Start a Blog

Start a Blog using WordPress with Step-by-Step Guide

Welcome to SmartBlogProfits.com. You probably landed here because you want to know how to start a blog with WordPress. Well you have come to the right place. The information found in this blog post, is crucial advice for new bloggers.

Before you learn how to start a blog, you need to know what you are passionate about. Once you find your passion, search the Internet to find other blogs that share that same passion. This will also give you an idea about the competition that is in your niche.

Let’s say your niche is skin care. Search the web for skin care. Notice that there are over one hundred million sites listed. Now narrow your next search to eczema skin care. Did you see how drastically the number of sites listed decreased? I’m using this example because eczema runs in my family. So if anyone decides to blog about this topic, I have some valuable information from my dermatologist.

Now that you’ve chosen eczema skin care for your specific niche, think of as many short domains with eczema, like healmyeczema.com, or eczemacure.com. Once you have written down a list of domains, you will need to check the availabilty for registration.

There are a number of web hosting companies to choose from. The company that I HIGHLY RECOMMEND for new website owners is Bluehost. Bluehost has free one-click script installs, which makes it extremely easy for WordPress installation.

Disclaimer: I am an affiliate marketer for various vendors such as Bluehost, Clickbank, Plimus, Avangate, and others. I recieve a commission on the products and services that are purchased on this blog. I make no guarantee of any financial results from any of these products or services. Individual results will vary. I promote these products and services based on either my personal experience, product reviews, or demand. If you decide to purchase anything on this site, please do so based on your own informed decision. If you have previously made purchases here before, I appreciate your continued support.

There are other blogging platforms other than WordPress. However, WordPress is the number one platform if you want to start a blog. Installing WordPress with Bluehost is very simple, and only takes a few minutes. Check out this short video below.

Once you have registered your new domain name, browse and install a WordPress theme that fits your niche. Next, assign titles to your pages and posts. This will be your guide for staying focus on the topics that you will be blogging about.

Throughout the day, ideas will come to mind for your blog. This will make it easier when you start writing, because your titles will remind you of your ideas for your blog content.

There are a lot of great free WordPress themes to chose from to start a blog in your niche. However, if you decide to start with an inexpensive premium niche theme, then Click Here.

Let’s Recap the Steps on How to Start a Blog

Find your passion.
Search the Internet for your niche market.
Write down the number of websites in the search results.
Narrow your search to a specific niche.
Write down some creative domain names for your niche.
Check the availability of the domains.
Register your new domain with Bluehost.
Install a WordPress theme that fits your niche.
Assign titles to your pages and posts to guide you with your content.
Start blogging!

Occasionally spy on your competition to see how their blog looks. Do NOT duplicate their blog, rather make your blog different and unique. Stay on topic and update your blog as often as possible. Remember that blogging is a journey and content is built over time. Do not expect to have everything you want in your blog in one day.

Still Confused about how to start a blog?

No problem. It took me years of studying with trial and error to figure out how to start a blog. If you need a more detailed explanation about creating an authority niche site, I highly recommend you download Niche Website Success.

Niche Website Success will teach you how to build a powerful niche site, find problems and build solutions, beat your competitors, monetize your site, effectively market your site, and much more. Unlike other eBooks, Niche Website Success has over 150 pages packed with powerful and detailed strategies for new and seasoned bloggers. It also comes with a free workbook to track your progress. I’ve read a lot of junk eBooks throughout the years. However, Niche Website Success is the real deal. Click here to get your copy.

I’m excited that you have chosen to start a blog. The world has been waiting on solutions from such brilliant minds. You will be networking with people across the globe. Some will have more knowledge than you, and some will have less. There’s a lot you can learn from others and there’s a lot you can teach to others. Blogging is a life long learning experience. Stay focus and remain persistent. I wish you great success!
CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM

How to Make Your First Online Sale?

This is probably the most asked question I get from new online bloggers and affiliate marketers. Before I get into the specifics, let’s look at the basics. It doesn’t matter if you started your blog yesterday or last year. The principles apply across the board. The tips I’m about to give you will produce results, assuming that you are promoting a product that is reputable and in demand.

Take a look at my featured post if you haven’t done so already. As you see my target audience is “new bloggers”. I started this blog with the sole intent of helping people who want to start a blog, or create a website and don’t know where to begin. After reading my post, “How to Start a Blog”, you will notice how detailed my instructions were. I also gave an example on finding a niche, and then narrowing down to a specific niche. There’s a video showing how to install a WordPress theme within your Bluehost control panel. Towards the end of the post, I gave a recap on what I mentioned in the post, and provided some additional resources.

As you can see, my blog is not the fanciest looking site on the Internet. But I get ninety-five percent of my sales from organic traffic. The reason I get sales, is because my content in my blog flows well and it provides valuable information to my audience. Make sure your blog flows well and reads easy. Don’t have a busy blog with banners everywhere. You only have one window of opportunity to capture your first time visitors. Keep your blog relevant. Whatever niche you chose, stay on topic. If your niche is about improving personal relationships, don’t place banner ads promoting smartphones. That will turn your audience away because they will feel that you are all over the place trying to make a quick buck.

The Fast Track to Get Your First Sale

If you just want to get a quick sale just for the sake of saying you made a sale, you can run a pay-per-click campaign. Pay-per-click is when you bid on keywords to promote a product or service. The higher you bid, the more likely your ad will appear on the front page of Google or Bing. If the keywords are very competitive, the cost will be higher. In essence you are buying targeted traffic to your site and hoping you get a sale. You can expect a one to two percent conversion rate from targeted traffic. Notice I said targeted traffic. Everybody that clicks your ad is not a targeted visitor. Some are just curious. Once you start seeing sales, you can determine if the profit margin was worth the campaign.

How to Earn a Passive Income

This is the best approach to earn an income online. A passive income is when you receive an income on a regular basis with little or no additional work to maintain your income. Earning a passive income takes time and a lot of hard work. I put in a lot of hours to start this blog. It took me less than sixty days before I made my first sale. I didn’t try to reinvent the wheel. I simply positioned myself to offer products that are in high demand.

How I Earn Money Online

Before I get directly into the details, please read my disclaimer.

Disclaimer: I am an affiliate marketer for various vendors such as Bluehost, Clickbank, Plimus, Avangate, and others. I recieve a commission on the products and services that are purchased on this blog. I make no guarantee of any financial results from any of these products or services. Individual results will vary. I promote these products and services based on either my personal experience, product reviews, or demand. If you decide to purchase anything on this site, please do so based on your own informed decision. If you have previously made purchases here before, I appreciate your continued support.

Now let’s get right to it. This may seem small and simple, but it works. I basically share information that help people who want to start their own blog. I recommend products such as Bluehost and other resources of the trade. Most of my sales comes from Bluehost, since my targeted audience usually do not have a registered domain name. I also have various ads throughout my blog. I get paid when people click the ads. Being honest, while helping people pays off. My primary focus is to help people and make the process of getting started as less stressful as possible. People feel comfortable enough that they rather purchase from my site as a show of appreciation for helping them by pointing them in the right direction.

You will never hear any slick talk from me. I will tell my success as well as my failures. I will share information that most people will sell you. My biggest reward comes when I reach someone and they actually take action to change their financial situation by starting a blog. When I receive emails from Bluehost saying that I have another referral, I smile and say my time and effort was well worth it.

To all of you who have purchased something from this site, whether signing up for Bluehost, buying resources, clicking an ad, or just forwarding my blog site to a friend or family member, I simply want to say thanks. I am so grateful that you would even take out the time to read any of my post. So if you haven’t signed up for a hosting account yet, or you know someone who mentioned that they are ready to start a blog or create a website, please forward this blog to them. Again thanks. Click here to signup for Bluehost.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing, also known as referral marketing, is a revenue sharing venture between an online retailer and a web publisher, better known as an affiliate. Online retailers pay a predetermined percentage or dollar amount when an affiliate refers a visitor to the merchant’s site and that visitor makes a purchase.

The best part about affiliate marketing is, you don’t have to store any products or handle transactions. You simply refer customers to the merchant’s site through your affiliate link and receive a commission when they make a purchase. Affiliates are paid by checks, PayPal, and direct deposit. Most merchants require that affiliates meet a certain commission threshold before payment is processed. That threshold generally is between $25 – $100.

There’s also an elite group of affiliates called super affiliates. These are the gurus of affiliate marketing. A super affiliate’s earnings can reach well over $100,000 per month. Before you get discouraged, keep in mind that most super affiliates started out not earning a dime. The difference between these elite group of affiliates is that they never gave up. They learned by studying and following other successful affiliate marketers in the same niche.

What are Subdomains and How to Benefit from them?

I rarely see tutorials about subdomains and why you should create them. A subdomain is a domain that is part of a main domain. It allows you to divide your website content into multiple sections by adding a prefix to the main domain name. Here’s and example of what a subdomain looks like, subdomain.maindomain.com.

Subdomains are just as important as domains and can be very profitable when used properly. They work well with blog sites, as well as static websites. With so many websites on the Internet, it’s hard to pick a domain name that’s unique and still available. However, you can chose a domain name that can be used to add several subdomains in different niches.

Let me give you an example. Suppose your niche is herbal products and you registered the domain herbalcure.com. You can create the subdomain asthma.herbalcure.com to promote asthma products, or arthritis.herbalcure.com to promote arthritis treatment.

In order to create a subdomain, you must have a registered domain with a hosting company. Most web hosting companies allow you to have numerous subdomains at no extra charge. One of the most popular hosting companies that I recommend is Bluehost. Watch this short video below about domain names with Bluehost.

Click here to Register your Domain.

Creating subdomains allow website owners to maximize their earnings without spending extra money registering more domain names. Let me show you how I profit from subdomains. One of my domains is spylizard.com. I have several subdomains in the spy niche that are forwarded to my affiliate products. One of my affiliate products is a product call niche spy. So I created the subdomain niche.spylizard.com.

By creating this subdomain, it allows me to test this product and other niche spy products without incurring extra expenses from buying additional domains. Additionally, it allows me to delete this subdomain if I decide that it is not profitable. If this was a new registered domain, I would be stuck with it for a year unless I sell if before the expiration date.

Keep in mind that when you are at the point of selecting subdomains, you should have already fine-tuned your niche to specific topics and products. I highly suggest that you start off with one domain and one subdomain in the same niche. After you have those setup or forwarded to your affiliate links, begin marketing through social media, yahoo answer, post comments, youtube, and etc. When you begin seeing financial results, then you can register additional domains and create more subdomains in other niches that you are passionate about. Good luck!

How to Avoid Brain Overload?

Most people at some point in life want to invest in their personal development. With so much information available on the web, your brain can easily become overloaded. Often times that same information that you are seeking becomes the obstacle that prevents that development. So how do you know if you are taking in too much information? The short answer is when your head is about to explode.

Before you begin, write down a plan. Since this site is dedicated to starting a blog, let’s come up with a quick strategy. Grab a new notebook, yes a paper notebook, and some sharpened pencils with erasers. The reason I said a new notebook is because you do not need a notebook with other notes in it to distract you. I recommend pencils because pens can be a headache when you need them the most. Do NOT sit in front of a computer, nor watch television. It is OK to listen to soft music that have no lyrics. This is only recommended to help stimulate the brain for those who just can not stand a quiet room. Lastly, turn off all ringers.

Now that you have a work area free and clear from distractions, let’s get started. I want you to write down the following: what do you want to learn; what are you going to do with what you learn; when are you going to implement what you’ve learned; and how to measure your progress. After you have written down this information, bring your pencils and notebook to a computer. Search what you are looking for and save a few of the top searches in your favorites.

I also recommend youtube videos as well. It is important to have a variety of sources. Don’t take actions based on one perspective, which includes Smartblogprofits. While I’m flattered that you’ve chosen to read my blog post, I also want you to read other blogs so you can compare and decide which direction is best for you and your success. Once you have decided your source for implementing your plan, focus only on that one source. Dedicate some time on a daily basis as if you were scheduling a routine workout. Do not expect to start and finish in one day.

I also highly recommend you implement your plan in phases. Read a little, then take action. Do not go to the next step until you have finished the previous steps. Notice on my post “How to Start a Blog” how I detail step-by-step instructions from start to finish. If you haven’t read the post, I strongly suggest you start there first.

If your source is not an audio or video file, I suggest printing out the information. Sometimes tangible information is easier to digest and easier on the eyes. Be sure to track your progress by checking off your list in your notebook as you implement your plan. I wish you much success!

How Many Words Should My Blog Post Contain?

One of the most challenging things about blogging is deciding the length of your blog post. A lot of times bloggers start writing blog posts and never post them because they believe the word count is too short. Most bloggers assume that the longer the post, the better the content. This is absolutely not true. They also tend to look at seasoned blog sites and compare them to their own blog. You shouldn’t try to make your blog content the same length as your competition. Instead, use the competition to see how you can add value that they didn’t provide.

Visitors come to your blog to get your perspective on a particular subject matter. They don’t want to read the same thing that they read on everybody else’s blog. It also doesn’t matter how many words are in your post. Believe it or not, most readers like short posts. Keep in mind that your visitors are extremely busy and you only have a few seconds to capture their attention. If you are fortunate enough to keep their attention, your content will determine whether or not they will return.

How often have you searched for something on the Internet and landed on a site with a small scroll bar on the right side of the page? The first thing you may have said was, “This page is too long, and I don’t have time to read all of this”. Sounds familiar? I have passed over hundreds of websites because I just didn’t have the time to read all the content. I’ve even bookmarked some sites with every intention of returning. Well we all know how that went. After months went by, and the time came to clean out some files on my PC, the bookmarks got deleted.

To make a long story short, focus on quality instead of quantity. If your blog post only has a hundred words, make those one hundred words count! Communicate as clearly as possible and stay on the subject. Not only will this increase your page ranking with the search engines, it will also keep your visitors returning. Since this blog post is about word count, and I want to practice what I’m teaching, I’ll end it here. Good luck!

Start out Simple. Don’t Break the Bank!

I know by now that you are excited about starting your blog. Your heart is beating fast. Your thoughts are running a mile per minute. You’ve already decided how you are going to furnish your new office space. Wait, don’t break the bank!

I speak with newbies all the time. All of them express excitement about their new blogging venture. Often times they are prepared to spend $100’s on new office furniture and equipment, even though they haven’t made their first dime. One gentleman told me that he was considering looking for office space to rent. Whenever I come across individuals like that, I tell them to keep it simple.

When people read your blog, they are more interested in the content than the kind of desk you have or the type of computer you use. It is absolutely pointless to spend money on furniture or equipment, at least in the beginning. To be honest, you do not have to own a computer. You only need access to one with an Internet connection.

I’ve been doing affiliate marketing for years. If you saw how small my work area is, you would probably laugh. I only replace things that need replacing. Buying new furniture would be like wearing a new suit while I’m writing new blog posts. Nobody will see it unless I take a photo and post it. But who cares? People read my blogs because they find value in my content. Remember to keep it simple. Do not stress yourself out with things that do not matter. Wishing you much success!

Does Money Grow on Trees

We’ve all heard the old saying, “Money doesn’t grow on trees”. That’s absolutely true. However, experience has taught me that if you sow your good seeds of knowledge, hard work, and persistence, your money will actually begin to grow.

Let me explain more in detail. Your financial future is a direct result of the actions that you are taking right now. This holds true for any activity you do in life. A lot of times we forfeit what I call financial blessings because we do not take advantage of opportunities. Sometimes those opportunities do not come back around. Let me give you a personal experience of a missed opportunity.

In my bio I mentioned that I was an affiliate for VMC Satellite. A few years ago, I missed a very big opportunity and missed a great amount of affiliate sales. As some of you may know, some of the cable networks were in dispute with a major satellite tv provider. During the dispute, some channels were pulled while the negotiations were settled. I missed the opportunity to promote my affiliate link, because VMC Satellite customers were not affected during negotiations. Although I make money with VMC, I regret the big opportunity that I let slip away.

I say all of that to say this, take advantage of golden opportunities that’s right in front of you. I wish I could turn back the hands of time. I would have done things differently. Hopefully my missed opportunity will serve as a wakeup call and steer you from procrastination.

You have a unique opportunity before you. If you haven’t started a blog yet, I urge you to do so. I regret waiting as long as I did before I started this blog. I’ve read so many blogs and watched hundreds of videos over the years. I finally convinced myself that I wanted a piece of the pie. Although it took me years before I started, it still wasn’t too late to start blogging.

I don’t know where you are financially in life. However, experience has proven to me that blogging can be financially rewarding. I would have never dreamed that I could write blogs, recommend products, and receive commissions when I make sales. Once you make your first sale, I guarantee you that you will not want to stop. If you haven’t registered your domain yet, I urge you to do it now. Click here to register.

UPDATE: Dish Network no longer participates in affiliate programs. It was fun while it lasted.

How to Market Your Blog

Now that you have your blog setup, let’s talk about some marketing strategies to generate traffic. The quickest way to generate traffic is through pay-per-click campaigns.

Pay-per-click is when you bid for certain keywords to have your ad shown in the sponsored section on the search engines such as Google and Yahoo. I really discourage this for new website owners. This type of advertising can get very expensive, especially if you do not understand how it works.

Pay-per-click requires running a series of test campaigns to see the effectiveness of your ROI. I highly recommend new website owners to use word-of-mouth, email marketing, NO SPAMMING, YouTube, social media, comment posts, free online classifieds, and writing articles. If you decide to use email marketing, I highly recommend Aweber. The top earning bloggers use Aweber for their email marketing, because of its versatility, dependability, and security. Sign up below and take a test drive.

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Along with using Aweber as your marketing strategy, remember to build your blog with rich and relevant content. I can not express this enough. This is the most crucial advice for new bloggers.

I have used pay-per-click campaigns in the past. I am a witness that it does not work as well in the long run. In essence, you are buying targeted visitors to come to your site. Notice the keyword is buying!

So what happens when you run out of funds to run pay-per-click campaigns? Now you see where I’m going? The ideal blog should engage visitors and provide value that keeps the audience coming back for more, which mean that you must post fresh content regularly. If you do these things, your visitors will be your biggest promotors.

Think about this for a moment. The last time you came across a blog that provided crucial advice, did you forward that blog to some of your friends? Did those friends forward that same blog to some of their friends? You bet they did. Why do you think the “Bookmark” and “Add to favorites” buttons were created? Your goal is to be added to as many bookmarks as possible. So go ahead and put in the hard work now and you will definitely reap the financial rewards later.

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