DO NOT DESTROY YOUR MONETISED BLOG

Hi people? This is my second post today. the first was about Somalia trying to involve kenya into their political issues.

I have been blogging for three weeks now and what was an aggravating activity is becoming quite fun. [Those hostel owners should switch on the WIFI again because I have to go to campus everyday to work on this blog] 

For people planning to monetise your blogs in time, like I am,  i have some info that you may find useful…

I was checking my email this morning and i got this in my inbox:

 

Don’t make the mistake that cost this
blogger over $2,000 per month in income.

Read the full story below…

———————

Hi Moses,

This is one the first questions new bloggers ask -

Which blog system should you use? 

- TypePad <http://www.typepad.com>
- Blogger <http://www.blogger.com>
- Blog Harbor <http://www.blogharbor.com>
- WordPress <http://www.wordpress.org>

These are some of the most popular blogging
platforms and while I think they all have their
advantages there is one clear winner -

WordPress.ORG 

Download WordPress (it’s no-cost), install it on
your server, buy a proper domain name and then get
blogging.   

If you are not sure how to do any of this then
make use of the training videos I provide for free
from here -

http://www.becomeablogger.com

These videos will take you step-by-step through
the very basics of setting up your blog with a
domain name using the WordPress blogging platform.

DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU

Let me tell you a story about Steve. Steve is a
niche blogger. He set up lots of little blogs on
all kinds of topics (niches) aiming to make a few
dollars from each blog by placing Google AdSense
advertisements on them. Google pays you when
someone clicks on the ads. 

After a few months he did really well and built up
his income. None of his blogs had a lot of
traffic, but they got enough from search engines
that each blog earned between $1 and $10 per day.

In total he earned over $2,000 per month from his
blogs – not a bad effort. 

One day he turned on his computer and all his
blogs had gone. Disappeared. Vanished without a
trace… 

What happened?

He was using one Blogger.com account to manage his
blogs and Blogger.com determined that what he was
doing was violating their terms of service.

They thought all his blogs were what are called
“splogs” or SPAM blogs. 

Splogs are blogs set up to get traffic to other
sites. They are usually automatically generated and
the owners have no intention of producing a useful
website – they just want to get traffic. They are the
SPAM of the blogging world. 

Steve contacted the support staff at Blogger.com to
explain that his sites were not SPAM sites but it
was difficult to convince them and he never got
his blogs reactivated. Overnight he lost his
regular $2,000 per month income in one hit. 

OWN YOUR BLOG

If Steve had hosted his blogs on WordPress on his
own servers with his own domain names this simply
would not have happened. It may cost a bit more
upfront to buy the domain names and rent the server
space (WordPress itself is free) but the security
and control you have makes it worthwhile. 

WordPress has many pluses. My particular favorite
features include: 

- It’s free, very powerful and runs of a mySQL
database, so it’s quick. 

- It has a very easy installation procedure.

- There are hundreds of free themes you can
download and install allowing you to change the
look of your blog. 

- There are hundreds of plug-ins that provide
extra functionality. 

All of the above benefits are available because
the WordPress system is Open Source Software,
which means anyone can look at the code and modify
the program. Consequently there are hundreds of
programmers working to make WordPress the best
blogging system and they do it for free – just for
the good of the software. 

GET STARTED

Hopefully I’ve convinced you that WordPress is the
way to go. Now if you haven’t done so already,
here are the three steps you can do right now to
get your new WordPress blog installed. 

1. Go to http://wordpress.org/download/ and
download WordPress. 

2. Buy a domain name and hosting package. At the
moment I use and recommend Dreamhost and HostGator -

Dreamhost
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/yaro-recommends/dreamhost/

HostGator
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/hostgator/

There are literally thousands of web hosting
providers around, just do a Google search if
you want more options.

3. Install your blog. Done!

If installing a blog is beyond you then just use
the one click installation option in Dreamhost or
HostGator. You can skip step one above if you do this.

This lets you have a WordPress blog installed
with one click so you don’t have to do the
WordPress uploading process.

Remember, you can go to www.BecomeABlogger.com and
watch the videos where we show you exactly how to
do all of this using visual tutorials.

BACK-UP YOUR BLOG

Before I end this newsletter I’ll leave you with
this one last very important note… 

If you are going to stay with Blogger.com or
TypePad or even if you use WordPress, there is one
thing you should add to your weekly to-do list -

Back-ups!

Make sure you have an offline archive of all your
content, so for whatever reason, if you lose your
blog you can restore all the content. If you own
your domains you won’t lose your traffic because
you can restore things to exactly how they were.   

There’s a great little plug-in that lets you set
up automatic WordPress database back-ups, you can
download it from here -

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/

Happy( money making )blogging