Up to now, we have covered the first four parts of this series: setting up your blog, customizing your blog, writing your blog, and monetizing your blog. Now we will cover part 5, the final piece of this series: generating traffic.

There are many ways to generate traffic to your blog. The first and foremost way is to send out an email to your friends, family, and colleagues. Ask them to subscribe and to please invite at least one other person that they think will benefit from the information that you post.

Another way is reciprocal support. Seek out and find blogs that can compliment the content that you produce. After finding the sites, ask the site owner to do a link exchange on their blogroll. Be selective. It is better to be listed on a few high quality sites than many low quality sites.

When you write a post about a particular product, service, or person, contact the appropriate representative and notify them of it. Invite the person or company to review your post and comment as they deem necessary. You will be surprised at how many people will visit your site and continue to read your posts, simply because you wrote about them, their product, or their service and you did so without provocation or anticipated compensation.

In part 2, I listed the All In One SEO Pack as a recommended plugin. After each post, fill this information out. Put the title of your post in the Title Box of the All In One SEO Pack. Then copy the first sentence or two of your post and paste it into the Description Box. And lastly, fill in the keywords in the Keyword Box. The keywords should be 4 or 5 words or phrases that you would search for if you were looking for the post you just wrote.

Create social networking profiles for your blog. Head over to MySpace and Facebbok and create profiles for your blog. Seek out and invite people, that may be interested in your content, to be your Friend from within each social network. Ensure that you place many links and references back to your blog. Remember, these particular profiles are to promote your blog, not you personally. And don’t forget to update your LinkedIn profile while you are at it. If you do not have one, create one and be sure to list your blog as one of your websites.

List your blog on Blog Top Sites, Delicious, Digg, Technorati, and Simply Headlines. This will put your blog into public lists and make it more accessible for others to find it. Another plugin from part 2 can help facilitate the increase of your rank on these sites, AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget. This allows your current readership to bookmark your site or just that post and save it to many different public bookmarking sites. The more your site is recommended, the more visible it becomes. The more visible it becomes, the more readers you acquire. The more readers your acquire, the more your site is recommended. You can see how this cycle grows.

Create a Feedburner account (if you did not create one in part 2), Widgetbox account, and a Conduit account. The first two will allow you to create widgets that you can place on your social networking sites, as part of your email signature, and allow others to add the widget to their site. The last one will allow you to create your own downloadable toolbar for Internet Explorer or Firefox.

Comment on other people’s blogs. Normally their commenting system will allow you to leave your name, email address (normally kept private), and website. This will allow people who read those blogs and pay attention to the comments, to find you and possibly become your reader as well. If you didn’t sign up and install the Intense Debate plugin in part 2, be sure to at least create an Intense Debate profile. It will allow you to login to many blogs (including this one) and leave your comments. Others can easily find your blogs, as well as other blogs you read and comment on.

And last, but not least, you can pay for it. You can pay for Google, MSN, or Yahoo advertisements. In addition, you can put an ad in your newspaper, have your blog listed in a trade magazine, pay other blogs to list your blog, pay highly read bloggers to review your site, or target specific readers with Simply Headlines (the same place that I recommend that you at least list your site with).

There is a veritable cornucopia of options for generating traffic for your blog, but these are the most common ones. If you have others ways and tactics, please share them with us. With that, this concludes our 5 part series on Get Started Blogging.

So far we have covered setting up your blog, customizing your blog, and writing your blog. Now we will venture into the basics of making money with your blog, otherwise known as monetizing.

First, let’s go over some basic terminology like referral, affiliate, CPA, CPM, CPC, and direct ad.

Referral is when you are enrolled with a particular program or service and you refer another individual or entity to enroll in the same program or service and you are compensated either directly for the referral or a percentage of the referral’s revenue or, at times, a combination of the both.

Affiliate is when you enroll or sign up with a company to sell their product directly or you join an affiliate network that has relationships with multiple companies from which you can request the right to enroll in the individual programs for each company. But the relationship is typically managed by the affiliate network company.

CPA is an abbreviation for Click Per Action. Most of the ads that you see on a website are setup this way. In essence, the site owner is paid when someone clicks the ad and completes an action such as a purchase, free trial, or a simple enrollment. This works well when the item has some relevance to the site.

CPM is an abbreviation for Click Per Thousand (M is the Roman numeral for 1000). Generally these ads, in my experience, are text ads similar to Google type ads. The site owner is paid a fixed rate for every 1000 ad impressions. This works well on high traffic sites.

CPC is an abbreviation for Cost Per Click. The advertiser can set a fixed price or a dynamic one, based on various factors, to the site owner each time someone clicks the ad. This is how most Google ads operate.

Direct ads are just like they sound. Individuals or entities pay you to place their advertisement on your site. This can be placed in various positions on the site and in the actual posts.

I have read many texts on monetizing your site and how to make the most money from your site. It has been my experience that mileage will greatly vary from site to site. An implementation of an ad strategy will work perfectly on one site and flop on another. You have to take into consideration that the content, theme, look, feel, and users are different for each site. I will give you some pointers to get you started.

I would suggest that you choose ads that compliment your site. If you pick ads that are in accordance with your site content, the user is more apt to click the ad due to the fact that it pertains to your content. 

Do not pick an ad simply because it has a high payout. Pick ads for products that you have either used or researched. If readers visit your site for trusted content, they may also hold you responsible (morally) for the advertiser’s behavior. If you put scams and/or rip off companies on your site, when the reader is burner, they will tell many others about their experience and you better believe that there will be negative repercussions.

Do not place an “advertise here” banner on your site. If you are seeking direct advertisers, offer them a free trial and payment contingent upon performance. Even if it you do not earn a penny from them, other potential advertisers will see their ad on your site and possibly approach you.

Give the ads and the advertising technology a chance to work. Do not put up an ad one day and take it down the next because it did not perform. Join on eor two ad networks and try to utilize them to their fullest. Find the ones that fit your style, preference, and support and stick with them. Defining the appropriate ad strategy for your site may take some time. But once you get it right, watch the revenues roll in.

You can visit my Earn Revenue page to view some of the advertising mediums and networks that I utilize. In addition to what is listed, I would also suggest you sign up for a Google AdSense and an Amazon Affiliate account. Regardless of the type of content on your site, you can typically find a match through one or both of those networks.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me and I will be happy to elaborate and give further direction.

Part 5 will be the final post in this series and it will encompass Traffic. Stay tuned as it will be coming soon.

Last time I wrote about Customizing Your Blog. Now we move on to actually writing posts and adding the content to your blog. I cannot tell you how to write your blog but rather pointers to follow while writing.

Pick a central theme and stick with it. I suggest that you not pick a subject or content matter that is extremely narrow in focus or you will inevitably repeat yourself often and your readership will not continue to return. Readers look for new and fresh content. And it is easier to provide that content when your focus can encompass many angles of discussion. Pick something you are passionate about. It is easier to write about a subject matter that you have a great liking and deep knowledge of. If you created a blog for your business, this step should be easy.

Write about what you know. With information so easily accessible, it is very easy to disprove incorrect information. You will gain more readers when your content is credible.

Learn what disclosure is and utilize it. For example, I am invested in many different companies. I listed them on a Disclosure page. Readers are fickle about self promotion unless you state it from the onset. They believe that when you self promote that is skews your information which makes it less credible. However, when you disclose this information up front and utilize it to enhance and support your posts, the readership is less quick to dismiss your post as simple self promotion. That is, of course, unless your blog is about self promotion and the reader understands this from the beginning.

Be truthful. The Internet blogoshere readership will pick apart anyone who attempts to be deceitful. In my experience, I have witnessed multiple readers write in concert to demolish a blogger that purposefully lied in their posts. If you make a mistake, be quick to post that you made a mistake. The readers know that everyone is human and are quite forgiving when you are honest.

When you write about an entity (person or company), send them an email or give them a call and let them know about it. Many people are appreciative of your mention, assuming your words were kind. If they are not kind words, alert the person or company and give them a chance to comment on the post. Either way, it generates more traffic and increases your readership by alerting those that you post about.

If you copy another person’s text, be sure to give them credit. You do not have to create a bibliography every time. I have found that a simple Mr. John Doe said, “blah blah blah” is sufficient. Keep this in mind when utilizing the words of others, how would you want others to credit your words if they utilized original thought from you? Since you are not selling your content, most authors will not press plagiarism due to improper procedure of attributing their work. Just remember to give credit where credit is due.

Write on a schedule. If you write once a week, then write on the same day every week. I never suggest that you try to write seven days a week in the beginning. I would write once a week. After you become accustomed to writing once a week on the same day, then increase your frequency until you are at a point of comfort. This will vary from person to person. I write 2 main posts on Tuesdays and Fridays. In between, I may have small pieces of information that I will interject throughout the week. But I only commit to writing twice a week for this blog and both times the blogs are more lengthy in content.

Mind your Ps and Qs. Pull out the grade school English book and review the basics. Remember that a sentence is a single thought with a subject and a predicate. Do not be the blogger that writes a 50 word sentence. One thought one sentence. Remember, commas are supposed to form points of pause in your sentence. Multiple sentences forming one point of your topic and grouped together into one paragraph. When you are done, proofread and spellcheck at the minimum.

Write your post in some sort of logical flow. Lead your readers through your post with an introduction, body, and a conclusion. I know this sounds like 5th grade English class, but you would be surprised how many bloggers lose readers because they do not follow these simple rules of writing and project less competence in their subject matter due to poor utilization of composition rules.

Lastly, make sure your content is useful. Assume you are writing for someone who wants to know the maximum amount of information that they can about your subject matter. It is better to have too much information than to leave your reader wanting more and having to go elsewhere for the information you left out. When they go elsewhere, they may not come back. If your volume of information is so great that you will exceed a thousand words or so, consider breaking your post up into parts. Up until this point this post is 865 words.

These are but pointers to get you started. Check other blogs that are popular that may cover content similar to yours and take notes from their styles. Do not get discouraged. Follow the pointers above and readers will come. It may take some time. But if you are consistent in your credibility and value, your readership will grow. Take your time in crafting your thoughts. Remember, your words may affect some one’s life so take care in what you say and how you convey it.

The next post in this series will discuss monetization, making money with your blog.

This is part two of a 5 part series. You can read part 1 here. This post assumes you have WordPress installed and functional. So next, we will continue with the customization of your WordPress based blog.

The first thing you need to do is pick a desirable theme. There are many capable and worthy free themes out there. Just take heed, in order to protect the copyrights of their themes, the authors may put encrypted code in the footer area. The encrypted code will be lines and lines of letters and numbers that make absolutely no coherent sense. I agree with copyright protection. But, due to the fact that you cannot see what the code says or does, I suggest you either pick a theme without the encrypted code or buy a theme. A few places to begin are:

•  Onehertz ( only 3 themes, but they are all free, excellent, and very customizable)
• WP Themes Free (a dizzying array of free themes from various authors)
• WordPress (a vast list of themes people have submitted for your downloading pleasure)
• Unique Blog Designs (these guys charge, but they provide blog templates for at least two of the blogging revenue masters - johnchow.com and shoemoney.com)

I suggest you pick out two or three themes and apply each to your site. Then pick the one that you like the best after seeing it in action. I also highly suggest that you pick a theme with at least two columns and ensure that it is widget ready. Two columns will allow for the main posting area and one sidebar. And being widget ready will allow you to plugin pre-built components that give your blog added functionality.

Ok. So you picked a few themes. Next you need to unzip them and upload to your wp-content/themes directory. Fire up your favorite FTP program (I like Filezilla), connect to your FTP server, and upload the entire theme folder. Make sure the folder is only one level down. Meaning, when you double click the folder, you should see files and folders rather than another folder of the same name as the first one. Now that your themes are uploaded, login to your WordPress admin panel at  http://YourDomainName.Extension/wp-admin. Once you are logged in, click on Design and then Themes. You should see the two or three themes that you uploaded. Simply click on the image of the theme and a preview will be generated and ask if you want to apply the theme. Apply each theme and view your blog then pick the one you like the best. If you want further aesthetic customization of your blog and do not have CSS or HTML experience, I suggest you buy a book, get the HTML lesson from the Video Professor, or contact Java Bytes, LLC to customize your theme for you.

Now that your site is looking nice, it is time to add some much needed function. I will give you a list of some of the plugins I like. But, it will be up to you to read the sites of the authors to gather tech support for installation.

• AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget (Help promote your blog.)
• All in One SEO Pack (Out-of-the-box SEO for WordPress.)
• BackUp WordPress (Back up your database, files, and folders with a plethora of options.)
• Feedburner (Detects your WordPress feeds and redirects them all to your Feedburner account so you can track how many subscribers you have.)
• Google XML Sitemaps (Generate a sitemap that is compatible with the major search engines making it easier for them to crawl your site.)
• My Link/Page/Category Order (Allows you to set the order of appearance for your links, pages, and categories respectively.)
• Secure Contact (Drop in form for your users to contact you.)
• UBD Block Ad Plugin (If you are going to place advertisements in the 125×125 variety on your site, this plugin makes it a breeze.)
• And last but most certainly not least is Intense Debate (They were recently acquired by Automattic, the creators of WordPress, because their plugin was so good. Enhance and encourage conversation on your blog by implementing this awesome plugin. Active participation with others who have Intense Debate will generate more traffic on your blog. This one is a must have.)

Most of these plugins are pretty straight forward to implement. You unzip and upload to your wp-content/plugins directory. After you upload them, you will need to venture to the plugins link on the right side of your WordPress admin panel. Then systematically click activate for each one. Visit the author’s website for more detailed instructions.

Your blog is functional, sleek. and powerful now. Tune in next time to garner some basic tips for writing and a little bit of blogtiquette.





Blog - Short for Web Log. It is a part of the Web 2.0 social era that started by individuals typing their daily activities online for others to see. Over time it has been adopted by many different people and companies and implemented in various ways for various purposes. I wrote about the benefits in a previous post and why you, as an entrepreneur, need to adapt to the times and implement social networking habits to grow in today’s Web 2.0 world. Now I am writing a 5 part series on:

• How To Setup A Blog (this post)
• Customizing Your Blog
• Writing Your Blog
• Monetizing Your Blog (get paid)
• Traffic For Your Blog

There are many free blogging platforms that you can use. Google has one called Blogger and you get a blog with a MySpace account. You can also setup one at Wordpress.com. But for the purpose of this post and the added flexibility, we will talk about a self hosted Wordpress installation. Self hosted Wordpress installation means you have your own domain name, have it hosted with a hosting company, and have your own install of Wordpress.

First, you need a domain name. If you already have one, skip this section. If you are reading this, I am assuming you do not have a domain name. You will need to purchase a domain name from a registrar. My registrar of choice is GoDaddy. They are reasonable, their tech support is friendly and knowledgeable, and their service is one of the fastest I’ve witnessed for domain name propagation. That’s fancy for telling other computers where your domain is.

After you have purchased a domain, you will need to apply for a web host. This is the company that will make sure your web pages are viewable to the rest of the world all day , every day. Typical hosting charges run from $5 to $20 per month depending upon the features you require. As a Concurrent Serial Entrepreneur, you should know by now that I have multiple businesses. As such, I am partners in a web resource providing company called Java Bytes, LLC. So, naturally, that is who I use. The normal charge is $10 per month or pre-pay a year and get the 11th month free totaling $110 for 12 months. Go to their contact page and mention this article to receive another month for free, totaling $100 for 12 months.

Once you have acquired a web host, you will need the web hosting company’s DNS servers. Most of the time they provide that to you when you sign up. If not, a phone call or email and they will readily provide this information to you. You will need to go back to your registrar, GoDaddy in this example, login and set your Name Servers from their default to the ones that your web hosting company provided you.

Now, most web hosting companies have a stand alone Wordpress installation option available to you. If they do not, you can get the installation from Wordpress.org and they have an installation guide to walk you through it. For those web hosting companies that have an automated install, like Java Bytes, you can install Wordpress and be ready to go in less than a minute. This is done through a useful feature called Fantastico. Fantastico allows for automated installation and upgrades and it is a breeze to use. You select Wordpress from the menu and click install. It will ask you for the folder location to install into (you can leave it blank to install in the top level directory or root). You will also be asked for an administrator name and password. You can put your name and chose a good password with numbers and letters in it. Below that you will be asked for a contact email address. This is only used for communications sent to you from your Wordpress installation and is not publicly displayed. Lastly, you will be asked for your blog name and tag line. Name your blog and a small tag of what your blog is about. You can change all of this info later. At the end of the install, you will have the option to email the details of the install to someone. Put your email address in the box just in case you forget your admin username and password.

Well, followed correctly and hopefully without incident, you should have a functional, albeit plain, blog based on Wordpress. You can login to it from http://YourDomainName.Extension/wp-admin. Where YourDomainName is the domain your purchased from the registrar and the Extension is the com, net, biz, etcetera that is associated with the domain name you registered.

In the mean time, browse around and become familiar with the various options in the admin panel of Wrodpress. You can find a lot of information about Wordpress in their Docs section. Check back for the next part of this five part series where I show you how to customize your blog and add various helpful and powerful options to it.