Why You Should Start Small But Think Big When It Comes to Making Money Online

Here’s another brilliant, and unsolicited guest post from our buddy Brian. He offers more great insights into how you should approach your market research. Thanks, Brian. Great stuff as usual. - Mark

Whenever people ask what I do these days, I just tell them I’m a drug dealer.

I know, I know - I’m copying Tim Ferriss, but it’s far easier than explaining what I actually do.

I work in a niche that no one else in the internet marketing game knows about. There’s nothing about it on affiliate networks (I’ve looked), and although there are “real” companies with products and services, they don’t know anything about online marketing.

I used to think there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t promoting ringtones, fat loss, dating, or making money online offers.

But over the past year, I’ve realized how beneficial it was to start out in a truly niche market.

The Problem With Starting in a Huge Market

Having spent almost the past decade in Silicon Valley, I’ve seen firsthand some incredible companies.

All of us have probably dreamed of founding the next Google - or at least climbing to the top of the internet marketing world.

But it takes a very long time to succeed in a huge market saturated with competitors. That’s true regardless of whether you’re trying to start a real company, or simply trying to rank for a keyword with 1 million searches per month.

Although I’m in a very niche market, my most general keyword still gets a couple hundred thousand searches per month. I now rank on the first page of results, but it took me over a year of dedicated effort to get there.

If you look at the successful people in large markets, most have been there for a long time. They’re not “better” than you, they may not have more content than you, but they have been around longer than you.

The Advantages of Starting Smaller

I fell into my niche randomly - it was just a topic I happened to know a lot about, and one day I decided to start writing about it.

This proved to be a good decision. Within a year’s time I was able to completely dominate the market. Sure, there are other companies out there, but online I am the only game in town.

When people ask questions via social media now, they’re always pointed directly to me - because there is no other competition online. I don’t even have to proactively market myself anymore.

In my earlier article, I wrote that one of the big challenges with starting an online business is the lack of immediate feedback - unlike being in school or working for someone else.

Although it’s still not “immediate,” the feedback you get in a smaller market comes more readily and therefore motivates you more effectively.

The Problems With a Smaller Market

The main problem with starting in a smaller niche? The market size can be limited.

You need to do some testing before you jump in blindly - if there truly is no competition in whatever market you’re thinking of, that’s probably a bad sign.

In my case, there was competition - but I saw an opportunity because most of it was offline.

Your market doesn’t need to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars to be lucrative. Mine is a fraction of that size and I still make a five-figure monthly income.

But you do need to be sure it’s a niche in which people are actually looking for solutions and/or buying products.

How to Think Big Even in a Small Market

Even though my niche is small, I’ve expanded across several different sub-markets.

Let’s say you were going after dog training keywords. That’s not even what I would call a “small market,” but let’s just go with it.

You might start by going after one dog breed or one behavioral problem, and then expand into other breeds and other problems. Each time you expand, you have an existing audience and links that you can use to make your next venture more successful.

Many people new to making money online try too many projects in wildly different areas, putting a half-hearted effort into each of them.

But that doesn’t work for me. I’d rather start with Coke and expand into Diet, Cherry and Vanilla rather than trying to launch a soft drink business, a line of clothing, and a night club.

And Sometimes Think Even Bigger

Even if you start off in a small market, you don’t need to stick with that niche forever. You could use what you’ve done as “proof” to show what you can do and to attract other partners to work with.

I’m doing that right now - I’m working with a partner to create an offline business (think: live training boot camps) to go along with what I do online.

But to do that, you need to have “proof” that you can succeed first. And that’s much easier to get in a small market - just as long as you think big the whole time.

102 Ways To Make Your Site A Back-Link Superstar

If your site isn’t a back-link superstar, you’ll never be an internet mogul! My sincere desire is that you can use this article to find more success in your online endeavors.

Why most articles about getting links aren’t worth time it takes to read them:

• Most (I’ve seen a few exceptions) don’t have a single original idea.
• Most contain too much technical jargon that no one understands. What’s the point of creating a list for the 3 people in the known universe that know what a ‘meme tracker’ is? The 3 people that know what a ‘meme tracker’ is can now proceed to close their browsers and start making fun of this article.
• Most are lists of links to other lists that have links to other lists that have links to other lists that list the links - ok, you get the point.
• Most don’t tell you why you need to do the things on the list. Who implements ideas that they don’t understand?
• People don’t know where to start because the ideas people should implement first aren’t necessarily listed first.

Why this article isn’t worthless:

• On this list, you will see original ideas that you have never seen before.
• It doesn’t have the above, annoying characteristics.
• If you find technical jargon, you will find out what it means.
• It doesn’t link to other lists; this is the end-all of lists on the subject.
• The methods you should do first, appear first.

And one more thought before you dive into the list…since I created this post I’ve found that many of my readers and students are having a hard time grasping the simple, but powerful strategies surrounding making money with keywords and search engine traffic.

To help you clear the fog I’ve created an email mini-course called “5 Days to Success with Keywords” that will save you from the time-wasting mistakes most new internet marketers have to suffer through.

102 Ways To Make Your Site A Back-Link Superstar:

1. Provide more value than other blogs and sites. This is by far the most neglected area by all of us! We want to market our sites like crazy, but conveniently forget that we need to offer more to our readers. We want to have 300,000 hits a day but we only want to write five 300 word articles per month. Steve Pavlina said that it should be easy to make a million dollars if only he could figure out how to provide a million dollars worth of value. Sites that have that kind of value don’t have any problem getting the link love.
2. Add a blog to your site. Blogs are capable of getting a lot more back-link love than regular websites. There are several reasons for this:
   • Blogs are tracked in real-time. Blog search engines publish the most recent blog entries they can find. This means your new entries get linked to instantly.
   • Blogs are much easier to update than regular websites. You can create a lot more content in the same amount of time. There is no need to design a new page for a new article. You simply write a new article and publish. Your increase in content will increase your visibility and ability to get links.
   • Blogs get links from other blogs. If you run a regular website that isn’t a blog, you will have a harder time getting links from bloggers. Bloggers mostly read and follow blogs!

   If your site is or has a blog, well done. If you have no idea how to setup a blog you should visit the following entry of this site, “5263 Words On Starting A Profitable Blog.“

3. Post relentlessly. The more you are able to post, the more you will appear in blog search engines like Technorati, Google Blog Search, and Blog Search Engine. Note: People aren’t going to link to posts that are garbage so don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. If your site isn’t a blog, update often and then go back to #2 and add a blog.
4. Make sure that your blog is set to ping. If you’re using a WordPress blog you will find this in your admin section: Go to Options and then Writing. Make sure that you have some blog search engines in the Update Services box at the bottom. The ones I’m using are:
   http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
   http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2/
   http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
   http://ping.feedburner.com
   http://www.bloglines.com/ping
   http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
5. Use Technorati tags (follow the link to the left for a lesson on what they are and how to implement them. Opens in a new window.). Getting into more categories in Technorati and other blog search engines will get you more links from them, exposing you to other bloggers and webmasters that can link to you. To easily create Technorati tags, use this simple tool: Tag Generator. All you have to do is type in the keyword, and the tool will make the code for the tag.
6. Create authority posts. An authority post by my definition takes at least 10 hours to write. These are posts that people are likely to be linked to. My post, “5263 Words On Starting A Profitable Blog” has already been linked to quite a bit. Authority posts are more thorough than most other posts. They’re usually longer than other posts. Authority posts must be easy to find (follow this link for a lesson on where you should put your authority posts) on your site, getting them more exposure than other posts.
7. Have your friends tag your best work in Digg. (Digg is a site that allows people to vote whether they like and article or not.) Your friends can get the article moving in the right direction. There are also other social bookmarking sites that are very popular. Here are a few of the biggies: Reddit, Netscape, Del.Icio.Us, and StumbleUpon. This won’t do a whole lot of good if your article isn’t good, but if it is it can bring you thousands of visitors per day, which will link to a good amount of links.
8. Encourage readers to Digg authority articles. If they like the article or post, they will vote for it for you. It only takes a few seconds.
9. Make your articles easy to Digg. If you look at the end of this article, you will find a button for Digg, Reddit, and some other imporant social bookmarking sites. These can make a huge difference and can add to a lot more exposure and links. To install those buttons I used the Sociable plugin for WordPress.
10. Creating list-posts. Examples: “Top 10 Ways To Stop Being A Lazy Pig”, “Top 5 Internet Marketing Gurus”, “Top 25 Reasons Why 99% Of Bloggers Don’t Make It”, “99 Ways To Make Your Blog Or Site A Backlink Super Power”. People love linking to that stuff. Place your list-post in a prominent location on your site (follow this link for a lesson on where you should put your authority posts) or people will never find it.
11. Recognize your field’s gurus. Link to them often. They are going to watch closely the source of their traffic and will definitely see if you’re sending some their way. If you send them traffic, they may start reading your site. If they find something they like, they might link to it. One link from a guru in your field could mean more than 100 weaker links. Gurus are usually pretty generous in spreading the link love. That’s a hint, hint to Darren Rowse, Shoemoney (Jeremy Schoemaker), John Chow, and Steve Pavlina, all of which I read daily.
12. Publish an RSS feed. An RSS feed is a news feed that people can subscribe to. They can see if you have written new entries on your site without having to go there. Many webmasters stay up to date by reading RSS feeds from the sites in their industry. If you don’t have a feed, these webmasters will never see your updates. If you have a WordPress blog, it creates an RSS feed for you. Other sites will naturally syndicate the feed. (They will post it in their site) Some of them will link to you as the source.
13. Setup your feed on feedburner. This makes your feed subscriptions easy to track and allows you to encourage users to subscribe. After you have quite a few subscribers, it makes getting additional subscriptions easy.
14. Comment on other blogs. Always fill in the URL box so that the owner can find your site. Good comments will spark more interest than dull ones. Answering other people’s questions in comments gets them excited - one of the most effective ways to spark an online rambling about you and your site.
15. Respond to comments left on your blog. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been able to get full write ups about this site just because I responded to people’s questions and comments. When people’s questions are answered, you become the authority. People can’t help but link to the authority.
16. Respond to your email. Be kind to people. Be cool to people. Help them with their questions. If it’s a hard question to answer, post the answer on your site so that you get the content. Email the person that asked and give them the URL to their answer. Being helpful to others will earn you respect and link love.
17. Link out to other blogs like crazy. If you link to interesting articles on other blogs, they will link back to interesting articles that you have. Bloggers usually check their site stats every 30 seconds, they’ll see that you have linked to them. (It’s an addiction!) Many people don’t want to link out because it spreads their pagerank thin. Would you rather have pagerank or money? I, personally would rather have money. Pagerank will come. It won’t do you any good to have high pagerank if you don’t have any traffic, and most people don’t realize that the two aren’t as tied together as it seems.
18. Offer to be a guest blogger. If you can write for someone’s site, you will certainly be able to link to related resources on your site. If you’re going to do this one, write a killer article and submit it to an A-lister (leading blogger in your field) who has a high-traffic site.
19. Timestamp your posts. (Timestamping is adjusting your post entry so that it is posted on a certain day, at a certain time. You can finish an article on Saturday and set it to post on Monday.) There are more visitors at Technorati, Google Blog Search, and Digg on weekdays. Never publish an really good article on a weekend, you’ll be off the front page of Technorati before all the visitors are there. If you’re using a WordPress blog, there is a Timestamp option on your “Write Post” page. You can set the date and time you want the article to publish, and then click publish. It won’t show up on your site until that date and time.
20. Show related posts in your blog entries. A blogger might find your site via one article but find a different one that they’re really interested in. Showing your related posts can help them to be found more easily. Interest+Visibility=Links. If you’re using WordPress, you can find out why and how to use the related posts plugin here.
21. Use deep-linking. Deep-linking is when you link to older posts or pages in new posts or pages. This article links to quite a few of my older articles that I think are good resources for the people reading this one. This can help your readers and expose your good work to them.
22. Use meme trackers to find hot topics. Meme trackers are sites that track information published on blogs and news sites, and provide information about which topics are the hottest. The big meme trackers are Memeorandum and Techmeme.com. Technorati also has a type of meme tracker. They show you the hottest tags in real time. When you find hot discussions, contribute to them. Your opinions can bring valuable visitors to your site, and will get linked to from other opinions on the topic. If you’re posts are tagged properly, people will be able to find them easily, so make sure you use tags on your articles, as you learned earlier.
23. Do blog reviews. (Follow the link to the left to find a list of blogs that do review exchanges.) Tons of webmasters will link to you in exchange for reviewing their site.
24. Do link exchanges. You never know if a sitewik or blog will exchange links with you, unless you ask. Since most bloggers won’t have traditional link pages (thank goodness), you should probably find one of their posts that is interesting, and link to it in one of your articles. Ask them to do the same.
25. Add a page that invites people to link to you. Offer to link back. Ask them to link to an interesting article on your site and tell them that you’ll link to an interesting article on their site. Create a contact form so that they can let you know quickly and easily that they have taken you up on your offer. You have to be willing to help others or this method will never work.
26. Trade blogroll links. Some bloggers will trade sitewide (this means on every page) or blogroll links. I would only do it if I felt that the site truly had something special to offer to my readers.
27. Ask me to do a link exchange. Better yet, link to me first and then ask me to linkback. I will! Even better, link to me everyday and don’t ask for me to link back.
28. Get a MyBlogLog account. MyBlogLog.com is like MySpace for bloggers. It it a place where bloggers go to meet each other and find new blogging friends. You can link to your blog(s) from your profile page, and other bloggers will have a chance to check out your work, which could lead to additional links.
29. Start a MyBlogLog.com Community. You can create your own community that members can join. Be extra social and invite members to join your community. This exposes a lot more bloggers to your site.
30. Do article exchanges with webmasters on your field.
31. Do a scheduled, recurring guest blog exchange with someone from your field. Writing for each other can give you both exposure to a new group of individuals that are interested in your field. You can link to resources on your own site each time.
32. Read your posts before publishing. Edit, edit, and edit again. Make sure they’re right before you show them to the world. Make sure your writing is easy to read and grammatically correct.
33. Run spell check. This probably sounds stupid but I’ve been called out in my comments a few times and I doubt that I’ll get any links from the people that noticed my spelling errors.
34. Learn more about your field. If you’re site doesn’t have any good material, you probably won’t have much luck getting links from other bloggers.
35. Create walk-throughs. I created a walk-through for one of my cell phone sites that teaches people how to connect their Motorola Krzr cell phone to their computer. People love me for it, and I got links from Cnet, Mobiledia, and HowardForums because of it. These are 3 of the biggest cell phone sites! You can walk people through installing ads, writing a good post, starting a blog, baking banana bread, riding a bike, or anything related to your field.
36. Use giveaways. Hold a raffle where you give away something cool. The participants have to link to you in order to get in their name into the raffle. If you gave away an Xbox 360 you would probably get a lot more links than you would if you gave away a snickers bar. (This method is only down this far because it costs money, otherwise it would be very near the top because it works like crazy)
37. Write articles tailored to beginners. Most people in your field are beginners! Most bloggers in general are beginners. You can’t connect with them by writing about PHP scripting and dynamic server protocols. You have to assume that your readers know nothing about the topic without talking down to them. They will show you their appreciation.
38. Submit articles to article sites like: Article Dashboard, GoArticles, and Article City. They will also allow you to place a link to your site at the bottom of the article. You can write an article about anything in your field. Most article sites like the articles to be about 500 words.
39. Submit stories to news sites. Even huge sites like ESPN.com accept stories from free lancers.
40. Review products on your site. Most brands are trying desperately to get more exposure. If you provide a thorough, fair review of a company’s product, it might get linked to. For best results review products from new, up-and-coming companies.
41. Review products on other sites like ePinions. You can quickly establish yourself as an expert by writing thorough reviews of products in your field. Some of the traffic that hits your review will follow the trail back to your site, leading to links.
42. Write testimonials for sites whose services have helped you. The testimonials themselves will often turn into links, and the webmasters will surely check out your site.
43. Write a testimonial for me. I’ll let you link to yourself in it. You can see other testimonials that people have left here.
44. Write and submit a press release. Sites like PRWeb will publish them and link to you.
45. Alert webmasters in your field when you write solid content that will be useful for their readers. Don’t bother webmasters by updating them on every little thing you add to your site. Alert them when you have authority articles.
46. Alert friends when you create something that will help them. If you’re helping them they should definitely give you some link love.
47. If you don’t have any friends, get some fast.
48. Write to help others. If you can help other people to find more success, you deserve a link from them. You will probably get one.
49. Mentor other aspiring bloggers. I help out quite a few friends and most of them have me on their blogroll. They also link to me from time to time, and read my site often. Some of them will probably get really big eventually and those links will pay off enormously!
50. Try to meet other bloggers offline. Every city has bloggers and other internet marketers. These relationships can lead to ‘mutual plugging’ and idea swapping.
51. Create surveys. A good survey can make a person (or a group of people) feel important and could lead to some free marketing from them.
52. Poll your readers. People like to participate in polls and are super interested in the outcomes. Many times they will link to the outcome post of a poll just because they participated in the poll.
53. Comment on online newspapers. Most of the links you make won’t have direct SEO benefit thanks to the “no follow” command, but the writers will follow the trail back to your site.
54. Interview other bloggers. Many bloggers want to be famous! They will jump at the chance to be interviewed. Add a page to your blog that let’s people in your field know that you are interested in interviewing them. Tell them how to sign up and they will. I can almost guarantee that they’ll be linking back to the interview once it’s published.
55. Cite the source of your information. This good will often sparks reciprocation. Webmasters and bloggers love to be talked about.
56. Use forums and discussion boards. I sometimes try to find something that people are really confused about. If you answer their question they will automatically start to wonder who you are. Most of the time I have to research the problem myself to be able to answer them. The best way to answer their question is by creating a short walkthrough on your site that teaches them. Show them where to find it and you have yourself a link. That technique will also work on the next few suggestions.
57. Ask your local, public library to link to you with their website.
58. Answer people’s questions on Yahoo! Answers. You are able to link to resources on other websites that will help answer people’s questions. If you don’t already have a resource on your site that will help answer a question, create one. Link to from Yahoo! Answers. You have a link, and some more valuable content for your site.
59. Answer questions on Google Groups. Very similar to the one for Yahoo! Answers.
60. Submit to free web directories. The biggie is DMOZ. (Don’t even bother unless you have at least 100 posts on your blog.) Directories are lists of thousands of sites. One of them should be you!
61. Submit to blog directories like BOTW. Blog directories are thousands of blogs, listed in categories.
62. Submit to paid directories. Don’t do it unless you have to budget. The biggie is Yahoo! Directory.
63. Write controversial content. Sometimes you can really get people talking by criticizing famous people and brands.
64. Write about celebrities. People eat that stuff up and if you write something that people don’t know, you will get links from all over the place.
65. Write about the leaders in your field. Tell others why you think they’re successful.
66. Attack the leaders in your field. (This one I would never do.) Write why they should do things differently. I’m sure I could get a load of links by attacking Darren Rowse, Shoemoney (Jeremy Schoemaker), John Chow, and Steve Pavlina, but I wouldn’t do it because I have too much respect for them. That said, I have to admit that I could get some serious traffic by getting some dirt on them or attacking their business practices.
67. Write in English. English is the major language of the internet and blog written in English cater to a much larger audience.
68. Install a text translator on your site. (I haven’t done this one yet but it’s one of my ideas for the near future.) Surely people that blog in other languages would tell their readers about www.mysite.com that has a version that they can more easily read. I would love to have a version of this site in Chinese, which is the second biggest language of the internet. It will eventually be the biggest.
69. Create a contact page with a contact form. If people don’t have to open up their email to get in touch with you, it will be easier for them to ask you for a link exchange.
70. Create a testimonial page. Allow people to link to themselves in their testimonials. Add your site to our list of sites that want testimonials.
71. Create a Wikipedia page about yourself or your business. Wikipedia links don’t count due to a “no follow” command, but you will gain some exposure that will surely lead to additional links.
72. Create a Squidoo page about yourself.
73. Join the Better Business Bureau - for this one you have to have a business!
74. Join local clubs that have websites. Maybe give them a few pointers for their site and find out if they list members. Include a link on your member’s page.
75. Check for local government directories - it should be easy to get into local, online listings.
76. Donate to an online charity. They usually list contributors. Make sure you donate using the name of your site.
77. Place an ad in Craigslist. (Craigslist is a very large, online classified site)
78. Market your site as a free resource for local businesses. I told an attorney friend of mine about this site so that he could get some promotional ideas for his company’s site. Sure enough he linked to me.
79. Better yet, hire a publicist. They can probably get you on the news so that lots of people and businesses can use you as a resource.
80. Hire a link building consultant. Andy Hagans is a great one. This one is down this far on the list because it costs $ and isn’t guaranteed.
81. Hire a starving student and pay them $8 an hour to do everything on this list for 8 hours a day.
82. Get some interns that you can teach to build links. Create an LLC called MyCompany Marketing, LLC. Set up an internship program with the marketing department at the local university or college. Get 2 students to work 4 hours a day doing everything on this list for free.
83. Get some interns to write for you. Start a second LLC called MyCompany Publishing, LLC. Set up an intership with the journalism department at the local college and get a few free interns (writers) for your blogs. That way you can start a few new blogs that you can use as valuable resources to get links from.
84. Start a few more blogs. You can create free blogs on Blogspot if you want. Give your main blog a link once in a while. There isn’t any reason to make 1,000 links with it, just link once in a while. Maybe you could even update the blogs once a week. Who knows, you might make some money with those as well.
85. Encourage your friends to start blogs. Some of my friends have started blogs and I have links from all of them. I actually didn’t really encourage them, but they asked me and it has worked out great for my blog.
86. Create images and tools that people can use on MySpace, FaceBook, and other social networking sites.
87. Link to your blog from your MySpace page. If you don’t have one, set one up. Try to get a lot of friends in there, because the more friends you have in MySpace, the more traffic your space will get.
88. Ask your friends to link to you from their MySpace pages. These links won’t be majorly valuable from an SEO standpoint, but could bring some extra visitors, which lead to additional links.
89. Create a new MySpace page for your site. Become friends with other pages like yours.
90. Create a WordPress template. I’m not a designer, but if I was I would create hundreds of these. If a person uses your template they will be linking to you with every page of their site. There are millions of pages in the world running WordPress.
91. Create a Mambo template. Mambo is a content management system like WordPress that allows users to create websites.
92. Hold and sponser a writing contest in your field with a giveaway to the winner. Make the contestants publish the article on their sites while linking to yours.
93. Create a certification program for sites in your field. Design a trophy that people can use to display on their sites if they pass the certification. Host the image. (This means that you will not allow them to download the trophy picture. They will just install a peice of code that you will give them that will reference the trophy picture from your site.) You need to save the image on your site and them use this code to give them:
    

    Insert the URL where your image is saved where it says, “yourimageurl”.

94. Buy links. You can email webmasters asking them to link to you in exchange for hard green. You can also use a service like Text Link Ads to purchase and rent links.
95. Rent links. Same as buying links except the links won’t be permanent. Usually you pay monthly for this type. Check out Text Link Ads for details.
96. Buy posts from other bloggers. You can offer to pay them directly to post about your site, or you can buy posts through services like Pay Per Post and ReviewMe.
97. Start a design company. Add the design service to your site. You can create small sites for individuals and people, adding designed-by links at the bottom of their pages.
98. Donate sites to non-profit organizations. Non-profits usually get a lot of links from government sites, and so they would be ideal to design for. Make sure to include a “design donated by MySite.com” at the bottom.
99. Setup blogs for other people. Make sure you include, “Designed by MySite.com” or “Inspired by MySite.com.” Help them to achieve success and their links will become a lot more valuable.
100. Help students that are taking HTML classes in college. Your help can probably be traded for ridiculously valuable .edu links on their student accounts. Make sure you link to their little student sites so they get indexed. You may want to link to them from another site you have, or from a forum. I’ve missed the boat on that one a few times with friends that I actually helped. Oops!
101. Donate some time every week to hold Q and A sessions for beginners in your area. They’ll link to you naturally, or you can ask them to.
102. Encourage friends to bring friends to Q and A sessions. Help them all out. You may get some good ideas yourself and some links from your group.

5,263 Words On Starting A Profitable Blog

So you’re starting a blog from scratch, or maybe you have some experience and want to make sure that you’re not missing anything. Either way, I think I can help you out. I wrote this monstrosity of an article because I couldn’t find one anywhere that was thorough enough.

I want people to be able to get started after reading a single article, and there is no such article that I know of. This is the most thorough article on this subject I have seen anywhere on the internet.

Lately I’ve had quite a few friends ask me how to start a business online. I’ve even had a few friends start up some sites. I can see why, it’s such an intriguing way to make money. When people see you making money this way, they obviously hope that they can do it, too. So they start asking questions, and since they’re starting from scratch they usually have a ton of them.

This isn’t the only resource I’ve created to help people get the right start with creating a passive internet income. If you’re serious about owning websites that bring you income 24 hours a day with very little daily attention, I can tell you the best way to achieve that is by using search engine traffic from Google.

You can have immediate access to my email mini-course entitled “5 Days to Success With Keywords” by just typing your email address into the box below. In the course I’ll show you how to get off to the right start - avoiding the time wasting mistakes most new internet marketers have to suffer through. Enjoy…and by the way - we’ll never sell, share, or rent your personal information. You’ll receive nothing but high-value, practical content about making low maintenance money online.

I wish I had more time to teach everyone one-on-one. Since I can’t mentor everyone this way, I want to create a resource for everyone.

Where I Would Start

If I had to start my entire business from scratch right now, I would start a blog. (I actually did start this blog recently, although I already have some profitable websites.)

Definition of a Blog

For those of you that are brand new to internet marketing, blog is short for weblog. It’s kind of like a journal or diary, except you don’t use it only for history. You can use it to post news on a topic, give tips about a specific niche, or to write random thoughts if you want. A blog puts the latest entry at the top, and the blog creates archives all of the older entries for you.

If you go to the homepage of this blog, you will see the latest post I’ve made. To the right, you will find 10 or so recent posts. These are the last things I’ve written for you on this blog. You will also see categories. With a blog, each time you post, or write an entry, you choose which category you want the entry to appear in. You will also see archives. Usually a blog organizes the entries you post by the date they were posted. Since this is the first month this blog is online (written Feb. 2007), under the archives you can only see February. This will be expanded to show more months as time passes.

Sounding Complicated?

I know that many of you are thinking right now that it sounds really hard to create a site that will do all of that for you. I know that it can be overwhelming to learn something brand new. The beauty of a blog is that YOU don’t have to make any of that work. There is free software that will do all of it for you. (We will get to that a little later, I just want to let you know now so you don’t get scared and click the back button.)

Why I Would Recommend Starting A Blog Instead Of An E-commerce Site (or any other type of site)

The biggest reason I would recommend starting a blog is because it’s easier. You don’t have to learn HTML. (HTML is the programming language that websites are written in.) Your biggest obstacle as someone trying to learn how to make money online is learning how to put a website together. You have to make tons of pages (that you designed yourself), and make sure they all work together. You have to create the layout, design, links, navigation, and content. (For the newbies, content is the articles, entries, and posts you put on your site. It’s the actual material that you write.) If you start with a blog you don’t need to do the layout, design, links, or the navigation. It’s all done for you, you just write the content.

Another reason I would start with a blog is that your blog will do some of your marketing for you. The program that I’m going to tell you to use will automatically alert some blog search engines when you post a new entry. These blog search engines will create links for you, and people will be able to find your site. The more you post, the more exposure you will get with the blog search engines. Even if this was the only marketing you ever did, you would be able to get some visitors and build up your list of readers.

My most recent protégé just started a blog about fitness. He just started last week! He and his mother are working together on the project. They haven’t done any marketing at all, other than the marketing their blog does for them, but they have already been able to get a few readers to their site. (Along with a little bit of money, which brings me to my next point.)

Blogs are easy to monetize. In other words, it’s easy to create a revenue stream for blogs. There are quite a few ways of creating revenue with blogs. The easiest and most effective way of monetizing a blog is with Google Adsense. If you look at the top of this article, you will see a Google ad unit. If one of my readers clicks on one of those ads, Google pays me. Depending on a number of factors, I might get between $.10 and $2.00 for a click. Google direct deposits this money in my account every month. You can opt for a check if that’s what you prefer. You make money day or night, as long as you have readers that click on ads. Some of your readers will naturally click because they will see things that interest them.

The reason I like Google ads over other similar programs is because they match up really well with the material on your pages. If they find this site because they’re interested in internet marketing, I don’t want them to see ads about tennis shoes or home loans. Google does a good job of showing ads that are related to the site.

Using Google Adsense is 100% free. After you have a website up, you can sign up with their service and use their ads on your site.

Hopefully You’re Convinced That Starting A Blog Is The Way To Go

If you are, let’s talk about where you go from here.

You Should Choose A Topic

Choosing a topic isn’t the easiest thing in the world. What are you passionate about? I’ve seen lots of different kinds of blogs work! This blog is about internet marketing and personal development, but I have other blogs that are more technical. I have a site where I publish cell phone news, and it does quite well. The most important aspect of picking a topic is your interest level. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Parenting
• Personal Development
• Finance
• Real Estate
• Fitness
• Recipes
• Technology
• Politics
• Dieting
• Celebrities
• Art
• Movies
• Update: 5/1/2007 - Check out a new article I have called “Ideas For Profitable Blogs“

You could literally start a blog about anything that you’re interested in. The important thing is that you have enough interest to keep working. Most blogs die out after a month or so, the owner loses interest!

What do you read about? I’m constantly reading about internet marketing, and how to better myself as a person. I spend a lot of time searching in those two areas, and that’s why I chose to start a blog about them.

You Should Then Choose A Domain Name

A domain name is the .com name for your website. The domain name for this site, of course, is courtneytuttle.com. Your first option is to use your name, like I did. Your other option is to choose a name that is more related to the subject of the site.

For your first site/blog, I would use a name that is related to your subject material. This can spark some interest from people that see the name and can make it a little easier to do well in Google and other search engines.

By choosing to use the name courtneytuttle.com, I know that it will take some extra work. People who see the name won’t have any idea what the site is about. I have to put in some extra time to establish my domain name as a brand.

By opting to use a name that is related to your subject, you can save yourself some marketing time.

How To Find Out If A Domain Name Is Taken/Registering Your Domain Name

There are plenty of sites around that allow you to do this. The one that I use for this is www.prouddomains.com. If you go to the site, you will see a search bar, where you can type in any domain name. It will tell you whether the name is already taken. If the name you want to use is available, you can register it there for $8.99. You will then own the name for one year.

You will probably find that quite a few names are already taken! Here are a few tips that you can use to find a good name that’s available.

Pick your subject and add a name to it. For example, if your subject is real estate, you could try prosperrealestate.com, or mountainrealestate.com. You just add another word at the beginning.

Use .net, .biz, .org, or .info extensions. Some webmasters would disagree, but I haven’t found any difference at all between using a .com,a .net, or any other extension.

Once you decide on a name, you will go ahead and register it. Make sure to save your login information! Save everything or you will definitely regret it later. Congratulations, by now you should own a domain name.

Setting Up Web Hosting | What Is Web Hosting Anyway?

A web host is the computer on the internet that stores your website. You buy web hosting so that your site/blog has a place to ‘live’ on the internet. I use prouddomains.com for my web hosting as well. (The same company that I use to register domain names.) They aren’t the absolute cheapest anywhere, but they are pretty cheap, and they have a support phone number that you can call if something gets messed up. I’ve called them quite a few times, especially in the beginning when I made quite a few mistakes.

If you use prouddomains, you need to get the deluxe hosting to make everything work properly. Its cost is $9.99 per month. At one point they will ask you if you want a Windows server or a Linux server. You need to choose the Linux server.

Once you buy the hosting account, they will guide you through setting it up. You will basically setup a user name and a password that you will use to access your site later. After you setup your hosting, it will take a few hours to become active.

Install Your Blog

Once your hosting is setup, you want to install your blog. The blog software I would recommend using is called WordPress. It’s the best around, and WordPress does a lot of the work for you. This site was built using WordPress.

If you are using prouddomains.com for your hosting, it’s going to be really easy to setup WordPress. Prouddomains.com will actually install it for you. This is what you need to do. First, you will go back to prouddomains.com. You will then hover your mouse over Web Hosting, which is a blue button up at the top. It will drop down a little menu for you, and you’re going to click on My Hosting Accounts. Prouddomains.com will then have you sign in, unless you’re already signed in. Once you sign in, they will show you your hosting accounts. Most of you will probably only have one. You should see a link that says ‘open’. It will be under the control panel column. Once you find the ‘open’ link, click on it. It will then open up the control panel for your hosting account.

At that point, you will see quite a few little icons, (Account Login, Domain Management…..) and you are going to look for one that says, “Value Applications.” It looks like this:

Once you find this icon, you’re going to click on it. You will be taken to another page where prouddomains.com has some applications that can be installed on your site. One of these applications is WordPress. You’ll find it listed in the left column under community tools. Once you find the link to WordPress, go ahead and click on it. You will then see a red button that says, “Install Now.” Go ahead and click the button.

It will then ask you which of your domains you would like to use. Most of you will only have one, so you will select it, (if you have more than one you will select the one that you want to use) and then you will click continue. You may need to scroll down a little to find the continue button. It will then have you fill in a ‘Database Description’ and a ‘Database Password’. For the description you can put anything you want. You could put ‘Dave’s Blog’ if your name is Dave. It really doesn’t matter at all what you put there. For the password, fill in whatever password you want to use. Make sure that you save this information. Write down the information every time you fill out something like this. After you fill it in, click next.

Another screen will come up that will ask you to choose an install directory. Since this blog is going to be your whole site, you don’t want it in a directory. After your domain name, you will see a box that will probably have the word, ‘WordPress’ in it. You need to delete it. Click your cursor in there and backspace the whole word. You will then click next. It will take you to another screen where you need to fill in a little more information. It will have you choose an admin name, and an admin password. You will also need to enter in your email address. It needs to be a real email address. It will also have you give your blog a title. This can be changed later if you want, so fill something in. As you can see, the title of this blog is, “Internet Marketing And Personal Development.” You can use whatever title seems relevant to your subject. Don’t waste a lot of time here, again, because your title can be changed later. Once you have filled that in, click finish. For now you’re all done!

It will take prouddomains.com anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour to install your blog. When they are done, you should be able to see it by going to your site in internet explorer. Once it’s setup, somewhere on your website you will find a login link. You will login with the admin name and admin password you just set up. Once you login, I think you will find everything to be pretty self-explanatory.

If you have any questions about how to do anything, please leave a comment! I will be more than happy to answer any questions. I would at this point take some time to click on everything in there, just to see what everything does and how it works. You Now Have A Website! If you have made it this far, that tells me that you’re probably pretty persistent. Will you make it through this entire article? I’m willing to bet that most people won’t. This is pretty frustrating to me!

So many people ask me for help, but somehow I know that if I direct them to this article, they won’t even read the whole thing. Most people are looking for an easier route. They don’t want to put in the time. They are looking for the easiest way possible to realize their success.

That’s why I really don’t believe that most people can make money with the internet. It seems that most people can’t be successful at all! They simply don’t have the persistence. I would ask you right here whether you are a persistent person. If you can’t muster the energy to do everything in this entire article, I don’t think this business is for you. If you haven’t been a persistent person in the past, perhaps this is the time to learn how to be one. If you can be persistent, you can make this work.

Now You Have A Site - What’s Next?

Now is the time for you to start writing. We need to get some material on your site. Really quickly before you publish anything, let’s check on one little marketing tool that you’re going to need. Login to your site, go to options, and then go to writing. Scroll down to the bottom, and you’ll see a box labeled Update Services. You need to make sure that the following URL is in the box - http://rpc.pingomatic.com. If it’s there, your blog will let the blog search engines know each time you update your site. This is a very important marketing tool, so if it’s not there make sure to copy the URL above and paste it in. Make sure that you click the update options button if you have to do this.

As soon as this is done, you’re ready to add some categories. You probably want to start with at least 5 categories. Every subject has some categories of information, and you should take a little time to decide how to split things up. My most recent protégé started a site about health and fitness, and has the blog divided into these five categories:

• Aging Gracefully
• Fitness Exercise and Weight Control
• Fitness Tips
• Muscular Strength and Endurance
• Stress Relief

This site will end up with quite a few categories, but started with these basic five:

• CourtneyTuttle.com News
• Finding A Voice
• Motivation
• Promoting Your Blog/Site
• Search Engine Optimization

I have added a category for beginners, and can see that I will be adding more soon. I tell you this so you know that your blog will always evolve. Don’t worry about trying to create a finished product right now, just come up with the best five you can.

How To Add Categories To Your Blog

Once you’re logged in to your site, you will go to Manage, and then to Categories. You will see a link that says, “add new.” You will click the link and then it will let you fill in the category name. Don’t worry about filling in the other stuff; it will fill it in for you. Once you’ve filled in the name, go ahead and click, “Add Category.” You will need to do this once for each category you want to add.

Now You Need To Add Entries To Each Category!

Now is the time to start writing! What do have to say to the world? If you’re hurting for ideas, you should have a look at my article, “Read Your Competition’s Work.” It’s always good to read what your competitors and fellow bloggers have to say. You should also be reading sites that offer news about your subject. You can use ideas to get at those sites to start writing. It’s never worth plagiarizing! People want to know your unique perspective on things; it does no good to write the exact same thing as everyone else. People want to know what you think!

By now you should have an article in each one of your categories. Well done!

What Now? How Often Should You Blog?

This topic is highly debated, but I can tell you that you should try to blog every single day. A blog gives you the unique ability of getting repeat visitors that will come back every single day. Most websites don’t have this kind of draw, but you can! Of course, if I go to your site tomorrow and see the exact same thing I saw yesterday, why would I check it everyday? If you want to do well, you will create new entries at least 5 times per week. For more on this, check out this article, “If You Can’t Post Daily, Don’t Quit Your Day Job.”

How Good Are Your Entries?

Even more important that how often you post is the type of material you’re posting. I try to make my articles extremely thorough. That’s why this article ended up so big; I wanted to ensure that people who read it could realistically end up starting a blog. Your users will know if you’re really trying to help them, or if you’re just trying to get something on the site that day. If you focus on writing material that actually helps people, people will come back again and again. I want this site to be a place where people can go to find help. I want them to grow when they read what I have to say; in fact I want this site to be the best site out there for this!

I understand that this will take some time, but I really believe that if I continue to be thorough and aware of what people need, I can make it happen. You have to try to provide the best information you can.

Blogging And Comments

One nice feature about a blog is that people can leave comments. If you’re reading this entry, you’re more than welcome to leave a comment when you get to the bottom. Some webmasters believe that responding to visitor’s comments is too time consuming. I absolutely disagree! Responding to comments is one of the best things you can do, it creates trust between you and your visitors, and makes it so they want to come back to the site again and again.

At some point, your site may outgrow comments! If you’re getting too many comments to manage, you may need to eventually turn them off. Until then, it’s a great way to establish a relationship between you and your visitors.

Respond to your visitors and answer their questions. From time to time they will ask you questions that you don’t know. It is most definitely in your best interest to find the answer for them! You can learn yourself and also establish yourself as an expert in your field. Other users will also see that your site is an interactive place where they can find the material they’re looking for. From time to time, you will see that your visitors answer each other’s questions!

Do You Want To Have A Quality Site?

Many of you are probably just in it for the money. I teach people how to make money online all the time, and the truth is that most people I teach don’t want to do very much work. They want to do the bare minimum. I read the blogs of many successful online entrepreneurs, and there is one common mentality that they all have. They want their sites to be the absolute best in their industries. I notice that I said they want their sites to be the best. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the best.

One thing is certain, they give their all to make their sites the best resources they possibly can. You should keep in mind that when you’re starting from scratch, you won’t be the best right away. Over time, you can establish your site/blog as a great resource for people.

Promoting Your Blog / Getting More Traffic

Now you have a site, let’s talk about getting you some traffic!

#1 Way To Get Traffic - Creating Valuable Material

The absolute best way to promote your blog is by creating content that actually helps people. Many bloggers and internet marketers rely on search engines for 100% of their traffic. In reality, it’s a lot easier to get traffic from word of mouth than it is from search engines! If you are pumping out material that is truly helpful to people, they will keep coming back, and they will tell lots of other people about it. They will link to you with their blogs. They will link to you from myspace, facebook, and send emails to everyone they know.

When I think about writing for this site, I try to think of what topic will help my readers the most. I know that the only way I will reach my goals is to help other people to reach theirs. I’ve met so many people that really want to learn this business, but don’t know where to start. I want this site to be a resource that they can use from start to finish. This means that everyday I think about what information will be the best for you, my readers!

When you create material that will actually help your readers, they will notice. Remember that you will always be more successful if you write for your readers.
You want to make sure that your blog’s content is original. I find original things to write about all the time. I do it by writing about things I can’t find anywhere. I searched for months for an article on how to make money blogging. I found quite a few, but couldn’t find anything that covered all the major topics, start to finish. Even though I know a lot about making money online, blogging has some unique and interesting characteristics that make it a little different from traditional website marketing.

Over time, I have learned a ton, but never found an article that covered everything. This is the kind of topic I look for, that’s why I wrote this one!

Pinging The Blog Search Engines

This part of your marketing will be done for you if you’re using a WordPress blog. Earlier, I had you make sure that this was set up properly. Each time you publish a post on your site, WordPress will ping (send a special message) the blog search engines. They will update their search engines, adding your new material to their results. The way blog search engines work is quite different than the way regular search engines work. Blog search engines will show the most recent entries found under each topic. This means that you can increase the traffic to your blog simply by posting more often.

Commenting On Other Blogs

One super effective way of getting traffic for your blog is by commenting on other blogs. When you comment on a blog, they allow you type in the URL to your website. When you type this in, you want to put in the entire URL. When I do this, I type http://courtneytuttle.com/. It will then make a link that people can follow to your site. Usually when I comment on blogs, quite a few people will visit my site to check it out. The webmaster of the blog I’m commenting on usually has to approve the comments, so he ends up visiting my site too.

Often bloggers will read other blogs to find significant material for their readers. Bloggers who have found me this way will often link to my blog, as they find material that is useful for their readers.

Blog Carnivals

Blog carnivals are places that feature a ton of blogs about a certain subject. There are blog carnivals about almost any topic. If you do a Google search for blog carnivals, you’ll find quite a few sites that do them.

Usually you’ll see a list of a ton of topics, and if you want to get into a certain blog carnival, you simply have to write an article about that topic. You submit it to the carnival, and they link to your site. This can drive quite a bit of new traffic to your site. If people like what you have to say, they will continue to come back again and again. Other bloggers will be checking out the carnival as well, and some of them may link to you if they like your material.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is making it so that your site does well in the major search engines. As of the day I’m writing this article (2/25/2007), Google by far is the biggest search engine. Yahoo! and MSN can also bring significant amounts of traffic to your site.

If you want to do well in any of these search engines, let me point you in the right direction. The most important method you will use to do well in search engines is keeping your site updated. If you stop adding new material to your site, your search engine traffic will slowly die. Most search engines want to see fresh material added to your site constantly, and this is especially true with Google. Google will drop your site altogether if it isn’t updated for a while.

How Do I Get Into Google In The First Place?

Luckily with a WordPress blog, this will be taken care of for you, as long as you continue to publish new material. When your posts get you into the blog search engines, Google, and all the other search engines will naturally find you.

How Do I Get A Better Ranking In The Search Engines?

There are two articles I’ve written about this, and I’ll post them here for you:

• Onsite SEO
• Offsite SEO

To learn more about getting better rankings and search engine optimization, you can also visit the search engine optimization section of this site.

How Long Until I Start Getting Traffic?

This totally depends on you! If you start commenting on other blogs, you will start getting traffic right then! The more blogs you comment on the more traffic you will get initially. Blog carnivals are also ways of getting traffic in a hurry.

As far as traffic from search engines, it will take you at least a few months. As your site continues to grow, so will your traffic from search engines.

How Long Until I Make Money?

This is the most asked question by far! It will take at least a few months after your blog gets set up. Of course, the more direct marketing you do (word of mouth, commenting of other blogs), the more accelerated this process will be.

Sometimes people are learning this business, and they ask if they should quit their jobs. My answer is almost always, “Are you crazy?” You don’t quit your job while you’re learning a brand new business. Learn the business, and then quit your job!

Yes, you can make a very significant income doing this. However, not everyone is going to make money. To tell the honest truth, you have to be pretty smart and wicked persistent. Most people can’t handle writing day after day. When you have a website, you do the work and don’t see the results for months. Most people honestly can’t handle it.

Hopefully This Gives You Somewhere To Start

I really want to create a helpful article that could help my readers to get started. If I could only give you one piece of advice, it would be to keep learning. I will continue to leave you with valuable tidbits of information. I will try to give you the material you need to find success.

5,263 Words On Starting A Profitable Blog

So you’re starting a blog from scratch, or maybe you have some experience and want to make sure that you’re not missing anything. Either way, I think I can help you out. I wrote this monstrosity of an article because I couldn’t find one anywhere that was thorough enough.

I want people to be able to get started after reading a single article, and there is no such article that I know of. This is the most thorough article on this subject I have seen anywhere on the internet.

Lately I’ve had quite a few friends ask me how to start a business online. I’ve even had a few friends start up some sites. I can see why, it’s such an intriguing way to make money. When people see you making money this way, they obviously hope that they can do it, too. So they start asking questions, and since they’re starting from scratch they usually have a ton of them.

This isn’t the only resource I’ve created to help people get the right start with creating a passive internet income. If you’re serious about owning websites that bring you income 24 hours a day with very little daily attention, I can tell you the best way to achieve that is by using search engine traffic from Google.

You can have immediate access to my email mini-course entitled “5 Days to Success With Keywords” by just typing your email address into the box below. In the course I’ll show you how to get off to the right start - avoiding the time wasting mistakes most new internet marketers have to suffer through. Enjoy…and by the way - we’ll never sell, share, or rent your personal information. You’ll receive nothing but high-value, practical content about making low maintenance money online.

I wish I had more time to teach everyone one-on-one. Since I can’t mentor everyone this way, I want to create a resource for everyone.

Where I Would Start

If I had to start my entire business from scratch right now, I would start a blog. (I actually did start this blog recently, although I already have some profitable websites.)

Definition of a Blog

For those of you that are brand new to internet marketing, blog is short for weblog. It’s kind of like a journal or diary, except you don’t use it only for history. You can use it to post news on a topic, give tips about a specific niche, or to write random thoughts if you want. A blog puts the latest entry at the top, and the blog creates archives all of the older entries for you.

If you go to the homepage of this blog, you will see the latest post I’ve made. To the right, you will find 10 or so recent posts. These are the last things I’ve written for you on this blog. You will also see categories. With a blog, each time you post, or write an entry, you choose which category you want the entry to appear in. You will also see archives. Usually a blog organizes the entries you post by the date they were posted. Since this is the first month this blog is online (written Feb. 2007), under the archives you can only see February. This will be expanded to show more months as time passes.

Sounding Complicated?

I know that many of you are thinking right now that it sounds really hard to create a site that will do all of that for you. I know that it can be overwhelming to learn something brand new. The beauty of a blog is that YOU don’t have to make any of that work. There is free software that will do all of it for you. (We will get to that a little later, I just want to let you know now so you don’t get scared and click the back button.)

Why I Would Recommend Starting A Blog Instead Of An E-commerce Site (or any other type of site)

The biggest reason I would recommend starting a blog is because it’s easier. You don’t have to learn HTML. (HTML is the programming language that websites are written in.) Your biggest obstacle as someone trying to learn how to make money online is learning how to put a website together. You have to make tons of pages (that you designed yourself), and make sure they all work together. You have to create the layout, design, links, navigation, and content. (For the newbies, content is the articles, entries, and posts you put on your site. It’s the actual material that you write.) If you start with a blog you don’t need to do the layout, design, links, or the navigation. It’s all done for you, you just write the content.

Another reason I would start with a blog is that your blog will do some of your marketing for you. The program that I’m going to tell you to use will automatically alert some blog search engines when you post a new entry. These blog search engines will create links for you, and people will be able to find your site. The more you post, the more exposure you will get with the blog search engines. Even if this was the only marketing you ever did, you would be able to get some visitors and build up your list of readers.

My most recent protégé just started a blog about fitness. He just started last week! He and his mother are working together on the project. They haven’t done any marketing at all, other than the marketing their blog does for them, but they have already been able to get a few readers to their site. (Along with a little bit of money, which brings me to my next point.)

Blogs are easy to monetize. In other words, it’s easy to create a revenue stream for blogs. There are quite a few ways of creating revenue with blogs. The easiest and most effective way of monetizing a blog is with Google Adsense. If you look at the top of this article, you will see a Google ad unit. If one of my readers clicks on one of those ads, Google pays me. Depending on a number of factors, I might get between $.10 and $2.00 for a click. Google direct deposits this money in my account every month. You can opt for a check if that’s what you prefer. You make money day or night, as long as you have readers that click on ads. Some of your readers will naturally click because they will see things that interest them.

The reason I like Google ads over other similar programs is because they match up really well with the material on your pages. If they find this site because they’re interested in internet marketing, I don’t want them to see ads about tennis shoes or home loans. Google does a good job of showing ads that are related to the site.

Using Google Adsense is 100% free. After you have a website up, you can sign up with their service and use their ads on your site.

Hopefully You’re Convinced That Starting A Blog Is The Way To Go

If you are, let’s talk about where you go from here.

You Should Choose A Topic

Choosing a topic isn’t the easiest thing in the world. What are you passionate about? I’ve seen lots of different kinds of blogs work! This blog is about internet marketing and personal development, but I have other blogs that are more technical. I have a site where I publish cell phone news, and it does quite well. The most important aspect of picking a topic is your interest level. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Parenting
• Personal Development
• Finance
• Real Estate
• Fitness
• Recipes
• Technology
• Politics
• Dieting
• Celebrities
• Art
• Movies
• Update: 5/1/2007 - Check out a new article I have called “Ideas For Profitable Blogs“

You could literally start a blog about anything that you’re interested in. The important thing is that you have enough interest to keep working. Most blogs die out after a month or so, the owner loses interest!

What do you read about? I’m constantly reading about internet marketing, and how to better myself as a person. I spend a lot of time searching in those two areas, and that’s why I chose to start a blog about them.

You Should Then Choose A Domain Name

A domain name is the .com name for your website. The domain name for this site, of course, is courtneytuttle.com. Your first option is to use your name, like I did. Your other option is to choose a name that is more related to the subject of the site.

For your first site/blog, I would use a name that is related to your subject material. This can spark some interest from people that see the name and can make it a little easier to do well in Google and other search engines.

By choosing to use the name courtneytuttle.com, I know that it will take some extra work. People who see the name won’t have any idea what the site is about. I have to put in some extra time to establish my domain name as a brand.

By opting to use a name that is related to your subject, you can save yourself some marketing time.

How To Find Out If A Domain Name Is Taken/Registering Your Domain Name

There are plenty of sites around that allow you to do this. The one that I use for this is www.prouddomains.com. If you go to the site, you will see a search bar, where you can type in any domain name. It will tell you whether the name is already taken. If the name you want to use is available, you can register it there for $8.99. You will then own the name for one year.

You will probably find that quite a few names are already taken! Here are a few tips that you can use to find a good name that’s available.

Pick your subject and add a name to it. For example, if your subject is real estate, you could try prosperrealestate.com, or mountainrealestate.com. You just add another word at the beginning.

Use .net, .biz, .org, or .info extensions. Some webmasters would disagree, but I haven’t found any difference at all between using a .com,a .net, or any other extension.

Once you decide on a name, you will go ahead and register it. Make sure to save your login information! Save everything or you will definitely regret it later. Congratulations, by now you should own a domain name.

Setting Up Web Hosting | What Is Web Hosting Anyway?

A web host is the computer on the internet that stores your website. You buy web hosting so that your site/blog has a place to ‘live’ on the internet. I use prouddomains.com for my web hosting as well. (The same company that I use to register domain names.) They aren’t the absolute cheapest anywhere, but they are pretty cheap, and they have a support phone number that you can call if something gets messed up. I’ve called them quite a few times, especially in the beginning when I made quite a few mistakes.

If you use prouddomains, you need to get the deluxe hosting to make everything work properly. Its cost is $9.99 per month. At one point they will ask you if you want a Windows server or a Linux server. You need to choose the Linux server.

Once you buy the hosting account, they will guide you through setting it up. You will basically setup a user name and a password that you will use to access your site later. After you setup your hosting, it will take a few hours to become active.

Install Your Blog

Once your hosting is setup, you want to install your blog. The blog software I would recommend using is called WordPress. It’s the best around, and WordPress does a lot of the work for you. This site was built using WordPress.

If you are using prouddomains.com for your hosting, it’s going to be really easy to setup WordPress. Prouddomains.com will actually install it for you. This is what you need to do. First, you will go back to prouddomains.com. You will then hover your mouse over Web Hosting, which is a blue button up at the top. It will drop down a little menu for you, and you’re going to click on My Hosting Accounts. Prouddomains.com will then have you sign in, unless you’re already signed in. Once you sign in, they will show you your hosting accounts. Most of you will probably only have one. You should see a link that says ‘open’. It will be under the control panel column. Once you find the ‘open’ link, click on it. It will then open up the control panel for your hosting account.

At that point, you will see quite a few little icons, (Account Login, Domain Management…..) and you are going to look for one that says, “Value Applications.” It looks like this:

Once you find this icon, you’re going to click on it. You will be taken to another page where prouddomains.com has some applications that can be installed on your site. One of these applications is WordPress. You’ll find it listed in the left column under community tools. Once you find the link to WordPress, go ahead and click on it. You will then see a red button that says, “Install Now.” Go ahead and click the button.

It will then ask you which of your domains you would like to use. Most of you will only have one, so you will select it, (if you have more than one you will select the one that you want to use) and then you will click continue. You may need to scroll down a little to find the continue button. It will then have you fill in a ‘Database Description’ and a ‘Database Password’. For the description you can put anything you want. You could put ‘Dave’s Blog’ if your name is Dave. It really doesn’t matter at all what you put there. For the password, fill in whatever password you want to use. Make sure that you save this information. Write down the information every time you fill out something like this. After you fill it in, click next.

Another screen will come up that will ask you to choose an install directory. Since this blog is going to be your whole site, you don’t want it in a directory. After your domain name, you will see a box that will probably have the word, ‘WordPress’ in it. You need to delete it. Click your cursor in there and backspace the whole word. You will then click next. It will take you to another screen where you need to fill in a little more information. It will have you choose an admin name, and an admin password. You will also need to enter in your email address. It needs to be a real email address. It will also have you give your blog a title. This can be changed later if you want, so fill something in. As you can see, the title of this blog is, “Internet Marketing And Personal Development.” You can use whatever title seems relevant to your subject. Don’t waste a lot of time here, again, because your title can be changed later. Once you have filled that in, click finish. For now you’re all done!

It will take prouddomains.com anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour to install your blog. When they are done, you should be able to see it by going to your site in internet explorer. Once it’s setup, somewhere on your website you will find a login link. You will login with the admin name and admin password you just set up. Once you login, I think you will find everything to be pretty self-explanatory.

If you have any questions about how to do anything, please leave a comment! I will be more than happy to answer any questions. I would at this point take some time to click on everything in there, just to see what everything does and how it works. You Now Have A Website! If you have made it this far, that tells me that you’re probably pretty persistent. Will you make it through this entire article? I’m willing to bet that most people won’t. This is pretty frustrating to me!

So many people ask me for help, but somehow I know that if I direct them to this article, they won’t even read the whole thing. Most people are looking for an easier route. They don’t want to put in the time. They are looking for the easiest way possible to realize their success.

That’s why I really don’t believe that most people can make money with the internet. It seems that most people can’t be successful at all! They simply don’t have the persistence. I would ask you right here whether you are a persistent person. If you can’t muster the energy to do everything in this entire article, I don’t think this business is for you. If you haven’t been a persistent person in the past, perhaps this is the time to learn how to be one. If you can be persistent, you can make this work.

Now You Have A Site - What’s Next?

Now is the time for you to start writing. We need to get some material on your site. Really quickly before you publish anything, let’s check on one little marketing tool that you’re going to need. Login to your site, go to options, and then go to writing. Scroll down to the bottom, and you’ll see a box labeled Update Services. You need to make sure that the following URL is in the box - http://rpc.pingomatic.com. If it’s there, your blog will let the blog search engines know each time you update your site. This is a very important marketing tool, so if it’s not there make sure to copy the URL above and paste it in. Make sure that you click the update options button if you have to do this.

As soon as this is done, you’re ready to add some categories. You probably want to start with at least 5 categories. Every subject has some categories of information, and you should take a little time to decide how to split things up. My most recent protégé started a site about health and fitness, and has the blog divided into these five categories:

• Aging Gracefully
• Fitness Exercise and Weight Control
• Fitness Tips
• Muscular Strength and Endurance
• Stress Relief

This site will end up with quite a few categories, but started with these basic five:

• CourtneyTuttle.com News
• Finding A Voice
• Motivation
• Promoting Your Blog/Site
• Search Engine Optimization

I have added a category for beginners, and can see that I will be adding more soon. I tell you this so you know that your blog will always evolve. Don’t worry about trying to create a finished product right now, just come up with the best five you can.

How To Add Categories To Your Blog

Once you’re logged in to your site, you will go to Manage, and then to Categories. You will see a link that says, “add new.” You will click the link and then it will let you fill in the category name. Don’t worry about filling in the other stuff; it will fill it in for you. Once you’ve filled in the name, go ahead and click, “Add Category.” You will need to do this once for each category you want to add.

Now You Need To Add Entries To Each Category!

Now is the time to start writing! What do have to say to the world? If you’re hurting for ideas, you should have a look at my article, “Read Your Competition’s Work.” It’s always good to read what your competitors and fellow bloggers have to say. You should also be reading sites that offer news about your subject. You can use ideas to get at those sites to start writing. It’s never worth plagiarizing! People want to know your unique perspective on things; it does no good to write the exact same thing as everyone else. People want to know what you think!

By now you should have an article in each one of your categories. Well done!

What Now? How Often Should You Blog?

This topic is highly debated, but I can tell you that you should try to blog every single day. A blog gives you the unique ability of getting repeat visitors that will come back every single day. Most websites don’t have this kind of draw, but you can! Of course, if I go to your site tomorrow and see the exact same thing I saw yesterday, why would I check it everyday? If you want to do well, you will create new entries at least 5 times per week. For more on this, check out this article, “If You Can’t Post Daily, Don’t Quit Your Day Job.”

How Good Are Your Entries?

Even more important that how often you post is the type of material you’re posting. I try to make my articles extremely thorough. That’s why this article ended up so big; I wanted to ensure that people who read it could realistically end up starting a blog. Your users will know if you’re really trying to help them, or if you’re just trying to get something on the site that day. If you focus on writing material that actually helps people, people will come back again and again. I want this site to be a place where people can go to find help. I want them to grow when they read what I have to say; in fact I want this site to be the best site out there for this!

I understand that this will take some time, but I really believe that if I continue to be thorough and aware of what people need, I can make it happen. You have to try to provide the best information you can.

Blogging And Comments

One nice feature about a blog is that people can leave comments. If you’re reading this entry, you’re more than welcome to leave a comment when you get to the bottom. Some webmasters believe that responding to visitor’s comments is too time consuming. I absolutely disagree! Responding to comments is one of the best things you can do, it creates trust between you and your visitors, and makes it so they want to come back to the site again and again.

At some point, your site may outgrow comments! If you’re getting too many comments to manage, you may need to eventually turn them off. Until then, it’s a great way to establish a relationship between you and your visitors.

Respond to your visitors and answer their questions. From time to time they will ask you questions that you don’t know. It is most definitely in your best interest to find the answer for them! You can learn yourself and also establish yourself as an expert in your field. Other users will also see that your site is an interactive place where they can find the material they’re looking for. From time to time, you will see that your visitors answer each other’s questions!

Do You Want To Have A Quality Site?

Many of you are probably just in it for the money. I teach people how to make money online all the time, and the truth is that most people I teach don’t want to do very much work. They want to do the bare minimum. I read the blogs of many successful online entrepreneurs, and there is one common mentality that they all have. They want their sites to be the absolute best in their industries. I notice that I said they want their sites to be the best. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are the best.

One thing is certain, they give their all to make their sites the best resources they possibly can. You should keep in mind that when you’re starting from scratch, you won’t be the best right away. Over time, you can establish your site/blog as a great resource for people.

Promoting Your Blog / Getting More Traffic

Now you have a site, let’s talk about getting you some traffic!

#1 Way To Get Traffic - Creating Valuable Material

The absolute best way to promote your blog is by creating content that actually helps people. Many bloggers and internet marketers rely on search engines for 100% of their traffic. In reality, it’s a lot easier to get traffic from word of mouth than it is from search engines! If you are pumping out material that is truly helpful to people, they will keep coming back, and they will tell lots of other people about it. They will link to you with their blogs. They will link to you from myspace, facebook, and send emails to everyone they know.

When I think about writing for this site, I try to think of what topic will help my readers the most. I know that the only way I will reach my goals is to help other people to reach theirs. I’ve met so many people that really want to learn this business, but don’t know where to start. I want this site to be a resource that they can use from start to finish. This means that everyday I think about what information will be the best for you, my readers!

When you create material that will actually help your readers, they will notice. Remember that you will always be more successful if you write for your readers.
You want to make sure that your blog’s content is original. I find original things to write about all the time. I do it by writing about things I can’t find anywhere. I searched for months for an article on how to make money blogging. I found quite a few, but couldn’t find anything that covered all the major topics, start to finish. Even though I know a lot about making money online, blogging has some unique and interesting characteristics that make it a little different from traditional website marketing.

Over time, I have learned a ton, but never found an article that covered everything. This is the kind of topic I look for, that’s why I wrote this one!

Pinging The Blog Search Engines

This part of your marketing will be done for you if you’re using a WordPress blog. Earlier, I had you make sure that this was set up properly. Each time you publish a post on your site, WordPress will ping (send a special message) the blog search engines. They will update their search engines, adding your new material to their results. The way blog search engines work is quite different than the way regular search engines work. Blog search engines will show the most recent entries found under each topic. This means that you can increase the traffic to your blog simply by posting more often.

Commenting On Other Blogs

One super effective way of getting traffic for your blog is by commenting on other blogs. When you comment on a blog, they allow you type in the URL to your website. When you type this in, you want to put in the entire URL. When I do this, I type http://courtneytuttle.com/. It will then make a link that people can follow to your site. Usually when I comment on blogs, quite a few people will visit my site to check it out. The webmaster of the blog I’m commenting on usually has to approve the comments, so he ends up visiting my site too.

Often bloggers will read other blogs to find significant material for their readers. Bloggers who have found me this way will often link to my blog, as they find material that is useful for their readers.

Blog Carnivals

Blog carnivals are places that feature a ton of blogs about a certain subject. There are blog carnivals about almost any topic. If you do a Google search for blog carnivals, you’ll find quite a few sites that do them.

Usually you’ll see a list of a ton of topics, and if you want to get into a certain blog carnival, you simply have to write an article about that topic. You submit it to the carnival, and they link to your site. This can drive quite a bit of new traffic to your site. If people like what you have to say, they will continue to come back again and again. Other bloggers will be checking out the carnival as well, and some of them may link to you if they like your material.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is making it so that your site does well in the major search engines. As of the day I’m writing this article (2/25/2007), Google by far is the biggest search engine. Yahoo! and MSN can also bring significant amounts of traffic to your site.

If you want to do well in any of these search engines, let me point you in the right direction. The most important method you will use to do well in search engines is keeping your site updated. If you stop adding new material to your site, your search engine traffic will slowly die. Most search engines want to see fresh material added to your site constantly, and this is especially true with Google. Google will drop your site altogether if it isn’t updated for a while.

How Do I Get Into Google In The First Place?

Luckily with a WordPress blog, this will be taken care of for you, as long as you continue to publish new material. When your posts get you into the blog search engines, Google, and all the other search engines will naturally find you.

How Do I Get A Better Ranking In The Search Engines?

There are two articles I’ve written about this, and I’ll post them here for you:

• Onsite SEO
• Offsite SEO

To learn more about getting better rankings and search engine optimization, you can also visit the search engine optimization section of this site.

How Long Until I Start Getting Traffic?

This totally depends on you! If you start commenting on other blogs, you will start getting traffic right then! The more blogs you comment on the more traffic you will get initially. Blog carnivals are also ways of getting traffic in a hurry.

As far as traffic from search engines, it will take you at least a few months. As your site continues to grow, so will your traffic from search engines.

How Long Until I Make Money?

This is the most asked question by far! It will take at least a few months after your blog gets set up. Of course, the more direct marketing you do (word of mouth, commenting of other blogs), the more accelerated this process will be.

Sometimes people are learning this business, and they ask if they should quit their jobs. My answer is almost always, “Are you crazy?” You don’t quit your job while you’re learning a brand new business. Learn the business, and then quit your job!

Yes, you can make a very significant income doing this. However, not everyone is going to make money. To tell the honest truth, you have to be pretty smart and wicked persistent. Most people can’t handle writing day after day. When you have a website, you do the work and don’t see the results for months. Most people honestly can’t handle it.

Hopefully This Gives You Somewhere To Start

I really want to create a helpful article that could help my readers to get started. If I could only give you one piece of advice, it would be to keep learning. I will continue to leave you with valuable tidbits of information. I will try to give you the material you need to find success.