TimThumb: Be Warned

Read this post, check your WordPress set-up and don’t get hacked!

When I first started blogging, several years ago, I initially set-up numerous blogs on subjects that I thought would make me an income. The subjects were not subjects I had much passion about. Hence I got bored.

The blog creation became a chore and I stopped updating them.

When I say I stopped updating them, I no longer added any blog posts and I didn’t update WordPress or any plugins.

I left them dormant and I have not touched them or even looked at them…in many, many months.

How To Make A Blog Part Eight: Perfect Your SEO Habits

how to make a blogWhat is SEO?

SEO is the abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization and it is the method that is used to attract visitors to your site via the search engines.

When someone does a search using Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc…they enter a search term and are provided with a list of websites that use that search term as part of their SEO.

This is often referred to as ‘free’, ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ traffic and as blog owners…we want as much free traffic as possible.

How To Make A Blog Part Seven: Are you Content with Your Written Content?

how to make a blog content

By far the most important thing about ‘how to make a blog’ is your content.

People are searching the information highway for answers to their problems, information and help and Google strives to keep the internet a source of good quality information that can be accessed quickly and easily.

A blog is an online journal or diary which should be added to consistently.  Without good content there is nothing for people to read and no reason for them to return. You can only build a readership of loyal followers by giving them what they need.

How To Make A Blog Part Six: The Tools I Use To Make A Full-Time Income

The next step in the ‘how to make a blog” series is all about the essentials tools and plugins you need to make a successful blog.

How To Make A Blog Part Five: Choosing a Domain Name and Hosting

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The next step in the ‘how to make a blog” series is choosing the best domain name and hosting for your blog.

There’s a lot of research you should have done before you reached this point:

  • Chosen your niche
  • Conducted keyword research
  • Looked for affiliate and digital products you can promote

Plus you need to have thought about the subjects and content of at least 10 articles using keywords from your research.

Choosing a Search Engine-Friendly Domain Name

With domain names we start to get into the wonderful world of search engine optimization (SEO).

How To Make A Blog Part Four: Monetizing with Digital Products

how to make a blog2

The next step in the ‘how to make a blog” series is monetization with Digital Products.

Many blog owners, by now, would be making the mistake of building their site and publishing blog posts…all without any plan or idea of how they are going to monetize their site!

The successful blogger doesn’t do that. The successful blogger ensures that they can monetize their site before building anything!

So let’s check some digital products…

What is a Digital Product?

In simple terms it is a product that can be instantly downloaded or viewed on-line.

How To Make A Blog Part Three: Monetizing with Affiliate Products

how to make a blog1

The next step in the ‘how to make a blog” series is monetization via Affiliate Marketing.

The reason you should check affiliate products and services to sell in your chosen niche BEFORE you start to build your blog is to ensure there are such products and services available.

If there are not, it could mean the chosen niche does not sell that well on-line.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

As the blog or website owner, you advertise someone else’s products or services and for each sale you make, you receive a commission.

Affiliate commissions range from 5% to 100%.

How To Make A Blog Part Two: Finding The Best Keywords For Your Chosen Niche

how to make a blog

In the last post in the ‘how to make a blog‘ series we covered the subject of finding your niche. That is a crucial step and so is this one…keyword research.

The vast majority of people who go onto the internet, go for one reason.

To find information.

They perform a Google or MSN or BING search to see what information is available for free or to buy.

What individuals enter in the search criteria is called the ‘keyword phrase’.

No Hype Here: How I Achieved an Hourly Rate of 900 Dollars By Working From Home

make money with no work

The following is a guest post by Patrick Meninga of Make Money With No Work. He recently sold his website for $200,000 dollars.

It is easy to become cynical when considering most work from home jobs. Nearly all of them promise a huge return on your time investment which is almost always a gross exaggeration of the truth.

But I recently sold my flagship website for six figures, and the site was making good money for years up to the point of the sale.

How To Make A Blog Part One: Getting Your Niche Right Is Crucial

how to make a blog1What is a niche?

The definition of a niche is “A special area of demand for a product or service”.

For instance, if you were to search for “time management” on Google, you would receive over 137 million results.

Albeit, “time management” is a niche, it is rather large and generic. If you performed a Google search for “time management for nurses”, you would receive over 21 million results.

As you can see “time management for nurses” is a smaller niche than “time management”.

However, each one, “time management for nurses” and “time management” is a niche.

Turning Your Website Visitors Into Customers

convert visitors to customers

Do you have a steady stream of traffic coming to your website?

That’s great. But now you need to take it a step further and convert your visitors into customers. It’s pointless to get traffic to your website if you don’t have specific goals in place to measure your site’s performance. During this post, I’m going to cover helpful tools to track your site’s performance and tips for converting your website visitors into customers.

How To Make A Blog: Everything You Need To Know

how to make a blogThis new blog series is going to be a 16 part series covering all aspects of how to make a blog.

I feel many of my visitors want to understand the exact steps to make a successful blog and by writing this series it will be easy for you to follow and extremely convenient to find.

These are the ‘How to make a Blog’ topics we
shall cover:

1. Choosing the best niche

In this post we cover why choosing the right niche is so important plus we share the best methods to determine your niche. Getting this right is so important to the success of your blog.