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.
- WordPress.com which is a free blog.
- 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.
