Whether you’re new to blogging or you’ve been at it awhile but haven’t seen the money roll in yet, you’ll want to check out How to REALLY Profit From Your Blog, a great post by Pat Flynn over at Smart Passive Income. I know you’ve probably seen these “make money online” posts all over the web and most of them are just a way to drive affiliate sales, but this one is real. Pat lays out several ways for anyone to earn an income from their blog. These aren’t get rich quick schemes. They are real ways to make money online. I use one of the ways here at Ninja Blog Setup (providing a service) and two of his other recommendations are on my list for future expansion later in the year. If you aren’t happy with the financial results of your blog, don’t miss Pat’s post.
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Day 1 of 31DBBB: Baseball in an Elevator?
Let me start this series by stating that it will most likely take me more than 31 days to complete 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. 
My goal isn’t to complete one task every day for the next 31 days. My goal is simply to complete the course in a reasonable amount of time. As busy as most people are nowadays, I think that is a more practical goal.
So here we are at day 1 of 31DBBB. Today’s goal was to write an “elevator pitch” for your blog. What’s an elevator pitch? It’s a short piece of information that you can tell people when somebody asks what your business is about or what you do. The goal is to inform people about what you do or what your site is about and leave them interested and wanting to know more.
This is a good starting point Darren gives us because it forces us to decide for ourselves exactly what our blog is about. What is the main purpose of your blog? What do you want your readers to take away from it? If you’re having to think very long about that, you’re probably in the same boat as a lot of bloggers out there, so it’s time to figure it out and develop your elevator pitch.
Here at Ninja Blog Setup, I provide technical services for bloggers who aren’t interested in handling the technical (or ugly) side of blogging. It’s kind of like changing the oil in your car. It’s a dirty job and most people would rather take their car down to the local lube shop and pay someone to do it for them instead. That’s the main purpose of my site, so I think my blog should mainly be focused on the technical issues of blogging. I want to provide my clients and readers with tips on tweaking their blog theme, various tutorials, informing them about security issues, passing on news about WordPress developments, etc. From time to time, I may stray from the technical arena and cover other blogging-related topics but for the most part, I want to keep this blog focused on the main goal of my site.
With that in mind, here’s the elevator pitch I’ve come up with for Ninja Blog Setup: Ninja Blog Setup makes blogging easier by performing the technical services most bloggers don’t want to do. I may refine this over the next few days but I think it’s a good starting point.
What is your elevator pitch? What do you think about mine?
Follow Me Through 31 Days to Build a Better Blog
Would you like to have a better blog? Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, just announced some great bonuses for current and previous buyers of his ebook 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, or 31DBBB as it’s commonly referred to. These bonuses are only good until January 19th so if you’ve ever thought about grabbing a copy, now is the time to do so. If you’ve already purchased it, you should have received an email from Darren by now explaining how you can get the bonuses. 31DBBB is very reasonably priced already (currently just $19.95), but with these extra bonuses it’s an even better deal.
I wish I could tell you how 31DBBB changed my life. However, my story is a little bit different. I purchased 31DBBB soon after its release last year with the intent to use it on a political blog I had at the time. I made it a few days into the course, but ended up putting that blog on the shelf due to a lack of time and the fact that political blogs are somewhat difficult to monetize. It was something I was passionate about, but I just didn’t feel I was getting rewarded for my time so I shelved it, along with 31DBBB.
When Darren announced his new bonuses, it made me think again about 31DBBB and my blog here on Ninja Blog Setup. This blog has been on life support for the past year and one of my goals for 2010 is to revive it and provide more useful information to my readers. I want to mainly focus on the technical aspects of blogging, but will touch on broader blogging topics from time to time as well.
Anyway, I’m digging out my copy of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and will start going through the course again using this blog. Although I only completed a few days the first time, it appeared to be a really well put together course on improving your blog and growing traffic. This time, I’m going to document each day as I go through the course right here on the blog.
If you want to have a better blog (and who wouldn’t), why not follow along with me? It always helps you complete something when you’ve got someone to do it with! If you’ve already purchased 31 Days but haven’t used it, dust it off now. If you’ve not yet purchased it, go grab it now while the bonuses are available. Either way, get ready to get to work!
Day 1: Baseball in an Elevator?
Day 2: Making a List and Checking it Twice
Day 3: Time to be a Pitchman!
Day 4: Watch Somebody Do It Right
Day 5: On Second Thought…
10 Reasons Why You Should Use WordPress
I was recently asked the question, “Why use WordPress?” This is a very valid question for anyone thinking about building a website and looking at all the available platforms out there. WordPress is by no means the only platform out there to build a website with but in no time at all I had thought of ten reasons to use WordPress to build your website so here they are.
It’s Free!
It’s free, but don’t let the zero price tag fool you. WordPress is robust enough that Fortune 500 companies like Ford Motor Co. choose to use it. If it’s good enough for a multi-billion dollar company, it will likely suit your needs just fine.
Easy Integration
Many website owners want to add a blog to their site and often use WordPress as the platform to do that. With WordPress, you can create just a simple blog but you can just as easily create a static website with an integrated blog and kill two birds with one stone. There’s no need to have one platform for your website and another platform for your blog.
Regular Updates
WordPress is constantly releasing updates to stay up with the latest security threats, add features and improve usability. Sometimes, they update so often it’s hard to keep track, but with the built-in update feature, it’s painless. How many updates has your current platform had in the past year?
It’s Search Engine Friendly
Google seems to love WordPress. I have made new posts and seen Google index them in less than 10 minutes. I have had WordPress sites that got indexed without me even trying. Why? Because of the pinging feature of WordPress. It allows you to send “announcements” known as pings to tell various websites that you have new content on your site.
Easy SEO
With it’s built-in permalink feature and the right combination of plugins, WordPress can easily be optimized for the search engines. I recommend All-in-One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps. Together, they take the hassle out of search engine optimization and best of all, they’re free! Every site I build has these two plugins.
It’s Automatic
WordPress has a built-in categorizing and archiving feature, making your posts easy to find for both the user and the search engines. With WordPress, many things just happen automatically, so you can concentrate on creating great content and not worry about the technical details.
Free Support Everywhere
It’s easy to learn and if do you run into a problem, there are tons of free tutorials you can find on hundreds, if not thousands, of websites. Don’t like to read? Just go to YouTube and type in “WordPress Tutorials”. No other platform has as many free tutorials available online.
Tons of Themes
There are tons of great themes for WordPress. Many of them are free. Most premium themes can be had for less than $100. No other platform has such a large choice of themes and with WordPress you can easily switch from theme to theme.
Plenty of Plugins
There are tons of great plugins for WordPress. Again, many are free but even the ones you have to pay for can usually be purchased for between $20 and $80. No other platform has such a large network of people creating plugins which can be used to easily modify and customize your site.
Easy Money!
If you want to make money with your site through Adsense or affiliate marketing, you just can’t beat WordPress. Why? Because of the various plugins that are available to easily place ads from Google’s Adsense or affiliate networks like eBay, Amazon, Overstock and others. Some of these plugins are incredibly robust. A couple of my favorite affiliate plugins are phpBay and phpZon. Of course, you have to have great content to pull the traffic in before you can make money, but these plugins make it easier to make money from your hard-earned traffic.
Okay folks, those are ten good reasons to build a website with WordPress. Can you be successful with other platforms? Sure you can! But go look at the most successful bloggers in the blogoshpere and see what they are using. WordPress is undeniably the king of the blogs, but it can be used as a CMS (content management system) just as easily. I know lots of affiliates who use it to build their sites with, some of them making four figures or more every month. I myself have used it to build everything from affiliate websites to business websites to political blogs to church websites. Combine all the great features of WordPress with all the wonderful themes and plugins and there really is no limit to what you can do when building a website with WordPress.
Why do you use WordPress?
WordPress Blogger’s Survival Guide
This is a resource guide for WordPress bloggers. I receive vast numbers of emails from bloggers asking for help with various problems they are having with their blogs so I decided to compile the most common questions and their answers to hopefully create a valuable reference guide for WordPress users who are having a problem, or wanting to make changes to their site, but don’t know where to go for help.
The guide is broken into two sections. Part 1 lists common problems or emergencies and then provides solutions or ways to get more information or help. Part 2 presents a list of things that you may be trying to accomplish and then describes resources can be used to accomplish your blogging goal.
Quick Start – Table of Contents
Part 1 – Got a Problem?
- DNS or Server Not Found Errors
- Script or PHP Error on the Page
- Website is Really Slow
- Unknown Error or Problem
Part 2 – Trying to Change or Accomplish Something?
- Setting Up WordPress
- Find or Add a Plugin
- Edit or Configure My Theme for a Certain Plugin
- Find a New WordPress Theme
- Learn More about how to Use WordPress
- Learn About Blogging or Improve My Blogging
- Make More Money Blogging
Part 1 – Houston, We’ve Got a Problem…
OMG – My Site is Broken, People Are Dying!
Take a deep breath, let’s figure out the best place to go for help based on what symptoms that “broken” is actually displaying.
Blogging for Money? Research Your Market First!
If you have an eye towards making money from your blog, then you should first have an idea of what makes a profitable blog so that you can make decisions right from the start that support that goal.
There are two primary ways to make money from a blog.
1. Get lots of traffic.
2. Be in a market, or niche, that either has a lot of products or services or unique products or services that other bloggers aren’t targeting.
There are two pretty simple ways to determine whether or not your topic will get lots of traffic or if it is in a ‘rich’ market.
Method 1, Search for a High Traffic Topic
To test the traffic level of your topic, use Google Trends
(more…)
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