I have been blogging for a few years now and have read countless blogs about blogging and how to make money online. I will try to summarize what it takes to make money online especially to newbie’s. To a newbie it can be quite overwhelming to see so many blogs giving you different pieces of advice. Some may even offer some software like auto blogging software’s, article spinners and the like to help you in your blogging but as a newbie it is best to know the fundamentals and lay the foundation to an awesome blog that will generate money for you in the not just in the short term but in the long term as well. I will break it down to you in simple steps to make sure that you will be able to succeed online and be able to make money online starting with as little capital as possible.
STEP 1 – FIND YOUR PASSION
First things first you need to find your bliss or in the internet marketing world a niche that you love. Your blog could be about food, comics, movies or about your travel experiences. How do you find a niche? It starts with you, yes YOU! You have to find in your heart what you want to do even if no one is paying you. You have to determine what your likes and dislikes are and be able to find the “THING” that will motivate you to write on your blog even when you don’t like to.
STEP 2 – KEYWORD RESEARCH
After you have found your niche, you must do some KEYWORD RESEARCH. What is keyword research? Keyword research is determining which keywords people in your niche are searching for when they are looking for something. When doing keyword research, you have to consider these sets of parameters like competition, daily Google traffic, ease of entry, commercial viability etc.
How in the world do I find that out? Don’t worry there are tools to help you with that and one that gets recommended that most by SEO experts and professional bloggers is Market Samurai. It is more than just a Keyword Research Tool, some say that it is an all in one research tool and to some degree I have to agree because it really helped me find the niche I want to be in and provided the foundation for me to succeed on my niche.
STEP 3 – DOMAIN and HOSTING
After KEYWORD RESEARCH, you must buy your own domain name and hosting. Some would ask why not use a free website like a wordpress.com or a blogspot.com hosted website. The answer to that is if you are really interested in dominating your niche and be able to really make money online for the long term the best option is to have your own domain name and hosting. A wordpress.com and a blogspot.com hosted website is not yours, no matter how many articles you write in it and no matter if you get to rank it high in Google, after all that been said and done, it is still not yours. They can take it from you anytime of the day just like what happened to Yahoo Geocities and other free hosted website. On a business standpoint, you need a professional looking domain name and website for your brand. It also really helps in helping you rank in the search engines when you have the right domain name and a good web hosting service.
My recommendation is to have your domain name in Godaddy.com and have your hosting in Hostgator.com. Why separate, why not in just one company? The answer to that is protection. If all of a sudden you encounter problems with your web hosting service you can easily move to a new one but if your domain is tied to your hosting company it will be much harder to move your site as things will get complicated. On registering your domain, I would suggest you use Godaddy.com. Why Godaddy.com? It is simply the largest domain registry in the world and I have tried their domain service and it is very easy to set-up that even a newbie can do it within minutes.
On web hosting, I would recommend Hostgator. Why Hostgator.com? Hostgator is the top web hosting company out there in my opinion, especially for those starting out because they offer fast and reliable customer service and top quality web hosting service. I have also tried Hostgator.com and whenever I have encountered problems their customer service response time is quite amazing. The good thing about Godaddy.com and Hostgator.com is that they offer discounts to newbie’s like a $7.49 dollar domain for Godaddy and a $0.01 for your first month for Hostgator by simply using the coupon code: SPRINGTIME, yup it is just a penny. This is one of the most important steps that will help you get started to making money online.
STEP 4 – INSTALLING YOUR WEBSITE
After getting your own domain name and web hosting account, it is important to install your website into your hosting account. I use a free account on http://www.wpdirect.com/challengesale/ it makes installing a WordPress site much easier and faster. I have tried it and it makes it very simple and user friendly. What I like about it is that it will also install important WordPress plug-ins to help make your website SEO optimized and search engine ready. It is FREE, so use it to your advantage.
Simply use any of the FREE themes in wpdirect.com to start with and later own you can find a WordPress theme that fits to your liking and niche. When you have started making money online, I would recommend that you use Thesis theme as its layout and architecture is SEO optimized and its typography is simply amazing. It also has been used by some of the top bloggers and even by some of Google’s employees in their blogs.
Make sure that you fill the title, your website’s description and category keywords in your site to help it rank better in the search engines for your particular niche. That is why we use the keyword research for so that search engines can know what you’re website is all about.
STEP 5 – WRITING CONTENT
After you have installed your website, writing content is the next important thing to do to make money online. When you write content in your website, make sure that it is centered on what you website is all about, relevancy is the key here. Your first ten articles should be about what your niche is about and what you want to achieve with your newly installed website.
You must make unique articles in your website, this is very important in a sense that you want your articles to rank high on search engines and writing unique and fresh content is the foundation to ranking high in the search engines. When you just copy content from other sites it will lower the value of your website and your search engine rankings because it is not unique and fresh anymore. Google particularly gives importance and value to quality, unique and fresh content. Your content must provide value to your readers.
This is where passion comes in to place. It is much easier to write articles and content for your website when you passionate about what you’re writing. When you like what you write, it is simply makes things better in a sense you can take it to the next level. It is very hard to level up your writing when you don’t like what you write. Passion transcends thru the paper and thru the computer screen and your readers will know it even if they are thousands of miles away, that is The Foundation to ones success.
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This in one of the best articles I have read on How To Make Money Online and believe me I have read a lot of blogs about that topic. It makes things easier to understand the the step by step guide really helps a newbie.
Thanks for making this article. It did not just helped me understand the foundation to making money online, it also saved me money online.
I wrote an article about make money online as well, but after reading just realized that mine is not even close to what you have written. Now, have to make huge changes.
Thank you.
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