January 4th, 2010 by admin
Blogging can be a lucrative source of income, and I hope to teach you how easy it is to set up and maintain your blog. Imagine getting paid to write about things that really interest you, whenever you want, wherever you are. For example, I’ll be leaving for my second home in Vermont October 1, but when I get back there, if it’s not raining, I will still be able to write about the topics my various blogs cover from the comfort of my deck while I enjoy the fall color of the trees on our property.
I love the flexibility blogging allows me to have. It makes it possible for me to just kick back, relax and go on a vacation whenever I would like to do so. You can enjoy it too!
In this article, I’m going to only hint about ways to make your blog profitable, and suggest how you can set up a blog of our own at no cost! Interested? Read on!
First, of course, you must create your blog. For this you have a couple of options. You can pay to host a blog with your own domain on your own website, or you can create a free blog. Let’s talk about the free blogs first. You can create your own free blog at www.blogger.com or at the newer (and in my opinion better!) www.wordpress.com. If you are at all more technically familiar with the internet, you will have heard of Wordpress, a free blog engine that is robust and infinitely expandable.
If your intent is to make money with your blog, I would recommend hosting it on your own web site with your own domain using the free WordPress software. In later posts, I will recommend a low cost hosting service and inexpensive ways to choose and secure a domain name.
Blogger.com is a blogging site actually owned by Google, so theoretically it will be detected on Google’s radar faster and you will be indexed faster. WordPress.com, however, is a relatively newer option so I have no comparison on the speed of getting indexed by search engines. However, I think WordPress is better because it has more advanced features such as Trackbacks and Categories. You can also manage your sidebar links more efficiently with plug-ins and widgets (more about this later).
Get a free blog at either Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. Then, familiarize yourself with the system you have chosen by making your first post to your blog and tinkering around with the options and templates.
Here are a few common “blog-related” words to help you understand what’s going on:
- Permalink – Permalink stands for permanent link, which is a URL (uniform resource locator) that leads to an individual post that you make in your blog.
- Trackback – When you post on your blog about a post on someone else’s blog, your post will show up in their “trackback” section. This feature, however, is not available with a Blogger.com account. Since links from outside are one things that determines your Google ranking, you want to have them.
- Pinging – Blogging seems to be paired with pinging almost every time either one is mentioned. Pinging is an action you can set up by which certain aggregators are notified whenever your blog is updated. Aggregators like pings because they enable them to keep their web sites current. Pings allow their web site to display the latest post to your blog. Pinging is a very important means of gaining traffic to your blog. We’ll discuss this and other traffic generating techniques in a later post.
I’ll stop for now so you can create and begin testing out your new blog and the features that it includes. In my next posts, I’ll discuss the many ways you can gain profit from your blog, as well as tips on writing posts that keep visitors interested and keep them coming back for more!
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January 4th, 2010 by admin
In the next several posts, I want to explain to you why I advise you to start your business using a WordPress blog. I will recommend that you innvest in what I feel are the best and most affordable tools and explain why you need to invest in very little else.
If you were just starting to think about creating an online business, I suspect you are feeling a little overwhelmed by the scope of the planning I suggested in the Business Planning articles. Please understand that I am trying t make you think before you dive into things.
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January 3rd, 2010 by admin
We’re back! I am so very happy to be back on my blogs. I must apologize for those of you who came back early in 2009 and found the rather abrupt notification that we were no longer publishing.
I won’t bore you with the details, but health issues including some painful knee surgery simply required me to FOCUS on my health. But I am back, and will be with a bang.
The subjects we can cover together on Internet Income Advisors You will help us all flourish at the tasks to which we have decided to commit ourselves. I hope you will join me here at IIA on a regular basis.
Please leave comments, suggestions, and especially questions. I will do my best to respond with useful information.
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December 8th, 2008 by admin
Writing a business plan allows you to create a road map for your journey to success. It helps you to develop your business goals and strategies and provides you with a better understanding of the marketplace. It highlights any business strengths or weaknesses that you may have, and provides you with an opportunity to take a close look at your competitors. If you want, you can also include financial projections, historical data and growth expectations in your business plan. Any good business plan should show who the target audience is and just how the product or service that is being provided will meet or exceed their needs and expectations.
When organizing a business plan it is best if you break it down into sections. For example:
- Business summary – A brief description of the product or service you want to provide.
- Market analysis – A summary of the research on the product or service and how/what your competitors are doing.
- Product positioning – An explanation of how you will make your product or service more desirable than your competitors’.
- Market strategy – A more detailed list of the things you are going to do to market your product or service.
- Customer analysis – A description of what your research has determined your customers want or need.
- Financial analysis – A well defined list of the money you must invest in order to start your business and especially what you will need to keep it going during at least the first three months.
- Overall business goals – What you hope to achieve in the first year. Include financial as well as unit sales goals.
It is very important that once your have developed a business plan you use it as a working plan. Refer to it regularly to remind yourself of your business’s destination. Don’t just stick it in the back of a desk drawer.
Don’t get too uptight about this important task. You can create a useful business plan. Just keep it simple but realistic. One or two pages should be all you need.
It is a simple fact of business life that a critical thing you must do when starting your online business is create a solid business plan and stick with it.
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December 7th, 2008 by admin
Why a Business Plan?
Yesterday, I beat you over the head with a post about beginning your business venture with a sound business plan. You may have been tempted to disagree or just ask, “Why?”
Not only is it important for you to have a plan when you begin your business. It’s equally important to have a yearly plan for your business so that you can see what progress you have made, what your needs for capital (read money) will be, and where you anticipate your money will be spent during the coming year. You need to show yourself, and if you borrowed money, your lender how far you have progressed since your original plan was written. Read the rest of this entry »
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December 6th, 2008 by admin
When you’re starting a business of your own it is both an exciting and challenging time. If you’re starting what’s called a “brick and mortar” business, you may need to take out a small business loan to cover the costs of leasing a space, advertising, employees, and insurance. Even if you’re starting an Internet business, you could still need a loan to cover products, shipping costs, employees, advertising, and other costs. Or . . . you could start an internet business for which someone else foots the bill for those expenses. In any case, the first few months can be a daunting process, but once your business is open and you begin to make a profit, you will see all of your hard work pay off. Read the rest of this entry »
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December 5th, 2008 by admin
All right! You have decided to start a home business. Good for you! A well conceived and well planned home business can provide you with much more financial freedom, in fact, much more freedom in general. Soon you will be able to say that you work from home and to be proud of it. You’re going to love working from home, so I’m very glad that you have decided to get started. Now you have one really BIG question. How in the world do I get started? One of the first and best steps you can take to generate home business ideas is to engage in a brainstorming session.
Among the best ways to generate ideas of any kind is to brainstorm what you want to do. Maybe you already have an idea for a home business, but you might be struggling with the details. Or, perhaps you only know that you want to have a home business, but you have no idea of what kind of business or how to go about starting one. Either way, brainstorming can be a really useful and productive way to get some ideas about how you can start..
GET READY!
Let’s get started. You need two primary things to get started. First, set aside lot’s of room to display your ideas as you generate them. Second, provide a very visible way to write your ideas down. I suggest a large pad of drawing paper, the kind that is used for flip charts in meetings or for children to draw on in primary school. You want something big so when you spread all you ideas around the room you will still be able to read them.
Whatever you sue to collect your ideas as they are generated, whether you are typing them on the computer, writing them on paper, or scribbling them on white dry erase boards, the point is that you have to be able to write down things in order to make decisions. Whatever you do, don’t try to do this all in your head.
GET SET!
Their is a reason it is called a brainSTORM. Storms are not controlled. They happen, usually in a rush of wind and water. You’re going to let your brain create a storm of ideas. Nobody in a storm says, “Oh, wait! That drop of rain, or that lightning strike was not good right then or right there.” In the same way, when you are brainstorming, you MUST let ideas come out in a rush of brilliant lightning flash thoughts or half-baked, tiny rain drop ideas. Make no judgments about any idea. Let every idea come out and record it.
GO!
First, look at the things you have done in your life and especially at the things have made you the most happy or satisfied. Make a list of the things that you do that you enjoy. Write them down! If you’re going to have a home business, you want to figure out a way to be happy with what you are doing. You want to be able to do something that you enjoy. A major reason to work from home is to take your own destiny into your own hands, so make your home business something that you enjoy doing each and every day.
the things you have done in your life and especially at the things have made you the most happy or satisfied
- Write down the things you have done in your life and especially at the things have made you the most happy or satisfied
- Write down things that you are good at.
- Write down what your skills are.
- Are they are planning or organizing?
- Are they writing or interpreting?
- What sets you apart from the other people out there?
- Of what are you most proud about yourself?
After you have written these things down, a pattern in your thoughts will begin to emerge.
In my next post, I’ll tell you how to use the ideas you have recorded to decide which of these home business ideas are useful and how to proceed from there.
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Hi there! I'm Jerry Nielsen. I've marketed online since 1992 when I put up a website for our 
