I showed up at the rehearsal with my guitar and rig. My rig consists of my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, my Line6 PODxt, and my Shure58 Beta microphone. My guitar is a 1997 Les Paul Studio. My purpose in being here is to audition to play with a band in need of a temporary guitar player who was in an accident. I am a hired gun.

As I set up and we get ready to play, one of the band members looks at me and asks “dude why doesn’t your guitar have strings?”

Could you imagine if that really happened? Do you think I would get many gigs if I did that?

The fact is you may be guilty of this with your web business. Let’s take the freelance entrepreneur as an example. He may have some knowhow and some ambition but does he have the tools to do the best job possible?

Yes the tools for the Freelancer and his gigs are as important as all the things I mentioned above for a guitar player trying to get some jobs with a band.

Now there are many tools out there. So part of your job is knowing what tools you need. Then it is a matter of getting them and using them properly.

Naturally there is quite a diversity in freelancing so obviously the list of tools is not an exact science and yet there is a general direction in which to head. Just like a keyboard player would not bring exactly the same items as a guitar player. And yet the principle is the same. And as you can see we are breaking it down into a couple parts to cover the basic concept.

So let us throw out a few examples. Let’s say you are a freelance web designer or developer. What’s in your toolbox?

Most likely you are armed with some education and experience. You undoubtedly have created or use a publishing platform. You perhaps are versed in computer language and coding. For example you could have the use of HTML down. You would benefit from any number of software items as well.

You could also make wise use of a variety of plug ins and add ons. Things like macro media flash players for example. This would include graphic tools and applications. You should have a variety of colors and fonts to choose from and use.

Have you ever heard of web design tools like “Fireworks”, “Dream Weaver”, “Adobe Photoshop”, “Panic Coda”, or “Firebug”? Do you know and use “Accessibility tools”? Do you know and use “color tools” and “Cascading Style Sheet tools”? How about “Validating tools” or “Informational Architectural tools”?

How about tools related to linking? What about the use of any of a number of miscellaneous tools that could be classified outside of the categories above. Like an SEO Analysis tool for example?

What if you are a just a freelance artist? Things like Photoshop, or any number of graphic tools would be a must. Good scanning ability would be just the beginning for you. And of course you have many direct illustrating tools available. Yes you can draw on a device that immediately displays your art work on your screen. You thus can skip the scanning phase if you can master the art utensil directly connected to your desk top.

Illustration and art is often linked with skills like animation and other high end graphics. All of which has a market rich with software and accessories to do your thing. Do you have those tools if you perform such services and skills?

Of course we can include freelance jobs like photography, video, and audio specialists in the mix also. These jobs also have some awesome tools at your ready. Along with tools like Photoshop and other magnificent photo programs you have a amazing editing tools for pictures, video, and audio. And so on.

If you are a game designer, a straight up video, or audio producer there is a software “buffet” out there. In a related area this is great news for musicians and recording engineers trying to freelance their skills in the recording business. Just look up a program called Pro Tools. Many if not most professional studios are equipped with this software and the additional tools that go with it.

The intriguing thing in the freelance world is, another valuable tool is one another. Yes often times freelancers are profited and benefited by one another.

Take for example our first example of a web designer. It is not uncommon for a web designer to seek out the assistance of illustrators or photographers. Or perhaps they need some music or video they want to add. You get how this works now? .

As we pointed out this is just part of the freelance world. We can revisit this some more in a future discussion. On the meantime get busy!

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In the Bible book of James, some practical advice is found that is truly applicable in all areas of life. Oh, you can all relax. I am not leading us in a spiritual conversation here. However, it is very interesting how he drives home his point.

In the 1st chapter at verse 22 he makes a statement at the beginning of that verse that is the nucleus of what we are going to discuss today. He writes “However, become doers of the word, and not hearers only …” Now like I said we are going to take this principle and apply it in a secular fashion not a spiritual application. We are going to apply it to our Internet business of affiliate marketing.

The point here is that we can know something but that is a far cry from doing it. In fact James gives us a brilliant illustration to make his point. He basically says that anyone who is a hearer only is like a man who looks at his face in the mirror and then goes off and immediately forgets what he just saw.

So picture a man getting ready for work. After he shaves, he washes his face and gets dressed and then goes to a mirror to straighten his tie and then takes one last look at himself before he leaves for work. As he is fixing his tie he notices a random patch of hair he missed while shaving. He takes a brief second and acknowledges to himself internally “what the heck is that?” But instead of taking care of it he simply shrugs his shoulders and wonders off and by the time he gets into his car he totally forgets about the noticeably unattractive hair patch. You can imagine where all of that may lead, can’t you?

The lesson here is that Internet applications need our attention. We can’t just sleep walk our way through our efforts nor can we ignore what we need to do to fix something or change something. The key, in fact, is sitting down and working out a strategy and moving methodically and systematically at accomplishing our goals. So let’s start with where to begin. We will start with affiliate marketing and where to begin.

Keeping in mind there are various aspects of affiliate marketing we are going to approach this from the cattle driver angle. A main ingredient of affiliate marketing is using a web site to drive traffic (the masses, the cattle) to a main or primary web page. They are the cattle drivers, as I call them. Let’s assume that you want to be a cattle driver.

Now for more details of affiliate marketing and the different facets, feel free to research our archives and stay tuned for more articles about affiliate marketing. But for now let’s get back to the business of using our site to drive traffic to our affiliates. The concept here is very simple.

First you have a company with the primary web site. Said company engages in standard marketing procedures. Naturally among those marketing practices is the gathering of affiliates that will use their site to convince people to come to said company’s site. Yes companies pay for people to use their web page to advertise the primary company site and send people to the primary company web site.

The web site that is used to drive customers to the “brand” site can be strictly used for marketing purposes or it may be a site that features a purpose of its own and has advertisements for the affiliate site or sites featured on it. It doesn’t matter all that much in the end what your sites primary purpose is. Nevertheless the affiliate will compensate you for sending business their way based on performance numbers, regardless of what your “other” business is.

For example, you may have a site that you use to sell handmade bed comforters. On your site you have an eye catching and impelling ad for a mattress company and there web page. As long as you send customers to them, they are not concerned with how many comforters you sell or even what your comforters look like. Following me?

Finding affiliates is the secret. It is a matter of seeking them out on your own or contacting them through affiliate programs, networks, and directories. Obviously this would be part of the starting up or beginning phase. Take your time and select affiliates that are credible, successful, and someone you see yourself using or may already use.

This may include you running classified ads announcing that your site has room for affiliate advertising. You may also find success at placing feelers out on Internet business forums. It could be as simple as asking around via the net or your circle of friends in the secular world.

Also part of your beginning an affiliation will include getting familiar with the various forms of compensation methods in affiliation marketing. You may ask yourself do I prefer a certain arrangement over another. Do the different methods matter?

Equally as important is what type of affiliates should you procure for yourself or mesh with? Remember the compensation is mainly weighted on success. In other words the more traffic and customers you send to your affiliates the more potential for income. So you do not want to link yourself with “dead wood” so to speak. That means you have more homework to do. What do you know about a prospective affiliate? How well do they market themselves?

An important factor may be what your site is all about. Is there a natural relevance connecting your site and theirs? Relevance is big on the Internet and in advertising. Another item to consider is your passion or personal interest in what potential affiliates have to offer. Can I get behind my affiliates and thus make a more persuasive pitch on their behalf? Remember you want people to go to their site. If the cattle don’t head in their direction, than your ad and your assistance is not working for them or you.

At the end of the day have you been a hearer or a doer? Hey it all starts with learning, planning and then ultimately the doing!

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Why not start your own blog? Do you have a passion, a love, a hobby, or do you just love to share your opinion and have your voice heard? Then you are a blogging fool at heart.

Okay quick review here, we are talking about setting up your own site devoted to your voice on a topic or a series of topics. It can be about your fandom of an entertainer, an athlete, or a politician. Maybe it will be your favorite sport or sports team? Maybe you have informative material to share? Recipe’s, locations of wonderful places to go, how to fix things, build things, or how to whatever.

Maybe you want to discuss more serious matters like politics, religion, relationships, or whatever. And we all know there is plenty of whatever in this world.

But where do you start? Before we get into that let me remind you that for more blogging related discussions feel free to browse our archives and of course continue to check back and review the upcoming articles on blogging and other Internet ventures that may catch your fancy.

Let’s get to-bloggin’!

Where and how to start blogging? The first agenda is by default a systematic decision you need to make. What is my theme or topic? And no it does not have to be limited to one topic. Although a blog page is usually dedicated to one central theme. But there are ways around that.

You have some options. Are you writing about your favorite music artist? Is it me? (I had to ask) Anyway let’s assume you are blogging about Elvis. Although your central theme is Elvis you could easily expand your blog to discuss music industry topics. Another example may be you are blogging about your favorite MLB team. Maybe it is the Philadelphia Phillies or the world renowned New York Yankees. Here again even with your main focus centering on that team you can easily incorporate related baseball topics, perhaps about the league or the game of baseball itself and the rich history. I think you get the basic point.

Now in the case you may want to voice your thoughts about baseball, music, and life as shepherd all at the same time, you may consider managing multiple blog pages. For now let’s stick with one.

Okay, you decided to blog about blogging. You clever sun of a gun you. Now what? Web page time. You have options here and I know you love options.

In a nutshell though you have 2 main options:
You can design your own page and pay for host space or for the services of a host provider.
This option gives you more control and a higher ceiling of advertising revenue potential.
Second option is using a free guest host service; there are plenty of them. You can even set up a social profile on a social web site, ala Facebook or Myspace and blog there, which would also allow the option of blogging about whatever pops into your noggin’. I call that bloggin’ from your noggin’. Of course there is a 2nd option part B of sorts. You can combine the more independent route and still use a guest host. I see a need for another discussion on hosting in our future.

Anyhow, you chose your primary theme of blogging and you decided to manage your own web page. You go! Now you need a domain name. This can be done through various domain name providers at a nominal cost. You call your web site HowToFlippin’Blog.com. Hey that’s the name you wanted! Actually we will discuss the value of domain names in a future discussion also.

Okay review time again.Topic of blog? = Blogging.
Type of web page? = Professional host service.
Domain name? = HowToFlippin’Blog.com.

At this point we are going to assume that you have taken care of the design elements of your web page. Whether you did it yourself or you paid for a web design service, your site is up and you’re ready to go.

That’s it? NO that is most definitely not it! But it is a start, which is where it all begins. Just like sledding as a youngster, you have to get on the sled first. “Yeah but” you’re thinking “isn’t it all downhill from there?” you ask. Yes it is, only in this case that’s a good thing. That is the objective of sledding isn’t it?

Now that you’re in business with your blog, it’s time to blog. In order to be successful with your blog page there is a number of things you will need to learn and/or do. These are things we will also discuss over time.

But for now get your thinking cap on and get the ball rolling, get on the sled and get ready to start to-bloggin’!

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James Taylor, a once famous American music artist once sang “ain’t it good to know, you’ve got a friend”. And of course we all have heard the famous lyrics from the Beatles and sung by John Lennon “I get by with a little help from my friends”.

In fact we all may recall the famous Latin Proverb, because I know how much all of you keep up with your Latin Proverbs, “A friend in need is a friend indeed”. And so true that is in the world of business, and it rings loud and clear when we are discussing Internet Business.

So that brings us right into our discussion of Affiliate Marketing. Basically put and defined affiliate marketing is promoting the goods, services, or content of another web site on or from your web site. This can be done in a few different ways. Let’s dissect a few.

1. You have a web page for products, services, information, or for blogging.
2. You may place an ad banner directing your visitors to the affiliate site or sites
3. You may make reference to your affiliate or affiliates in your content
4. Your information blog may be a blog where you present articles cleverly advertising or making reference to your affiliates or affiliate friends and their services or products. For example you may write an article about a certain product and how marvelous it is and professionally suggest that they visit “so and so” at www.soandso.com to get the lowdown.
5. You may have an area on your site that provides a short list of self explanatory links for your visitors to choose from. Or you may present it in a directory form or by category to give them a clear idea of why they may want or should to go to that site.

Now while these are common ways to send traffic to your on line partners practically speaking, you may use any effective method you can conjure up to get people to notice on your site and to be motivated to give a gander at your affiliates site.

A couple things here to consider. Some Spanish novelist most of us never heard of once said “Tell me what company thou keepst, and I’ll tell thee what thou art.” You have most likely probably heard the English version that says “A man is known by the company he keeps”.

Here’s the deal, this applies in affiliate marketing and business in general because nothing is more productive than word of mouth referrals. And your online content or web presentation is an extension of your mouth, but why would you do this for someone?

Well we are talking about a business here aren’t we? This is how it works for you and for your compadre. You are basically in the paid referral business. Upon taking any of the above outlined actions from the examples given here, are going to send your readers to “so and so” and those responding to your invitation are going to electronically tell your affiliates that “Charlie (that’s you) sent them” . Yes when they click on any form of ad or link you provide your affiliate will know who brought them to their site.

So then, as people visit there site you will receive a pay per click fee for either sending them or for sending them over and they purchased something or did some kind of business transaction because you sent them there. Maybe you got someone to use a service or subscribe to a their site is another example. Obviously you have negotiated these arrangements prior to doing any business.

You also have the option of negotiating a sponsorship style fee. For instance “so and so” will pay you $XX.00 per month or per year for an ad banner on your site regardless of whether 10,000 people are sent to their site or 10,000,000 visitors are sent to their site.

So then all of this naturally suggests that you need to have a working knowledge of how to set this up and how it works from a logistical standpoint. Meaning you have to know how to get ad banners on your site, how to make links available, what type of affiliates and how many you should procure?

As far as the skills required for being successful at affiliation, you will have to at least have been educated in the pay per click marketing area, some web design as related to web marketing, how to market your own web page, sales copy writing, and perhaps some creative sales writing area.

“Why do I need to market my own site?” you ask. Well if you asked that question than you have not quite grasped the concept of how the Internet business works and how affiliate marketing will make you money. That does not mean you’re stupid by any means, I am simply demonstrating to you that ‘you gots sum learnin’ to do’. You see the more people you get to your site the more people you will get to your affiliates site.

Now to hit this baby out of the park let’s go full circle in this discussion. Samuel Johnston, whoever the heck he was, once said “True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth and choice.” You got to give the man his props for making this profound point. He is right, you do not want to overload your page with too many choices and you want valuable prime choices. Keep your affiliates relevant as much as it is humanly possible. For example if you have a blog about a Major League Baseball franchise you may want to get sports relevant affiliates. For example a site that sells tickets to baseball games, baseball hats, or baseball equipment and so on would be complimentary and enticing options. But you can use your creativity a little by perhaps making an affiliate pact with a company that has sponsorship with the team or teams you write about. It is highly probable that they have a web site to send people to. And their link to the team makes them relevant.

And finally not to be lost in this equation is the fact that you can make use of affiliate marketing to market your site. You don’t have to be the director of traffic you may be the beneficiary of the fruits of someone else’s marketing in your behalf. In this scenario you thus become the one paying out the “delivery of a customer” or referral fee but you should also in turn increase your traffic exponentially and likely earn higher profits as a result.

Affiliate Marketing, is it for you? Can it be? Do you see yourself putting in the work to get it done and make some cash? Or can you delegate and manage others to do this for you and supervise the needed work to assure it is to be done?

If so maybe you will be singing “I get by with a little help from my friends”.

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“That’s easier said than done” or “It looks easier than it is” are phrases we often encounter in our life. And there are lessons to be learned and a reality to be accepted behind the thrust of what these expressions mean. Absorbing this information and taking action is where you need to roll up your sleeves and get down and dirty in doing instead of just thinking.

We are going to apply this in our Internet marketing. Just to set this up, we need to clarify where we are going to aim our focus. This article is eying the affiliate marketing approach. Keeping in mind that affiliate marketing can cover a somewhat broad spectrum of applications, we are not going to get into any specific forms of affiliate marketing but more of a valuable option to improve all areas of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is basically a partnership, an ‘I scratch your back and you scratch mine’ mentality. In a business model you basically are involving these 4 “players” on the team: The Merchant, a Network, a Publisher, and a Consumer. And like we acknowledged before there are various directions this can take, but stick with me on this one.

The underlying fact is that in the physical world and on the World Wide Web, this marketing plan will succeed. Participants who understand the concept and the nuances of affiliate marketing will make money. However remember our opening comments, “That’s easier said than done” and “It looks easier than it is”?

This is where the cheese hits the bun on our discussion. Are you new to the Internet biz or perhaps a very frustrated Internet marketer? The odds are that your frustration is due to a lack of understanding. And if you’re new, well then you are probably in the dark at this point. What should or could you do about it?

Thankfully for you and the rest of us in your shoes there are marketing savvy people who have drawn up a blueprint for us. Yes, there are educational courses we can take. You have all heard the term, business 101, haven’t you? That’s an old inference to the fact that higher learning centers have business courses for people to learn about owning and operating a business.

Quite predictably as the Internet has blossomed and Internet business has become mainstream, the same education options have cropped up all over for the Internet business person. These courses are not just on line either. Many schools offer Internet business courses. Naturally than you can find quality courses concerning affiliate marketing and related elements either in an accredited school or an on line course that will enhance your affiliate team.

Why not speed up the learning curve if you can? A good affiliate course will take you from the choosing the product aspect to the building a network facet to how to build traffic and/or pass it on to an affiliate merchant or how to present a web page for superlative SEO. And more!

“I need a course for that?” you ask. Indeed, you most likely do. Reports indicate that up to 90% of on line marketers fail or under perform in terms of making money. What does this tell you? That is screaming out “that it is easier said than done” or “It looks easier than it is”, is what it tells you.

And before someone says, “well maybe it is telling you that the Internet business is overrated”, you need to explain how the other 10% are doing very well. The plain and simple is that the majority of successful marketers have learned by education or some by trial and error. That leaves a small space for the ones who got it to work by accident basically. But I think we all agree that is highly unlikely and not a good game plan.

Regardless of your computer I.Q or your raw ability to learn on the fly, why not at least entertain and explore the idea of letting successful people teach you the ins and outs of affiliate marketing?

Like the old Alka – Seltzer ad used to say, “Try it you’ll like it”.

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Let’s continue from our previous post, where we…

1. Activated the “Akismet” plugin.
2. Installed the “ All in One Seo Pack” plugin.
3. Converted the url’s of our blog into search engine friendly url’s.

Our next plugin is “Google Analyticator”

From the Google Analyticator website:
Google Analyticator easily adds Google Analytics tracking support to a WordPress-powered blog. Google Analyticator also comes with an easily customizable widget that can be used to display specific information that is gathered by Google Analytics using the Google Analytics API. It supports all of the tracking mechanisms that Google Analytics supports such as external link tracking, download tracking, tracking without counting administrative users, and any other advanced tracking the user wishes to add. Google Analyticator works with a majority of themes as long as these themes provide the proper plugin hooks.

Please note that that you will need to have the following to apply all our steps to your own blog:

• Google account: https://www.google.com/accounts/
• Google Analytics account: http://www.google.com/analytics/
• Google Adsense account: https://www.google.com/adsense/

If you have the above, please continue:

1. Go to the dashboard of your blog. Install and enable the “Google Analyticator” plugin (You can refer to this post if you forgot how to install a plugin).
2. “Dashboard=>Settings=>Google Analytics”
3. Enable logging for Google Analytics
4. Fill in or edit all the information appropriately. Some fields come with a default value, which most of the times you won’t need to change; also every field has an explanation next to it.
5. Click on “Save Changes”.

Our next plugin is “Google XML Sitemaps”

From the Google XML Sitemaps plugin website:
This plugin generates a XML compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.
Note: The XML-Sitemap format was introduced in 2005 by Google and adopted in 2006 by YAHOO, MSN Search and Ask.com so that’s why it’s often called “Google Sitemaps”.

Plugin Installation:

1. Go to the dashboard of your blog. Install and enable the “Google XML Sitemaps” plugin (You can refer to this post if you forgot how to install a plugin).
2. “Dashboard=>Settings=>XML-Sitemap”
3. Fill in or edit all the information appropriately. Some fields come with a default value, which in most of the times you won’t need to change; also every field has an explanation next to it. It is also good to get the YAHOO API key in order to notify yahoo of the changes we make on our blogs.
4. Click on “Update Options”.
5. On the top part of the same page, click on build/rebuild the sitemap.
6. Done

There are many more plugins that we could install at this stage, but we will wait to pick the plugin that we want to install as the time passes and the plugin features become more essential to our blogs. Our choice will be based on factors like, theme design, functionality and security among others.

In the next post of this series we are going to work with the design of our website, in other words we are going to make it nice-looking for our readers and match the subject of our blogs.

Stay tuned for the next steps to create your first online business and make money with it.

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This time we are going to work with the plugins for our blog.
When you first visit the plugin section of your dashboard you will notice that there are two plugins already installed: ‘Hello Dolly’ and ‘Akismet’. There is also a short description next to them.
For now we are going to activate only Akismet.

Extract from Akismet.com: Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.

To enable Akismet, click on “Activate” located on the right, next to its description.
We now need to get an API key from wordpress.com for our blog.

1. Go to wordpress.com and create an account.
2. Login to your wordpress.com account and click on “My Account => Edit Profile” (located on the top left corner). There you will see the wordpress.com API key you need for your blog.
3. Copy the key and come back to your blog dashboard.
4. Make sure you are at the “Akismet Configuration page” of your dashboard.
5. Paste the API key in the field provided.
6. Select “Automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month.”
7. Click on “Update options”
8. Done! We are now protected against spam.

 

The next thing we are going to do is make our blog search engine friendly; some webmasters call this work, search engine optimization or seo.
Let’s do some seo work!
To make our blog search engine friendly, we want to change the way the urls of our blog are displayed in the browser.

We don’t want to have http://www.bevyhost.com/?p=1152 when we can have http://www.bevyhost.com/creating-your-first-online-business/
Also, for personal taste, we prefer to include the www at the beginning of our urls.

To have the urls of your blog like this:

1. Go to your blog “Dashboard=>Settings=>General”
2. Fill in your WordPress address (URL) including the www. So it looks like http://www.bevyhost.com but with your own domain.
3. Fill in your Blog address (URL) including the www. So it looks like http://www.bevyhost.com but with your own domain. Now that you are at this window, it would be a good time to update your blog by filling all the fields in this window accordingly. Every field has its own description next to it.
4. Click on “Save Changes”.
5. Go to “Dashboard=>Settings=>Permalinks”
6. Select “Custom Structure” and write “/%postname%/” without the “”
7. Click on “Save Changes”.

Now let’s install some basic plugins on our blog:
There are two options to install a plugin in from WordPress 2.7 onwards directly from your dashboard.

First option

1. Go to “Dashboard=>Settings=>Plugins=>Add New”.
2. Fill in the search term you want to use and click “Search”.
3. Look for the plugin you want to install and click on “Install”.
4. Go to “Dashboard=>Settings=>Plugins” and click on “Activate”

Second Option

1. Go to “Dashboard=>Settings=>Plugins=>Add New”.
2. Click on “Browse” and look for the plugin as a zip file on your computer.
3. Click on “Install Now”.
4. Go to “Dashboard=>Settings=>Plugins” and click on “Activate”

You can also install a plugin for your blog via FTP (file transfer protocol).

1. Using a FTP program, upload the plugin folder (including its content) that you want to install to the plugin directory of your blog. Usually found on /public_html/wp-content/plugins/
2. Go to “Dashboard=>Settings=>Plugins” and click on “Activate”

There are some other options to install a plugin in your wordpress blog, but we won’t cover them for now.
We also want to make a good use of the title, description and keywords on our blog. For that we are going to install a plugin. This plugin is called “All in One SEO Pack”

Extract from the All in One SEO Pack website: This plugin is streamlined for some best practices for Wordpress SEO. While it gives you many options the defaults reflect the settings I recommend using.

Installing the “All in One SEO Pack” plugin

1. To install this plugin just follow one of the installation steps described above. If you are going to use the first option (installation from the dashboard) write the search term “All in One SEO Pack” and the plugin will appear as one of the first results for your query.
2. Click on “Install”.
3. Go to “Dashboard=>Settings=>Plugins” and next to the “All in One SEO Pack” click on “Activate”

Now we need to customize the All in One SEO Pack plugin

1. Go to “Dashboard=>Settings=>All in One SEO” and fill in the information about your blog accordingly. Note that some information is already filled by default. Change that filled information only if you know what you are doing.
2. Click on Update Options
3. Done

In the next post we are going to install a few more plugins.
Stay tuned for the next steps to create your first online business and make money with it.

This is a post from the " Creating your first online business " series of articles.

Other posts from this series:

• Creating your first online business #1
• Creating your first online business #2
• Creating your first online business #4

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Ever been to a sensational party? Maybe it was simple or perhaps it was a bit exotic. Chances are everything went smooth and things were kept lively. Face it, much of that took planning and a good host.

And maybe you were part of the planning committee or contributed ideas and resources to the preparation, but in the end you knew you couldn’t pull it off yourself or with a bunch of random friends. So you solicited the help of someone who knows how to host a good party.

I am here to tell you that you need to borrow a page from that concept and approach in your on-line business. Having a web page is more than design and development, graphics and content, or marketing. Of course all of those things have a vital place in the process. However there is a fundamental practical and logistical aspect you need to square away. Who is hosting your site?

What is a web host? Basically it is an Internet support company that provides space on a server that they operate and in turn provide and perhaps manage that space for you. True some web masters can provide this for themselves but that is usually the exception and not the rule. That is because most people do not have the resources to own or lease the level of equipment needed. The average office and home PC is not going to be dedicated for that purpose. Again, it most certainly can be done but it is very easy to allow someone else to worry about the details and logistics of what goes into web hosting.

A prime example of a web host is the now famous social web hosts like Myspace or Facebook. You can subscribe to them for free. They have a generic template set up for anyone who logs on that allows you to set up your own web page. That is just one example of course. There are more business oriented options for you out there. Finding them is not difficult at all.

There are some items you need to understand though before you choose a web hosting service. And money should not be the only factor. Although weighing the cost is a factor, you want to consider value over cost.

For starters you need to purchase a domain name. That is a name for your site that becomes exclusively owned by you. For example, this site, bevyhost.com is registered under the domain name of bevyhost.com. That means no one else can title their site that. Note however the Domain world has grown immensely. So you need to learn that there are different Domain options other than .com. There are .net, .org, and more. Meaning what?

Meaning bevyhost.com is not the same Domain name as bevyhost.net. Why that matters will be for another discussion.

Now that you have a Domain name, you need it to be assigned to your web site. Many web hosts actually offer Domain name services. Others offer easy transfer. In fact when purchasing a Domain name to be used elsewhere, you may want to be sure they offer a hassle free transfer.

You also should inquire the amount of bandwidth and disk space your host offers. Of course you need to understand what the numbers mean in a practical sense. You also need to have a good idea of the amount of space or bandwidth you need. For example if you are going to use a lot of audio and video streaming you will need more space than if you are going with a less complicated style. For example a text driven forum does not use the space and bandwidth that YouTube uses.

Keep in mind that seemingly trivial options like email accounts attached to your site also use space. So just because you can have many email addresses does not mean you should. How many will you actually use and need?

A harsh reality to the computer world is computers and systems crash or go down at unpredictable times. What kind of guarantee does the web host offer? Do they assure you that 99.9 % of the time you will be up and running? And will they compensate you for any tangible losses if your site should go down temporarily?

Here is an area where a free site that does not guarantee uptime is not as valuable as one that will at a reasonable fee. A host should have a watch dog system to stay on top of what is going on.

What kind of software applications come with your hosting service? How much control do you have to change the appearance of your site? Many of the free ones are very limited. That doesn’t always mean bad but it narrows down the possibilities. Do they offer site building options? Or is it compatible with outside web building programs?

Part of a good host service is its support. Can you talk to these people 24/7? Do they provide live support via on line or even by telephone? Sometimes so called live on line support is a pre set forum that addresses popular problems or questions. That is okay sometimes, but you should have an easy option to talk to someone who knows what they are talking about.

For a service you are paying for what kind of money back options are they offering? I mean even if you cover all the bases, you may have overlooked something that will reveal itself later on. You should have the option to terminate the service within a reasonable time frame. Be clear on any other billing issues also!

By all means see what others are saying about the host companies you are interested in.

Remember if you want to have a happening party than get yourself a great host. Drinks anyone?

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