This is a FREE  Step by step Coaching tutorial which also includes videos on how you can start your own blog right now and make money from it. What you’ll also discover and find out here are what most so-called “internet gurus” will teach you from a $97 ebook..

for your reference, Feel Free to bookmark this post. “CTRL+D” ;)

Starting a blog has become one of the most popular way to make money  for people who wants to build a solid long term income. I strongly believe that everyone needs a blog and everyone simply have to take advantage of the opportunity on what blogging can give to an individual.

Blogging is a business and business is an investment.

if you want to make money blogging, You have to keep in mind that blogging is not a “get-rich-quick scheme.” blogging for all I know is a long term investment. you will not make money instantly. not unless you are someone who is rich and famous like Brad Pit or Britney Spears (which could generate thousands of visitors to their *new* blog instantly).

but of course, if you do it right, you can walk away from that job and be free!:-)

below is a step by step Guide on how to start a blog and make money from that blog.

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.

- dan and jenifer
blogsuccessjournal.com

if you really want to be successful on making money on the internet, the key is to take action… but it’s not all just about taking action… it’s also about taking THE RIGHT type of action.

the first thing you have to do is to decide what you want to blog about or pick a niche for your blog.

tip – Pick a Profitable Niche

notice that I inserted the word Profitable. since this post is about Starting a blog and making money from it, there’s no point if I tell you to pick any niche you want to blog about. if you want to make money from your blog, You have to make sure that The topic that you are actually blogging about is PROFITABLE. (although I think almost every niche is profitable) :-)

How to check if your niche is profitable

Decide What you Want to Blog About

Choosing the right niche for your blog is perhaps the most important choice you can make BEFORE starting a blog. Choose the wrong niche, and it’s very unlikely you’ll ever succeed.

to help you decide on what to blog about, you should probably
ask yourself these questions:

1. What Are The Things I love doing? – think about your hobbies and interests. stuffs that you love doing the most. something that you are passionate about. if you are not passionate about the topic, chances are you are not going to stick to it.

2. Does The Niche’s topic expand? – make sure that the niche you will be blogging about covers a wide range of topics that expands so you would actually have a lot to blog about.

3. Would I do this for free? – if you answered yes, then you had found your topic. people who blogs only for money seldom succeeds.

How to Start a Blog

you can start a blog right now by registering for a Free account on blogger.com or wordpress.com. They are the most popular blog sites on the internet. however, I don’t recommend you starting your blogs on these sites since there are many limitations and the worst part about it is that…

You don’t own your blog – they do.

if you create a blog on these sites like for example, “blogger.com” which is owned by google they have the power to delete your blog whenever they want even without notice. to simply put it, I recommend you to buy your own domain and start there.

The Best Place To Start a Blog is From a domain that you own

having your own domain name makes your blog look more professional. while it may not make you a pro-blogger,  the advertisers will take you a lot more seriously. some ad networks don’t accept sites unless it has it’s own domain name. it’s better to get the domain name at the start than down the road. the last thing you want to do is build a blog on blogspot, get a ton of backlinks, pagerank, alexa and technorati rankings and then have to move it to it’s own domain and start over

-John chow
johnchow.com

1. Buy a domain name

The first thing you want to do when you had finally decided what to blog about is to buy a domain for your blog. The best place to buy one is at godaddy.com. all my domains are registered under godaddy since their service is good and the way they charge for the domain is really cheap. and I made the domain price even more cheaper on the video I made for you. ;)

if you don’t know how to buy a domain name yet, check out my post “how to buy a domain name” I made a video guide for you to follow there.

2. Host your Domain – get web hosting

a domain alone is not enough to start a blog. you need to get hosting to it. :-) you should also make sure that your blog’s webhost is reliable, Secure and responsive.

for hosting, I recommend hostgator since their service is simply on top of the line. and you get to host your website for as little as $0.01 Cent on your first month. (i taught you how to do it on the video)

if you don’t know how to get hosting for your account checkout my post “how to get hosting on hostgator” be sure to change the name server of your domain when you finally bought hosting for it.

3. Install The Best Blogging platform on your website – WordPress.ORG

When you had finally got a hosting account from hostgator, the  next step should be installing wordpress software to your domain. if you don’t know how to do it, I made a Simple guide on this blog, check out the post at “how to install wordpress blogging platform”

4. Install a Good Theme for your blog

if you don’t know how to install a theme for your blog, checkout my post – “how to use ftp software and install a blog theme on your site”

qualities you have to look for for a WordPress theme:

1. The looks. – Does it look good?
2. easy to use – is it user-friendly?
3. Search engine Friendly – is it SEO Friendly?

The Looks

in my opinion, having a good theme is crucial when it comes to blogging. since your blog theme represents your personality and how people will see you.

to simply put it… – your theme describes YOU.  if you have a bad looking theme, chances are people might not trust you by just judging from your blog’s theme.

SEO Friendly and Ready

a blog theme plays a big part on Search Engine optimization.  be sure your getting the most out of your blog theme by having the qualities needed for seo.

Easy to use

The one of the best thing I liked about the theme that I am using right now is that it’s very user-friendly. in fact, it’s very user-friendly that I don’t even have to edit a single code or do any tweaks to it.. it’s just simply install- and go.

the good news is, there’s already such a blog theme that exist… and it’s the

Ultimate blogging theme – the exact same theme I use from this blog. it simply looks good, easy to use and best of all it’s SEO friendly. (the author of the theme is actually on the Frontpage on google for the very competitive keyword “make money online”.

Which simply proves… the theme itself really works. and it cost real cheap too. for only $67 you get a copy of the blog theme and make your way making money blogging… if you want to learn more about it, you can check it out here. – Ultimate blogging theme.

- Features, stuffs to like and how to use the ultimate blogging theme – (coming soon)

again, if you still don’t know how to install a blog theme, I taught you how to do it at my post on “how to use ftp software and install a blog theme” ;)

5. Get to know how to use WordPress a little bit and Publish your first post

“a little bit” cause it’s what you’ll really need to learn which is really very easy. all you have to do is learn how to post, accept comments, and install some plugins etc.

WordPress Video tutorials – (coming soon)

6. Send Traffic to your Blog

There are Hundreds Of ways to send traffic to a Website. The best thing to do really when you are just starting out is – not to care too much about your traffic but instead, focus on Writing / creating quality content for your blog which would actually Bring you visitors the first place – the traffic would come naturally.

how to gain and build traffic to a website (Coming soon…)

The Best Places to gain traffic to a blog:

1. Search engine
2. From an Email List
3. Referring websites
4. Directly Visited your site

Make Money online – The Formula

The Simple formula on making money online:

MYTH - The formula on making money on the internet is Traffic…

Traffic = Money… WRONG!

it’s Traffic + Conversion = Money .

You will not make money online with crappy traffic alone. you also have to make sure that your blog, website or something that you are selling on ebay is actually converting well.

Traffic by the way is “the Number of visitors a website receives daily”.

Conversion is simply “how active?” the visitors Responded to an offer from a website which could be signing up for your email list, Clicking your adsense ads, Buying your products etc…

example Scenario –

• you are selling an ebook on your website for $10
• that website of yours generates around 100 visitors daily.
• everyday, 30 out of those 100 people who visits your website buys the ebook that you were selling.
• you make money.  (made $300 a day or $9000 that month)
• That’s conversion. :)

How To Make Money From a Blog – Monetize Your Blog

After you had successfully started your blog and Generated your First contents for it, it’s time to monetize your blog and actually make money from it.

below are the best ways to make money from a blog

1. Ask for Donations

you Can choose to accept donations and it’s a pretty good way to start. you can easily Create a donation button with paypal and place it in your blog. just make sure visitors can see it. The trick on asking for a donation is to let visitors actually KNOW that you are asking for donations.

Tip – Do not just post the “paypal donate button” but instead, Place a different image if you can and add a simple text / tagline like “hey, like my blog? Buy me a beer!” or “buy me a coffee” (stuffs which cost not more than $1)

if you’re having fun making money with donations, you can also consider having an Amazon wishlist to post on your blog. There’s a chance that someone like Bill Gates (one of the most richest man in the world) would see it and actually make one of your wishes come true. ;)

2. Sign up for Ad networks

ad networks like Google-adsense is probably the most popular (but not the best) way to make money from a blog.

List of ad networks:

1. google.com/adsense
2. Kontrera.com
3. Infolinks.com
4. Bidvertiser.com

the idea here is to sign up for an account with one or all of these ad networks and install a Code that they will give you to your website. they would then automatically Place ads that are related to your site’s content and when visitors of your site actually Click these ads, – You Make Money.

The thing you want to do when you decide to monetize your blog with ad networks like google adsense for example, is to make sure you place the ads accordingly and place it where visitors would actually click on it. which would give you a high CTR (click through rate)

you also have to consider The colors of the ads. it would Would work very well if the colors blend on your site and looks like part of your site’s content.

3. Endorse or sell Someone else’s Products / services – be an Affiliate

an Affiliate is basically someone who Recommends / endorse someone else’s product and Get’s a Cut of the money made from a sale.

How to be an affiliate

1. sign up for an account at Clickbank.com or any Site that’s accepting affiliates
2. Find a product to promote on the market place Related to your Blog’s niche
3. Don’t forget to Generate your affiliate link (hop link)
4. promote it on your blog and recommend them to your readers / visitors.

There are many more affiliate Companies. but the most popular are clickbank.com, paydotcom.com and e-junkie.com

Thousands (if not millions) of People had already made a Fortune by simply being an affiliate on clickbank and other affiliate companies. I don’t blame them cause for me, Being an affiliate is one of the Best ways to be Successful on making lots of money online.

The proper way to do affiliate marketing on a blog

Placing affiliate banners on your website is not enough. There are two Great ways to maximize your affiliate earnings. these are Capturing your visitors email address using aweber and Having this “Review / recommended page” on your blog.

Capture leads with an autorespoder

The main reason why you want to do this is to build a relationship with the customer and at the same time, Recommend more products to him overtime.

Recommends page

you want it easier for your visitors to see what you are actually endorsing for them. and at the same time, Give them value by giving them a Coupon code or a discount from a product you are promoting. and that’s when the “recommends page” takes in place.

4. Accept Paid Reviews

you can also make money from your blog by accepting sponsored reviews on your site. you can do this by either contacting potential advertisers (or them contacting you) Related to the niche that you are blogging about or by simply Signing up for an account on websites like payperpost, Reviewme, Sponsoredreviews etc…

popular bloggers Charge around $500 for just a single 200 words review.

5. Create your own product and sell it for profit

This ones a no brainer. you simply create your own product like an e-book for example, and sell it on your website for profit.

when you have your own product and your into this “internet marketing thingy” you obviously have a big advantage on the pack.

6. Sell Advertising Space on Your Blog

This is probably my most favorite way on making money from a blog since not only you get the money on the spot but you totally keep 100% of your advertising revenue.

Why sign up for google adsense or Promote affiliate links when you could keep 100% of the profit?

OIO Publisher Direct is probably the best plugin to have when it comes to selling advertising spot on a blog. all The transactions on my blog are handled by OIOpublisher.

How to sell advertising on a blog (coming soon…)

7. Sell Your Blog

when your blog had finally grow and built up a great community, built great articles in it and successfully made it popular (or even if you haven’t done those things written) you Can Sell your blog.

Sounds crazy but it Surely makes you money. this is also known as the term “site flipping” (i think)

There had been someone in the blogging world who had actually sold his blog for $15 million dollars.

you can check out the buzz at Problogger’s blog which happened last october 2008 – http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/10/02/1-man-blog-sells-for-15-million-dollars/

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After you had successfully installed WordPress blogging platform on your domain, now is the time to install a good looking theme. and we are going to need an FTP software for this.

there are lots of good FTP softwares around but I personally use Core FTP Lite. it’s a free software available for download so there’s no need to worry…

you can download it here: http://www.coreftp.com/download/coreftplite.exe or just simply search on google for the keyword “core ftp”.

FTP softwares btw are softwares used to upload files from your computer to your desktop or vice-versa, download files from your website to your computer.

anyways, after you had successfully downloaded the file, install it on your computer and you’re good to go. ;)

Open up the file and this is what you’ll see:

Just type in the required information. all you’ll need to fill up are the site name, host/ip/url, username and password area. after that’s done just hit hit connect and you’re ready to upload a theme for your website.

on the video I’m going to show you, I used the Ultimate blogging theme as The example theme that we will be using for this tutorial. if you don’t have the UBT yet, I recommend you getting one since it’s the best theme I found online so far, and good price too!

you can however download a Free WordPress theme just about anywhere on the net by simply google-ing it. but I would always recommend the ultimate blogging theme for you to use since it’s very user and google friendly plus it looks good so you might as well get one. ;)

Check out UBT here: http://www.elie-palima.com/ultimatebloggingtheme

after that’s done, Watch the video below on how to install a wordpress theme using ftp:

here’s a full screen version of the video:
http://www.elie-palima.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/THEME/THEME.html

here’s a summary of what I did to install the theme:

1. downloaded core ftp
2. installed core ftp and configured it on my computer
3. downloaded a theme (in this case, I used “UBT” ultimate blogging theme)
4. Uploaded UBT to – public_html/wp-content/themes directory
5. Logged in wordpress control panel by typing “http://mydomain.com/wp-admin
6. Activated UBT on my wordpress control panel 

after you had successfully installed a blogging theme on your blog, now is the time to get to know about how to use wordpress a little bit. which I am going to talk about on the next lesson on how to start a blog and make money.

©Make Money Online

after Changing the nameservers at godaddy.com it’s now time to install wordpress software on your domain. to do this, we must Login to your Cpanel account.

1. to access your cpanel account just login to “http://www.example.com/cpanel”
2. then enter your username and password. (it was sent to your email)

after logging in, scroll down to the “Fantastico icon” and click it.

After that, just tick on the box that says “wordpress”

Then you’ll see this screen where you need to enter the details of your blog and create a username and password etc. (Blogs are best set up on the homepage of your domain so leave the ‘directory’ blank):

then click on “install wordpress”

by this time you should now see your site up and running. but wait..

the theme of the site is not what you expected. that’s because that’s wordpress’ default theme. it’s the theme that’s automatically installed and provided to you by wordpress.

anyways, to install a new theme for our website, we are going to need an FTP sofware for it. Which we’ll talk about how to use one on our next lesson…

and that’s it for now, Stay tuned for more “Start a blog and make money” lessons.

©Make Money Online

here’s my old logo btw:

Before coming up with the main concept there were three different concepts for my new logo and here they are:

after 3 days of deciding I decided to stick with this:

I like the fact that the logo looks kind of like my favorite candy. it looks very tasty! :D

now, I’m just sitting back and waiting for the final touches for my new logo. I’ve been waiting for it for like 15 days already. it took that long cause I guess I was pretty picky with my logo choosing. anyways, I’’m waiting for my new logo to be delivered for about a week or so.

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Where to find the nameservers

after buying a hosting plan on hostgator, they will automatically send you an email confirming they had received the order and will automatically send you the following important information about your hosting account:

• your Cpanel login name
• your Cpanel password
• the Nameservers. (it usually looks like this: ns1.hostgator.com.blablabla.2010) =D

after you had received those information, it’s time to log-in your account at godaddy’s website. after doing so, just Follow the rest of the instructions on the video below:

“How to change the nameservers on godaddy”

after you had changed the name server, take note that you’ll have to wait for about 20-40 minutes for the changes to take effect. and about an hour or two for your domain to be fully propagated.

that’s it for today’s “start a blog and make money” tutorials. the next lesson would be Installing wordpress‘ software to your website using cpanel. do let me know if you have any questions.

©Make Money Online

like buying a domain, you should also consider the “quality service” a hosting provider gives. before buying one ask your self these question.

How’s is their support? do they have a “instant live chat” or are they even available by phone whenever I have technical or billing issues?

Are their feedbacks good? are they for real? do they deliver their service as promised?

I’m telling you these because I myself had a “problem”  with a hosting provider myself, and I don’t like this happening to you. this blog was first hosted by “hostazar”. and I’m in the position to say that Their hosting sucks. and I got disappointed to Rob Benwel a so called “blogging guru” best known for his ebook “blogging to the bank” who is always recommending hostazar’s services. ( I think he owns that site)

anyways, I found this website who said news about hostazar’s crappy service.  http://www.thecaymanhost.com/customer-hosting-reviews/hostazar-hosting-customer-reviews read the comments too.! :)

I’d tell you more about hostazar’s service but for now let’s just focus on getting hosting from a RELIABLE host.

And The Qualities you should be looking for are the hosting by Hostgator. they keep their words, provide THE BEST customer support and Host websites Professionally for a very affordable price. (1 cent for your first month) and I thought how to host your domain with hostgator on the video below. Enjoy!

Mentioned on the video:

• how to Host a domain with hostgator
• paying with paypal
• The Coupon code “wordpress”

the next video will be Changing the Nameservers on godaddy.

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The first step you have to do when starting a blog or a website is to register a domain name. domain names are simply a “name” for a website with the extensions “.com, .net , .info , .org , etc..” although there are many possible extensions to choose from The First choice you should consider is having a “.com” website because it’s simply the most popular domain extensions that are people are used to.

having you’re own domain name makes your blog look more professional, advertisers will take you more seriously  and it it’ll be much easier for you to “Brand yourself”.

Note that you do not have to be a company or organization to register a domain name. Any individual can do it too. if you have your blogs running on blogger.com, wordpress.COM and the likes, you should consider buying your own domain.

Importance of a Domain name

there are numbers of good reasons for having a domain name

• People EASILY remembers the name of your website. if you have a company or a business, and you used the name of your company’s name as your domain name, people will usually know what website they have to go, for example.. “mcdonalds Dot com, kfc.com etc..”
• makes your blog look more professional
• advertisers take you more seriously

Choosing a domain Registrar For your site

here are stuffs you should consider to look for when choosing the right domain registrar for your website:

how much they charge for the domain

if they charge you more than $12 a year for 1 domain (and nothing else) that cost too much. consider looking for someone else and run away.

How Good is their customer support

do they have those instant chat thingy? do they respond to your questions fast and briefly?

Step by step instructions on how to buy a domain name In video:

this is the video I made on how to register a domain name at godaddy.com the most popular and most reliable domain registrar on the internet today.

Please bear with me though.. this is my first ever video tutorial that I did *while speaking..* I can say that it’s not half bad.. but tottally amteur.. :D

nwei.. enjoy the video:

How To Register a Domain name | start a blog and make money Coaching Videos step 1

Stuffs mentioned in the video:

• Godaddy.com
• Using paypal to make a purchase online
• Godaddy $7.49 Discount. Coupon code: cjc749fat (expires 2/28/2010)
• Grab the Latest Godaddy coupon codes at : www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/725207

Watch out for the next coaching video on How to start a blog and make money.  the second step will be hosting your new domain.

© make money online with a teenage dad

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