Resources

Over the years I have developed a list of excellent resources and products I use.

I only recommend things I use myself. Let my trial and error experiences save you time and money!

1. Buy a domain name.
You do not have to have your hosting and domain names at the same place.

GoDaddy.com – World’s No.1 Domain Registrar

2. Web Hosting: I highly recommend HostGator. I have used them for over 5 years now and I am very happy with them. I am a reseller for their hosting ( for my own clients only) and have over 100 happy clients on HostGator hosting.

The customer service is amazing and 24/7, and very rare downtime. (This will happen to you no matter where you are hosted, it happens to everyone once in a while.)

Check out their offerings here.

3. Choose  a template.

WordPress Themes: StudioPress:

Best WordPress themes EVER. Seriously. Matt Mullenwag, who started WordPress endorses the amazing Brian Gardner’s StudioPress themes.

Learn more or buy them now here: StudioPress Themes

I almost exclusively design sites using these themes.

Visit my portfolio page to see what you can do with these themes.

There are thousands of FREE WordPress templates to choose from.
Here are just a few unique places to find some very creative themes.

The official site for WordPress themes is at WordPress itself.

Official WordPress Theme site

ezwpthemes.com
Some very creative and different looking themes can be found here.

wpthemesfree.com
There are some very cool themes here, but many of them include spammy links in the footer you cannot remove.
(or you can pay someone like me to remove them for you.) but the reason these fancy themes are free is the creator
are trying to make money through those links.

High Quality Photos: –istock is a good place to buy high quality images for using on the web.
They have taken over a few other stock photo companies online and they are huge.
It only costs $1-4 dollars per image depending on the size you need and well worth it for the quality of the images.  You can use these for your printing, logos, websites, brochures and anything you need an image for.

4. Posting. You will want to post at least once a week to keep your new blogsite active and get some traffic in the search engines. The average length of blog articles is only 250-300 words. People like shorter lengths.
So break up a long article into small chunks.

5. Ways to get some traffic. This is Web-speak for getting readers.

A. Technorati and Blog Catalog.
Both of these are free to list in and you will list yourself by subject or topic

B. Links from other blogs. Technorati rates on “authority”—which is the number of links your blog has. Google assigns “authority” based on relevant links you have from other websites, sites you link to are not as important when ranking your website/blog.
The highest ranking links you can get are .edu or .gov.

C. Press Releases:
You can create your own free press releases here: http://www.prlog.org/

D. Get out in the blog world and post on other blogs and Web sites.
Take part in the dialog, always with a link back to your blog. This is key.

E. Put good keywords on your posts. These will be picked up by Google and other search engines.

F. Communicate with readers. Answer e-mail from readers. I have a separate e-mail account for this.

G. 4 out of 10 people now read blogs. With proper key words and links, people will find your blog when searching on Google.

H. Watch your stats. Learn who and where your readers are coming from.
There are many good stat programs you can add to your blog.

Sitemeter

Google Analytics

Plugins you can install on your blog:

Counterizeii

Wassup

StatCounter provides free customisable hit counters, visitor tracking, web analytics and website stats for WordPress.org (I pay for the hosting). You simply need to:

I. Making money with a blog. There are many ways to do this. You can become an affiliate with places like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Overstock.com and Netflix, you
add your affiliate links and codes to your site and when someone clicks your link and buys, you get a %.

J. Adsense ads or other ad networks. Once you start getting traffic, you may want to add some ads on your site and make some money that way. It is free to join various ad networks and they will give you the html code you need to ad the ads to your blog website. This is also known as PPC, or Pay per Click.

K. Sell things on your site: You can sell anything on your site, ebooks, eguides, products, you can create products and open a free store at CafePress or Zazzle and link your store to your blogsite.

These are just a few ideas and basics to help you started. Whether you are blogging for fun or profit, just stick with it and you will see results. Getting started is half the battle. To learn more and watch How to Blog for beginners, visit me at http://wordpresscentral.org

Your email list is your GOLD online.

Email Programs: I use aWeber.

Why? For several reasons but a big one for me is they just rolled out a WordPress plugin that makes adding any newletter/email list sign up to your WordPress site a snap.
Also you can design a nice look in the panel in aWeber.
You can see what I did with it here in action on one of my WordPress sites.

It is on the sidebar, using the new aWeber widget. Super easy and fast. No more messy huge sign ups or redoing code that breaks your site!

I also really like the back end layout and ease of use with them. I find their set up intuitive and easy to navigate.
For me it was very frustrating when I was getting started and trying to learn how to set all these things up. I look for the most “user friendly” interfaces when I select programs and products.

I recommend to my clients that they try to sign up for multiple free trials and see which one feels the best for them. (if you have the time, or just take my recommendation and sign up for aWeber now!)

Here some links to the other top email programs out there for you to select from.

ConstantContact: This link is for a free 60 day trial.

icontact:

InfusionSoft: Many of the big Internet Marketers use InfusionSoft.
They offer much more then just email. They will run an affiliate program for you, and have a great shopping cart set up and much more.
Check them out here-InfusionSoft..

Some other tools I cannot live without are :

ColorPic: Ever wonder what the hex code is for web colors?
this FREE tool is easy to use and super helpful if you ever need to need color codes online.
Safe and free download on their website here.

Snagit by Techsmith: You can resize images, capture images, add call outs and
text boxes,  create slides for PowerPoint and so much more.
I use this at least 50 times a day. I could not live without it.

Here is a free 30 day trial link.

Camtasia by Techsmith:Video Software: I use this for all my longer videos and when I want to add an intro and logo and watermark. This program is amazing.

Most of the instructional videos you see on the web are created with Camtasia.
Here is a free 30 day download for PC users
Free 30 day trial for Mac users.

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I used to clean spyware off computers in the early 2000’s, ( not a fun job), so I know what works.

Avast is FREE, (they have a paid version too.) and I have been using it on six computers over 12 years now. It is the best. If you use the free version you have to keep reregisitering every 6-8 months. They give you a little alert when it is time. Or pay the small price and use it forever.

It is the best.

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