This article on blogging instructions originally posted on The Hermit’s How To Blog Site

If you are blogging you need to know have a few blogging instructions to make sure you are starting out on the right foot.

If you are going to start a blog there are some things that you need to consider before you take the plunge. These items will help keep your readers coming back and build a loyal following of readers.

1.) Make sure your blog is set up on the right hosting service. By this I mean, should you be using a free blogging services like WordPress.com and Blogger.com or should you be setting up a blog on your own domain.

The simple rule of thumb that I use is if your blog is for your business or for profit have it set up on its own domain name. If it isn’t for either of these purposes then you should be fine on a free blogging service.

The main advantage of having the blog on your own site is that you can add plugins and optimize the blog much easier than you can with a free blogging service. This brings you traffic and traffic brings you customers and sales.

2.) Make sure you use the right blogging software – software like Joomla, TypePad and Concrete will all make blogs but I recommend that you use WordPress. I recommend WordPress because it is the most highly supported when it comes to plugins, themes and even support. There are a number of sites that will help you with your WordPress blog besides the support that you will find at WordPress.org. Besides it is easy to learn and to use.

3.) Keep your blog in one niche – I do a lot of blog research and I constantly find blogs that have numerous niches covered. They will cover items such as custom cigars and acne on the same blog. Most of these are using some type of auto-posting system and throwing in Adsense and other advertising programs. These are the type of sites that make the search engines and PPC advertising systems change their rules and end up hurting everybody.

If you keep your blog in one niche the likelihood of getting readers to come back time and time again is greatly improved. This also brands you as an expert in your niche and builds loyalty with your prospective customers which in turn will increase the sales of your product and/or affiliate products you recommend.

Speaking of niches, your niche should be something that you have an affinity for. You don’t have to be the expert but you need to like the niche enough that you are willing to put in the work and it helps if you do know enough to know if the post you are entering is good information or bad information.

4.) Do some keyword research – Keywords are the heart and soul of your blog. If you are relying on the search engines to get traffic to your site you need make sure you are using keywords that are being searched and are targeted to your niche.

There are a lot of free keyword research tools out there but Google’s Adword Keyword tool is by far the best free tool you can use to do some quick research of your keywords and it will suggest keywords that you might not of thought of.

5.) Make your blog reflect you – this simply means that your blog should be something that reflects your personality or the personality of your business. This can be the tone of voice you use in your posts or it can be something as simple as putting your name and picture on the blog. Let people know who is doing the talking, let them see you, let them put a face to the voice and you will find that you will get a better following than trying to be the anonymous expert.

These steps will get you started with blogging, review them before you start your blog or if you already have a blog going see if they apply to your blog. They are the backbone of almost all successful blogs and if followed will give you a foundation of trust that your readers will appreciate.

At Blogging Beginners you are provided with all the blogging instructions you will need to build your blog, find your niche, do your keyword research, create posts and drive traffic to your site.

 You hear a lot about search engine optimization about back links, linking from your own site, internal site linking.

 But one thing you don’t hear about too often is where the links come from.

 What do I mean by that?  Well, when the search engines look at links they actually divide them up by IP addresses.  If you have 1000 links to  your site but they all come from one or two IP addresses then it won’t help you with search engine optimization as much as having 5 links from 5 different IP addresses.

  The reason for this is that a lot of people put a ton of links to their own sites from their own sites.  Since all these links come from one IP  address the search engines will basically count them only one time.  This is how they stop you from  creating a blog with a 1000 posts, with every post pointing to one site, from counting as a 1000 back links. It is an internal control that they use to stop the blackhat guys from taking over.

 Does this mean that you shouldn’t link from one of your sites to another of your sites?

 No it doesn’t mean that, you definitely want to link your sites together but if you are like most people and your sites are all on one IP Address (like with add on domains) the links don’t count  as backlinks to the search engines.  In fact even if your IP Address is in the same server block it won’t count.

  What is a server block?

  IP Addressess are a group of 4 numbers from 0 to 255 that look something like this 216.187.86.159
Most hosting services will have all their IP  addresses in one block, for example if we were using
the example above you might see blocks that look  like this:

216.187.86.159
216.187.86.160
216.187.86.161
216.187.86.162

 As you can see the first two sets of numbers don’t change.  To search engines these are the same IP
addresses.

 If you have a number of sites (like niche blogs) you are better servered if you put each of your
sites on a different IP Block. This will greatly increase the effectiveness of your cross links.

 But most hosting services will only let you have  the one IP block. This is the reason I have several
different hosting services, vps, and dedicated  servers.

 If you really want to make the search engines  notice you one of the best ways to do it is to create 4 or 5 related sites (blogs work great) and have all of them point at one main site from different IP blocks.  This will take you one giant step towards becoming an authority site that the  search engines love.

 A couple of years ago I met David Purdue and we talked about setting this up where we could share hosting and there for get different IP Blocks for our sites because the only other option was to  set up a number of different hosting accounts with a number of different services to get these different IP Blocks.

 The idea was there and I knew from my own testing that it worked great but implimentation was, to be
blunt, a pain in the butt.  You had to know someone that had multiple hosting accounts and trade space with them to get the different IP blocks or you had to set up all the different hosting services.

 For the last two years David has been working on a way to make getting different IP blocks simple for everybody.  He has set up a system that will let you set up sites on five different IP Blocks from one account.  These IP addresses all have  a different A block (the first set of numbers in a IP address) which is the most valuable aspect of different IP Addresses.

  Not only that but you get Cpanel, Fantastico and you still have the addon domains.  The best part is that it is much more inexpensive than setting up 5 different hosting accounts. And much easier to work with.

  He explains it even more at his site:

Niche Simple

  Check it out, if you want to build an authority site and dominate the search engines there is no better way to start.  Combine your own cross linking with a normal backlink strategy and you will soon be the Authority for your niche.

 As of this morning there are only 53 spots left at the introductory price, so if you are  trying to be the authority site now is the time to grab this.

Niche Simple

OK, I am a little nuts and my brain does work at weird tangents sometimes.

I came up with this idea to add an audio track to a website that I thought would be a fun addition.

So let me tell you what crazy idea ran through my head. A friend of mine, Rob Richards – A long time member of Marketing Beginners, has a site that he launched that has one of the largest packages of resale rights and private label rights products I have ever seen.

Now on his sales page he is talking about how crazy he is to put together this extremely large package of products and some how my mine made an unusual connection and I came up with this idea for an audio track that might be fun and also get people to the site.

Basically what I did is a parody on a commercial for that 24 hour man helper drug. I won’t mention the name here because that will trigger the spam filters. The music in the background is the same song used by them in a number of commercials but it is performed by a friend of mine and his group “Smokin’ Section” you can actually hear them play the entire track at Danny’s website

http://www.DannySilber.com

It is the track Rock Me Baby. I took this track and edited to a loop of about a minute and a half and did a parody voice over for it, I sent it to Rob for his use but I haven’t heard back from him yet and I don’t know if he is going to use it.

But what I would like is for you to tell me what you think about it.

http://www.startingsteps.com/resale-maniac/

I have duplicated his sales page down to the order button and added the audio clip. I would appreciate it if you would take a couple of minutes to look and listen to the clip and then let me know what you think.

Particularly:

Do you think it goes too far or is it just fun

I actually think it ties in well with his crazy man copy. But I want to know what you think.

You can let me know by leaving a comment.

This is about “Gurus” and what you can expect to gain from following them.

First off, do you need to follow a “Guru” to succeed with Internet marketing?

The simple answer is, no, you don’t NEED a “Guru” to succeed but the information that you can get from some one that has already done what you are trying to do can push you towards success much more quickly.

The problems with most “Gurus” is that they only teach you one technique, which is a technique that stops working once the word gets out to the masses or it’s a technique that works for them but doesn’t work for you.

Not to mention the fact that most of them hold back a small critical part of what they are teaching you to do so they can upsell you later.

This gives you a couple of choices:

1) Do like I did, and buy everything out there and study it and apply what works for you and ignore the rest. Warning: I spent over $10,000 doing this before I saw any return on my investment.

2) Do what June Parker did.

Now I bet you are wondering who June Parker is and what did she do.

I met June when she became a member at Marketing Beginners. Let me tell you, when she joined she was broke and looking for a way to make some money. When you see the headline on her site remember it isn’t hype, it is the truth. You can take a look now if you like.

http://www.10StepsToMakingMoney.com

What June did is take action. She wasn’t afraid to ask for help and she got it. She was smart enough not to ask the real big “Gurus” but she asked some of the smaller to intermediate size marketers people she knew where making money online but not making millions.

And she found people like me an a few others that would actually answer her questions.

Before we go any further, yes, I answer questions when asked. I prefer you ask the questions on the rarely used forum at:

http://www.MarketingBeginners.com/powerforum/

AND, this is important, the questions need to be as specific as possible. I other words don’t ask “How do you make money online” there are literally hundreds of answers to that.

But back to June, she asked a lot of people and received answers from a few but between these few she collected the information she needed and took action and found her way to making a full time income online.

No, she not making millions but she works from the comfort of her home and works the hours she chooses.

I don’t remember if I told June this or not but it is something I have told a lot of people. When you are trying to make money online. Keep a journal of what you are doing and how it worked.

When you find something that works repeat it.

June did this and even more she turned her journal into a book, that tells you exactly what she did to start making money online.

Actually, it is better then that, she wrote a book that not only tells you WHAT to do but HOW to do it.

It includes all the resources she used to get started and how she used them. She has now made this valuable information available at a ridiculously low price. Yes, I have advised her to raise the price but she wants to keep it low to help as many people as she can.

You can find out more about June’s story and her book at:

http://www.10StepsToMakingMoney.com