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.

 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

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.

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

What is this cardinal rule of blogging that I broke?

It is really quite simple, I didn’t keep my blog updated. You need to add new content to your blog or site at least once per week to keep the search engine spiders happy.

Of course I have an excuse as to why I didn’t keep it updated, but then again we always have an excuse for the things we do or don’t do.

Even though it isn’t worth the paper (cyber-paper?) it is written on here is why I haven’t made a post recently.

Most of you that know me know that I am a techno-geek and I like technology and learning how to do all the technical things on the internet.

Yes, I can hear you groaning and saying, “How can you like the technical side? I hate the technical stuff!” But aren’t you glad that there are people like me that do like the technical stuff and make it easier for you to get things done.

What I have been doing is actually learning how to write programs in PHP from start to finish.  A lot of you will know that I was familiar with PHP as far as installing the programs and tweaking them to do what I want. But this is a long way for actually creating a script that will run a website.

There were a lot of empty spaces in my knowledge and although I didn’t need to fill in the missing pieces to accomplish my goals there were just some things that I wanted to do that I couldn’t do.

For example, I wanted to create a site where you as a customer could choose from 100’s of products and pick only the ones you wanted to download but you could get the “big package, special, limited time, limited quantity, grand opening, holiday, one time offer” price.

In other words you could buy a package of 20 products and choose any 20 of the 100 products available on the site or you could buy just one product or you could buy 100. This means that you wouldn’t have to buy a package of 50 products to get that one product that you want and leave all the other products collecting digital dust on your hard drive.

I looked around and there is no script that will do this on a site that I could find. Yes there are shopping cart scripts that will let you purchase a number of products but each product has to have its own price and it becomes a cumulative total of all the products with the price going up and up and there is no discount for quantity.

I wanted to provide the quantity discount you find in the big packages where you pay very little per item and the price per item would go down when the number of items goes up.

So, I though about outsourcing the script and having someone else create it for me. But to be completely honest with you, I haven’t found a PHP programmer yet that knows what they are doing and would be willing to get tied down to putting my work first. This means that if there is a problem with the script I might or might not be able to get support.

With this in mind, I decided to create my own script and let me tell you I have spent a lot of time running down errors in the script and learning new things about PHP. I learned how to integrate PayPal’s IPN into the script to ensure that the package was actually paid for. I learned how to have PHP count the number of files in a folder. I learned how to protect a download link and right now I am learning how to create a search function for the script so that you can search through all the products to find that particular product that you want.

I doing this I actually set a goal to have this script up and running by June 3 and when I set my goals I go after them whole heartedly. This means that I have at times lost track of what day of the week it is.

But I do have a working version of the script done (except for the search) and when it is completed you will be able to see it in action at www.YourChoiceProducts.com (nothing there right now)

So, there’s my excuse for not posting but remember it is only an excuse. I could have created a post similar to this earlier to let you know what I was doing and helped keep the search engine spiders heading this way.

I have to keep telling myself, “Keep posting, don’t stop, keep posting, don’t stop” The only advantage I have is that this blog is not about making money it is about providing information to you.

It seems that Clive thinks that you have to be an “advanced IT expert” to do the things I mention here.

I know this isn’t true and I am sure you know it isn’t also. If you could do me a favor and write a little about yourself and how much of an “advanced IT expert” you are to show him that you don’t need to be an “IT expert” to get your site up and running the way you like. Make sure you put a link to your site in the comment so he can see what you have done.

Here is Clive’s comment

What has me most concerned is that he doesn’t think he can add themes and plugins to WordPress. I am sure a lot of you have had experiences with this. Please let him know that it isn’t that hard once you do it a couple of times.

This is a file that you put on your site that is only for the search engine spiders it is not seen by your visitors.

This file can get you indexed very quickly with Google, MSN, Yahoo! and Ask because it lists all the pages on your site and how often they are modified. This makes the search engines happy because they don’t have to work as hard to get all your listings.

This is a great tool in the SEO wars, it lets you get your pages indexed in no time and let’s face it you can’t do well in the search engines unless you are indexed.

There are a couple of free programs that you can use to create your sitemaps, if you have a WordPress blog you can use a plugin called Google XML Sitemap from Arne Brachhold that will automatically create your sitemap and notify the search engines, if your site isn’t on WordPress you can use a program called GSite Crawler to create and upload your XML sitemap.

I do highly recommend that you have a XML sitemap for your site because it WILL help you get your content indexed and move you up the search engines. With that said…

YOUR XML SITEMAP CAN BE HURTING YOUR RANKING!

If you have errors in your sitemap it can actually hurt your rankings with Google, most of the time when people think about errors they figure the code in the sitemap must be the cause but both the programs listed above will create your sitemap with perfect code but you can still have errors as far as Google is concerned.

The reason for this is because Google not only holds your sitemap to the strict XML code but it also holds your site to Google’s policies for indexing, such as 404 error (missing pages) which a lot of people know about but what a lot of people don’t know about is that you will also get errors if you violate their redirect policy on your site.

Google doesn’t like redirects that never become visible to the viewer. Things like cloaked affiliate links and sales links and these will create an error in your sitemap. This only applies if you have the links actually in your sitemap, if they are coming from your site such as www.mysite.com/recommends/buythis.html then they will probably be in your sitemap. This is a common cloaking technique for affiliate links.

Sales links can also create this, for example on one of my sites I use DownLoad Guard to handle the sales and download protection for my products. The script creates a link for the purchase that goes to the script and then redirects the customer to ClickBank to purchase the product. The viewer never sees the page they are clicking on.

While there is nothing nefarious about this link Google still sees it as a violation of their policy and it will create an error in your sitemap file and this can get you knocked down in the listings.

To fix this you can simply put a no follow tag in the link you are using.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU HAVE ERROR IN YOUR XML SITEMAP?

This is actually pretty easy to do. Just signup at Google Webmaster Tools and register all your sites that have XML sitemaps. If they see an error they will mark it as a warning and even tell you what the problem is.

Once you have verified all your sites wait a couple of days and log in to see if you have any errors. If you see a warning beside any of the sites click on it and it will tell you the error if it is too many redirects start using the no follow tag on those links or remove the links from your sitemap.

If you would be interested in me making a video showing you how to set up your Google Account for sitemaps and how to fix some of the errors let me know by leaving a comment below.

Yes, you can actually have too little of both.

The question is what to do about it?

This really depends on what you are lacking time or money.

If you are short of time but have money then it simply takes outsourcing some of your work. There are a lot of online services that will do parts of your to do list for you, plus they can do the technical work that you don’t know how to do.

You can find services that will write custom programs for you, create your website for you, create custom graphics, handle your customer support, etc. The prices will vary quite a bit and I recommend that you use a service that puts the money in to an escrow account until the work is done.

Make sure when you do hire a free lancer either directly or from a service that you find out as much as you can about them. Ask for references, ask to see samples of their work and make sure they have done the type of work you are looking for. There are some people out there that will bid on everything but have no experience actually providing this service. You want to avoid these people.

That pretty much covers if you have more money then time but most people starting out are just the opposite, they have more time then money. I’m not going to lie to you this does make it harder and it takes longer to get established but you can succeed if you are diligent about your work ethics.

This does mean that you will have to learn how to do a lot of things for yourself. You will need to know how to maintain your own website, you will have to write your own sales copy, you will have to do basically everything yourself.

But don’t try to do it all at once. Pick one area that you need to get you to the next step and concentrate on that until you have it done. It doesn’t do you any good to learn about Adsense and SEO if you can’t put the code on your site or if you can’t create your own site.

What do you do if you have too little time and too little money?

There isn’t a lot you can do about this you need to have one or the other to make progress, there is no magic button you can push to be a success.

But, I do have one suggestion; form a Joint Venture (JV) partnership. Most people think of JV’s as just some one that will promote your product or site for you but this isn’t the case. A joint venture is any situation where two or more people work together for the benefit of all parties involved.

Let’s say you have some talent in creative writing, maybe (with a little studying) you could start writing sales pages, email, content for websites and even products themselves.

Another person has all the technical background to put the site up on the server and install the scripts and edit and maintain the site(s) but can’t write a word. Wouldn’t this make a good partnership?

This way you can get the technical skills you need and they can get the copy they need. Or you can go together on one site and split the profits 50 / 50

Where do you meet people like this? Good question. There are a number of places online that you can look for people like this such as www.linkedin.com but the very best place to meet people for any type of joint venture is at live events.

I have learned more from the people that I have met at seminars then I have from the presenters!

Yes, that is true and the reason why is that you see the presenters for a hour and a half and the people you meet you can have a relationship with for years. People that you have a relationship with will be more likely to help you then the guy standing on the stage.

If you get a chance to go to a live seminar GO! Don’t think about it! Just GO! Pay attention meet some people and open your mind and your heart to learning. No, I am not plugging a seminar here I am just tell you the way it is.

Michael Cheney is launching a new product called Start Your Profits Today. This is a step by step process that will take you from nothing to having a fully functional, high profit potential site.

I have watched the videos and he really does take you from nothing no site, no list, absolutely nothing to getting your own site up and running. If you have been struggling, trying to decide what to do to get started then this is an ideal product for you. It truly aimed at the beginner. Which is why I am posting it here at Starting Steps, this is a good way to get started.

When I saw the videos I thought to myself that there is some stuff that I can add to this product to make it worth much, much more.

I decided to provide this information as a bonus when any one purchased Start Your Profits Today through my affiliate link and I started making videos and one thing lead to another and all of the sudden I ended up with 18 videos that cover such topics as:

• Comment Spam
• Ping Spam
• Search Engine Optimization
• Widgets
• Plugins
• Etc.

My bonus actually became a product of its own and it was created specifically as a followup to Michael’s product. It is not something I just happen to have laying around. It was created just for this bonus but the information provide is so valuable this will be it’s own product in the future.

If you would like to know more about my bonus for Michael Cheney’s Start Your Profits Today go to the site I set up for the bonus at:

Start Your Profits Today Plus!

If you already have a blog up and running then Michael’s new product isn’t for you but my bonus just might be. My bonus will become a product of it’s own in the near future with a price of either $67 or $97 but for right now you can only get it as a bonus for purchasing Start Your Profits Today through my affiliate link.

A squeeze page is a page that is designed for only one purpose and that is to “squeeze” a person into signing up to your list, usually with the promise of something of value in exchange like information or a gift. I have also heard them call capture pages, fly catcher pages and opt in pages.

Now if you have been around for awhile you have probably heard a number of things about squeeze pages, like:

• Keep them short – you want it all to fit in above the fold (where you see it all without scrolling)
• Make sure you use audio on your squeeze page
• You must have video on your squeeze page
• You need to have custom graphics on your squeeze page.

I will cover all these things in a minute but first I will tell you the most important thing you need to remember for your squeeze page. The only option the reader of the page will have on your squeeze page is to sign up to your list. That’s it! Remember a squeeze page only has one purpose and that is to get people on your list.

Now about all the things I listed above that you might have heard in your marketing education, forget all of them.

Yes, that is right I said forget all of them.

As far as keeping short the entry page to my Marketing Beginners site is basically a squeeze page and it is anything but short. I average about a 26% conversion ratio with that page that means one out of every four people that come to the page sign up.

If you want to put video on your squeeze page then put video on your squeeze page but test it with and without the video to see which converts better.

If you want audio or custom graphics on your squeeze page then put them on but again test it without and see which does better for you.

Just because a 10 page sales letter works as a squeeze page for me doesn’t mean it will for you.

Just because video works for Marketer X doesn’t mean it will work for you.

Hopefully you are seeing what I am getting at, if you aren’t then here it is for you:

TEST, TEST, TEST

That’s right test everything. For a squeeze page it isn’t that hard to create an account with Google Adwords and set up the analytics so that you can see how many people are coming to your squeeze page, where they are coming from and how many signed up to your list.

Once you are in there you can actually set up your squeeze page with the website optimizer and you will be able to run tests with and without audio, video, graphics or you can test different copy and it will do the analysis for you. Yes, you can do all of this for free.

The proper layout for a squeeze page is what ever works the best for you after you have tested your options!

It is as simple as that.