Education

Okay, now that you have your domain, and your webspace, your domain is pointed to you web host’s nameservers, you are ready to start setting up your site.

You will need some ftp software. This is what you will use to upload files to your new site. I recommend Filezilla. It’s free and works great. You can get it at http://filezilla-project.org. Download Filezilla and install it.

Now you can point set up Filezilla with a conection to your new site.
1. Run Filezilla.
2. Select Site Manager under the File menu.
3. Click New Site.
4. In the Host box, enter your new domain (ie MyDomain.com).
5. Select Normal in the Logontype dropdown.
6. Enter your username in the User box.
7. Enter your password in the Password box.
8. In the list on the left, change “New Site” to whatever the name of your site is.
9. Click OK.

Now you need to download the WordPress blog software (it’s free too). Download it at http://wordpress.org. You can find instructions for installing WordPress here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress.

After you get WordPress installed, you might want some plugins. WordPress plugins are easy to install. Just download them, unzip them, and ftp them to your web server, placing them in the wp-content/plugins directory. After they are uploaded, login to your wordpress blog, select Plugins from the menu, located the plugin(s) you uploaded, and click activate. You can download the plugins here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/.
The plugins I use are:
1. Akismet (antispam)
2. Crawlpage
3. Google XML Sitemaps
4. WordPress Database Backup
5. Wp-Shortstat

One setting in WordPress that I recommend highly that you use is the Permalink.
1. Login to your Worpress blog.
2. Click Settings in the menu.
3. Click Permalinks.
4. Check Custom Structure.
5. Enter “/%postname%.html” into the Custom Structure box (without the quotes).
6. Click Save Changes.

If you get an a message saying something like “You should update your .htaccess now.”, ftp into your site, and temporarily change the permissions of the root directory to 777. Then go back save your changes again. You want it to write a .htaccess file into the root directory. Once it creates the file, set the permissions of the root directory back to maybe 715.

Web hosting is a little tricky to make recommendations on. You want to balance reliabilty and features with cost. For your first blog, you probably want something relatively cheap. I see GoDaddy offers webhosting for around $5/month if you pay for a year. I am not sure of all the details. I see a couple more options for $6.64/month and $14.24/month that mention unlimited websites, the the $6.24 only has 25 MySQL databases. You can have more than one blog on a database, but it is easier to have one blog per database. You could get one of these options and host multiple blogs. After you had the webspace, you could add new blogs for the only cost of registering a new domain. I have a dedicated web server myself at iMountain. But I signed up for this before I saw the spaces at GoDaddy.

What you want in a web hosting service is reliability. You want to be able to put up the blog(s), and not have to worry about them. The great thing about blogs is you can put them up, add posts, and then forget about them from time to time. The money keeps coming in. But then you want to keep posting as more posts, mean more potential earnings.

The amount of disk space on a web host is not too important. You don’t need a lot of space unless you plan on having a lot of pictures, or videos. Pictures are good on a blogs, but for videos, you might be better off posting them at YouTube, and using them as traffic conduit to your web site. But I’ll talk about that later.
You’ll need MySQL. You’ll want a decent amount of Data Transfer. Though unless you blog becomes sort of viral hit on the web, you wont need a whole lot to start.
After you get web hosting, you will need to change the nameservers of your domain to point at your new web server. you web hosting service will give you the nameservers to use. If you registered you domain through GoDaddy like I suggested you can point the nameservers like this:

1. Login to your GoDaddy Account.
2. Click Domain Manager in menu on the left.
3. Check the box next the domain you want to change.
4. Click the Nameservers menu item along the top.
5. Click the Custom nameservers option (unless you are hosting at GoDaddy).
6. Enter the nameservers given to you by your web hosting service.
7. Click OK.
8. That’s it.

If you don’t like the place where your are hosting your blog, it is easy to move it. You would just have to get a new web host, upload all the stuff, and then point your domain to the new web host.

Brainstorming blog ideas is the first step. What are your hobbies? What do you like to do? Is there something you know a lot about? Think about all the things that you could possibly blog about. You will want your blog to be somewhat focused on on topic. The more focused the blog, the better. If you have a blog with sports related posts, and investing related post, the investing posts might show sports adds that wont get clicked, and the sports posts might show investing ads, that wont get clicked. It would be better to create two separate blogs, one for sports, and one for investing. But you don’t want to use a topic that is TOO narrowly focused. If you create a blog about a very obscure topic, you might get little traffic. But then if yours is the only site about the topic, you might get all the search engine traffic for that topic. It is always good to find a solid niche that is untapped. But if there are only a couple hundred people in the world interested in the topic of ‘green frapplehammers’, you might get all that traffic, but it might not be worthwhile.

Will people want to read about your topic? If you create a website about your dog, and post all about what your dog does each day, chances are many people wont want to read it. But say your dog is an Airedale Terrier. You could create a site about Airedales, and write posts about selecting puppies, breeding, training, breeders, dog shows, etc. Other people with that type of dog might be interested in reading your posts. But will you run out of things to write about?
If you travel a lot, you could create a travel related site. You experiences while travelling are bound to be different than anyone elses. And everytime you travel, you will have new stuff to write about.

Another thing to consider is what is the earnings potential of the topic? If you want to do a site about books, think about how much books sell for. A new book sells for $10. Advertisers are not likely to pay alot for your to display ads that might sell a book or two. But for a site reviewing x-ray machines, or something expensive, advertisers might be willing to pay more per click. But do you know anything about x-ray machines?

Now that you have come up with some ideas, consider how much you will have to write about each topic. If the topic is something that you might be able to write a half dozen posts about, and thats it, it is probably not a worthwhile topic.

Some topics that you will definately want to avoid are things like drugs, sex, violence, hate sites, anything like that. Most advertisers will not allow their ads to show on your site. So if your hope is to make money from your site, you will need advertisers.

Coming up with a domain name can be fun and challenging. My first stop is always the Wordtracker Keyword Selector site. Let’s say you have decided to base your blog on golf. Type GOLF into the keyword selector, and click the hit me button. It show you the top searches with the words golf. You can see how many time each was searched over a fixed period (not sure what the time frame is though).
You want to try to come up with a domain that has solid keywords in it. Having keywords in your domain doesn’t guarantee that you will get the traffic related to those keywords, but it helps.
Look down the list for keywords that work for you. How about “how to hit a golf ball”.

Open another window and go to GoDaddy.com. Type in howtohitagolfball. Leave the suffix as “.com” as that is the one you will want. Unfortunately HOWTOHITAGOLFBALL.COM is already taken. So now try how-to-hit-a-golf-ball. That’s taken too. Try HowNotToHitAGolfBall. Hey, that’s available. Open a text document, and type that one in there. Keep brainstorming and trying different keyword combinations. Record the ones that are available. After you get a bunch, decide which one you want to use. If you don’t like any of them, keep looking.

You can also try things like GolfCity, GolfTown, GolfCountry, MyGolf, GolfersRule, etc.

Have fun. But don’t stress over it too much. Eventually you need to pull out your credit card and register the domain. I recommend using GoDaddy. You might be able to find some place a little cheaper, but if they are small, and go out of business, it might be a pain to try to move your domain to someplace else. GoDaddy has been around for a while, will like be around for a while longer. And their prices aren’t too bad. They currently charge about $10/year, but often offer discount codes if you can find them. I usually register the domain for 3 years, you can do anywhere from 1-5 years.

Generating an income online can be something that seems difficult, particularly if don’t know very much regarding this. Basically, it might be less difficult than it seems if you know how to proceed. Here are several tips to acquire started out.

If you like writing, have a look at revenue sharing web sites. These sites will assist you to blog about whatever you desire and you will probably obtain a cut of inbound earnings. They also have affiliate options with Amazon online, so that it is potentially much more worthwhile.

Acquire online surveys. You will find loads of online surveys offered to do and some of them pay out decent cash if you are the best group. This is usually a easy way to create a certain amount of revenue. They will likely not allow you to get abundant but may help a lot. But, it’s an easy method to earn some money in your extra time. You may well be surprised at just how the funds could add up.

Make use of your downtime smartly. A lot of on-line sources of revenue can be accomplished with out plenty of concentration. Internet sites such as Mechanical Turk enable you to work on little tasks. Consider working on them although before the t . v .. Though you will not become wealthy, you possibly can make some additional profit your free time.

Perhaps you have tried turning domains? A number of people make decent money off of domain names. It’s much like purchase real estate property on-line, however it consists of an investment of your stuff. Google adsense is a superb website for you to utilize. Also, try acquiring those websites making use of acronyms. These domains are more likely to pay well in the long run.

Keep in mind how beneficial your time and energy is just before working on-line. If you would like operate, just what is the least expensive level you’ll accept? In the event you work for peanuts, which might be all you could at any time get. If firms know you will work for much less, that’s what you will get money.

Publish a good E-reserve that one could promote online. This may cause you appear being an expert and lets you money making ideas earn more income as well. Take into consideration composing from the tasty recipes, handyman information or anything else you might be experienced at.

Fraudsters are all around online. That’s the reason why you need to being cautious prior to diving in and dealing with them. Among the finest methods to check out a company is through your neighborhood Much better Business Bureau.

Give other folks the opportunity promote by way of you. Website adverts are a great way to make money. If you have a well known weblog now, some dealers may wish to pay you for having their adverts positioned on it. Whenever your visitors click on this advert, they may wind up at another site offering services or products.

With any good luck, these details has presented the foundation you necessary to get going now. You are certain to encounter plenty of online dollars-generating possibilities. Be sure to keep the wits of you and focus on locating legit delivers. Start off gradually, and ultimately the amount of money will materialize.