Things That I Know

Welcome to the world of blogging. It is no longer just a medium to share bits of personal information and talk about your day. It is a legitimate way of communication, and source of news and information. While there are millions of blogs that are just for fun, there are very many blogs that are making serious money. Blogging is now a way of life and for many, a job.

There is one simple to explain, but hard to attain recipe for successful and profitable blogging: Content + Traffic = Income. Looks easy on paper, but making it work, as many will tell you, is not quite as easy as it looks. But the Internet is a limitless source of people and opportunity, and there is no reason why you can’t do what many others are doing.

While I can’t tell you what to write about, I can tell you how to get your blog up and running and ready to make money. Then all you have to do is add the content and drive some traffic to your site. This is by no means a get rich quick formula, but it is an outline to put yourself in a position of having a blog that is set up to create content and make money.

No matter how perfectly your site is created, no site will be successful without having quality content. In that sense, I cannot help you. But if you can make the content, and aquire traffic, then you will be in a position to make some money.

The outline showed here is merely what I have personally done and found successful. This is by no means meant to show you the only way to do this, just the way that I have done it.

Pick a Host

In order to pick the right host, you need to have an idea where you are going with your site. If it is going to be a blog, running blog software, then you should check the blogging software’s requirements before choosing a host. Most hosts will offer you everything that you need, but you should be aware of the necessities before agreeing to do business with a host. I’ve previously written about picking a host here, for any type of website, not just a blog.

Most likely, you will need MySQL databases in order to use the content management software needed. These are databases that your host provides that will need to be set up and integrated into your blog. If you plan on using WordPress, you will need a MySQL database for each blog you plan to maintain.

I use 1&1 Internet, Inc. as my host. I can’t say they are better than any other host, but I can recommend them based on my experience with them. They have hosted a multitude of websites for me for several years, and I can’t think of one serious complaint I have. They offer the services I need at affordable rates with reliable service.

Important note — when picking a host, particularly 1&1, pay attention to the service you are picking out. With 1&1 for instance, the MS Hosting packages do not include the MySQL databases that you need, but the Linux packages do. Get the Linux package that fits the rest of your needs best.

Pick Your Blogging Software

Your blogging software is the content management system (CMS) you will use to add content and customize the look of your blog. There are many CMS’s out there, but without a doubt, I recommend WordPress. WordPress is the industry standard CMS, but feel free to explore the other options available.

If you decide to go with WordPress, you’ll need to first download their software, then follow the necessary steps to install it. For more information on installing WordPress, I have written about that previously.

Once you’ve followed the instructions on how to download and install WordPress, you are ready to customize your blog and get ready to start adding content.

Customizing Your WordPress Blog

Themes

The beauty of using a CMS like WordPress is the endless options available to you to customize the look of your site. From downloading themes and plugins, to the ability to design or edit your own themes and plugins, there is no limit as to what you can do with your blog.

All WordPress blogs have a theme. A theme is the basic look of the blog. It is a collection of files that includes the header, footer, sidebar(s), and anything else that makes up the look of the site. Themes can be edited and customized, and you can download all kinds of different themes from other users. You can have all of your themes loaded into WordPress at once, allowing you to change your theme, and thus the look of your site, as often as you’d like.

There are many sites to download WordPress themes on the Internet, starting with the official WordPress theme site. There is also a huge list of sites that offer themes here. There are some theme sites to avoid, but the sites listed on the official WordPress site are all fine.

Once you have downloaded your theme or themes, and upload them to your WordPress site, then you can choose which theme you would like on your site. You can edit the themes from the Presentation tab on your WordPress dashboard. To do this, you’ll have to get yourself familiar with CSS and PHP. It’s not as hard as it looks, and with a little effort, you’ll be editing your own themes in no time. All WordPress themes follow what’s called “The Loop.” The Loop is the general format that every page will follow. Once you look at the files in the editor, you will see how it works, and be able to move things and customize the look of your site. When in doubt, check the WordPress Support forums. Most likely, the question you have has already been answered.

Plugins

Plugins are “tools to extend the functionality of WordPress.” Essentially, they are more functions that can be added to your blog. They may be as simple as adding a Stats page to your dashboard, to a contact form, or perhaps something more complex, like a plugin to automatically backup your files for you. There is an endless list of plugins available from the WordPress site that you can pick from. I’ve personally recommended four essential plugins, and a few more that I think you’ll like.

Plugins are also editable and customizable, but until you are extremely comfortable with editing files yourself, I’d suggest leaving them as they are. Most of them are customizable to you as a user anyway, so I’d recommend not editing them.

Creating Content

This is where the blog itself becomes the focus. Now that you’re up and running, and happy with the layout, it’s time to start adding your content and drawing in traffic. This section is up to you. There are many ways to write, and many topics to write about, so this is on you — the blogger. There are many sites out there that will help you harness your potential and manage your time, but that’s not my expertise, so I’ll simply recommend doing your own search on those issues.

Before you think about making money, you should get a decent amount of content on your site. In order to get ads on your site, they need text to scan for keywords. Not to mention the risk you run of being denied an AdSense account because you don’t have enough content. Get at least a few posts on your site before putting ads up.

Google AdSense

Once you have your blog up and running and a few posts, it’s time to get your ads going. Without question, I recommend Google AdSense. You might move on to bigger and better things eventually, but this is the place to start. Using AdSense is simple, but there are many things about it you need to learn. I’ve put together a collection of the things you should know about AdSense, from how it works, to how to optimize it’s power.

If you aren’t seeing ads right away, don’t fret. Sometimes it takes Google a day or two to get a grasp of what your site is about and find ads for it. If your site is about a common topic, it should pick out the keywords right away and you’ll see ads. With AdSense, you get paid per click, so getting traffic is the key. Be sure to follow Google’s Terms of Service, which includes no clicking on your own ads, and certain restrictions on content. If you can’t use AdSense, there are other advertising options available with more lenient terms, but if you fit into the terms of service, I’d suggest starting off with AdSense. Now that you have a blog with content and AdSense, all you need is the traffic to make some money.

Getting Traffic

If there were a secret to this step, everyone would be a professional blogger. But there is no secret here. The best thing I can tell you is to make good content, and people will find it. But you’ll have to help them find it, at least at first.

First of all, make your site search engine friendly. That means creating good titles for your posts, and filling in the meta information on all of your pages. Use keywords often in your posts, but not to the point of annoyance. If your site is about iPods, be sure to mention iPods by name several times. Search engines (and AdSense) will pick up on this and it will help you out.

Another way to get traffic is to be involved on the Internet. That means participate in forums, leaving your website in your signature, or commenting on other’s blogs, also leaving a link in the comment. Be sure to frequent sites about similar topics, and post comments that are relevant, not just “saying hi…” Make some friends on the Internet, or at least colleagues and your traffic will grow.

Again, there’s no secret to getting high levels of traffic, but if you have solid content, you’re on the right track.

*****

Now you have the blueprint to get your professional blog up and running. If you follow these instructions, you’ll end up with a website, blogging software, a unique look to your blog, advertising on your site, and you just have to add the content and bring people in. You are not likely to get rich overnight, but over time, you may be able to start making a few bucks, and with some effort, you might even have a new job.

Good luck and happy blogging.

Tags: AdSense, Blogging, Google, Plugins, Web Design, WordPress

For the small to medium sized Internet webmaster, Google AdSense may be your best friend. In fact, it may even be the best friend of many big-time sites. The reason is simple — when it comes down to it, Google AdSense is the quickest, easiest way to bring advertising to your website.

Whether you are looking to make a living off of your website or just hoping to get a few bucks back to cover your fees, there are plenty of reasons to put a few ads on your site. In order to get AdSense up and running on your site, all you need is a working website and be willing to have advertisements on your site.

How Does AdSense Work?

The way AdSense works is as sort of a middleman to bring outside advertisers to website owners without the two parties having to get together. As a webmaster, all you have to do is paste the code that Google gives you where you would like the ads to appear, and Google does the rest of the work. You design the color scheme and pick the size of the ad, and AdSense will fill the spot with relevant ads.

In order to get relevant ads, AdSense scans the text on each page for keywords. After figuring out what your page is about, it places relevant ads on your pages. It may take some time for Google to accurately analyze your site, but eventually, your site should have only ads that are relevant to your site’s content. To analyze your site and find relevant ads to match it, Google uses “a sophisticated algorithm that includes such factors as keyword analysis, word frequency, font size, and the overall link structure of the web, we know what a page is about, and can precisely match Google ads to each page.” If you make your site content rich, you’ll get ads that match the content.

Behind the scenes, Google finds advertisers and websites looking for advertisers and does the dirty work of getting them together. So company X wants to advertise on an iPod related website. Website Y is all about iPods. So when website Y posts pages about iPods, Google may run advertisements from company X on those pages. Company X pays Google their advertising fee. For every click, or for a certain number of page impressions, website Y will get paid.

The overall goal of the website is to get more clicks, meaning that they are providing quality content, meaning the advertising company is getting their ad viewed by their target demographic. Company X gets it’s ad seen by who it wants, website Y makes money off of ads, and Google takes a cut for making it all happen. This is Google AdSense in a nutshell.

The exact formula of how the money is split is not something that is available to anyone outside of Google. You get a certain amount of money per click, but there is no set rate. But from all accounts, it seems to be a fair deal, and using AdSense is an “everybody wins” scenario.

Can You Make Real Money

One of the most often asked questions by people looking to get involved in the AdSense program. The answer is yes. There are some websites making multiple thousands of dollars per day. Because of AdSense (and some other quality online advertising services) there are many, many full-time bloggers.

So what’s the secret to making money off of AdSense? Well, that’s the million dollar question. Each site that makes money uses a different formula to do so. But their are two things that your site needs to make significant money: traffic and content.

It is unlikely (though possible) to get a website up and running and be making significant money right away. You need people to be visiting the site regularly, viewing and clicking on ads. That is traffic. There are many ways to get traffic to your site, but no secret formula of success. The best way to maximize your traffic is content. If you have a lot of quality content, people will keep showing up, and they’ll come back. In my opinion, those are the two essential ingredients to a successful AdSense campaign.

Making money for most websites is not going to be an overnight accomplishments. Since Google doesn’t send a check until you have over $100 in your AdSense revenue, many people wait many months before they get their first check. But if you’re serious about profiting off of your website, there are steps you can take to maximize traffic you get and therefore, the money you’ll make.

How to Make the Most Out of AdSense

As I said before, the most important combination your site needs to make money is traffic and content. Content is simple — make a lot of it. If you have a blog, maximize the content on it. You can post more often, or make longer posts, but either way, you need a supply of content that people will find. Many people find their information on the web through searches, so having things that can be searched for is one way to maximize your content. There is a lot of debate as to whether quality or quantity is the most important aspect of blogging. Some people feel as if you need four or five posts every day, whereas others feel they can post just a few times a week, but they are longer, more in-depth posts. If you are looking to profit off of a blog, this is an issue you’ll have to deal with yourself. Experiment with both, and pay attention to what is your most successful formula. Then go from there.

As I said, most people find websites through searches. That means you will want your site to be found when people search for topics on your site. You may have seen SEO somewhere and wondered what it was, well it stands for Search Engine Optimization. That means making each page of your website friendly to search engines. This means a proper title, keywords, and a description. While this meta information isn’t as important now as it was in the past, it should not be ignored. Nowadays, search engines will send spiders and bots to crawl your site for keywords. Search engines know what your site is about, but it doesn’t hurt to help them out a little and tell them exactly what your pages include.

How to Use AdSense

First of all, remember that Google is your friend when using AdSense. They have great technical support, and if you have questions about AdSense, they’ll answer them quickly. Rule one of using AdSense is follow the Terms of Service. Google has some strict rules, and if you break them, they’ll cut you off. Just follow their rules and everyone will be happy.

Once you sign up for your AdSense account (wait until you have some content), you can begin putting ads on your site. When it comes to AdSense, location and colors can mean the world.

When it comes to colors, there are multiple ideas: one that you want the ads to blend in, as if they aren’t ads at all; and another, that you want the ads to stand out to draw the eyes of the user. Studies have shown that if anything on a web page looks like an ad, users’ eyes will naturally not even look at the area. Even if it is legitimate content, if it looks like a banner or an ad, users may ignore it. I personally feel that blending in is a better option. The best way to figure it out is to just play around with the AdSense options until you have something that looks good and serves it’s purpose. If you’re not getting a decent click rate, you may want to change the layout. Here is Google’s opinion.

But color is just part of the equation. As in real estate, it’s all about location, location, location. Again, feel free to experiment and see what works for your site, but the placement of the ad is as important as any other factor in getting people to see it and click on it. Google has a “heat map” that they use to show where the most successful locations are for ad placement.

Like I said earlier, Google is your friend. They want you to make money. The more money you make, the more money they make. Feel free to play around with your locations and colors, just remember to never edit the code that Google gives you. That is a TOS violation and could get you shut down.

Advanced AdSense

Once you have your Google AdSense account up and running, here are a few tips and tricks that may help you customize it. You should make yourself familiar with AdSense channels, as well as have a few options as to where you are placing AdSense on your page.

If you’re using WordPress, there are ways to put your AdSense anywhere you want. Only want AdSense after the first post? In the first post? In the sidebar? It can all be done. Learn the power of AdSense and you can make more money.

Google AdSense Resources

• Google AdSense Home
• Google AdSense Heat Map
• Google AdSense Blog

Tags: AdSense, Blogging, Google, Web Design, WordPress

Using Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a way to show ads on your website and make money. Whether it be to break even on your hosting fees or to earn a living, Adsense can do a lot for both the amateur and professional web publisher.

From a publisher’s perspective, AdSense is just code. You plug the adsense code into your page once, wherever you want it to show up, and Google does the rest of the work for you. Google’s sophisticated technologies scan your site and display relevant ads based on the content of each page. According to Google:

“We go beyond simple keyword matching to understand the context and content of webpages. Based on a sophisticated algorithm that includes such factors as keyword analysis, word frequency, font size, and the overall link structure of the web, we know what a page is about, and can precisely match Google ads to each page.”

In order to make money, people need to click on the ads on your page. Depending on the ad that gets clicked, you get paid accordingly. Some ads and keywords pay more than others, so how much you make is dependant on what kind of site you have. The most important thing to remember when dealing with AdSense is content. The more content you have, the more the ads will be relevant to your site. If your ads are relevant, there is a much higher liklihood of visitors clicking on the ads.

Signing up for an AdSense account is free, but you need to be approved. Wait until you have some content on your site before submitting it to Google. Once you have a site approved, you can use that same AdSense account for as many sites as you’d like.

To make your ads, you just follow the instructions from the AdSense Setup page. You choose either AdSense for Content, AdSense for Search, or Referrals. Each of these can be put into your webpage, and you can profit from the usage or clicks they generate.

To use AdSense for Content, you need to pick the size of the ad you want and the color scheme it will use. You want your ads to blend into your site well. Studies have shown that peoples eyes automatically ignore ads on webpages these days, so you don’t want it to stand out as an ad. You want your ad to appear as if it is part of the page. Follow Google’s rules, however, as they are reportedly quite strict about their Terms of Service. This means no pictures next to the AdSense ads in an attempt to confuse the reader, and no mis-labeling what the ads actually are. Follow Google’s rules and you’ll be fine.

Google also includes a “heat map” on their AdSense page that tells you where the most successful ads are on a page, according to their research.

There are an unlimited number of ways for you to display AdSense on your site. My advice is to play around a bit and track your ads through Adsense channels to see what works best for you.

Using AdSense Channels

AdSense Channels are a way to monitor your different Adsense ads to measure their performance. You can track your ads by either the URL the ad appears on or track the actual ad itself.

To create a channel, from your AdSense Setup page, click on Channels. You can create custom channels that get implemented right into the ad code itself, allowing you to monitor that ads page views, and clicks.

You can also create a URL channel. This can be particularly helpful if you are managing multiple sites from your AdSense account. It is also helpful if you have subdomains, or just want to measure that performance of Adsense on certain parts of your site.

Again, I would suggest playing around with all of these options and finding out what works best for you.

AdSense Tips and Tricks

There are a few tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way with AdSense. Before I get into them, let me remind you that none of them will ever involve changing any of the AdSense code itself. If you ever see an AdSense tip that involves changing anything in the ad, don’t do it. That’s a good way to violate the Terms of Service and have your account shut down. No need for that.

The first thing is putting AdSense code in a post. Sure you can just put the code into the post, but then you have to take it right back out when you make more posts, in order to not have AdSense in each post. Putting the code right into a post may work on single post pages, but if you have multiple posts on a page, it’s kind of a waste since you can only have three AdSense for Content ads on a page.

So lets say you want to put an ad in a post, but only on your single post page. In your theme editor, or whatever you use to edit the pages of your WordPress theme, open the single.php file. This file may have different names, depending on your theme, but you’re looking for the file for single posts.

In this file, you want to find the line that says “<?php the_content(”); ?>”. This is the body of your post. Now, in order to insert the AdSense into this post, I use the following code:

<div style=”display:block;float:left;margin: 5px 5px 5px 5px;”>
INSERT ADSENSE CODE HERE</div>

What this does is inserts the ad at the beginning of the post, aligned (float) to the left. You can switch that to the right if you like as well. I’m not an expert in code, but there are ways to play around with that to customize it even more. Just put that code in before the content and ad your AdSense where it says to and your ad will show up.

If you want this to always be in the first post on a page, we can do that too. Just apply the same thing to the Main Index page and it will show up. However, it will show up in every post if we leave it at that. In order to put Adsense in certain posts, I’ll refer you to this page. It may seem like a lot of code, but once you follow the instructions, you pretty much never have to touch it again. You can play around with this to make ads appear in only the first post and then after the third, or however you want it to look.

If you want your AdSense ad to only show up after the first post on a page, that too is possible. Again, find the part of the code on your main index page that says <?php the_content>, or something of that variation, and paste the following after it:

<?php if ($count == 1) : ?>
GOOGLE ADSENSE HERE
<?php endif; $count++; ?>

This will put the Google AdSense ad of your choice only after the first post. If you would like it after a different post, you’d just edit the count == 1 to count == whatever post you want the ads to show up after.

Feel free to play around when putting AdSense in your webpage. But remember, don’t play with the code. Google is your friend on this one, keep them happy. Read the Terms of Service and don’t break the rules. Know what kind of content can have AdSense, and know how many ads you can use. These change often, so check with Google for the most recent rules. And when in doubt, ask Google. They’re quite good at answering questions promptly and they can be very helpful.

Tags: AdSense, Blogging, Google, WordPress

I don’t have any statistics to back this up, but I would bet that the most popular websites being built these days (non-adult) are blogs. Blogs are a great way to share information with people without having to know a bunch of techie lingo. You can get a blog up and going with minimal computer language skills (but you will need some).

There is many a choice when choosing your blogging software. A simple web search will yield you lots of results. Since I haven’t used them all, I will not recommend anything I haven’t used. I use Wordpress, probably the most popular blogging software out there. I know there are others, but I will be of no use trying to explain their in’s and out’s so I won’t try. What I will do, is tell you how to get your Wordpress blog installed and running on your website.

At this point, I’m assuming you are already in possession of a website. You will need to have MySQL databases available and a working FTP account to make this happen.

First, go to Wordpress.org (NOT wordpress.com) and follow their installation instructions. I can’t write it any better than them, so just follow their step-by-step to the letter and you’ll be almost ready to go. There are a few additional tips that I can add to their installation guide.

First, you’ll need to know how to create a MySQL database. This is done from your web host’s control panel. Each host’s setup is different, but you should be able to find something with “MySQL” to click on, and from there you can create a database. When you create the database, either keep the page open in another tab/window, or copy all of the user information you are assigned to your Notepad. You will need the database name, user name, password, and database host. Keep these handy.

Next, you’ll need to be able to unzip the .zip file that the software comes in. You probably already have something to do this on your computer, otherwise you’ll have to download something to unzip the files.

Once they are unzipped, you’ll want to find the file “wp-config-sample.php” in the folder you just unzipped the files to. Rename it by right-clicking it, and just name it “wp-config.php”. Then you want to open the file. It opens in a basic text editor, like Notepad. Now you can continue following the wordpress instructions and fill in your database’s information.

Now, to put the files on your website, open an FTP connection. FTP accounts should be an option with your web host. Usually, your site can be accessed at ftp://yoursite.com. You’ll need a password to access you sites files. You can do all of this in Internet Explorer if you want, or use an external FTP client. If you use Explorer, just type in your FTP address and your password and you’ll see a directory, probably full of files (maybe not if it’s a new site). Click on View, and then click “Open FTP Site in Windows Explorer”. This will open you site as a folder like any other on your computer. From here you can drag files to and from your website with ease.

If your blog is the only thing on your site, just drag all of the files you just unzipped into the root directory. If you’re putting it somewhere else on your site, drag the files to the folder you want your blog to be in. After the files are in the directory, you can run the install as per wordpress instructions, then just follow step-by-step. Once you finish the install, you have a blog. If you just registered the domain name that your blog will be a part of, sometimes you need to be patient with everything. You can still do everything listed here, but you may get an error connecting to the database at the installation. If you’re sure all of your database information is correct, and all of the files are in the right place, just be patient, sometimes the database takes a bit to get up and running.

Once you successfully run the install, you have a blog. From there, you can do everything you need to maintain the blog directly from the wordpress software. But remember how to use the FTP because you will need it to upload any files to your blog like themes, plugins or pictures. But more on that in a different post.

Tags: Blogging, WordPress

There are many reasons to want a website. You can sell things, share information, post pictures, etc. If there’s a reason someone will visit (or sometimes not) there is a reason to build a website. Well, where do you start?

First, many Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) provide a certain amount of webspace as part of your monthly Internet service. If you’re just looking to share a few pictures with your friends, but not expect a lot of visits, this may be the way to go.

If you’re looking for something more than that, you can look online at free hosting services. These will often give you a certain amount of webspace, more than your ISP, and you’ll get a website along the lines of http://freehostingexample.com/~yourname. This will usually give you more freedom than your ISP, but not always. Since I haven’t used any of these services, I won’t recommend any specifically.

The next level would be to pay for web hosting. In this case, you buy your domain name (www.domainname.com) and you pick a company to host your site. This allows the most freedom and variety. Each web host usually offers a variety of packages, from beginner up to professional. Typically, a web host will include the domain name in the cost of hosting for a new account. The prices to have your website hosted has gotten very reasonable, and if you’re serious about building and maintaining a site, this is the way to go.

The things to look at when picking out a package depend on what kind of site you plan to build. The basic stats you’re looking for are web space, email addresses, transfer volume allowed, database/MySQL support (we’ll get to that later), and you may want to see if they offer web design tools. If you plan on having a lot of pictures and videos on your site, you will want to have a decent amount of web space. If you’re going to have a text based site (like this one) like a blog, you don’t need as much web space.

Email addresses are not that important to some people for personal sites, but if you plan to do any business on your website, you may want a fair amount of email addresses for your employees or just to make yourself sound a little more professional.

The transfer volume amount is how much data is being moved to and from your website every month. Again, if you’re using large files like pictures and movies, you’ll want a high number here. If it’s a small site without much downloading or uploading, you don’t need the highest amount available.

Databases are used on many websites. If you plan to have a blog on your website, you’ll want database support. That means you will want your package to include MySQL databases. This may seem intimidating now if you’re new to this, but by the time you’ll need to do anything with them, I’ll walk you through it.

Once you’ve decided what kind of website you want and pick out a host, you’re ready to register your domain name and get started. After you’re sure, register the domain name and sign up for your hosting and you’re ready to start building a website.

Tags: Web Design