Getting Started

I’m catching up a little in my feed reader at the moment, and stumbled across this post by Darren @ ProBlogger, check out Hunter Nuttall’s free PDF ebook (that’s free with no subscription, no junk mail  - FREE)  on The Zen of Blogging

A welcome addition to my coffee!

Michael Martine is right, when you’ve just started your blog, all you want is traffic. We’re lucky here at full-time-blogger.com as we got quite a lot of traffic from day one, and that is growing daily thanks to people like Damien Riley.

Michael has found a way for you to get some extra traffic to your site and get a “leg-up” quite quickly.

Simply comment on his post with a description of your blog, subscribe to comments so you see any new ones after you and visit them - subscribing to them and stumbling them as you go - finally link to them on your own blog (all stuff you’d probably naturally do anyway!).

So let me know how you get on - Full-Time-Blogger is over there today!

We’ve already discussed what people have learned in 2007, but what are they going to do with this new found knowledge into 2008?

Damien Riley has his list, which includes guest posting wherever anyone will have him - we wouldn’t mind a guest post from the funny farm here at all if he’s ever interested, I’m not sure anyone would want me as a guest poster at the moment - this blog looks very quiet still - unlike my other blogs!

Pearl has her list, which alongside some task related items includes some very SMART goals PageRank, Technorati Rank, Subscribers etc. are all in there.

Scott’s focus is a two pronged attack, he’s looked back at what happened in 2007 and made resolutions to correct those things in 2008, many of these focus on paying less attention to unimportant things.

Fred at Newest on the Net has sensibly divided his goals into content, stats and monetary - a sensible decision.

Where do I stand?

• I’ll keep my personal blog it’s a fun place to spend some time and chill.
• This is my new project and I’m loving it at the minute.
• My niche sites will continue to grow (hopefully) and I have a few more in the pipeline, hopefully if any of them get too big for me to work on I can either sell them or take someone on to work on them!
• The webhosting business goes from strength to strength on an almost daily basis, that will undoubtedly continue to grow at an alarming rate of knots!
• I want to put into use at least 90% of the domains that I have bought over the years, I’m sick of renewing them and wondering when they’ll make their money back!

On a personal level?

• To be happy and go on enjoying life!

How about you? What are your plans for 2008? Why not call back here every couple of months and let us know how you’re getting on with them?

It’s been a busy year for me, I’ve increased my blogs, We’ve got married, I’ve honeymoon’d, We’ve found a new house and are trying to sell our current one. A lot of people ask two things at this time:

• What have you learnt over the previous year?
• What are your goals going forward?

It’s a strangely reflective time for almost everyone, and I can’t really be sure what I’ve learnt (other than great Irish Rugby teams can be beaten easily!). I may go back through my posts of the year and see what I’ve blogged about later, in the meantime - I’ve been interested to learn what other’s have learnt - maybe I can learn something from them in the closing days of 2007.

• Mona has started a post series about what she has learnt in 2007, starting with #15 Not all monetizing options are best for your blog. The series is continuing from the links on this page and I’ll definitely be following with interest to see if I can learn something new as well!
• Not so much a what we’ve learnt, but Tamar over at Techipedia, has put together the Best Internet Marketing Blog Posts of 2007, it’s going to take me months to read all of that lot - well into 2008!

Is there anything you’ve learnt that would benefit others in the coming year?

I suddenly realised when I looked back at yesterday’s post on Motivation, that I had included a reference to Google Alerts without actually explaining what they are first!

Google Alerts

Google keeps track of thousands upon thousands of news sites, blogs and just normal websites every single day. Indexing the most current and regularly updated ones more frequently than those that are less current. We can utilise this to find content for us to talk about on our niche websites!

Google Alerts is still in beta testing - but is a fantastic tool! Google advertise it as a service to keep track on a particular news story, celebrity, sports team, industry or even a competitor - now in my eyes that makes it pretty powerful!

I have about 6 alerts set up for daily delivery of my niche terms, I get both the blog alerts and the news alerts (as these tend to be far more current!), so if I’m ever stuck for something to talk about on your niche site you’ve always got something in your inbox!

Note: I did try the “as-it-happens” news stories, but as I operate two of my sites in popular niches, I was flooded with data…. However if you’re doing a really popular site (about a sporting event for example) with breaking stories - this would definitely be for you!

BetterDays provide a great tutorial on setting up a Google Alert, if you’re struggling at all, and Krishna De will tell you exactly how useful she finds Google Alerts.

I know I said I wouldn’t help you choose a domain name, but if you’re still looking for ideas.

Read Mark’s post that reveals how he picks domain names!

The key to knowing what’s going on in your site is the key to making more money from it!

I used to recommend the statistics in cPanel, AWStats being the main one. You’ll often find Urchin bundled in on your cPanel, which is a great product, but it got made greater back in April 2005, when Google bought it.

Google rebranded the “Urchin on Demand” product as Google Analytics, they still sell the standalone version for use in a variety of hosting environments - but it’s not a patch on the Analytics product!

You can track just about anything with this, how long users stayed on the site, whether they visited one page and left, goals and conversions, and much more!

How do you get it?

Trundle over to Google Analytics, sign up, include the JavaScript on your pages (preferably in the footer of your Wordpress theme on your blog!) and away you go - spy on your visitors to your hearts content.

What’s Wrong with it?

• Ad filtering programs can block the JavaScript
• Some users do not have Javascript-enabled/capable browsers.

Your own server probably doesn’t use the JavaScript and actually uses the log files from visitors to your site - so may contain these missing visitors (a bit like “Where’s Wally”).

You’ve probably already heard of Adsense, or seen this button around:

If you haven’t signed up you really should do! I’m not say it will make you millions overnight, because it probably won’t - more likely a slow and delicate trickle-feed of USD!

What is Adsense?

Adsense is run by Google (they run a lot of things these days!), and essentially what you do is tell Google the style of the ad you’d like to display, colours, borders, size etc, they then provide you with a short piece of JavaScript that you incorporate into your website or blog. When people click on the advert you get paid!

Sounds simple doesn’t it, and really it is - that’s probably why it doesn’t generate earth shattering amounts for most people, ShoeMoney is a different kettle of fish earning $132,994.97 in his biggest cheque ever!

Why is it so Clever?

OK, let’s say you have a site about widgets (everything on the net is widgets, blue or red - get used to it!), Widget supplier, Widgeroo offers to put an advert on your site and they’ll pay you $0.50 every time somebody clicks on it, but they want to be the only advert on your site. The trouble is you find out later that everyone coming to your site already has a Widget and don’t need to buy another one from Widgeroo - what’s even worse is that the advert for Widgeroo is awful so nobody is clicking it, and you agreed to a six month term!

Step in Google Adsense and Contextual advertising!

If you were to put an advert for Google Adsense on the template for your site, or in the sidebar of your blog, you’d find that whatever you write about on your pages (within reason!) relevant adverts will appear on your pages. The more relevant the adverts and in context with what you’re righting about - the more likely they are to click on them and earn you some cash!

How? What? Why?

Now you’re just going to want to get technical aren’t you? I know, you want to know how it all works before you take part. It’s all done by the opposing side of the system, Adwords. Yep, we’ll cover that one at some point in the future!

For now, here’s what you need to know:

1. Advertisers create adverts in Adwords and bid on keywords, the higher their bid (and ranking within that keyword), the more likely their advert will be displayed.
2. A percentage (Google have to make their money somewhere!) of what the advertiser bidded is paid to you if the advert is shown on your site AND a user clicks it.

See, it’s still simple!

Signup now:

I’ve already said you should be using Wordpress as it’s a fantastic piece of software, more importantly it’s Easy to Install (with Fantastico , or Manually without Fantastico), and with a Few Tutorials you can be and running in a few minutes.

I was going to provide a bunch of tutorials here on Wordpress, but in the spirit of this blog I won’t be doing so. Reinventing the wheel is not what we’re here for, so just to get you up and running take a look at these tutorials before we go any further and get Wordpress installed, change your theme, make your first post,  and create a few categories.

For future reference you may want to read this tutorial, about installing Wordpress Plugins. Plugins are great because they extend Wordpress’ capabilities - sometimes beyond what you expect!

One of the first things I intend to do is produce a Wordpress resources page as you’ll find it’s a great tool, in fact that’s exactly what Yaro recommends… We’re getting on swimmingly here!

Firstly I’d recommend NOT using Blogger for your new blog, but getting some decent web hosting and setting up Wordpress. Yes it’s going to cost you (hey you have to spend money to make money almost always!), but you’ll have far more control over your entire site, statistics etc

Almost all sites I write these days are Wordpress based, because it’s such a great tool - so you’re going to need some PHP capable web hosting.

Now in the spirit of trying to make money, which is what we’re all here for - I’m going to recommend my own hosting over at BetterWebSpace, if you really must go elsewhere do yourself a few favours:

• Make sure it’s a cPanel host, who has Fantastico (it will make life so much easier!).
• Make sure you’re getting enough Disk Space and Bandwidth (or can upgrade as your grow!).
• Avoid hosts offering unlimited bandwidth (it simply doesn’t exist).
• Avoid hosts with very “templatey” websites (you’ll know what I mean).

On the subject of domain names, just choose one, make it meaningful, or just catchy!