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Forum Marketing

Promoting your site can take on many different features. There are all different kinds of avenues where you can promote your site effectively. A lot of it depends on the type of niche that you’re in to begin with. For example, many people advocate the use of something called forum marketing. This is where you join forums that are relative to your niche so that you can become a valid and valuable contributor to the forum. Then, you can gain the trust and respect of the other members of the site so that they will want to visit your blog about the same topic.

For instance, let’s say that your blog is about rose gardening. You might want to find forums about flower gardening, roses or even organic gardening. You can become a member and usually you are allowed to have a forum signature. Some website owners may only allow you to have a link to your website in your profile. Either way, you can find stealth ways of advertising your blog to the members of the forum. Remember, though, that you are there to provide value on the topic at hand so don’t go blatantly spamming someone else’s forum. That is only going to make you look bad and won’t help you to drive traffic to your own site.

Social Media

Another way to promote your site is by using social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. These sites are growing in popularity as more and more people utilize them on a daily basis. By promoting your site or business on social media networks, you can develop huge lists of followers who will hang on your every word when you post. Again, this is about relationship marketing so it’s not going to be an overnight success. People need to know that you care about them and what they need, so make sure that most of your posts are not promotional in nature. You can do things like create a group on Facebook about your niche topic and provide valuable information to your followers.  Or learn how.

Another way to use social media is by putting buttons on your blog so that people can share your content with their list of friends. If you can gain the loyalty and respect of the readers of your blog, they will share your information and help you gain even more traffic to the site. Again, this is all about relationships so you must provide such valuable content that people are constantly amazed that you’re giving away this information for free. That way, when you come up with a paid product or suggest another service to them they will trust that it must be good because your free content is so super valuable.

Paid & Free Press Releases

One often overlooked way of marketing your blog is by using press releases. Some people think the press releases are simply for people who are trying to get an article in the newspaper or on television, but they are actually one of the best ways to get extra link juice online. There are several high-powered press release websites on the Internet like PRWeb and PRNewswire where you can submit your release and generate more traffic to your site. Of course, there’s also the possibility that your blog will be picked up in the mainstream media and featured in a publication outside of the Internet. This is just icing on the cake for your marketing efforts.

When writing a press release, it’s very important to remember that you don’t want to be overly promotional. Press releases are meant to express the fact that you have something newsworthy to say. For example, if your blog is about working from home then you might want to write a press release from the angle of the high unemployment rate and how more people are taking on jobs from home. That way, the press release is newsworthy in the eyes of anyone who reads it.

Free press releases are also an option, and several sits offer this service. But while it sounds good on paper, we’ve yet to ever see any significant results from a free press release service. So when we want to do a key press release and get some real visibility, we always turn back to one of the major players like PRWeb.

Article Marketing

By far, article marketing is probably one of the most common ways of getting traffic to your website and creating links back to your blog. There are many facets to article marketing that you want to learn, but the main idea is to write short, informative articles with anchor text leading back to your website.

These articles can be posted in many places online including article directories and Web 2.0 properties such as eHow, Hubpages and Squidoo. However one of the most well-known article directories is Ezine Articles, so be sure to publish your articles there as well. Unlike many others, their submission guidelines are fairly strict, but that keeps quality on the site high, so you’ll be in good company. For example, Ezine Articles will only allow you to include links in your “author bio”, not in the article itself. But that’s true of most high quality article directories…

Remember that when you are doing article marketing, that there are two reasons that you are working on this task. For one thing, you want to create high-quality links back to your site using specific anchor text that you want your site to rank for. On the other hand, you also want to create quality information that will help you to attract more visitors back to your blog. Hopefully, people will see the quality of your information and want to click through to read more on your blog. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t give all of your information away in your articles. Otherwise, there is really no reason for anyone to come and visit your blog since you’ve already given them all of the pertinent information that they want.

There are many different ways to market your blog online through social media, press releases, article marketing and more. It’s important that you focus on several different ways of promoting your blog rather than just one. A variety of different kinds of links from different sources can only serve to help your blog rise up in the search engine rankings and maintain its stability over time. In other words, don’t simply rely on article marketing for all of your promotion as you will also want to use a variety of other avenues to invite new readers to your blog daily.

Be sure to read about our favorite web hosting provider and find out how to start a blog in 10 easy steps!

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Promote Your Blog

Let’s face it: you can never have too much publicity for your blog or business. Some people make the fatal mistake of creating a blog and publishing content but never doing any promotion whatsoever. While that can work over the long term if enough of your content gets into the search engines, it certainly isn’t the quickest or most efficient route to getting your information into the right hands. You need to take some proactive steps in order to get your blog noticed in the right places.

It’s very simple to register your new blog with the top website and blog directories. We’re simply talking about filling out forms on certain websites so that you can start to get noticed. This is not one of the more active ways of marketing that we will talk about later, but it is very important in the overall marketing plan of your website.

Technorati Blog Directory

Probably the most popular blog directory that you can register with is called Technorati. This site actually tracks and lists the top 100 most influential bloggers. This would certainly be a list that you would like to be on in the long run, so the first step is getting your blog registered there.

BlogCatalog Blog Directory

Another influential blog directory site is called BlogCatalog. Again, it is very easy for you to go ahead and list your site here as just one more way of drawing in more visitors and attention. If you go to Google and put in the term “blog directories”, you will find hundreds of different sites where you can fill out a form and have your site listed. Again, don’t expect a huge influx of traffic as soon as you do this, but it is still a great way to get more publicity of your site over time.

So what is the big deal about getting submitted to these blog directories? One of the biggest reasons is because the search engines often crawl these directories. These directories are structured such that the search engines like to regularly check for new content. Therefore, if you list your blog on a site then you’re more likely to get continual attention from the search engines.

Another reason to get listed on blog directories is that some of these directories actually do see quite a bit of traffic. Many of them rank very high in the search engine results, so this can create a lot more clicks and exposure that you would not otherwise have access to.

You can’t bank on the fact that you’re going to get thousands of new visitors the next day just because you listed your site on a few blog directories, but any traffic that you do get is like icing on the cake because you wouldn’t have otherwise had it.

A lot of these blog directories have a huge number of incoming links. Some of the directories will give you the opportunity to provide a reciprocal link. This means that a number of links are being generated on a regular basis which helps for popularity and placement in the search engines. These blog directories also make a lot of use of the RSS feed updates which can allow for more individuals to subscribe to your specific blog feed.

You can submit to these directories individually on your own or sometimes you can outsource the task to someone else. There many outsourcers that you can find on different freelancing websites who would be glad to set up your blog directory listings for you. There are also certain software programs that will allow you to submit many at one time.

However, you have to make sure that the programs are not spamming any systems because you wouldn’t want to get blocked.

DMOZ Website & Blog Directory

Another major blog directory that many bloggers make sure to submit to is DMOZ.org. This is a directory of websites which is extensively utilized by search engines. This is actually the largest human edited directory on the Internet.

It is an important site because it’s trusted by the search engines and regularly reviewed by a human. Google and other search engines know that the information can be trusted as being legitimate, so getting in this directory is of utmost importance.

When trying to get yourself listed on the site, make sure that your site category is correct. You’ll submit your site to the most relevant category because the human editors are not going to allow you to submit your site to the wrong category.

You also should be patient with the process because it can take several months before you get accepted to the site. You also want to carefully write your description text to make sure that you follow the DMOZ guidelines.

Getting listed in the major website and blog directories is an important part of doing the initial promotion on your new blog. It certainly is not the last thing that you will do to market your new website. However, it never hurts to have this extra bit of traffic producing juice behind your site.

As a new blog owner, you will do everything within your power to get as much of your content sent out to your new potential readers. This might mean through RSS feeds, blog directories and other avenues which will generate interest and traffic to your site. Once they are on your site, remember that it is your responsibility to provide quality content in a welcoming format in order to keep people on your site and make them want to come back again and again.

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These feeds will allow people to subscribe to get regular updates delivered to them when you add new content to your site. Some people read their feeds online while others use news readers or get e-mails.

Having an RSS feed also makes it possible for the content of the site to be packaged up into different kinds of widgets and gadgets that can be displayed in other places. If you’ve ever been on a website and noticed the little orange icon that is usually located somewhere beside the URL, that is the RSS feed button.

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What’s the Big Deal with RSS?

So what is the big deal about having an RSS feed? Thinking about how busy people are these days, it is no surprise that readers want to get information quickly and efficiently. With more and more people using mobile devices such as cell phones and tablet computers, having your content accessible by RSS feed is going to be vitally important.

Not everyone has time to go back to their web browser and read over your blog each day. Some people prefer to have only updated information sent to them by way of an RSS feed.

Thinking of it from the consumer’s perspective, subscribing to feeds allows them to look at a huge amount of online content in a very quick amount of time. For you as the publisher of the content, RSS feeds allow you to instantly distribute your content to a huge number of people who might want to subscribe.

These kinds of feeds make it possible for people to read lots of information without having to constantly remember to check their e-mail or your site manually. In short, it streamlines the user experience while still allowing people to get the information that they want and need.

Huge news outlets also publish content feeds throughout the day. Even Google itself publishes its own feeds. Hundreds of thousands of podcasters, video bloggers and traditional bloggers publish feeds every single day in order to continue making connections with their own followers. As a new blogger, you certainly don’t want to be left behind as technology moves forward. RSS feeds are not going anywhere anytime soon, so you must learn how to set one up for your site so that you can take advantage of the huge opportunity to gain more readership.

RSS Aggregators

Before you set up your own feed, you should first understand how consumers are able to read these RSS feeds. There are many choices because there are over 2000 different feed reading applications available to consumers these days. These are also called news aggregators. Some readers also work specifically on mobile devices since more people get their news on their cell phones now more than ever. Some people also use online, web based services to manage their feeds.

So how can you publish your own feed for your website? Since you are using WordPress, it’s likely that your feed is being published automatically. This means that anyone can click on the little orange box up next to your URL and download your feed. However, you want to publish your feed in other places in order to get it distributed to as many locations online as possible.

One place that’s very popular for submitting your feed is a website called FeedBurner.

In order to create the feed for FeedBurner and submitted, the steps are very simple. Once you sign up at the site, you simply input your WordPress blog URL and click next. After you go through the steps at the website, you will have a special RSS feed that you can now put into the sidebar of your WordPress blog.

This will let people know that they can easily subscribe using FeedBurner. Thankfully, you can use widgets in your sidebar in order to display the RSS symbol so that readers know they can get all of your content in a feed reader.

WordPress RSS

WordPress automatically creates several different kinds of feeds for your site. In order to find out your feed URL so that you can submit it to search engines and directories, WordPress says that there are four different feed addresses that you can use:

http://example.com/?feed=rss

http://example.com/?feed=rss2

http://example.com/?feed=rdf

http://example.com/?feed=atom

If you have set up custom permalinks in your blog, then the proper feed addresses would be:

http://example.com/feed/

http://example.com/feed/rss/

http://example.com/feed/rss2/

http://example.com/feed/rdf/

http://example.com/feed/atom/

Why Setup a RSS?

Understanding the reasoning to set up an RSS feed is very important. Remember that your main goal as a blogger is to get your content out to as many people as possible who might be interested in what you have to say. This is sort of like your own version of online publicity. Getting people to subscribe to your RSS feed will allow them to constantly see the updated information that you post.

Instead of having to wait for someone to come back who might have forgotten that your blog even exists, you will be able to keep them updated by way of their subscription to your feed.

Many people may decide not to sign up for an e-mail list because they don’t want their inbox bombarded with possible spam e-mails all the time. However, they might still be very interested in your information so make sure that you always share things on your blog that you have shared in private e-mails to your list.

That way you’re really hitting people in both ways so that they get the information whether they subscribe to your e-mail list or only subscribe to your feed. In the end, building a successful blog is about trying to reach people in any way that you can without detracting from the relationship you’re trying to build with them. RSS feeds are one way that you can do that easily and effectively.

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For one thing, you have to think about exactly what you have to say. Again, you want to make sure that you have a unique perspective on your topic so that you’re not simply rehashing the same information that has been written about over and over again.

Readers want to get new and insightful information rather than reading the same repetitive opinions on various sites.  Your goal is to become that expert who will provide authoritative information on the topic.

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Write it Outside of WordPress

Before you start to write your blog posts, it’s best to do it in another document rather than doing it directly into your WordPress dashboard. To add a post, you simply click on posts, add new.

However, you need to write the document in MS Word or Notepad first and then transfer it over to your WordPress document later. That way, you can save that and make sure that you have the content before you try pasting it in. Remember that anything can happen when you’re working online, so it’s best to always backup your work.

Plan Your Topic

Assuming that you’ve already picked your niche, you should plan out what you want your post to say before you even start writing.  You might even want to jot down some notes or bullet points that you want to use in your post. Then, you need to come up with an effective and creative title.

Remember that you’re also writing for the search engines, so you may want to include some keywords in your post title. Here’s an example: let’s say that your blog is about homeschooling. If you’re writing your first blog post about how to socialize your children when you’re homeschooling them, you don’t want your title to be something like “Helping Susie Find New Friends”.

Be Interesting

First of all, that’s not a very entertaining title and doesn’t draw the reader’s attention into your blog. More importantly, it contains no keywords to let readers or search engines know what the topic of the blog is. Instead, you might want to go with a title such as “Socialization for Homeschoolers: Is It Really A Big Problem?”

As you can see, this is an interesting title which is also making use of specific keyword phrase “socialization for homeschoolers”. Hopefully, visitors will find the blog title intriguing enough to click on while search engines will be able to make use of the keyword in the title.

Use Chunks

Another important point that you should remember while writing a blog post is that people like to scan instead of read. You want to make sure that you leave plenty of white space and use bullet points or short paragraphs if possible when writing a blog post.

That way, people are not overwhelmed with a huge chunk of content that they may click away from instead of reading. Once they start scanning your content, hopefully they will see something interesting enough that makes them want to go back and read all of it.

Add Value

Any blog postings should also add value to the reader and help them to solve a problem, learn new things or even become more productive. Focus on writing blog posts that give people practical tips or even tutorials on how to do something. In other words, you want to overwhelm your readers with so much quality, free information that they trust you and become loyal followers of your blog.

Have Good Grammar & Spelling

It’s also important to make sure that your writing is free of grammatical and spelling errors. While no one is going to come along behind you and grade your paper with a red pen, it is important to make yourself look like a professional by making sure that your writing is free of these kinds of mistakes.

Believe it or not, there are many people in the world who will discount anything you have to say based upon your ability to write. They figure if you can’t sound intelligent in your writing then maybe your ideas are not worthwhile to read.

Use Targeted Keywords

As you are writing your blog posts, you might want to make sure to include the keyword or keyword phrase you are targeting in your first and last paragraphs at least. That being said, you don’t want to overload your content with keywords because the search engines can look at that as being keyword spamming or stuffing. This can actually hurt your rankings instead of helping them.

Paste into WordPress

Once you have written your content, you are ready to paste it into the WordPress editor. This is very simple because all you have to do is click on posts and then click new. You’ll paste in your headline and then paste in your content. If you need to put any links in your content, that is also very easy to do.

Simply highlight the text that you want as your anchor text and click on the little chain-link just above the box where you paste your copy. Here, you will input the link in the pop-up box. By putting a couple of links in your copy, you are giving readers a place to click off and get more information or purchase the product or service you want to sell.

Tag Your Post

You’ll also notice there’s a place in WordPress to add what are called tags. These are basically keywords that will also help the search engines classify your blog post so that readers can find it. Make sure to add at least three or four tags but no more than about eight.

Again, you don’t want it to appear that you’re only trying to rank in the search engines. Google and other search engines like quality websites with good content for their readers.

You should also note that you can schedule your posts in WordPress in case you want to write a few that will be released in the future. For instance, if you want to go ahead and write a post about something that’s happening the next week, you can do that and just schedule it to be released at that time.

Check out our video on how to write your first blog post.

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Don’t worry about monetizing your blog right away.  Blogging is about an ongoing dialogue with your readers. Because of this, you want to make sure that your website is both engaging and welcoming to new readers.

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Make it Welcoming

There are many ways to make sure that your blog is welcoming to people when they first come onto the site. First of all, you want to talk to them in a conversational tone. You don’t want everything to seem very technical or overly academic so that people don’t feel welcome.

Remember that you don’t know if the person coming to your site is brand-new to the topic or very experienced, so you need to make sure that your content and layout is welcoming to them no matter what level of experience or knowledge they have about the subject matter.

Is it Easy to Read?

The first thing you need to make sure of is that your theme and layout are designed in such a way as to make people feel at home. For instance, it has been proven that having a light background with dark text is much more readable for people than having a dark background with light text.

You don’t want people to have to squint to read your site, so make sure to look at it from an objective standpoint after you build it. If it is too difficult for people to read because the text is too small or the coloring is not right, take the time to make sure that all of that is resolved before launching your blog for the first time.

Occasionally you might also see weird characters on your WordPress site. Don’t panic. It’s easily fixable and just requires that you pay attention to details.

Have A Nice Website Header

Another way that you can make your blog more welcoming is by having a nice header designed for the top of the site. Show your personality here and make the blog more individualized. Remember that you’re trying to build a relationship, and part of that is branding yourself as an expert on the topic that your blog is about.

By creating a header, you can brand yourself in such a way as to make people believe that you are the expert in your particular topic. You wanted to look professional, yet engaging. Headers can be outsourced for less than $25, so invest in branding yourself.

This goes back to creating a logo that’s representative of your brand, of who you are.

What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin

There is also a free WordPress plugin called “What would Seth Godin do”. You can search for this plug-in in your WordPress dashboard. Simply put, it creates a text box at the top of your screen with prewritten information to welcome the visitor. You can set it up to say whatever you want, and you can even program it to give a special message to new visitors and a different message to returning visitors. You might invite the person to join your mailing list, subscribe to your RSS feed or just tell them that your glad they have visited your site.

Allow Comments

One way to make it more engaging to readers is to allow comments. When people read your blog posts, you don’t want them to simply read it and move on with their day. You want to engage them by making the content entertaining, informative and maybe even a bit controversial.

That’s not to say that you should go out of your way to irritate your readers or try to create controversy. But you don’t want to blog about boring or mediocre topics where you have no original slant. Let’s face it: if you don’t have anything original to say then maybe you shouldn’t have a blog on the topic.

By allowing comments, even moderated ones, this will not only help your readers to interact with you more effectively but it will also give the search engines more content to help you rank. You can set up the comments so that you have to approve them before they’re posted which will give you the right to delete any comments which are inappropriate or simple spam.

Blog commenting is very popular right now, so closing your comments completely really doesn’t help you to achieve a loyal following. Not only should you allow comments, but you should respond to the comments professionally so that people know that there is a person behind the blog. This helps to develop trust and loyalty between you and your readers.

You should check out the DISQUS plugin.  It allows real-time commenting, notification of response, full integration with media services such as Youtube, Flickr, and compatibility with mobile websites for commenting while on the go.

Do Your Research

Another way to be more welcoming and engaging to every reader is by doing your research. You want to make sure that not only do you provide a unique perspective on what you’re discussing, but you also have the most up-to-date information about your niche. If news stories have been released relating to the topic, you want to include that information so that you’re also informing your readers. If you could become their “go to” person for the topic, you can develop quite a huge list of readers.

You may also want to entertain the idea of setting up a mailing list so that people can subscribe to your monthly newsletter and updates. Again, this is another way for you to stay in direct contact with those people who are following what you have to say on your blog.

Have Easy Layouts

As far as the layout, you want to make certain that it’s easy for people to navigate and find information that they want to read. Have a search box so that people can go back and look for particular keywords to find more information on blog posts you may have written in the past. You may also want to have a list of your pages and categories in the sidebar so that people can refer back to topics that interest them. You could also have a list of your most recent blog posts so that people can see what you’ve been writing about lately.

Finally remember to test how your blog looks in different browsers and see our review on WordPress themes.

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You can find WordPress plugins for a whole variety of different tasks, and new ones seem to be coming out at a rapid pace. Most plugins that you find are free of charge, although there are some paid plugins that you can purchase directly from developers online.

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Google Sitemap Generator

Having a sitemap plugin (such as Google XML Sitemaps) is also very critical to the overall success of your site and bringing in more traffic. This is a simple plugin that generates a sitemap you can then submit to Google Webmaster tools.

By submitting the sitemap, you’re letting Google know about your new website and inviting them to come and crawl the information on a regular basis. Obviously, you want Google to come to your site as often as possible.

Best of all, once configured it will automatically notify Google of new posts you publish and updates to existing posts, so it’s a “set and forget” type of thing.

SEO

So why would you use plugins? Some plugins are specifically designed to help you generate more traffic from the search engines. One very popular plugin is called All In One SEO. This plugin has several fields that you fill in with your keywords, site name and description among other things.

Then, this information is automatically coded into your webpages so that it makes your website more attractive to the search engines. In the old days, you would’ve had to program this into your website yourself, but thankfully the use of plugins on WordPress came about allowing anyone to have these features.

Privacy Policy Generators

There are many different plugins that people use on a regular basis in WordPress. Aside from the one mentioned above, there are other plugins such as Easy Privacy Policy plugin.  If you’re going to be selling anything online, you want to have a privacy policy on your website as well as a disclaimer.

If you search in the plugins directory, you’ll find all kinds of different options available to you in order to quickly and easily add these pages. You’ll simply click a couple of buttons to install the plugin, configure it with some information and you’re off to the races!

Amazon

There are also a whole variety of paid plugins available online. For instance, many people like to sell products from Amazon.com. You don’t want to have to go into Amazon, find products and generate your affiliate link over and over and over again. Here’s an Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer plugin to alleviate the hassle of adding these products your website.

In fact, some of the plugins like Amazon Showcase WordPress Plugin pull products that you specify and drip feed them on your blog. So, while you’re asleep or on vacation, content is automatically being added to your site at your specified intervals of time.

Although you always want to add unique content to your blog in order to make it a great experience for the user and more attractive to the search engines, some bloggers find that having a little bit of automated content allows them to beef up their site without sacrificing quality. Also, because many people are interested in selling products or services on their site, these plugins allow for products to be added easier and faster.

Social Media

There are other plugins like the Social Media Widget which will make your site more social media friendly. These days you can often find examples such as Facebook & Twitter button on websites. This option allows people to easily share your content on their favorite social networking sites.

So, if you write a particularly interesting or controversial blog post, users are able to click a button and share it with all of their friends and followers. This is a great thing to have on your blog because it allows you to go “viral” easily.

YouTube Videos

The Automatic YouTube Video Posts Plugin allows you to add media content to your site such as music and videos. You can automatically import videos from your YouTube account corresponding to the topic of your blog. Even though you could lose a little bit of your traffic from people clicking off your site to read more, this kind of content can also pull more interest from the search engines to your blog.

Contact Form

Another great plugin that is free to use on WordPress is the Fast Secure Contact Form. You definitely want to have a contact form available on your website so that your users can get in touch with you with questions and comments about your site. Also, from a legal standpoint you want to make sure that you have a way for anyone to contact you in case there are legal issues with your site.

Link Cloaking

Some other types of WordPress plugins that are popular these days are link cloaking plugins like Pretty Link. These allow for you to mask your affiliate links in such a way as to not alert the search engines that your links are going out to a page to sell a product or service. Instead, they make the links look more SEO friendly.

You can use this plugin to manage affiliate links in one central place.  You should never put a direct affiliate link in an article, because if that affiliate link breaks later due to articles being syndicated (copied, etc.), you might lose that revenue.  However if you use your Pretty Link URL then you always have control of the affiliate link and can change it easily.

Related Posts

You can also use a plugin like Efficient Related Posts or YARPP (our personal favorite) that pulls up other related posts on your own website. For example, if you write a post about organic gardening and you have written posts in the past related to organic gardening, then it will show a list of related posts so that the reader can find more information on your blog.

This simply improves reader loyalty while also keeping people on your website longer. The longer they are there, the more likely they are to click on an ad or an affiliate offer.

As you can see, WordPress offers all kinds of great perks in the way of plugins. Make use of these plugins to increase traffic to your site and improve overall reader loyalty.

Here are 10 more top WordPress Plugins that you should know about.

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You don’t need to know how to code the site at all. For example, you might choose to have a theme with two columns or three columns, and a header or one without. There are almost unlimited amounts of design options that you can choose when it comes to having your own WordPress blog.

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Find the Themes

So where do you get these themes? There are numerous places that you can obtain them for your WordPress blog. First of all, the easiest way is to simply click on the appearance tab in your WordPress dashboard and then you will see the option for themes.

Once you click on it, then you can do a search within WordPress for all kinds of free WordPress themes that are available, i.e. on wordpress.org. You will see many variations.  Spend some time really looking at all of the options available.

Premium Themes

There are also paid WordPress themes that you can find online from different vendors, including PremiumWP and StudioPress (founded by our friend Brian Gardner, and highly recommended). If you are going to have a site that is for your business or other professional interests, you might want to invest in a paid theme that will allow you to do all kinds of other customizations that many of the free themes don’t allow.

These can range in price from very inexpensive all the way up to a $200 or more. A lot of this depends on whether you’re going to use the theme just on one website or whether you plan to use it on numerous sites. Some theme designers have an option called a multi-site license or even a developer’s license. Make sure you know what the licensing rules are for the package you purchase.

One great thing about WordPress is that it doesn’t require you to be technologically savvy to use it. However, some can be quite complicated and complex to use, especially for a novice.

You don’t want to purchase a theme this could be overly hard for you to customize to suit your needs. However, if you do find one that you don’t think you can set up by yourself, then you can always outsource that task to someone else who does that on a regular basis.

As an example, you might decide that you want a custom header to go at the top of your site. This makes your site stand out from the crowd and gives you an opportunity to brand yourself better. Many people will make a website header for less than $25 by hiring a graphic designer on sites like Elance and Guru.

Map Out Your Site

Before you purchase a header or even use a free one, it makes sense to sit down and map out how you want your site to look. If you are planning to generate passive income on the site by using Google AdSense or affiliate offers, you need to think about exactly where you want those advertisements to be placed.

Certainly, many studies have been done over the years pointing out the best areas to place your website advertisements (like this Google AdSense Heatmap) to ensure maximum conversions. Do some research online to find out the best places to place your ads so that you can make the most money from your website?

If you are not planning to put advertisements on your website, then you still need to think through what you want the user to experience when they come to your blog. Thinking through this ahead of time will help you narrow down the choices when you’re looking for themes that will fit with your blog site plan. You might even want to ask around if you’re on any kind of Internet forums to see what themes other people are using with great success.

You should also review how your website looks in different web browsers.

Install a WordPress Theme

To install a theme, it depends on where you got it. If you’re using one of the free themes that come inside of WordPress, you’re simply going to click on the theme and hit the install button. Once installed, it will ask if you want to activate the theme and you can simply click on the “activate” button.

You can load several themes onto your site and preview each one individually before activating the one that you want to use. Thankfully, themes are very simple and easy to change on a WordPress site, so don’t worry if you load 5 or 10 before you figure out which one you want to activate. It really is just simple clicks of a button to change them out.

If you purchase the theme from somewhere or download one from somewhere else on the Internet, it is still very easy to install on your site. In most cases, you will be given a zip file when you download a theme online.

You’ll simply click into your themes area, click on the install themes tab and then look for a button that says upload. Once you browse and find the zip file that you downloaded, simply upload it to the site and activate it.

As you can see, installing a WordPress theme is very easy. With a few clicks, you will have a site that literally looks like it was designed by a professional. This is one of the biggest perks of using WordPress to build your blog. You don’t have to worry about all of the technical jargon. You just need to know where to click and before you know it you will be publishing the first few articles on your blog!

Be sure to read about our favorite web hosting provider and find out how to start a blog in 10 easy steps!

One of those reasons is because it is so simple and easy for even a novice to install. Previously, many people felt like they had to hire an expensive website programmer in order to have a nice-looking blog online. In fact, many folks gave up after trying to figure out all of the technical jargon such as HTML and CSS.

Prepare Installing WordPress

Before you install WordPress on your site, you do want to make sure that you have purchased a domain name and input the proper name server information into your domain account.

This tells the domain registrar where to forward people when they want to come to your website. Otherwise, the domain will point to a parked web page hosted by your domain registrar. Obviously, this is not what you want to have happen.

Not only is WordPress easy to use, it is also free and easy to install. But you will need to purchase web hosting and a domain name in order to make this site your own. In other words, you’re not going to be using the free (but very limited) WordPress.com hosting service.

Instead, you will be using the free WordPress blogging platform and your own web hosting account (just like we do!).

As mentioned previously, we recommend HostGator (read our review here) for your hosting account because of their great reputation and really low cost (plus no long term commitment like most others – you can start month to month). Plus that’s who we started with so we can personally vouch for them.

Installing WordPress on HostGator

Another reason why we recommend HostGator is because they have a particular software called Fantastico located within their control panels – which makes it super easy to install WordPress for your site. When you sign up for hosting, you will get access to your own control panel which is commonly called your CPANEL.

When you login to your cPanel for the first time, you might be overwhelmed at all of the options available. Rest assured that you will probably never use most of the options that you see on the page. For now, the main thing that we are interested in making use of is Fantastico.

Once you login to your cPanel, you will want to scroll all the way down the page and look for the heading “software/services”. This is where you will find the Fantastico software.

Click on that button and it will take you to the first screen that will allow you to set up your WordPress blog. Next, click on WordPress in the left sidebar.

Now click “New Installation.”

At this point, you will be required to enter some very important information. The first thing you will need to decide is where you are installing WordPress. There is a drop-down menu that says “install on domain” beside it. Use this drop-down menu to choose where you are installing this instance.

If you have any questions about that, contact your hosting company to get clarification. It will also ask you which directory you want to install WordPress. Most of the time, you’re going to leave that blank.

The next blank is for your admin access data. First, you need to choose a username that you can easily remember which will help you to log into your dashboard.

Make sure that you choose a username that other people can’t guess. Also, if you’re going to build multiple WordPress sites, make sure that you don’t use the exact username for each site as it can make your blog much more prone to being hacked.

Next, you’ll need to choose a password. Again, it’s important to choose a password that no one else can guess. Many people use passwords that have letters and numbers to make it a lot harder for anyone to hack into your account.

The next blank starts your base configuration section. Where it asks for an “admin nickname”, this is the name that you want to show up on your site when you make a post.

For instance, if you make a post then this name is what will show up as the author of that post. Many people choose “admin”, but if you’re trying to have a more personalized site then you might want to use your first name or even a nickname.

The next blank asks for your admin e-mail. Normally, you will set up your e-mails in the CPANEL. You can see the option to add e-mail accounts at the top of your CPANEL screen. You can also forward these e-mail accounts so that you get them in one central location if you wish.

This particular e-mail box is specifically for your administrator. This is the e-mail that you would want people to contact if they have a question or problem with your website. It’s very important to have contact information on your site, so make sure that this e-mail is actually working.

The next blank is site name. This is very self-explanatory as you will want to put the name of your site or even be URL address. This is not a necessary blank so you don’t have to fill it out if you don’t wish to.

Keep in mind that sometimes certain themes will show this name in the header. Therefore, if you don’t want these words to show up in the header of your website then you may not want to put any information here. The same can be said for the description which typically shows up as the tagline in the header of your website.

Once you have all of the information filled out, click on “install WordPress”.

The next page will ask you to confirm your installation, email your installation info, and then you are finished! Now, all that is left is for you to login to your brand-new WordPress website. This can be done by putting in your URL followed by /wp-admin/. For example, “your_website.com/wp-admin/”

You will then need to login with the username and password that you choose. As you can see, installing WordPress on your website using HostGator is extremely simple and easy to do.

When you rent a home or apartment, you are paying someone else’s mortgage, but more importantly, you have no ownership over your own space.

If you plant a tree in the backyard, you don’t have ownership over it. Maybe you decide to put tile down in the bathroom, but you can’t take it with you one day when you leave. Renting means that you are living somewhere at the approval of another person.

Owning, on the other hand, means that you can do what you want because you own the space. You can paint, put down hardwood floors and fence the backyard. Sure, you might have some neighborhood covenants that govern certain things, but for the most part, you are the captain of your own ship.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Using Free Web Hosts

With web hosting, many people make critical areas when it comes to choosing how to host their blogs. There are free blog services like Blogger and WordPress.com that you can use (don’t confuse the WordPress.com free web host with the very popular WordPress blogging software – which we use AND highly recommend). In fact, many people start out using these free services because they want to “test the waters”. However, there is a big danger is using free services if you want to build a long term business as a blogger.

Just as with renting, you can be “kicked out” of your free blog in a heartbeat. Let’s say you spend 6 months building up a blog with tons of fantastic content and a following of faithful readers. Then, one day out of the blue, you realize your blog has been wiped clean.

As unbelievable as it may sound, it does happen and is not a good surprise. When you build rankings to a free blog, you are paying someone else’s mortgage payment in a way. You are building rankings for something you do not own which can be wiped out in any time for no valid reason at all.

Also some free services like WordPress.com prohibit the use of affiliate links on your free blog, meaning you can’t make money with your blog. Which really makes “free” into a pretty bad deal?

When you use a free blog service, you have to follow someone else’s rules. If you break those rules, or they even think that you did, they can click a button and kill your business in a heartbeat. It is like building a house on sand. Who needs or wants the stress of wondering if your business will still be there tomorrow?

Paid Web Hosts

So what is the answer? Get your own web hosting! You can (and should) still use WordPress as your blogging software. Web hosting is very inexpensive (less than $7 per month for basic services) and will allow you to be the ruler over your own virtual “real estate.”

As you learn how to start a blog, you will be able to write what you want and build your business without constantly worrying about the possibility that someone will remove your content tomorrow.

When considering a hosting company, it helps to ask other successful bloggers and Internet marketers who they recommend. Many will have horror stories of certain hosting companies, which will help you avoid landmines in your search for a hosting company.

You also want to make sure that the host you choose has CPANEL (control panel) so that you can easily access certain features that you will need as you learn more about blogging and working online. You may also want to ask if the host has support for WordPress, our recommended blogging software. Some web hosts (like our recommended web host below) provide a simple way to install WordPress in just a few clicks.

Another factor to consider is how much space you really need for your new blog. You don’t want to overbuy and overpay each month for space you don’t yet need.

You can always upgrade your plan later as your blog grows in traffic. When starting out in blogging, it’s important to only spend money on the necessities instead of wasting a lot on things that are not needed yet.

Our Web Host Recommendation

There are many web hosting companies out there, but one of the most popular and most reputable is called HostGator (read our review here). They are well known within the industry for their competitive pricing and great customer service.

Also they’re the ones we started with and we recommend you start with them as well.

They have chat representatives available all the time in case you have questions or concerns which makes it a valuable resource for new bloggers all the way up to advanced bloggers. They offer several plans including dedicated servers, but you won’t need that until you have either a lot of sites or a ton of traffic.

HostGator offers unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth and a very easy control panel where you can set up email addresses among other things. They have a 99.9% uptime guarantee which is highly important because that means your website will very rarely “go down”.

Some hosting companies cannot guarantee uptime, and that usually means they experience a lot of technical glitches. The last thing you want to worry about is having your site go down a lot and missing out on traffic and income potential.

As one of the world’s top 10 largest web hosting companies, HostGator has more than 4 million hosted domains. They are certainly not the only hosting companies, but you will rarely hear any complaints about their services.

Another great thing about HostGator is that WordPress can be installed in just a few clicks using a feature called Fantastico. They also have simple tutorials available showing exactly how to install WordPress, and once you do it then you will be a pro at it – and you’ll get your blog started right away.

Choosing your web hosting is important because you want to be sure that your blog is protected and stable. After all, this will be your new business model so you need to take the decision seriously.

Look at all of the factors when you are comparing hosting companies so that you don’t have to move your site later as that can mean a real hassle and potential loss of data if not done correctly. You can also look for special coupons and deals on hosting to get in at a great price.

Check out the detailed review on the ONLY web host we recommend if you’re just getting started – the one we recommend to our own friends and family.  Our recommended web host even comes with 1-click installation of WordPress, our favorite easy to use blog publishing platform: the one we use for all our sites.

This is not to say that you can’t make money in a popular, broad niche, but it does take more time and work to grow that kind of blog to the level where it makes good money.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How to Pick a Niche – Passion vs. Moneymakers

So where do you start when you want to pick the right niche and learn how to start a blog? There are two schools of thought on picking a niche. Some people say that you should just choose something you are passionate about because you will want to wake up every morning and write quality content.

While that is a great thought, if your biggest hobby is underwater basket weaving, you are unlikely to make a great income blogging about it.

One often overlooked component in blogging is that you need to be able to find related products to promote to your customer base in order to make money. Of course, you could create a blog with simple AdSense or other banner ads, but it might take longer to see a profit over time.

On the other hand, some people say you should only pick topics that are known moneymakers whether you are interested in them or not. While that might work for some people, others need to have at least a passing interest in their topic in order to be successful.

In short, when you learn how to start a blog, you want to be certain that thousands (if not millions) of other people share your enthusiasm and interest in the topic and will pay money for products and/or services that you have to offer in the niche from time to time. No matter what, the key to the whole niche selection process is choosing the right keywords and getting your research together before building a blog site.

Keyword Tools

There are many free online keyword research tools to find keywords. One popular tool is the free Google Keyword tool.  After you have entered the keywords, you can check the amount of advertisers in that niche by gauging the bar in the “Competition” column.  You can even assess how lucrative the keywords are by click on the “Columns” button, and then enable the “Suggested Bid” checkbox.

This site is handy for many different tasks including your search for a blog topic. Let’s say you know that dating is a popular niche, so you want to do something in that niche. The problem is that going after such a broad niche can be the kiss of death for most new bloggers. So it’s important to find a sub-niche on dating in this case.

One way of doing that is putting in a “seed keyword”. You could start with “finding a date” and whittle the keyword options down further and further. Perhaps, in the end, you find that you would be interested in blogging about “finding a date for young professionals in their 20s & 30s.” There are many sub-topics to choose once you have a general idea of your topic.

The idea behind blogging is to develop a loyal following. To that end, it is important that you target your niche with laser-like focus so that you are one of the only people providing such specific content to a group of people. Additionally, you want to be sure that enough people are interested in your niche so that you get enough traffic.

If only 10 people per month are searching for your keyword, you need to either move on to another topic or see if there are other related keywords to create a bigger blog.

You can use tools other than the Google Keyword tool also. For instance, two other free tools are the SEObook keyword tool and Google Insights for Search. There are also other paid tools that are a lot fancier. We recommend you get a proven keyword research tool to find your keywords quickly and accurately.

The Google Insights tool gives additional information that can be very important during the niche research phase. It shows you how popular search terms are and what kind of history they have. For example, Christmas phrases would be highly searched from October through December, but most blogs would be quiet throughout the rest of the year. That can have a direct impact on your income.

Check the trends for your keywords and make sure that enough interest is there throughout the year to give you a reason to put your time and effort into the topic. This tool can also help you maximize your chances of making bursts of income at different times of the year as well.

So how do you know the proper way to research a keyword? The answer is that there is no “right” way. Everyone has their own opinion as to the number of searches that a keyword tern should have to make it worthwhile.

You can find yourself spending so much time researching that you never get around to creating quality content for your blog. Don’t over-analyze things. Often, you will find yourself with a list of keywords that, when added up, will give you plenty of potential search volume for the month.

The key is finding a way to get to the #1 slot on Google so that you can get the bulk of the daily searches for your keywords.

Once you have picked your keyword, you can also search what affiliate programs are available and check their commission.  Choosing a niche for your blog does not need to be a long, drawn out process. Use a mixture of your interests and knowledge to make your selection.

Here’s a quick tip: if you do a search on Google for a topic and people are paying money to run AdWords ads on the right side, they are making money. If you see TV commercials or magazine ads about your topic, they are making money. It’s a good bet that you will make money too!  So get started today and pick that lucrative niche that you will dominate!

Be sure to check our How to Start a Blog page to give you an overview of the process.  In our next step, we’ll be talking about our recommended web host, which comes with 1-click installation of WordPress, our favorite easy to use blog publishing platform: the one we use for all our sites.

Top 10 Tools Every Blogger Needs (Part 1 of 2)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Top 10 Tools Every Blogger Needs (Part 2 of 2)

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. WordPress

Once you get set up with a great web host (here’s our #1 recommended web host), you need a blog publishing engine, or rather a Content Management System (CMS) that your site will run on. You have a lot of options, some paid and some free. Google’s Blogger is free, but there’s no support. What happens if you blog goes down (or disappears) in the middle of the night? Who will you call? With Blogger, you get what you pay for: not much. We’ve actually seen this happen. Joomla is well, something that we won’t get into here (lets just say we are SO not fans of Joomla). Then there’s TypePad, a paid option. Let’s just say we started on TypePad, and left as soon as we could.

WordPress is really your only viable choice, plus it’s free. It’s very powerful and customizable, and very easy to optimize for a busy site, which is crucial. It’s the best CMS tool out there, and it comes in 2 flavors, both free: installed on your website or hosted on their servers. Sure, you can get a WordPress blog right on the WordPress.com site, but we strongly recommend against that. That’s a handicapped WordPress that doesn’t give you the power to grow that makes WordPress so valuable to begin with. And their terms of use don’t allow affiliate / revenue generating links.

If your blog is your business, you need to treat it like a business. Get a good, cheap web hosting service and install your own WordPress on it. There’s no reason not to. Our recommended web host even offers 1-click WordPress install.

2. Google Analytics

Knowledge is power. You need to know about the traffic on your site. Where is it coming from? Where are they going on your site? How long are they staying there? Is your traffic up? Or down?  This is information you need. Big time.

Google Analytics has all this. Yes, there are other products out there that cover the same territory, but this is the best one. And it’s free. Have we mentioned that free is good? Because it is. Get it, use it, learn it, love it. You totally met your new best friend. Fun fact: some years ago, Google Analytics was a commercial product called Urchin, which cost upwards of $5,000. Then Google bought it, made it way better, and offered it free to everyone. Best. Analytics. Ever.

3. Chartbeat

Chartbeat very similar to Google Analytics. In fact someone once called Chartbeat “Google Analytics on crack”. It offers you much of the same data, but it does so in REAL TIME. You can see traffic stats unfold right before your very eyes, feeding your Type A personality or offering you a cure for insomnia. It shows you who’s on your site right now, what they’re looking at, where they came from, etc.

Chartbeat has many valuable features, but chief among them is the ability to tell you how long it takes real users around the world to download pages on your site. Is your fancy new flash widget downloading slowly? Is your front page taking forever to load? Chartbeat will tell you, and you desperately need to know. Why? Because the internet makes people impatient. They may have no problem waiting nine months for their child to be born, but they won’t wait five seconds for your site to come up. Google knows that and won’t send visitors to a slow-loading website. Chartbeat lets you know if there’s a problem and gives you real time insight into what’s happening on your website.

4. Pingdom

Is your website up? Or is it down? You hope it’s up, you thinks its up, but is it really? Is it up all the time? Does it go down at the four in the morning on the third Tuesday of the month? Is your web host flaky, meaning having lots of tiny outages that you wouldn’t normally notice?

The truth is that without a great site uptime monitor like Pingdom, you simply don’t know. It offers you uptime reports, error analysis response time reports and will notify you by email, text or twitter if something happens. Pingdom does cost money, but it is an extremely valuable and necessary item for anyone who is in the business of blogging and/or making money online. You simply can’t live without it. Think about it: if you walk by a store and the sign says “closed” are you really going in? You can’t. It’s closed. Your website is the same way. Pingdom makes sure your doors are open all the time. And yes we’ve tried many other uptime monitors over the years, most sucking more or less than the one before.

More than any other uptime service we’ve tried, Pingdom catches any minor server flakiness so you know about it before your visitors or Google abandon you for it. Think of this as your outside agent keeping your web host honest.

5. Google Ad Manager (now DoubleClick For Publishers)

Google Ad Manager is the best ad management tool on the market, bar none. And it’s free.  It is simple, robust and relatively easy to use, once you get the hang of it. Yes, you’ll need to play with it a bit because it’s very powerful, but it’s time well spent.

So what’s an ad manager? It’s a way for you to post ads on your site and make money. It allows you to create “ad units” on your website and then to display (and test) all kinds of different ads through those ad units. And then it allows you to figure out which ads get clicked best, convert best, etc. It’s something you must have if you’re going to make money online.

And it is free, and will remain so despite rumours that this could change with their recent acquisition of DoubleClick. As a result of that acquisition, Google Ad Manager has morphed into DoubleClick For Publishers (DFP). The DFP web page has replaced the Google Ad Manager web page, but the functionality is the same. In fact the functionality and the user interface have both improved considerably since the DoubleClick merger.

6. Aweber (Email List Server)

If you have a website and no email list, you’re really missing out on a huge opportunity. But that’s a topic for another day.

And let’s face it. If you do have an email list, you need your emails to get there and get read. Period. You need a way to get them from your keyboard to John Doe’s inbox. Period.

How do you make that happened? With Aweber.  It’s that simple, and with their $1 for 1 month trial offer, it’s that cheap. At least, to start. It’s true. Aweber is not the cheapest email marketing service out there, it’s just the best, and frankly, it’s only one worth using. We left. We came back. There’s a reason for that. In the past it wasn’t exactly known as the easiest to use or most intuitive  site out there but they have made incredible strides in this department as of late and it is way more accessible for you and we can’t recommend it highly enough. Do yourself a favor and don’t price-shop email list providers; try Aweber, you’ll be glad you did.

7. Tubemogul

If you’ve started a video show (or video podcast) you know that it can’t just be on your website, it has to be everywhere. That means YouTube, DailyMotion, 5Min, Blip.tv, Vimeo, Yahoo Video, Sevenload, etc. You also know that each video file is HUGE (especially with HD), and uploading them is a HUGE PAIN. And that’s just uploading it once. With multiple sites, you have to upload each video multiple times, right?

Wrong. Tubemogul takes care of this for you. With Tubemogul, you simply upload it to their site once and then boom! They use their proprietary magic to distribute your video content to all the major online video platforms.  That saves you time, and sanity. And if that wasn’t enough, they have analytics built in! See how many times your video has been viewed, for example.

8. VodPod

Oh, VodPod, how do we love thee? Well, we’ll spare you the details, but we love them a lot. You are seeing them right here, at the top of our page! You see that sexy row of our videos? That’s them.  They are really amazing at giving you ways to do something with your videos in a stylish, organized manner. Lets say you upload your video to Youtube. Great. What do you do with it now? Embed the heck out of it? That’s fine, to a degree, but if you have multiple videos like we do (we have over 550 segments and counting on Ask Dan & Jennifer alone) that just doesn’t cut it. Vodpod gives you a way to integrate and display your videos on your website in a way that is as accessible as it is aesthetically pleasing.

9. Sendible

The simple fact of social media is that it is always there. If you want to be a force in the social media world, you must always be there. You need to be regularly posting to Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc. You can’t be robotic, but you must be consistent. The phrase “out of sight, out of mind” certainly applies to the digital age and social media.

Fortunately, with Sendible, that’s never a problem. Sendible is a tool that allows you to schedule you tweets and other social media posts on all platforms hours, days, weeks and even months in advance. Going on vacation? No problem, set up your tweets in advance and your followers will never even know you were gone. Another way to look at this is that your followers who expect your great tweets regularly will keep getting them regularly. Just don’t go totally automated or everyone will stop following you… they expect personality and engagement too!

10. TweetDeck

TweekDeck is a free desktop tool that functions as your personal real-time social media browser. It allows you to keep up with and post to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare and seemingly every other place you can think of – all from one application. Think of it as a sexy, digital command center from which you can control your burgeoning media empire. Okay, maybe not, but it is really simple and fun to use. You simply enter in your account information for each network and that’s it. You are officially off and running.

11. PollDaddy

Yes, we know this is #11, but you will thank us for it. Face it. People have opinions and they LOVE to share them. That’s a fact. It’s also a fact that user interaction is a key component of a successful site. People love to take polls and they love to see what other people think.
PollDaddy is the way to go, and there’s no point in you looking around at other polling options. We did. They look bad; really bad. Recently it was acquired by Automattic, the good people who bring you WordPress, which is definitely a good thing. Here’s a poll we ran on Ask Dan & Jennifer…

That’s all for our top 10 (and by 10 we mean  11) tools that all bloggers need! We’ve done all the work, research and experimentation so you don’t have to. All you have to do is run out and get these tools and put them to work on your site. And remember, if  your website is your business, you need to treat it like one. Now get out there and get to making money and changing people’s lives!

We know we went kind of fast through this list due to time constraints, but stay with us. In the coming weeks we’re going to get into all the details you ever wanted to know for choosing all of these tools and using them like a pro.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Congratulations! You’ve made it this far. You’ve got your niche, figured out what you want to talk about, who the other players in the niche are, decided what you like about them, what you don’t like about them, and you’ve started interacting with their readers on their blog and you have begun to build up your presence. Now what?

Now you write your first blog post.

Oh, how this strikes fear in the hearts of many a blogger… “What will I write about?” They ask “How will I come up with a topic.” Writer’s block sets in at this point and for many, but really, it’s not a problem if you’re writing about something that you are passionate about.

Not satisfied? Fine. We’ll give you a sure-fire way to come up with your first subject.

Lock yourself in a room. Literally. No cell phone, no significant other, no T.V., nothing. Sit down in front of a pen and paper and write down every idea that you can think of. Don’t stop until you have a least 50-100. Then pick one. How do you pick you? You pick the one that speaks to you. How will you know which one speaks to you? It just does. Try not to over think this. Your first blog post is important, but the fate of the world doesn’t depend on it. Just your world. Kidding! Just relax, and pick one. You’ve got like a 100 to choose from, right? See, it wasn’t that hard. You’ve done it! You’ve chosen a topic. And now you have your first blog topic ready to write about to your heart’s content.

Here’s something to get your juices going: What keeps your audience up at night?

What are their hopes, dreams, problems, etc? Now pick one of these and write about it. Now we come to blog length. How long should it be? As long as a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the goods, but short to keep it interesting. Spell check it, and be sure to test any links in it you might have to say, your twitter account or a product page.

On a side note, always have a notebook handy.

You will often find yourself getting ideas at the most random times, when you least expect it. Write them down whenever they come to you. You may never actually use any of these ideas that you come up with on the go, but you will have them and it will help relieve any fear or pressure you feel about coming up with topics. You’ll never be stuck.

Once you have that first blog post written, when do you post it?

This is a bigger question than you think. The name of the game with posting is consistency. Do you post every hour or every day or every week? You have to set a schedule and stick to it. If you’re going to make money at this, you need to have people consistently coming to your site to check out your content. It has to be new, constantly updating content. They aren’t going to be checking out your greatest hits, either. They want new, fresh content. It’s not going to help if you post ten times a day for a week and then don’t post again for another month. If you do that, you’ll come off as flakey to your readers and that’s just death to bloggers. You won’t get those readers back, and you won’t be generating any traffic or making any money, either.

But it’s not just readers that hate inconsistency and flakiness. Search engines hate it too. You want to be on their good side, and you’ll need to be posting regularly. We’re talking at least once a week, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to manage that. The more posts the better, but don’t commit yourself to something you can’t deliver and end up flaking out. There’s plenty of scheduling software’s out there that can help you make sure you never miss a posting. WordPress even allows you to schedule a post to go live at a certain date and time. So there’s no excuse to not be posting regularly!

Click here to view the embedded video.

You need to have a topic for your blog and you need to make sure it’s something you’re deeply, truly passionate about.

“Without passion you don’t have energy, without energy you have nothing.”
– Donald Trump, Inspirational Quotes from Today Is That Day

This is absolutely critical. There is nothing else more important than this. You may not be ready to hear this or think that it could happen, but the fact is sooner or later you’re probably going to be making a living at this. This will be come your job. This is something that is going to consume a great deal of your time. You’ll be talking about it constantly. It might as well be something that you love. Something that you eat, sleep and breathe. Because then, it’s fun. If not, well, what’s the point?

Another really simple yet profound thing to consider is this: is this just a hobby, or do you plan on making money off of it?

Would you like it to become a source of income at some point? If you’re just looking to vent about something or indulge in your inner nerd, or talk about your favorite pro wrestler than you probably don’t need to worry too much about your niche. Because it just won’t matter. If your blog is your hobby then all you have to do is indulge your passion to your heart’s content and not say anything too stupid that will get you fired from you “real” job (and yes, that has happened to people before).

But if your blog is something you’d like to make money off of, you need to consider the market place. Some niches monetize better than others. Some just don’t offer than much money. Some are already well covered (that is, there are already a great number of people blogging g on that topic), while some are completely ignored or relatively underserved. If it’s a crowded space, then you really might want to rethink it. It’s always better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond.

Once you’ve decided that, it’s time to jump right in!

Step one is doing your homework: research the blogs in your niche.

Learn the lay of the land. Find out who the players are in your space. Do all the research that you can. Google and other search engines are great for learning everything from how old the blogs are to who founded them, what kind of money are the generating, etc.

Next, make a list of the most popular blogs in your niche and study them closely.

At the end of the day, it’s all been done. There is not any reason to try to reinvent the wheel here. Just look at what other people are doing and copy what works, while placing your own personal spin on it.

Get to know the most successful authors in your space.

Read their blog, post comments, be part of the discussion. The more interactive you can become on their site(s) the better. Sooner or later, you will become known and that will lead people to becoming curious about you and what you have to say and ultimately lead people back to your blog. Increased presence means increased traffic which means increased revenue. For you.

Now go out there and do it! Get in the game people! You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Now you may be asking yourself “Should I even bother?”

“The niche I want to blog about is already so crowded and they say not to write in a crowded niche!” True, but then again, we started Ask Dan & Jennifer and that’s a love and sex site and that niche is about as crowded as it gets! And we do, in fact make a living off of it. So, it can be done. There are no absolute rules. These are only guidelines, so definitely, by all means go with your gut and your passion, but make it easy on yourself, too!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Question 1: Why are you starting a blog?

It’s the most profound question you will ever ask yourself, but also the most important. Why are you doing this? What do you hope to accomplish? Do you want to make money? Do you want to help people? Do you want to make people laugh? Do you want to vent about something (society, politics, your love life)? There are no wrong answers here, but you do need to have one. You need to know why you are doing it, but more than anything you need to be passionate about doing it, whatever it is. If you love Spam and you want to sing the praises of Spam on your blog, then you will be successful. But if you’re a Vegan and you hate spam and someone offers you a ton of cash to blog about Spam, it’s just not going to work. It’s a job at that point, and you’ll hate doing it, and more importantly, you’ll hate yourself for doing it.

Question 2: What’s your niche?

Everyone needs an angle. Whether you’re a writer blogging about being a stripper, or a stripper blogging being a writer, you need a hook, pure and simple. You can’t be all things to all people and you shouldn’t try. You will fail. You can only succeed if you can identify a portion of the market that is being underserved (ideally, they won’t be getting served at all) and then speaking and marketing to them. This isn’t as hard a question to answer as it might seem. Once you answer the first question, the second question will largely answer itself.

Question 3: How will you set yourself (and your new blog) apart?

Here’s the really tricky question. You know why you’re blogging, you know what your niche is, now what? How do you stand out in a sea of endless bloggers? What’s your angle on your angle? Maybe you’re giving relationship and dating advice from the Born Again Christian perspective, for example. Or maybe you’re a divorced dad offer dating and parenting tips. The point is, whatever your niche, there is probably someone already there serving it as there are very few new ideas under the sun. What makes you worth listening to? Tricky question, to be sure, but an important one.

Once you have the answers to these three questions, you’re good to go. Just be aware that the answers, may change over time, and probably should. Your answers to these three questions represent a snapshot of where you are at the time you answer them. If you have a vision and a goal of say, getting ten people a day to visit your blog, and then that happens, then what? What happens is your answer to these three questions will probably change. You’ll need to re-answer them, and that will affect why you are doing this and how you go about doing it.

Don’t worry about this. Don’t wait to have the perfect answers. You won’t. You’ll not only never get it “right,” but you never even get started either. It’s all about progress, not perfection. You must repeat “Progress over perfection” in your head one million times. Okay, actually only three. But you get the point, hopefully. Perfection is one of the deadliest diseases on the planet. It robs people. Of their hopes, of their dreams and of the chance of actually making those hopes and dreams a reality. If you don’t get in the game you’ll never get a chance to win it, but there are some that endlessly practice and attempt to perfect whatever it is they working on before they show it to the world. But it’s never perfect. Ever. I don’t even know if anyone knows what that means.

It’s vitally important that you have a plan, vision and something to shoot for. But don’t let the prep work consume you to the point where things are unhealthy. That’s as much a life lesson as it is a lesson about blogging, but it certainly applies here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Content Is Key

You may have the best SEO keywords on your website or blog, but without quality content, the search engines are going to start overlooking you. You may get an influx of site traffic for awhile, but it will quickly cease as the search engines realize that people aren’t staying on your website very long. If you’re not offering people anything of value on your website, you won’t be getting traffic for long, if you ever got it at all. The key to a successful blog or website is to produce quality content that people want to read on a regular basis. Search engines will pick up on regular publishing and start taking a better look at your website or blog. If there’s good stuff on there that people are interested in and searching for, the search engines will start sending them to you. It’s as simple as that.

Search Engine De-Crappers

Search engines, especially Google, spend millions of dollars every year on technology that allows them to filter through websites that publish what is known as Internet “crap.” Search engines don’t want to send traffic to websites that don’t offer people anything of value. You can only fool search engines with SEO tricks and keywords for so long, if at all these days. Search engines are continuously working on ways to weed out the bad and useless content, regardless of how many fancy keywords and SEO there is. If you don’t produce quality content on a regular basis, search engines are going to figure it out and fast. Without quality content, you’re not going to get the traffic you need for a successful blog or website.

Regular Publishing

To take this #1 tip on blog and website success a little further, you must continue publishing good content that people want to read on a regular basis. You may have a great article up on your site or blog, but if you’ve only published one or two articles, the search engines aren’t going to know to look in your direction. Search engines want to send people to websites and blogs that regularly publish good content, not a website or blog that published one or two good articles. Search engines such as Google love websites that stay relevant and stay in the game by continuously posting content.

Great! Starting a blog can be a solid way to make long-term income – just for doing some writing on stuff you actually like and care about. But there’s a little more to it than that AND it may not be for everyone. This is not a get rich quick or plug and play business. If that’s what you’re looking for, this is not the place for you.

Yes, you can make a lot of money online but, like other traditional businesses, it’s not guaranteed. Anyone who tells you otherwise, is not being truthful.

Our goal is to help people who are really serious about building a real online business – because you can make a little, or a lot of money. That all depends on you…

Here’s the big difference between making money online and going to a job every day. If you do it right, the work you do today, this week, and this year – will continue making money for years to come. It’s an investment rather than trading your time for money.

So how does this work? Search engines find and cache the articles that you write, and over time each post is “worth more” to the search engines. That means you’ll get more web site traffic with every passing month as your site gains credibility. This does not happen overnight. It takes persistence and even some hard work – but you can do it if you’re serious and committed…

We did it (Dan and I both walked away from our corporate jobs and now do this full time), and so can you. The good news is that you get to take advantage of what we’ve learned over the last several years and avoid the sand traps that we had to dig our way out of.

So let’s get started – RIGHT NOW!

Here are 10 EASY steps we’ll take together to help you start a blog and make money online.

Decide to start today

TODAY. No, not tomorrow, not next week, and not next month. Tomorrow always feels “safe” because you’re not having to make a decision. The power of today is that you make that commitment to yourself. And that is the first step to success.

This step is the most critical one, and it’s where most people get stuck. Don’t dream about doing something. Just get up and do it.

“The best way to live the life of your dreams is to start living the life of your dreams Today, in every little way that you possibly can.”  – Mike Dooley, Inspirational Quotes from Today Is That Day

Step #1 – Choose the right niche – What your blog is about…

Choosing the right niche for your blog is perhaps the most important choice you can make BEFORE you actually start writing. Choose the wrong niche, and it’s very unlikely you’ll ever succeed.

Some questions to help you choose the right niche

• The most important question you have to ask yourself is this: What are you passionate about?
  It’ll be very hard for you to write regularly and authoritatively and be a go-to industry expert on a topic you don’t really care about. Passion tends to make the difference between amazing success and quiet failure.
• Do you intend to make money with this blog? Would you like it to be your primary income source?
  This makes a big difference. If so, you’ll have to choose a nice that is not overly crowded. Regardless of the crowding, you’ll need to research your niche thoroughly and develop your own value proposition.

Research your niche and learn the landscape

Find the popular websites in your niche, study them closely, and visit them regularly.

Get to know the authors and regular contributors. Comment on their posts regularly so they can get to know you too.

Find the right keywords to target with your blog

Once you choose your niche, it’s crucial to find the right keywords to target. This is a delicate balance between finding keywords that get enough search traffic and keywords that don’t have too much competition.

Don’t wait until your site starts getting popular to figure out which keywords to target, or you’ll waste a lot of time and effort and end up starting from scratch.

While you can do a lot of research the manual, old-fashioned, and time-consuming way, we recommend you use a keyword research tool to find your keywords quickly and accurately.

For more details on choosing your niche, check out “How to Start a Blog – Step 1: Pick Your Niche”.

Step #2 – Get a web hosting account

Your host should be reliable, responsive if you have questions, and inexpensive. $7 per month is reasonable for a reliable host; less than that and the service tends to go down a lot.

Many people try to save those few dollars and start a blog with a free platform like Blogger.com. But we strongly advise against it. It’s virtually impossible to get free search engine traffic to those free blogs, and support is completely nonexistent. Oh, and if your blog disappears overnight (as we had happen once on Blogger.com), there’s nobody to call and ask for help. Your work is all lost. You’ll also have a hard time moving away when your blog takes off. And you’ll lose all the search engine value that you’ve built up.

Take this seriously and go with a proper web host that actually has competent support people available to help you. Spending $7/month for a proper web host will also help you realize that you’re serious about your goal.

We highly recommend HostGator when your just getting started.

HostGator is great because it JUST WORKS, they offer a lot of great features, and (unlike most other quality web hosts) you can sign up for an inexpensive monthly plan, and pay month by month. Most of the other guys advertise a really cheap rate, but you only get that if you pay 1-3 years up front.

The fact Hostgator’s email support team replies to my issues in literally minutes is awesome, but that’s not the only reason we recommend HostGator. Check out all of the reasons we love them in our web hosting review of HostGator, and then go set up your own account with them today.

Are there other good web hosts? Sure, but HostGator is the only web host that we recommend to our own friends and family when they ask…

If you’re just starting out – or you’re looking to keep your costs as low as possible while working with a solid, reliable web host, do yourself a favor and get started with HostGator.

Don’t forget to check out our web hosting review of HostGator, and give it a try yourself; we’re glad we did.

Tip: Don’t forget to use Coupon Code BLOGSUCCESS when you sign up with HostGator – and your 1st month is just $0.01! That means you can start a blog today for just $0.01. Now you’ve really got no excuse to delay, so take a few minutes and do it before you get busy and forget!

For more information on web hosting, read “How to Start a Blog – Step 2: Get a Web Hosting Account for your Blog”.

Step #3 – Install WordPress

After you choose a reliable web host, you’re ready to install your blogging software. The most flexible choice available today is WordPress. It’s also free, and easy to set up and maintain.

Yes, this is a little more involved than setting up a free account somewhere, but it’ll be well worth the effort when you get more web site traffic in a month then you would have gotten in a year on a Blogger.com.

For more information and step by step details on how to install WordPress, check out “How to Start a Blog – Step 3: Install WordPress to Run your Blog”.

Step #4 – Make a great first impression with a great theme

First impressions always matter. On the web, that’s even more important. A web visitor’s first impression about your site determines if he clicks away in the first 5 seconds, if he stays on to read what you have to say, and if he will ever come back again.

So it’s very important to put your best foot forward. Make your site interesting, distinctive, and engaging to your readers by using a great “theme”. WordPress themes are basically website designs that you can just download and enable for your WordPress account.

Start with a free theme and when you have the resources, consider having a custom theme made to enhance your brand even further.

For more information and how to find great free themes for your blog, make sure to read “How to Start a Blog – Step 4: Make a Great First Impression with a Great Theme for your Blog”

Step #5 – Configure WordPress and its plugins to get the most search engine traffic

What good is a blog if nobody is visiting? One of the great advantages of WordPress is the vast array of options to make your blog very yummy to the search engines. This is all about understanding what Google wants and giving it to them in the way they want it. Simple.

The most powerful SEO trick of all: “work with Google to give them what they want instead of trying to trick them”.

For our list of must have plugins and brain-dead simple SEO tips, check out “How to Start a Blog – Step 5: Install These WordPress Plugins to Get the Most Search Engine Traffic”

Step #6 – Make your blog welcoming and engaging to every reader

To make your visitors stick around and come back for more – day after day – use the power of WordPress and make your blog fun, engaging, and interactive.

Use polls to get readers involved and ask their opinion. Feature the latest posts and comments. Show off your most popular articles. Get readers truly involved by getting them to comment on your posts.

To discover a few simple ways to get your readers coming back, again and again, check out “How to Start a Blog – Step 6: Engage Your Readers”

Step #7 – Write your first post

OK, at this point you’ve chosen THE best niche for you, you’ve become very familiar with that niche and it’s most popular sites, and you’re basically what could be considered an “authority” on your topic.

So now is the time for that all important first post

Off the top of your head, make a quick list of all the issues in your niche that people care about. What problems do they have, what questions do they have? What keeps them up at night?

Now pick ANY one of these and write a quick article on it. This “article” can be just a simple Top 10 list, with a supporting sentence of two for each bullet. That’s it!

Get feedback

Get this first article out there and see what people think. Email it to your family and friends, and ask them to help you make it better.

All the planning in the world is no substitute for Action. It’s time to go forth and do those good and powerful things.

For detailed steps on how to get started writing great content, read “How to Start a Blog – Step 7: Write your First Post”.

Step #8 – Set up your RSS feed

Not long ago, RSS was the domain of the super-geeky. But today, millions of mainstream internet users are subscribing to RSS vibes every day.

Get set up with full-blown RSS support by setting up a free account with FeedBurner. They’ll pull a feed from your blog, make it pretty so everyone can actually read it, and they’ll even give you accurate stats on your readers. Yes, it is nice to know if anyone is actually subscribed to your feed.

WordPress also has a simple plugin that you can enable to support your shiny new FeedBurner RSS feed service.

For more information on RSS, check out “How to Start a Blog – Step 8: Set up Your RSS Feed“.

Step #9 – Register your new blog with the top directories

Once you have a few posts out there, it’s time to start getting the word out. Search engines want to see links coming back to your site. Those links show that people other than just you consider your site to be important.

Well, at first you have no links. So you have to start somewhere. One of the best places to start is the endless list of web site directories and now blog directories which are just begging to give you a free link.

Here are a few to get you started: BlogCatalog, DMOZ and the Yahoo Directory. DMOZ and Yahoo Directory are very important, but your submission to them is considered just a “suggestion”, and you may never hear back or get included.

Blog Catalog has turned into a social community of bloggers, which makes it significantly more valuable than a regular blog directory, largely because of the relationships you can forge there.

For more information on blog directories, read “How to Start a Blog – Step 9: Register your Blog with Every Top Website and Blog Directory”.

Step #10 – Promote! Social Media, Internet Press Releases, Article Marketing, and more

If you don’t tell people about your new site, they’ll never know about it! Stop hoping someone will accidentally stumble upon your site. Take matters into your own hands and get the word out there!

It’s never been this easy to promote a brand new site, and to explosively grow your traffic and readership.

Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and more

Did you just publish a great article on your site? Let people know! Social media is a great way to share your stories with others who WANT to know about it.

Share your great article on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and StumbleUpon. But tread with caution. Don’t “spam” these sites with everything you write.

To be truly successful, it’s VERY important to follow the rules and participate in these communities.

There are even some great tools like to automate the process and submit your stories to tens of social media sites! This means you save countless hours AND actually get your story out to dozens of sites instead of just one. But again, you can’t just spam these communities, it’s crucial to build a presence and participate as a real person.

Article Marketing – Establish yourself as an expert by publishing your articles

Time to get more visibility for your hard work. Article directories take your articles and provide them to the countless webmasters and eZine publishers that need what you have: good, useful, and informative content.

You’ve already spent the time and written excellent articles… Now it’s time to publish those articles on the top 10 article directories and get lots more readers coming to your website.

For more information on the best ways to promote your blog, check out “How to Start a Blog – Step 10: Promote! Social Media, Internet Press Releases, Article Marketing”.

“Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually’, just do it and correct course along the way.” – Tim Ferriss, Inspirational Quotes from Today Is That Day

Next Steps: What to do RIGHT NOW – Today…
(It’s Easy, Stay With Us Here)

OK, so we’ve been through the basics, it’s time for action. If you’re going to do something, there is only “now”. Later and someday never come. So let’s do it together! Yes, today.

1.) Choose your niche.

• Ask yourself these 3 questions.
• Here’s a short video to help you choose a niche.

2.) Get a cheap, reliable web host. Regardless of your niche (topic), this is one thing you’ll need before you start.

And that little $5 commitment may actually help you get going! This is the ONLY web host we recommend if you’re just getting started – the one we recommend to our own friends and family.

Our recommended web host even comes with 1-click installation of WordPress, our favorite easy to use publishing platform: the one we use for all our sites. So you can now check this item off your list, and move up to step 2.

3.) Write your first post.

Don’t agonize over it, just do it! Start small, and keep going. Here’s some step by step help for you -
How To Write Your First Blog Post (Video)

Choosing the right niche for your blog is perhaps the most important choice you can make BEFORE starting a blog. Choose the wrong niche, and it’s very unlikely you’ll ever succeed.

Some questions to help you choose the right niche

• The most important question you have to ask yourself is this: What are you passionate about?
  It’ll be very hard for you to write regularly and authoritatively and be a go-to industry expert on a topic you don’t really care about. Passion tends to make the difference between amazing success and quiet failure.
• Do you intend to make money with this blog? Would you like it to be your primary income source?
  This makes a big difference. If so, you’ll have to choose a nice that is not overly crowded. Regardless of the crowding, you’ll need to research your niche thoroughly and develop your own value proposition.

Research your niche and learn the landscape

Find the popular blogs and websites in your niche, study them closely, and visit them regularly.

Get to know the authors and regular contributors. Comment on these blogs regularly so they can get to know you too.

Find the right keywords to target with your blog

Once you choose your niche, it’s crucial to find just the right keywords to target. This is a delicate balance between finding keywords that get enough search traffic and keywords that don’t have too much competition.

Don’t wait until your blog starts getting popular to figure out which keywords to target, or you’ll waste a lot of time and effort and end up starting from scratch.

While you can do a lot of research the manual, old fashioned, and time consuming way, we recommend you get a proven keyword research tool to find your keywords quickly and accurately.