Now that you have decided on your blog name and niche, it’s time to start your blog! From here on out, I’ll only be covering blogging using the WordPress platform and will be targeted towards those who have paid hosting. Those who use free WordPress blogs will be severely limited to the customizations you can make on your blog, which is why I recommend investing in a domain and host.

For those who wish to take the free route, simply register for a blog on WordPress.com

For the masses who heed my advice, I recommend using Hostgator for hosting your blog and domain name. They have hosting plans that cost less than $5 a month. They currently have a 20% off special, so it’d be smart to take advantage of this. I also have two coupons you can use on any plan, d3so994off (get $9.94 off any hosting plan) and d3so25pctoff (get 25% off any hosting plan).

After ordering, wait for your confirmation e-mail which will contain your account information. Click the link to your control panel and enter the login information provided. I highly advise that you immediately change your password once you log in.

Next, scroll down to the software section and click on “Fantastico De Luxe”. With Fantastico you can easily install many different software or scripts one of them being WordPress. WordPress is located under the “Blogs” category. Select “New Installation”.

You can either install WordPress in the root directory of a domain or within subfolder. Leave the directory blank if you wish to install it in root which will make your blog address look like this, yourdomain.com. If you choose to install within a subfolder, the blog address will be similar to yourdomain.com/subfolder.

After that, you’ll need to choose an admin name and password to access the admin panel of your blog. Now, enter your blog name and below that it’s description. Click “Install WordPress”, then click “Finish Installation”. Finally, you’re blog is set up! The installation details should be sent to the e-mail address you provided on the install page.

Now, is the perfect time to tour around the admin panel and become familiar with the tools and where they’re located. In my next blog improvement post, I’ll show you some tweaks that you should apply to your blog.

Choosing the appropriate name for your blog is one of the most important aspects of starting your blog. It is what identifies your blog and differentiates it from others. Some thought must be taken into consideration when naming your blog. Just don’t give it a name because it sounds cool. Think about your readers as well. Unless of course this is a blog that’s not intended to be branded or marketed to the general public.

Domain name:

The name of your blog has to be identical to its domain name. If it isn’t this could cause confusion among your readers. It could also make it a bit difficult to find your blog online. For example, if you name your blog ‘make money online blog’ but your domain is bloggingtips.com, it wouldn’t seem right. This also wouldn’t give you any search engine optimization (SEO) points. I also see many people following the trend of registering their own name as a domain and try to make money online by claiming to be an expert. Also, consider keeping your domain short so that it can easily be remembered. I know it can be difficult to find an appropriate domain that isn’t registered, but take the time to search. It’ll be worth it in the end. Despite all of the new domain extensions coming out such as .me,.mobi, .etc, .com is still king in search engine rankings.

Does it describe your blog?

Your blog’s name should describe what your blog’s about in a nutshell. More people are likely to visit a photography tips blog called phototipsonline.com rather than sofakingcoolpictips.com, right? You can try to be edgy and creative but don’t over do it. If you want to play it safe, be literal and professional. After all, you’re competing with millions of other blogs out there.

How unique is your blog name?

Does the name of your blog sound similar to others? I’ve seen this done with the phrase ‘make money online’ since it’s a competitive keyphrase. Many try to put their own spin on the phrase but few find success. Would you visit a blog called make money online today or make money online with a 13 year-old? A niche that’s been quite good with being unique are photo upload sites. You have imageshack, photobucket, tinypic, and the most recent popular service Flickr.

I probably sound like a hypocrite considering the fact that my blog name doesn’t following any of these rules but I’ve managed to make it work through hard work. I wouldn’t recommend anyone doing the same. In fact, I believe having an odd domain name halted success. The upside about my domain is that it’s short and seemingly easy to remember. I hope this helps you decide what to name your blog. Choose a blog name that matches your domain and make sure it describes what your blog’s about. Some may think that naming a blog isn’t that big of a deal. But honestly, take the time to do so and you’ll gain an advantage over your competitors.

Many people don’t seem to stop and plan when first starting a blog. I didn’t but I should have. When I first set this blog up, I decided I was going to blog about anything I wanted whether it be about school, business, or hobbies. This blog ended up being a blog about blogging, making money blogging, and served as a review site for blogging and make money online resources & products. I should’ve stuck with what I intended this blog to be, a hobby blog, and created a new blog for my make money online ventures. It’s probably a little too late for that and now I want to help you avoid making mistakes that I’ve made.

Wait, don’t start a blog yet!

As years pass by, the blogging hype grows. I know you’re anxious to start a blog but before you do you need to plan first. First, you need to decide what your blog’s going to be about what you’re going to write about. Once you’ve decided, it’s important that you stick to what you intend your blog to be. Don’t turn personal blogs into business blogs and vice-versa. It’ll hurt your chance of building a strong readership. If you don’t care about building readers, disregard what I’ve said.

Are you blogging for the money?

Top bloggers I know have advised many times not to blog solely for money but for fun. That’s why it’s best to blog on something your passionate about. Don’t make money your primary goal, keep it at the bottom. Focus on delivering quality content, deliver content consistently, and focus on building a strong readership. In time, you’ll know when it’s time to make money but getting there depends on how hard you work on your blog. No one said it was easy, it just looks that way. Never expect any compensation from blogging or else you’ll end up being disappointed.

Which blogging service to use?

Paid or free? It depends. If you’re going use your blog as a journal, I recommend using a free service such as Blogger or WordPress. I suggest you use WordPress because most people use that platform (even I do) and it offers many different features. If you plan on buying hosting, you’ll end up using WordPress as well. If you plan on branding your blog, I recommend using a paid hosting service such as Hostgator (Get $9.94 off a Hosting Package with Coupon Code: d3so994off). Even if you plan to use a blog as a journal and want full customization options you should consider paid hosting as well, which is very affordable. Before you buy hosting, you should create a free blog first so you can become oriented to the interface. Test things out and create a few posts and once you feel confident in using the platform, sign up for hosting.

Last year, I learned a lot about running a blog. Small things can heavily impact a blog in either a positive or negative way. Decide what your blog is going be about and stick with it. Don’t expect to make any money blogging or you’ll lose interest fast. And use the appropriate service to host your blog. Take the time to plan and you’ll be glad you did.

I just wanted to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas! And if you don’t celebrate it, Happy Holidays! I hope everyone has a blessed one. I’m actually writing this post a couple of days before because I’m going out of town.

Let’s open the room for discussion. What was on your wish list? Want to see mine? Of course you do It’s in order of importance.

1. A make money online mentor- I can’t believe I’m actually having trouble with this. I find myself bouncing between developing sites and creating campaigns that I don’t build enough momentum to take off with projects. Having a job greatly affects this because I have less time. I’m specifically looking for someone who can consult me on creating effective campaigns. Hit me up if you know anyone or would help me out.



2. Money- I need some money to fuel number one on  my list. You can gift me this via Paypal: d3so@d3so.com



3. iPhone 4 32GB- Well, I didn’t really have a number 3 on the list but if there were anything else I wanted it would be a new iPhone 4 32gb. I’m dissatisfied with the used one I bought off Craigslist.

I’ll be extremely happy even if I receive only one of these. As for actual presents, I know that I’m getting a bunch of clothes, exciting!

Oh, if you’ve signed up for my newsletter, I sent a gift to you via email.

So, what was on your wish list and what did you get?

December so far has been an unproductive month. I’ve been busy with life and also lazy. There’s something about the holiday season that just makes me not want to do anything. I’m struggling just typing this post

Currently, I’m competing in the the Publisher Forums’ contest. There are 3 ways to win. You can either win by being a top poster (no spamming of course), being a quality poster, or a top referrer (minimum of 5 posts per lead to be valid). I’m pretty confident that I’m going to win something. They’re offering over $7,000 worth of prizes with a total of 55 prizes and 12 prize packages! I want to win cash more than any of the other prizes. So, here’s my offer. Be my referral and make 5 acceptable posts on the forum. If I win, I promise to reward those who helped me with free prizes!

Also, I finally got my hands on an iPhone 4 32GB. It seems that it wasn’t worth waiting for the white version. There’s also a bunch of rumors going around about a Verizon iPhone. I bought the phone off a local seller on Craigslist for $600. I question whether or not I made a good decision because the iPhone looks as if it’s been moderately used. The battery also seemed to be flawed since it drained even without use. Good thing the seller was willing to pay for the battery. Another downside is that I use T-Mobile. The phone is locked with version 4.2.1 and baseband 03.10.01. I’m patiently waiting for an unlock. For now, I’ll have to survive with my iPhone 3GS while I keep my $600 iPod at home. By the way, the retina display is amazing! I test drove one before at the Apple Store but you really don’t notice the complete difference until you own one.

This week, I received my license to become an official Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN). I made a subtle announcement on a previous post that I passed my state licensure exam. The next step is to find a place that I’ll enjoy working at. I currently work at a skilled nursing facility as a Nurse Assistant (CNA) and am reluctant to work their as an LVN. I want a change of environment and a different experience. Hopefully, I’ll find a place and position I’ll be satisfied with or maybe I’ll have no choice but to work at the same place.

I hope all of you are being more productive than I am. I have some review posts I still need to write so I guess that’ll keep my schedule full. Take advantage of the busy buying season! I have yet to ride that wave

If you’re a blogger, one of the most important things we overlook is the title of our posts. Our post title is a huge factor that determines where we’ll rank on search engines. Without the proper title, our post can be buried deep under many search results and can even wind up in the sandbox.

Simple Ways to Choose a Title:

1. Do research – Have others used that same title?
2. Target a specific keyword and include it in your title
3. Use Keyword Winner

What’s Keyword Winner?

Keyword Winner is a WordPress plugin that will make figuring out a post title easier for you. It’s generally simple to come up with post titles, but it’s harder to come up with a post title that will dominate search engine rankings. Keyword Winner is easy to use. All it takes is one click!

The installation is simple. You have to upload the plugin files and you have to change the permission settings of two files. After that, you activate the plugin and can start using it.

To start using Keyword Winner, you have to create a new post. Enter a keyword in the title box and click “Get suggestions” and it’ll get to work. You can get up to ten results with 3-4 keywords but long keyphrases only give one result.

From the list of results you’ll want to choose one that’s highlighted green, which indicates that it’s a low competition keyword (100,000 competing pages or lower!). Red means high competition (about 1,000,000+ pages) and Yellow is medium competition (between 100,000-1 million).

What I think of Keyword Winner:

I like the fact that Keyword Winner is simple to setup and use. It takes very little time to receive the keyword results and it has helped me gain more traffic to my blog through search engines. The plugin can use some improvements.  I noticed how the “Get suggestions” button is only available when you create a new post. I would like to be able to use Keyword Winner when editing a post that’s already published. Also, It takes awhile for me to find low competition results. I thought the plugin automatically tries to find low competition keywords, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I got this:

Instead of this (as advertised):

I don’t know what the deal is but I hope this gets fixed and release a new version of the plugin. Regardless, I still think Keyword Winner delivers overall. It takes away all the guessing and work involved to research keywords for your post title.

Currently, Keyword Winner is priced at $77 (for a single site license) and was normally $147. There’s no telling if the price is going to go up. If you has the slightest interest, I recommend you go on and buy it! You have 60 days to try it out, and if it isn’t what you intended, you can get a refund. If you do decide to keep it, I’ll give you $10 as a Thank you!

Pick up a copy of Keyword Winner today!

This blog has been up for two years but has been dormant for some time. This year, I thought I should try to bring this blog back to life, and it looks like I’m headed down a promising path. I would like to thank those who’ve supported me. This is an introductory post I wrote back in 2008. It’s surprising to see how much my life has changed throughout the years. I hope you enjoy it!

Hello there! I’m known as “d3so” (deso)(By the way, 3 is my favorite number). For some odd reason I don’t plan to reveal my real name but there are those who do know. The reason I chose “d3so” was because it’s fairly easy to remember and it was available as a domain name

I was born in Los Angeles, California. I currently reside in Southern California, Riverside County (I don’t plan to reveal my exact city of residence). I’m 18 years-old and I just graduated from high school, Class of 2008! I currently attend a local community college and plan to transfer to a UC where I plan to major in Radiology.
The main reason I plan on taking Radiology is to be financially stable/indepedent. I also plan to start my own retail clothing line in the distant future (A long time aspiration of mine).

I’ve always been fascinated by the internet. It influenced me into learning about web-design and graphic-design; this started when I was 12 years-old. For the first few years I created sites on free hosts such as Freewebs. Now, I can proudly say I own domains and sites, which include this blog. This is actually the second blog I’ve created. I failed with my first because I lacked the effort to produce unique and quality content. I was also slapped by Google for paid-blogging. Then I decided I wanted to start out fresh, which is why this blog was created. I’m positive this blog will grow to become successful.

My plans for this blog is to take my readers on a journey through my life, providing them with interesting and entertaining articles. And also information that will be essential and beneficial in the long run. In some way, I hope change the world for the better, if only a little. Hence, A Celebrity In The Making.

Here are a few quotes I live by:

Dream as if you’ll live forever; live as if you’ll die tomorrow.  -James Dean

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence. -Mark Twain

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. -Eleanor Roosevelt

Thanks for reading this mini-autobiography of mine, and I hope to see you around!

What did you think? Also, I would like to announce PPC Ian as the winner of last week’s giveaway. I’m surprised that no one else participated. Oh well, your loss!

One of my favorite aspects of blogging are contests. The reason why I love contests so much is because there’s opportunity to spread your brand/name and the chance to win prizes. The best part is that most contests are free to enter!

The current contest I’m in is being held by TechnShare.

It’s very easy to enter this contest. All you have to do is register and write a guest post on their blog and write a post on your blog promoting the contest. You can view the complete contest details below by clicking the links for more information. Also listed, are the contest sponsors and the prizes that are being given away.

Please support me by sharing & leaving a responsive comment on my post: Niche Selection: Your Passion or The Money?

Contest Sponsors

These are the Technshare Contest Sponsors, feel free to check them out, also check the Online Contest page for more information.

$100 SPONSORS

MyBlogGuest

$50 SPONSORS

• Technshare ~ Group blog about how to Make Money Blogging, how to blog and blogging for business.
• The Internet Time Miachine ~ Internet Marketing
• Now Relevant ~ Best new Search Engine
• Andrew ~ The Ultimate Blogging Guide
• Michael ~ Virtual Bookkeeping service Business
• Colleen ~ Kennewick Homes

Non Cash Sponsors

• 3 copies of Twitter Dummy
• 1 copy of Ultimate Blogging Theme
• 5 copies of Twitter marketing ebook
• 1 copy of Pliable Press WP Theme
• 3 copies of GabFireThemes WP Themes
• 2 copies of Mascot Design ~ LogoNerds
• 3 copies of SEO Revenge eBook
• 5 copies of Ramped Reviews
• 1 copy of Blog Post Engineering
• 2 month Pro Plan of Crazy Egg

I recommend that you join this contest. If you don’t want to, I could always use your support.

Comment on my entry post here: Niche Selection: Your Passion or The Money?

Thanks!

I wished that this was all a dream but sadly, it wasn’t.

On a Saturday afternoon, about 4:30-5:00 pm (PST), I was napping. I suddenly awoke to screams of distress from my family. I thought, “what the hell is going on? are we being robbed?!”. I walked outside to see the front of my car in flames with thick gray smoke being emitted from the hood of the car. My dad was fighting the fire with a hose. I then grabbed another hose to help out but it seemed to make things worse. We  immediately called 911 and the fire department arrived within 5 minutes. As they attempted to put out the fire, I stood there in disbelief. They couldn’t get the hood to open and had to saw it open.

About 10 minutes later, the  fire subsided. I was relieved but in shock; I still couldn’t believe it. The Fire Captain came up to us to get some information so that they could file a report. What’s interesting is that I had the alternator replaced on Wednesday this week because the car wouldn’t start. The fire could have been started by an electrical error, they said. Another possibility was a leak from a fuel injector. In the pic below you can see the alternator next to the fuel injectors.

After getting info, they informed us that the report will be done in a few days. Now, I’ll have to wait for the report to report to the insurance company. Hopefully, they’ll be generous. You’ll also find it funny that my insurance expires this month on the 14th. Below is the bill; I guess I don’t have to worry about paying it.

What’s also disheartening is the amount of money I spent on the car. The vehicle is a 95′ Pontiac Grand Am and I’ve had it for about two years. Within those two years the problems came one after the other. First, came the overheating issues which caused leaks. The problem was a damaged heater-core. Next, the ignition stopped working. I had to get that replaced along with the battery. After that, I had to get the air-conditioning fixed, since Summer time was coming along; living in a desert you can see how this can be a problem. The compressor had to be replaced which was very costly. Two months later, one of my tires went flat and I had to replace them all. The last repair was on Wednesday, September 8. My car wouldn’t start and I had to get it towed to a shop to have the alternator replaced. In the pic below, you can see all the bottles of water I kept from when my car was overheating, the old compressor on the left, the tire jack I used when I had a flat, and the green jumper cable I used back then when I had the ignition problem and recently when the alternator died.

See the photos in Full-Quality here.
Working part-time and earning a couple of dollars above minimum wage, car problems have eaten my bi-weekly checks and drained my bank account to a few hundred dollars. I’m positive it’ll all work out. I’m just glad this tragedy didn’t happen while I was driving or away from home. Life is worth more than anything in this world.

I still wish that this was all a dream but sadly, it wasn’t and I have to move forward.
Though, my family and I were unharmed physically, this has brought a financial burden to me especially.
I’m asking for your help. Please give what you can. I GREATLY APPRECIATE IT!
Thank you for taking the time to read this

There are many of us who don’t know how to design squeeze pages. We usually download templates or copy others’ squeeze pages. If you use WordPress, look no further. Unique Blog Designs, who brought you the Squeeze Theme, now have a new product called Squeeze Plugin.  With this plugin you can now create squeeze pages with ease.

You’ll be amazed at how simple it is to setup and publish a squeeze page. Squeeze Plugin utilizes widgets to design a squeeze page. The widgets consists of elements that are used in a squeeze page such as video, form, submit button, disclaimer, and more.  All you have to do is drag and drop the selected widget at the desired area on the design board. How the widgets are arranged on the design board is exactly how they’ll appear on the page (I wish web-design was this simple). You can also edit the size of the widget with your mouse. The best part about the plugin is that it works with all WordPress themes!

I’ve tested and used Squeeze Plugin myself and it’s definitely simple to setup and use. Just upload it like any other plugin and you’re set. There are also some aspects of it that are too simple that it needs to be improved. The buttons widget doesn’t utilize a button or image at all, just a text link.  The testimonial widget basically wraps your text with quotation marks and nothing more. The image widget should have the option to use an image from an external site and images that are already uploaded. I’ve also had trouble with the widget placements on the design board. I used a page with no sidebar but it seems that the widgets fail to utilize the free space. Also, some widgets would appear on the opposite side of the page rather than at its intended placement. Those are the only problems I’ve experienced so far. I’m sure these issues will be addressed and fixed since the current version of Squeeze Plugin is 1.0

The cost of Squeeze Plugin is only $97 considering the fact that a squeeze page made by a designer can cost up to $100. You can use Squeeze Plugin and an unlimited number of blogs and create an unlimited number of squeeze pages. When you purchase the plugin, you’re covered with a 30 day money back guarantee just in case you find that the plugin isn’t for you. I highly recommend this plugin if you’re the type that has trouble with squeeze pages; $97 is a small cost for convenience.

Get it now and setup squeeze pages in minutes!

Squeeze Plugin in Action: