Blogging

There are so many blogging platforms out there that it is hard to know where to start.

There are free blogs, blogs that you must host yourself and paid blogs.

The main free blogs are Blogger and WordPress however a large list of free blogs can be found at Cash Made Easy

The thing to keep in mind with free blogs is that you don’t actually own the blog or the content you put on it. It is common place for a free blog to be pulled off the web by the blogging platform for a reason like breech of terms of agreement. There will be no discussion it is sanction by blunt rule of force. Many aspiring internet millionaires have put years of time and effort into a free blog only to log in one day and find it gone for good with all their content.

Blogging-Free Blogs

Most web masters use free blogs as a tool for driving traffic to their main web site. By building a link wheel with free blogs pointing to their site. For example your main page is qwerty.com so you will get a dozen or so free blogs with the keyword qwerty in the url and link them to each other and also to your main page. So each free blog will have an article on it relating to the content of the main site and each free blog will be linked to two other free blogs in chain link formation plus each will link back to the main site. This is a great SEO strategy.

Then there are the paid blogs like type pad which is excellent because the monthly fee includes hosting and SEO. All you need is a domain name. However it is still a platform that is owned by someone other than you and you do have to abide by their terms and conditions.

Blogger also has a paid version which allows you to have your own domain name instead of the typical “qwerty.blogspot.com”. However as with type pad it is someone else’s platform.

When someone decides to start blogging it may seem like a great idea to get a free blog and save the money on hosting and a domain name but this is a mistake that is so stupid that it is mind blowing for one who has been on the web for some time.

Blogging-Make Money

Here’s an example that should stand as warning for any would be web entrepreneur. The first result out of 224 million pages in a Google search for the keywords “make money online” is a blogger blog. This appears great, but do you know how hard it is to get into the first page results in google, the time, work and effort it takes. The web page in question deserves all the credit in the world for getting to be first in Google out of 224 million, it is a mind blowing achievement, but the sad reality is that this person does not own his/her site or the URL address that it is on.

If this was a .com domain name and not a blogger URL it would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. When you own the domain name you can do what you want with it, sell it, keep it, or even rent it out. The moral to this story is that if you are going to put a lot of work into a website or blog make sure that you own the rights to it.

Blogging-Wordpress

So I guess that we have come to blogs that you own outright. The number one platform is WordPress. Before we continue for those who don’t know wordpres comes in two versions.

1. WordPress.com which is a free blog.
2. WordPress.org which is blogging software available for free which you download and upload to your web host.

WordPress is amazing, it can be used for bloging or it can be used as the basis of a website. There are so many themes which are templates available that there is something for everyone. This site is running on a free wordpress template.

Then there are plugins which do everything from goggle sitemaps to ensuring that your SEO is correct.

To run a self owned wordpress blog you will need a domain name and hosting.

Domain names are available at GoDaddy which is by far the best domain name registar. If you buy your domain name from GoDaddy at this link you will get a discounted domain name price.

An excellent host for running WordPress is Hostgator. The process of installing wordpress is made simple in HostGators cPanel. Simply direct your domain to host gator and install it. Then go to fantastico and press wordpress install and hey presto your new blog is up and running.

For those who need a step by step guide to installing wordpress one can be found at My Web Works.

If you buy hosting from HostGator from this link you can feel free to email me at mlsmass@yahoo.com if you need help with your wordpress install.

Also if you buy your domain name from GoDaddy at this link you can email me at mlsmass@yahoo.com for help changing your dns setting if you are having difficulty.

Get a Free Website

There are a lot of ways you can get a free web site up and running on the internet.

In fact there are so many that the list is long and winding. Things like Google’s own blogger called BlogSpot and theWordpress.com are hosted and owned by wordpress and google but they give you your own blog to run on their platform.
A large list of free blogs can be found here. 

As always it should be remembered that you don’t own a free blog you are merely being given some free space on someone else’s platform, so in the long term you are actually building traffic and web presence for someone else. If you intend to be on the web for a long time it is far better to register a great domain name, get some hosting and create your own WordPress.org blog. 

The real value in free blogs and media sites is to use as a vehicle for driving traffic to your main site. Say for example your main site is abcdefg.com then it might be a great idea to have a number of free blogs and social media pages named abcdefg pointing to your main site. 

You can also find a large list of social sites that will give you your own web page for free without the need for a domain name or hosting. As with the blogs remember when you are drawing traffic to Face Book or MySpace you are actually building up their web presence and not yours.

If you are serious about your web presence then get your own domain name and hosting and build a web site or blog around your own brand. 

Remember you can get free hosting at Free Website Hosting Sign Up while you get yourself off the ground. 

A great way to get a free website is to go to Free WebSite Sign Up and sign up for a free affiliate site. They will give you an URL that is your own to market as you please in forums, classified and with article marketing. 

This is a neat idea and a great way for a newbie to get their feet wet on the internet without splashing out a lot of cash. Here’s how it is done: 

1. Get some affiliate code which is usually in the form of an URL which identifies you as the person sending the traffic to the affiliate’s site so which ensures that you will be credited with any sale and will receive a commission.
2. Market your affiliate coed in places you think will earn you a commission by sending targeted traffic to the affiliate’s site and hopefully buy something.
3. The best way for a cash strapped newbie to market their affiliate code is in forums, free online classified sites and article marketing sites.

Below is a list of such sites: 

Large list of classified sites. 

Large list of forums. 

Large list of article sites. 

List of Do Follow Social Sites.

Get a Domain Name

Every great website deserves a great domain name. A great analogy for a web site is that it is like a building. Even though most of a web site is written you don’t actually write a web site you build it. And just as every building needs a place to sit, an address, in the realms of cyberspace a web address is a domain name.

Some hosting providers will actually give you a free domain name for as long as you host your site with them and this might seem like a good idea until you decide to move and they are holding the domain name that you have built your precious site on and most probably spent a lot of time and money building up your traffic. So before you jump at what looks like a deal make sure that you are actually going to hold ownership of the domain name.
Websites can be changed and altered but a domain name stays the same forever so it is a good idea to put some time effort and thought into selecting the www address for you new website.

Domain names come in various TLD’s (top level domain). At the top of the food chain is dot com followed by dot net, dot org, dot info and dot us. You can pick up a dot info at Go Daddy’s for 99cents which looks like a good until next year when it’s time to renew and now it’s like ten or eleven bucks. A dot com is like $7.50 and if you choose wisely you will have made an investment that could make you a wealthy individual in the near future. Pizza dot com recently sold for $2.6 million and while it is true that one word domains are rarely available for registration there are still some great domains available if you are prepared to look.

Here’s how to find a good domain name:

1. Go to Go Daddy’s and enter names into their free search tool and see what’s available for registration
2. Fresh Drop lists domain names that are being auctioned off. Although Fresh Drop is a paid membership site they allow you to search some categories for free. They offer superb tools like showing the amount of back links a domain has and page rank and if it is genuine for domains being auctioned. If you are interested in grabbing good domains then Fresh Drop is an absolute must.
3. Go to Go Daddy’s expiring domain name auction site and see what’s available. Before you can bid you must take out a membership but it is less that $5 a year and considering that you can buy thousands of expired domains some of them over 10 years old for $5 plus registration fee the $5dollars for the yearly membership is a great deal. For example I recently bought the domain name GetRidOfDebts.com at the Go Daddy’s auction for $5.

Dot net and dot org are also useful domain name extensions but if you can find a good dot com that suits your website then that is without doubt the way to go.

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