Blogs are a great way for new people to internet marketing to get a site up and running and easily add content without having to know HTML. Search engines love blogs as they come well configured right out of the box. Wordpress is one of the best blogging platforms available and as it is free is an obvious choice for The 30 Day Challenge. In fact you are looking at a Wordpress blog right now as I use it on this site in conjunction with Joomla which is a free open source content management system.
You have two options in regards to using your own hosting account which allows you to have your own domain name such as yourdomainname.com or using the hosting provided by The 30 Day Challenge which would look something like yourkeyword.topicster.com
Registering a Domain
If you are serious about starting an online business it is highly recommended to purchase your own domain. It only costs around $10 a year to register a domain so it isn’t going to break the bank and over time that domain will increase in value providing you continue to promote it. You also have full control over what content you add to your site and don’t have to be concerned with having your account deleted and losing all of your content if it is hosted elsewhere.
It is recommended that you add your main keyword to your domain. For example if the niche you are targeting is ‘titanium golf clubs’ then your domain name should be something like titaniumgolfclubs.com. If the domain you are after is taken do not add numbers i.e. titaniumgolfclubs123.com or dashes titanium-golf-clubs.com because that looks spammy to the search engines. Try something like titaniumgolfclubreviews.com or toptitaniumgolfclubs.com. Lastly don’t try and stuff too many keywords into your domain because that also appears spammy.
www.namecheap.com is the service I use to register my domains.
Hosting Your Site
Once you have your own domain you will also need to find somewhere to host your site. Hosting varies greatly in price depending on how much information you wish to store and how much bandwidth your site is going to use. Fortunately to run a blog you do not need a lot of space or bandwidth therefore a basic plan is perfectly OK. You can also upgrade your account at any time if you need to.
The hosting service which Ed recommends is www.hostgator.com which I also have used and highly recommend. The $7.95 a month plan is the recommended plan as it allows you to host as many domains as you wish however like I just mentioned you can go for the $4.95 plan if you only wish to have one site and upgrade at any time to add additional sites.
Installing and Configuring Wordpress
Now that you have your domain and host set up you will want to install Wordpress. You can install Wordpress yourself by using Fantastico which you will find in cPanel or you can use the service which Ed recommends called Wordpress Direct. The advantage of using Wordpress Direct is that it installs several plug-ins and makes optimizations to Wordpress which would otherwise have to be done manually. It also comes with 1,500 themes which you can choose from which again saves you from having to find and install it yourself.
The free subscription of Wordpress Direct allows you to install up to 3 blogs and the paid service allows you to install up to 15. Most 30 Day Challengers wouldn’t require more than 3 blogs as you only need one per niche market therefore the free service is perfectly fine.
Today’s Videos
Awesome Software And Domains
A video showing you how to register your own domain name.
How To Setup Your Own Hosting
Dan goes through the process of setting up your hosting account at Hostgator.
Install A Blog With Wordpressdirect
Ed shows how to set up a Wordpress Blog using Wordpress Direct.
Add Content And Publish Blog
GuruBob shows how to add content to your Wordpress site installed with Wordpress Direct.
Summary of Day 6
Wordpress is a great blogging platform and has been pretty much the industry standard system for affiliate marketers due to how well they perform in the search engines and the ease of use. If you are serious about starting an online business then I highly recommend getting your own domain and hosting account.
See you on day 7!
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