If you have an eye towards making money from your blog, then you should first have an idea of what makes a profitable blog so that you can make decisions right from the start that support that goal. There are two primary ways to make money from a blog. 1. Get lots of traffic. 2. Be in a market, or niche, that either has a lot of products or services or unique products or services that other bloggers aren’t targeting. There are two pretty simple ways to determine whether or not your topic will get lots of traffic or if it is in a ‘rich’ market. Method 1, Search for a High Traffic Topic To test the traffic level of your topic, use Google Trends...
Read MoreSpecial Offer: Sign-up for WordPress hosting using one of our preferred hosts and Ninja Blog Setup will install, setup and configure a WordPress blog for you, for free! (After you sign-up for hosting, fill out the form to order your blog installation.) Choose Your Host Wisely Before you can have a self-hosted WordPress blog with your very own domain name, you must first select a host for your site. The host is the company that provides the server where your site will be digitally stored on a hard drive and be continually connected to the internet where it can be accessed by billions of internet users. All hosts are not created equally, however, so it pays to learn just a little bit about what you should look for in a quality blog hosting company. WordPress Hosting Plan Components A standard hosting environment for blog hosting software will include the following components. Apache web server, which is found on almost 100% of Linux hosting services. SQL server – usually MySQL which will manage the WordPress blog database. A mail host, which allows your WordPress site to send email notifications for things like comments, password resets and administrator functions. Fantastico – allows easy installation of WordPress and many other popular website management tools: Drupal (themes), osCommerce, Moveable Type. PHP – WordPress runs best on the latest version of php 5+ WordPress Hosting Benefits Getting your WordPress site hosting setup on your own domain name can have many benefits over using free blog hosting services like WordPress.com or Blogger. Custom WordPress themes: You can visit any of the many WordPress themes download sites and modify it or have a designer modify it to perfectly represent your topic or business blog. WordPress plug-ins: You can perform an almost unlimited number of creative services that make creating a blog easier. Multiple sites: With a web hosting reseller unlimited account, or even many shared hosting plans, you can host 20 or more WordPress blogs on one hosting provider plan. WordPress Host Advanced Features There are many blog hosting elements that will not affect the novice or low traffic blogger searching for reliable and affordable WordPress hosting. However once your WordPress blog begins to earn decent money or you experience bandwidth limits or process throttling, you may want to upgrade to a more advanced WordPress host. Server virtualization allows your WordPress blog to run unaffected by other sites on the same server. You are protected from downtime that could result from other sites’ traffic spikes or errors. Dual processor servers or even quad processor servers provide extra speed and power for high traffic or processor intensive...
Read MoreDarren from ProBlogger has a good post called How to Choose a Niche Topic for your Blog which is aimed at people trying to decide what subject to blog about. Here are the questions he asks: Is the Topic Popular? Is the Topic one that is growing or shrinking? What competition is there? What is the competition neglecting? Will you have enough Content? Are there Income Streams on the Topic? They are all worth considering, but first you need to answer the big one… Are You Interested in the Topic? A friend of mine explained it this way recently: “Probably the best place to start thinking about what your blog should be about is to consider what YOU are about.” The unspoken truth about blogging is that it isn’t easy, but it becomes virtually impossible if the subject you’ve chosen for your site doesn’t spring from a real part of your life. You will need to be constantly involved in your topic to become a great blogger and you just can’t fake real involvement and expertise. Market, Niche & Competition I think there are a lot of misconceptions about blogging for profit and most of them concern the issue of competition. If there are a lot of blogs in a topic, it may very well mean that it is a thriving market and that there is a lot of money to be made on that topic. My thought is that in general you will make more money as a mediocre blog in a very profitable niche rather than to be the best blog in the world on a topic that not very many people care about, or that there is no real market for (ie. no products or services or advertisers in that topic). However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t lucrative opportunities available in certain micro-niche markets where you may be able to dominate the niche (be the big fish in a small pond). Chose your topic carefully, but do make sure that it is something that you are naturally involved in or have some passion for. There is no room for fakers in blogging. There are varied remedies for sundry diseases. Several remedies are antifungal medicines. In specific instances pharmacies offer to them customers Viagra. If you’re concerned about erectile problem, you have to study about “cialis daily” and “daily cialis“. Probably you already know some about the matter. Maybe “cialis for daily use cost” is an extremely complicated question. Matters, like “undefined”, are linked many types of medical problems. A scientific research found that about 14 percent of patients capture Bupropion had sexual disfunction. Finally ordering...
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Picking a domain name for your blog is the second most important decision you’ll make when starting a blog (what to blog about is the most important). Most people who are buying a domain for the first time make the same mistakes, so I thought I would write up a crash course for buying a domain name. Here are some brainstorming tools that I use frequently to find great available domain names: World’s Largest Registrar – GoDaddy.com has a great domain search tool that gives you a list of alternative domain names when the one you want isn’t available. Bust a Name Domains Bot They all work really well but are quite different so try them both to get two different points of view when thinking up domain name ideas for your blog. Here are my guidelines for purchasing a domain name: The Basics for Domains get a .com if you can, .net only if you can’t find a good .com no hyphens or dashes no numbers avoid having any of these words: my, the, your as short as possible, ideally 3 words or less, four at a maximum If you follow those guidelines you’ll avoid most of the common domain name mistakes. Then you want to move to more advanced considerations like: How easy is it to tell someone the name, in a conversation, like over the phone and have them find your site? A great domain name works even when someone can’t read it. Watch out for expressions that are said out loud one way and written down in another. For example: Your name: South by Southwest You register: SouthXSouthwest.com (most users will type in southbysouthwest.com instead) This is the best reason not to use numbers in a domain name. If you tell someone your site is: 2 by 4 dot com Do they go to: twobyfour.com or 2by4.com How does it look when it is written down? Some site names look better when written down. This is a reason to keep it short. TrialLawyerAssociationLLC.com would be much better as: TrialLawyers.com Watch out for unintentional or hidden words in a domain name. I recommend showing your potential name to a couple people before you purchase it. You may have a slang, or common swear word in your name without even realizing it. Here’s an example from a top tech site on the web: Experts Exchange. http://www.expertsexchange.com/ Can you figure out why they should have chosen a different name? 🙂 The Last Thing to Remember Unless you are really really trying to jump on a fast moving trend, the best tip I can offer when buying a domain name is...
Read MoreMost bloggers start out using a free blog service. Blogger.com or Blogspot.com is the most popular, but there are others including WordPress.com which is a free sub-domain version of WordPress.org (the hosted version of WordPress). The Best Reasons to Use A Free Blog Testing Blog Ideas If you have an idea for a new site, but you’re not sure if the niche will be popular or how people will respond to your idea, you could use a free blog as a way to test your idea risk free (no cost) and do it quickly. This way you can be more certain that your concept is going to fly before you commit to purchasing a domain and hosting and the time it takes to create a hosted blog....
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