosting server.

Transfer the domain to your domain service provider
Set up the domain on your hosting server
Upload the WordPress database files
Configure your WordPress website

What do you need before you start?

WordPress Database MySQL restore file, DBprefix_DBname.sql
The complete WordPress website directory
The current WordPress admin userid and password

So let’s go a little more into detail on each step of the set up process…

1. Transferring the domain to my domain service provider

If you have also purchased the corresponding domain, the very first step is to get the domain transferred to your domain service provider. This will be done by the owner. If you have the same domain service provider, this is usually very simple; it’s called “”pushing””.

Unfortunately Maria had another domain service provider than Bob is using. So to make things easy he created a free account with her domain service provider and would take care of transferring the domain to his provider later on. Maria then “”pushed the domain into his account, Bob accepted it, and then pointed the domain to his DNS server. That was the easy part.

2. Setting up the domain on your hosting server

Bob has a hosting plan, which includes unlimited add-on domains. He logged into his cpanel and created the new add-on domain. This is pretty simple, so I won’t go into more details here. Bob did NOT need to create a WordPress Blog Website installation. This is done by restoring the WordPress database and uploading the WordPress website directory files he got to the domain’s root directory.

Bob then entered my new domain name in the internet browser’s address bar and saw that all was working so far, because he could see the empty cgi-bin directory that is created by default.

Now Bob could upload the WordPress website directory content to the domain directory, located below the root directory; in his case KingKoilMattresse.net. You can either do this via FTP or use the cpanel > Files > Backups wizard.

Bob reentered the domain name in the internet browser address bar and got the expected database connection error. First of all he did not have the DB installed yet and the connection information would be incorrect anyway. We will see how this part of our WordPress website setup can be achieved.

In the final part of the article we will have a closer look on how to Upload the WordPress Database files and Configuring your WordPress Website.

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WordPress Goldmine – Review For Bloggers

WordPress Goldmine – Review For Bloggers

Are you tired of hearing everyone else telling you about their success stories while you are still struggling to get started? Have you bought some manuals that promised a lot without delivering on their promises?

If it’s the case, let me reassure you that you are not alone. I personally hate those guru books that have all the answers, but don’t deliver. I hate them so much that the first time I heard about WordPress Goldmine, I dismissed it instantly.

The second time I heard about this book, however, it was from someone I knew and trusted. They told me that the book was an excellent, never written before step by step tutorial for WordPress bloggers. I had been trying to set up a blog myself, and didn’t understand anything about plugins, blogroll, themes and so forth. I knew that I could use a blog tutorial. WordPress Goldmine, was just that.

You probably already know that WordPress is a free blogging platform that anyone can use. There you can build an entire website on any given niche that you can own and dominate entirely. This is the beauty of this blog platform. The only problem is that the average new affiliate doesn’t know how to set up an efficient site, because even though it is not really complicated once you know it, it would take a lot of your time to do the learning process on your own.

The good news is, you don’t have too. Someone else did it for you and when he realized that no one had done it yet, he did it himself. He wrote a very well explanatory step by step on how to set up, promote and monetize a WordPress blog. It is so easy to follow that any average Joe, can do it and make money online.

Are you still doubting that you can do it? Well, let me tell you that if you can read and follow instructions, it’s all you need in order to be able to pull this through. Yes, this is as simple as that.

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How to Have People Write Blog Posts for You now

How to Have People Write Blog Posts for You

As a blogger you’ll need a lot of content and typically to run a successful blog you’ll need to post at least once a day. In many niches like technology and entertainment you’ll find that the good bloggers make anywhere from five too twenty posts a day. Now if you’re a one man or woman show then you’ll know how much work it is too try and write twenty posts a day while still promoting the blog. It’s nearly impossible too do unless you spent all of your time everyday writing and promoting your blog. This isn’t usually an option because in most cases your blog won’t earn you a full time income.

You could hire writers to help you get the posts done each day, but if your blog isn’t making much money then you’re not going to want to spend money on content. If your blog is making money then I would recommend buying content because it will be much better quality then any free content that you get. In the beginning though you’ll want to resort to having people write free content for your blog, and then once it starts making money you can start implementing paid content that is of better quality.

To have people write for your blog for free it will take some work, and you’ll in most cases need to offer some sort of bonus or reward to the posters. The best way to offer people a reward is either through a contest or a revenue sharing plug-in. If you choose to run a contest on your blog for the people who offer content you’ll want to do it something like this. You should get ten great prizes that you post on a page of the blog, and you let everyone know on your blog that the people with the most posts will win these prizes at the end of each month. You’ll need to buy ten prizes each month for this method, but it’s a lot cheaper then buying content on a daily basis. If you have more then ten people posting and battling for the prized then you’re going to be well into the profits in no time. The goal is too get as many people posting on your blog each day as possible. If you choose that you want to run a revenue sharing plug-in then it’s really simple to do. All you need to do is activate the plug-in and allow people to register on your blog. Then when they post articles there Adsense will appear 50% of the time and your Adsense will appear the other 50% of the time. So you can make money off of their content with this method plus you’ll be filling up your blog with free content.

If your blog is new then you might not have the luxury of just making a post on the blog letting people know that they can win prizes or money for posting on your blog. You might need to go out around the internet and find people to post for you. The best place would be on forums in your niche, so for instance if you have a celebrity blog then you should try finding some teenagers in forums who will post on your forums in hopes of winning prized. It shouldn’t be too hard to find people on forums as there always looking for ways too win prizes and money online, especially if your niche is suitable for teenagers.

As you can see there are some great methods for getting free content on your blogs, so don’t think that your only options are paying someone too write the content or you yourself having to write the content. There are options for getting free content and in the beginning stages of your blogging career you should work on finding as much free content as possible. Content is king on blogs and the more you have the higher you’ll rank in the search engines and the more traffic you’ll get, which directly will result in making more money off of your blog.

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How to Pick WordPress Plugins That Fit Your Blog Needs

How to Pick WordPress Plugins That Fit Your Blog Needs

If you have a hosted WordPress website you can add plugins. These little programs can change the features of your blog and make it fit your unique needs. But deciding which plugin to use can be a challenge with so many available.

Why is the decision so hard?

The number of plugins available is ever growing on the WordPress directory. In just the past 3 months over 1000 plugins were added. So it is virtually impossible for someone to test all the different plugins and combine them with different themes and in various combinations.

What about support services?

Most WordPress plugins are free. The developer(s) of a plugin may have a full time job, may have stopped updating it, or whatever, but they may or may not provide support. Even when they do provide support remember the plugin is free. They are not making any money except through the occasional donation.

How do I install a WordPress plugin?

Most plugins can be easily installed from the dashboard, your WordPress back office. Scroll down to plugins and click the arrow, beneath in the new menu click “”Add new.”” Search for the name of the plugin or the feature you need. Now you will have a list but it is important to make certain the plugin meets certain criteria.

What is the rating?

Look at the stars. Most of the plugins have some sort of ranking. While you do not know how many people voted for that 5 stars, chances are it is worth more research than the one with one star.

Does the description meet your needs?

Just because a plugin matches your term does not mean that it actually matches your needs. People have different needs. A plugin for photos could turn your site into a gallery, allow you to edit your photos in WordPress, work with one photo program but not another or it may work with both. So you want to be certain the plugin fits your needs.

Do I install it now?

If you still like the program click Install. Now you get more information and more criteria.

How long ago was the last plugin updated?

Over 365 days ago is over a year ago. 10 days means it is fairly current.

Is it compatible with your WordPress Version?

Do not worry if it has not been tested.

How many people rated it?

You knew from the previous screen how many stars, but now you can find out how many people rated it. 290 people rating a plugin 4 stars is far more impressive than one person rating it 5 stars.

How many downloads are there?

Like the rating, more downloads gives it a better chance of being a workable plugin.

Will the plugin work?

Most plugins will not cause too much trouble, you can back up your blog for precaution. If the plugin is still to your liking then you can install it. Activate and see how it works. Again because there are so many themes and you could use it with a combination of plugins, that does not mean it will work in your case. Plugins are free so they are worth trying!

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