Module 6 - Blogging Power!

Module 6 – Blogging Power!

Important Learning Advisory:

To experience better learning, it is recommended that you print and follow this transcript
while listening to the MP3 audio. There is ample space at the bottom of every page for
you to write your own notes and jolt down ideas. Happy learning!

1
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

Hello and welcome to a popular and exciting way of building your online presence,
getting targeted traffic, and making money online like never before! Introducing
“Blogging Power!” – you can now learn how to plug in the power of profitable blogging to
your existing online business, or even make money on this standalone business model.

2
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

What are blogs? It’s been more than a decade since the first blog was started online, so
I am positive you have stumbled across countless blogs as you surf online by now.

Originated from the word “weblog”, a blog is simply an online journal. The blogger, which
means the author of the weblog, documents his or her entries in a chronological format
on regular blog posts. Think of it as an online diary.

And did you know? As of December 2007, Technorati.com was tracking more than 112
million blogs! Blogging used to be done exclusively as a past time and a means of
sharing opinions publicly, but today blogs have evolved to be more than just an online
diary for personal entries. Even marketers are using it for profit building purposes, and
this is what this course is all about – how to make money from blogs.

3
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

So why use blogs for your online business? For starters, through blogs you can easily
start your own website without the need for HTML or highly technical knowledge. Almost
anyone can start their own blog now! This means it is going to be a whole lot easier
establishing your online presence as an online entrepreneur, and branding is not only
just as easy, it is also inexpensive.

Blogs also provide an easy and free means of getting targeted traffic to the rest of your
websites that are selling products and services.

And why not? Blogs, especially if it is Wordpress hosted or using the Wordpress script,
naturally have good possibilities of ranking high on Search Engines.

4
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

Last but not least, traffics going to your network of blogs can be easily monetized in
more ways than one, and if you prefer, they can also be sold away for big paydays! More
on these in a while.

Now if you’re new to the world of blogging and you have yet to start your first blog of any
kind, you might be wondering what should be the first blog all about? Firstly, I warn you
not to simply rely on blog hosted sites like blogger.com or wordpress.com. Rather, you
should host your own blog on your own hosting and get your own domain name for them.
The reason is that it will be more professional that way and you must be ready to invest,
if you want to start making money.

5
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

Fortunately, web hosting is cheap and so is getting a domain name. As far as installing a
Wordpress script is concerned, it can be done easily and I will show you how to do that
in a while too.

So what should your first blog be? Your personal blog. And what about your domain
name? It should be named after you!

The first blog you should get is a blog in your name, and make it your personal space for
your ramblings, pen your online journal and make it a documented online journey for
your success. You can talk about what you have learned from your recent experiences.
You can talk about your upcoming projects and product launches. This is a healthy habit
to exhibit because it makes you responsible, it makes you accountable for your actions.

6
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

How to install and set up your Wordpress blog… now I will be walking you through
these steps on how you can easily install and set up your Wordpress blog on your web
hosting from scratch, even if you have never done so before.

Now you might be wondering, “Why WordPress blogs? Why not Blogspot or something
else?” Throughout this entire course, we will be using WordPress blogs to construct our
blogs to monetize from. We won’t be using any other blog platforms, not even Blogspot.

WordPress is highly customizable and it’s the most popular blogging script. Again, don’t
worry if you know nothing about installing or setting up your own WordPress blog script.

First thing you need to do, is of course, get your domain name. If this is going to be your
first blog then it’s going to be www.yourname.com. It’s that simple, and it’s a no-brainer.

7
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

Register for your domain name from domain name registrars like
http://www.namecheap.com/. Next get your web hosting too. I recommend
http://www.hostgator.com/ and your web hosting account will store your files. Make
doubly sure your domain name points to your web hosting account correctly.

Next, download the latest version of the Wordpress blog script from this link:
http://wordpress.org/download/

Okay, done? Next…

Unzip all of the contents of the ZIP file you have downloaded from the Wordpress.org
website. Then using your FTP program, upload ALL of the files to your web host. All of it.

8
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

If you don’t have an FTP program, you can search for CuteFTP or SmartFTP, download
either one of these programs online, and install to your computer.

Uploading these files will take a while because there are many of them. So don’t waste
any time and log into your web hosting cPanel at the same time. Because
simultaneously, you’re going to create a database within your web hosting. This step is
essential and cannot be skipped. Look for MySQL Databases once you’re logged in.
Click on the icon.

9
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

Now you are going to create your database. The steps are a lot more straightforward
than you think it is. First give your new database a name, say “newdatabase”. Then click
on CREATE DATABASE. After that, you need to assign a user to it. So create a new
username and password. Again, say “username” and your password should have
combinations of alphabets and numbers to make it harder to guess by hackers. Then
click on CREATE USER.

Next up, you need to add the user to your database, all together with its privileges. So
third step is to assign the new username to your database, click check the box “ALL” for
privileges. Then click ADD USER TO DATABASE. You’re done! You can leave the
Access Hosts section blank and ignore this.

10
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

By now, all of your Wordpress files should have been uploaded completely to your web
hosting. One more important step to go. Open up the wp-config-sample.php file and
edit it in Notepad or your favorite HTML Editor. Insert your details for the Database name,
Database username, and Database password. Save the file.

11
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

After that, rename the file to wp-config.php. Upload this file again to your web hosting
through your FTP program. And to complete the installation and setup, run the install file.
It’s on yourdomain.com/wp-install.php. The process is straightforward again – you will be
asked on details on your database again so be sure to remember them and enter them
in correctly. You’re done – congratulations, this is your first successful blog setup!

You will receive an email on your admin access to your new Wordpress blog and you
can use the details to change your password, log in and configure your Wordpress look
and feel, post new content, however you want.

12
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

Now that you already know how to install and setup your Wordpress blog, you are going
to discover how to set up and design your first niche blog for profits.

13
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

If you want to have as many niche blogs started up and running quickly, it is important
that you get the first template done correctly before you go on to duplicate it. If the blog
model is faulty or flawed, you will only be wasting your time duplicating a blog model that
doesn’t work. This is why you need 3 aspects answered in your niche blogging plan
before you go on to build it: WHAT topic to choose, WHERE to get content and HOW to
monetize it.

14
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

What topic to choose for your niche blog? Now don’t start a blog that discusses random
topics. Your visitors will not know why they are here for and if they are not getting what
they expect, they will leave. Unless you have uniqueness or something that you can
relate to the masses, blogging about random topics is a sign of amateurish blogging.

So choose a specific theme for your blog and stick to it. It must be targeted, but have
enough mass appeal. Don’t blog on anything too general or else you will draw less
targeted traffic.

Also make sure that it’s a topic you can get non-exhaustive content on. If there’s very
little to discuss on this topic then it’s possible that the blog is not worth starting in the first
place. You want to start a topic for a blog that you can keep getting on, for a long time to
come. Above all, it must be on a niche where people are also willing to spend money on.

15
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

If you’re cracking your head and don’t know what to blog about, take a gander at
http://ezinearticles.com/ and pick any sub category you want from the full list of
categories available there, at the main page! This is your quickest way to get a bird’s eye
view on every profitable topic you can possibly blog on. This is quite general so I’m
giving you ideas on types of blogs you can start on. If you want to take the “niche blog”
approach you must break down to further sub topics.

16
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

Where to get content? There are basically five easy ways to get blog content, most of
which are free or low-cost.

REPRINT ARTICLES. You can republish articles onto your blog as long as the articles
are not modified, and that the credit is given to the original author. You can get articles
with reprint rights from sites like again, http://ezinearticles.com/. This article directory
alone is a reliable source for constant stream of new articles to reprint on your blog.

PUBLIC DOMAIN. You can edit the contents and claim the authorship but the only
difference is that works in the Public Domain are often from nearly 100 years ago. Any
work that has its copyright expired or are published before 1922 are considered Public
Domain. This is included but not limited to books, articles, tapes, films, and more. A lot of
self improvement and recipe blogs have elements of Public Domain content as some

17
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

principles don’t change with time. The only drawback is that since these works were
published in the past century, the command of English is outdated so you have to do
some modifications. One good source of Public Domain is http://gutenberg.org/.

PRIVATE LABEL RIGHTS. If you don’t mind spending a bit more money in favor of
publishing content that you can claim as the work of yours or your blog, you will do well
to consider Private Label Rights. In short, Private Label Rights means you can edit the
contents and put your name as the author. You can get Private Label Rights on just
about any niche topic nowadays.

YOUTUBE VIDEOS. http://youtube.com/ has videos on just about anything and

everything under the sun and the best part is you don’t have to create your own video!
Most of the time, the video makers let you embed the YouTube Videos on your blog so
you can run a video blog – or Vlog in short.

PICTURES AND PHOTOS. A picture paints a thousand words and sometimes, pictures
are all you have to put. For example, http://failblog.org/ shows hilarious photos submitted
by their fans and visitors.

18
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

Finally, blogging won’t be complete without the use of RSS. You probably hear this all
the time hand-in-hand with the word “blogging”. So what is RSS, exactly? RSS stands
for "really simple syndication". It’s a new and easy method for distributing content on the
web, using a newswire model. You can also pull content and related topics from other
blogs real-time.

Several major search engines such as Yahoo! and MSN are offering to index your RSS
feed along with your blogs, if your visitors include your RSS feed in their search engine
specific accounts.

19
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

To jumpstart your RSS campaign, I’m going to show you how to add RSS feeds for your
blog. It won’t take any more than a few minutes of your time, and this is purely one-off
work. You only need to start this with two major search engines on the web – Yahoo!
And MSN.

For starters, if you don't have a My Yahoo! account, go create one now by visiting
http://www.yahoo.com/ and click on the MyYahoo! icon and register. You need to know
what your RSS feed URL is because you will need to input it. Next log onto your My
Yahoo! Account, click on the "Add Content" button. On the next page you will see a
search box and to the right of this box, there is a link you need to click on "Add RSS by
URL". Copy and paste your RSS feed URL into the box and click on "Add ", You’re done!

20
 Module 6 - Blogging Power!

Now to get your feed listed on MSN. You will again need to create an account with
http://www.msn.com/ if you don't already have one. Once you have registered, log into
your account and repeat the similar process. Copy and paste your RSS feed URL into
the box and save the information. You’re done!

That’s all there is to it, so each time you create a new blog, just be sure to add it to both
Yahoo! and MSN using the steps I’ve just mentioned. Granted, there are many other
feed services but these two alone will get things kick started.

This concludes the “Blogging Power!” speed course.

21