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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!

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.

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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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!

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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!

Don’t waste your time trying out each WordPress plugin to find out which one you want. Here are the top 10 WordPress plugins that you want your blog to have, hands down.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

W3 Total Cache

For top-notch website performance, you need the W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin. Both your blog visitors and search engines care about how fast your website is. If your pages take forever to load, you’ll lose readers and search engine traffic. In fact Google just announced this week that they are not officially taking site response time into consideration for rankings. Of course they are: speed means quality of experience for their users.

W3 Total Cache can reduce your page load time by as much as 50% or even more – something you definitely want to do. AND it will help you keep your site running and available instead of crashing if you get a major rush of traffic all at once, such as getting a popular story on Digg or a “StumbleUpon attack”.  Other major caching plugins like WP Cache and WP Super Cache are OK, but in our opinion they are not as versatile or as powerful as W3 Total Cache (and we’ve used/tested them all).

Google XML Sitemaps

You want search engines to know when you post new content so you get more traffic. Google XML Sitemaps automatically generates an updated sitemap and submits it to top search engines without you lifting a finger. Don’t rely on search engines to crawl your site and find new posts – use this plugin to automatically tell them the instant you post – before someone else copies your post and pretends they wrote it – which happens. And “original content” (i.e. where Google “finds” a post first) gets much more credit than duplicate content (i.e. other places Google finds that post).

GravityForms or cForms

Your readers need an easy way to contact you, whether it’s to ask you a question or to advertise on your site. Contact form plugins like GravityForms or cForms allow you to easily create a great-looking contact form for your website. Instead of putting your email address out there for everyone (including spam bots) to email you thousands of times, use GravityForms or cForms to allow your readers users to contact you easily without cluttering your inbox with lots of spam.

Disqus Comments

Another interactive tool for your blog readers is the all-important comment box. Disqus Comments is an excellent WordPress plugin that allows visitors to comment on your articles with a great looking social interface and great spam control. Use an advanced plugin like Disqus Comments instead of WordPress’s integrated comment tool. It looks much, much better and gives you more control over comments. It’s also a hosted comment plugin that automatically syncs the comments with your WordPress database, and provides great social interaction with your readers.

Two other very popular comment oriented WordPress plugins are JS-Kit Echo and IntenseDebate. We’ve tried them both and feel Disqus is currently the better choice. The backend comment management of JS-Kit Echo leaves a lot to be desired, and we feel the Disqus comment layout just looks better than the IntenseDebate option. Frankly, this is a matter of preference, they’re all good options!

Akismet

This plugin automatically comes with WordPress and does a great job catching comment and trackback spam. If you’re using a hosted comment service like Disqus, Akismet won’t apply to you. Actually you can still use the Akismet service through Disqus, just won’t need to enable the plugin.

FeedBurner Feedsmith

Redirect your RSS feed to FeedBurner and have your RSS subscribers poll Feedburner instead of your site. This WordPress plugin makes your feed much more usable, since it provides far more optimized RSS feed than WordPress alone does. It will also offload the feed reader traffic to Google (who now owns FeedBurner) so it’s much,  much faster than your web server, improving your blog’s performance even more. This will sound a little technical to a new blogger, but do it anyway, it’ll work better that way.

YARPP

This WordPress plugin is an excellent tool to use if you want readers who are interested in your topics to stay on your website longer. YARPP automatically displays the most closely related articles from your blog to your readers at the end of the article, allowing them to easily browse through the content they’re interested in on your site instead of allowing to look for what they want elsewhere.

After The Deadline

This easy to use spell and grammar checker for WordPress is available for free and is essential to use even if you feel like you’re spelling and grammar error-free. It doesn’t cost anything and will ensure each post is error free and looks as good as it is.

Sexy Bookmarks

A bookmarking tool is essential for your blog and Sexy Bookmarks is an excellent tool to use with great eye candy. It adds a nice visual appeal to your blog, while encouraging readers to share the article they’re reading with their friends on Twitter, Facebook and more. This means more linkbacks to your blog and more readers for you!

Viper’s Video Quicktags

To embed your YouTube video on your blog, you’ll need Viper’s Video Quicktags. Newer versions of WordPress (2.9 and above) allow you to embed videos without special plugins, but Viper’s Video Quicktags allows you much better control over how the videos look in your posts. You can set the format for all of your videos in one place instead of coding it in each post – and having to edit ALL your posts to make a change.

After building very successful WordPress blog and online magazine AskDanAndJennifer.com over the last four years, these WordPress plugins are our personal favorites – and for the most part, the only ones we actually use.

So if you’re staring a blog yourself and decide to install WordPress for it (which in our opinion is the only way to go!) these WordPress plugins are a great place to start.

Do you have favorite “must have” WordPress plugins that aren’t in this list? Let us know! Leave a comment.

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Camcorder

One of the obvious things you need to start a successful video show is a camcorder, or possibly more than one if you have them. You don’t have to have an expensive camcorder – you can even use your webcam if you don’t have a more traditional camcorder.

The best thing you can get is a simple HD camcorder which has the following: 1.) a microphone-in jack and 2.) ability to record to an SD card (this makes it very easy to take your recordings to a PC/Mac for video editing) and 3.) a remote control (way better than pushing a button and running to your seat). The Canon Vixia line has worked well for us.

Regardless of whatever camcorder you have, make sure you have a stable place to set the camera up for filming. If you’re using a traditional camcorder, you’ll definitely need a tripod. Don’t have someone hold your camera for you – they’ll never be able to keep it steady enough to keep your viewers from getting motion sickness.

When your video budget justifies it, have someone who knows what they’re doing come in and do the filming part for you. The quality difference will be significant.

Good Lighting

Your living room overhead or a lamp just won’t work if you want good, even lighting for your online video show. Lamps and overheads create shadows, which look unprofessional in a video. Visit a camera store or browse online for some discount lighting fixtures or lighting kits. You don’t need super expensive lightboxes or anything like that. A simple bulb with a broad umbrella will do just fine.

We use and highly recommend this Cowboy Studio video lighting kit. It’s a good price and good quality, and best of all, it is SO MUCH COOLER than our old lighting kit. This one barely puts off any heat.

Lapel Microphone

Strong, even sound is as important as good lighting. For a professional looking and sounding online video show, you want to minimize echos and static. Some computers and laptops have built-in microphones that may work, but your best bet is a lapel microphone, especially if you’re shooting your video on a set in front of a camera instead of with a webcam. Lapel microphones are very inexpensive, but they’re worth their weight in gold.

For example, for a long time we used 2 of  these $20 Audio-Techica lapel mics with 20 foot cords and a $5 cable splitter from Radio Shack to combone their signal into the camcorder microphone-in jack. Until you go wireless, these are probably still your best bet.

Video Editing Platform

Good video editing software is essential for a professional looking video show. There will be lots of things you want to edit out, without spending hours re-recording a video to be perfect because you don’t have editing software. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to have a Mac to have a great video editing platform. Adobe has some great options for Windows video editing, including Adobe Premiere Elements which is available for less than $100. However, their best program so far is Adobe Premiere Pro, which comes in at just over $700 – if that fits your budget.

Just like with filming above, when your video budget justifies it, have someone who knows what they’re doing do the video editing for you. The quality difference will be significant, again. What’s great is today you can share files with your video editor using tools like Dropbox, so no more running hard drives with HD video all over town.

Use Video Sharing Sites

Video sharing websites, like YouTube, are free and your most valuable tool for getting people to see your video show and start making money online. Create accounts with several of the most popular video sharing websites and start uploading your video show online regularly so people can start watching what you’ve created. Tubemogul is an excellent option if you want to upload one video to multiple video sharing websites without the hassle of uploading large files over and over to different sites. Tubemogul allows you to upload the video once and it will distribute your video to various video sharing websites for you.

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Staying Relevant In Your Niche

Using social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook is one of the easiest ways you can stay connected to your blog readers and relevant in your niche. Regular Tweets and Facebook posts keep people reading and keep people “in the know” about your favorite topics. Also, one of the best forms of advertisement is through word of mouth. Fans of your Facebook page will inadvertently direct their friends to your page via their Wall and so on and so on. Your Twitter followers might Tweet about a topic you’ve already Tweeted about and tell their friends about it and so on. Using social media outlets is a must if you really want to be a successful blogger and build your own brand.

The Benefits Of Scheduling Your Tweets

The benefits of scheduling your Tweets is that you don’t always have to be at your computer when you want something Tweeted. While there are applications that can allow you to Tweet from your cell phone, sometimes you just want to take some time off without completely withdrawing yourself from staying on top of things and staying relevant. That’s where scheduling your Tweets (and your blog posts) comes in handy.

Tweeting Responsibly

There is definitely a fine line between using Twitter and Facebook scheduling tools and abusing them. While you can schedule many of your Tweets, it quickly becomes obvious that all you’re doing is scheduling your Tweets and you’re not really relevant in your niche anyways. Your Twitter followers and Facebook fans will ask you questions, and it’s important that you answer them. Although you do schedule some of your Tweets, you should add to it by answering questions and having real conversations with people. This is the best way to build your brand and let people know that you’re available and interested in what your blog is about. Social media outlets give you the opportunity to actually be in the action instead of simply being behind the scenes. Use your Twitter and your Facebook pages to talk about your favorite topics, ask your fans and followers questions of your own and get them involved and interested in your blog topics. Not only will this generate tons of traffic for your blog, it will also generate real interest, and that’s something that can’t be bought. Be responsible with your Twitter and Facebook. Take the time to talk to your fans and followers, and schedule your Tweets and posts when you have to.

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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)