Beginner’s Guide: Start a blog, get 100,000 page views and make over $100 your first month

If you’re a blog reader, chances are you’re also an aspiring blog writer. Launching a for-profit weblog is extremely attractive because it has the potential for endless profit with practically no overhead. Launching a blog is a quick and easy process even for the absolute beginner. The following is what I learned from my pre-lifehack.org blog in which I earned over $100 and received over 100,000 page views my first month blogging. I did it and you can too! Make the jump to find out how.
Technical stuff
First things first, you’ve got to get the technical stuff out of the way. The “technical stuff” I’m talking about includes choosing a blogging platform, choosing a hosting service, and choosing a domain name. Chances are you’re well aware of the various blogging platforms so I won’t spend time going over them. I think the best blogging software to use is WordPress. Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger.net has an excellent post that describes the features of WordPress 2.0. After you’ve decided on a blogging application, you need to chose a domain name and a hosting service. If you have never blogged before (or even if you have) you will find that it is easiest to chose a domain name and hosting package from the same service provider. GoDaddy.com has 24/7 technical support (although you will pay a premium compared to other hosting providers) and it will completely automate the installation of WordPress for free. If you are not a technical person, this frees you from messing around with all the technical junk.
Domain name
It is extremely important that you think long term before picking a domain name. After you establish your blog, you aren’t going to be able to transfer your domain name without losing your readers, really! Think of your domain name as being permanently attached to your blog. Your domain name should be as short as possible, easy to remember, easy to speak, and not include any part of your name unless you’re a celebrity (which you’re not). You should avoid using any part of your name because if your blog becomes popular enough to sell, having your name as part or all of the domain name will drive down some of the blog’s value.
Get advertisements immediately
Sign up for advertisements immediately. You’re not going to make any money without advertisements. Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and many others offer advertisements that you can easily integrate into your site. I had great success using Google Adsense. Despite what you may have heard, you can make some pretty good money with Google ads. Checkout Darren from ProBlogger’s survey about Adsense income. I also recommend signing up with PayPopUp banner ads. PayPopUp pays you every time their ad is displayed, you don’t have to rely on users clicking the links. This will not make you nearly as much money as Google Adsense, however it is guaranteed money even if no visitors click your advertisements. After your blog is established, the goal should be to ditch third party advertisements and sell advertising space directly to companies.
Get Google Analytics immediately
You will want to track as much information about your visitors as possible, the easiest and most detailed way of doing so is with Google Analytics. Amongst many other things, Google Analytics lets you see the referring URL of your visitors, your top content, what Google searches are landing users at your site, how long users are staying, and their exit points. Knowing this information will help you customize your content so that you can maximize your readership. You should also consider using Site Meter to publicly display your site’s up to the hour traffic to potential advertisers.
Write 50 posts
That’s enough talk about setup, it’s time to talk content. That’s right, you need to write at least 50 posts your first month. That’s 2-3 posts per day, everyday for 30 days. It may seem tough, but it is absolutely necessary. The number one way that you will lose potential readers is to not update your site regularly. You need to establish readership, and get your Google Page Rank up, if you can’t come up with 50 posts the first month, you may want to consider finding another topic for your blog. Adding several posts per day will help increase the amount of Stumbleupon traffic your site grabs.
Submit every article to Digg
This recommendation is going to bring some negative comments, I’m sure. Regardless, digg.com is a tremendous way to advertise your site for free. Honestly, submit every article you write to digg. When you are starting a brand new blog, besides exchanging links with more establish blogs (which I recommend) there will be absolutely no links to your site. Even if you think the article is no good, submit it to digg. Let the digg community decide what is good content and what is not. You might as well let your work get some exposure. Some of my most popular posts through Stumbleupon got less than 4 diggs. Every article that doesn’t make the front page of digg will land you about 100 page views. If you do make the front page of digg (it’s a great feeling, believe me). You will get anywhere between 3,000 and 20,000 page views per day.
What would you do differently ?
I know some of you have been blogging for a very long time. What would you add that I didn’t mention? Is there anything I suggest that you disagree with? Please share your opinion in the comments.

Pros and Cons of Google Plus

Google Plus has been available for a month or so now. The social networking website has grown to have over 10 million users. A majority are engineers and others involved in technology, however the male-majority social network is expected to diversify in the near future. You will be surprised to find that Google Plus isn’t even available for public release yet. Yep, Google Plus is still under limited field-testing. There are still some issues that Google Plus must straighten out because it is still so new. Let’s take a look at the strengths and weaknesses of this rapidly emerging social networking site.

User Experience – Plus

The layout is amazing. Google Plus didn’t look to be revolutionary on this front (but it also didn’t look to copy anyone else either). The website took what was already good with social networking and fixing the faults of it as well. That’s the reason why Facebook was the first thought that came to mind when we laid our eyes on the layout. You have the main activity in the center; the sides mainly focus on the number of friends, notifications at the top and different timeline viewpoints on the left.

Circles – Plus

Circles are a really good idea that Google Plus created. It mixes the privacy of Facebook with the publicity of Twitter. With circles, you can put individuals in certain groups. You can have groups of friends, family, colleagues, and others. When you share something on Google Plus, you can select who sees the content and who doesn’t. This, in a way, covers the privacy part of it. On the other hand, if you have friends with different interests, then you can have certain friends to view content about one subject and vice versa. It’s genius.

Notifications – Minus

Notifications fell by the waste side in my opinion. It seemed as if when I checked notifications, the notifications tab cleared the alert. To elaborate, if I had 10 notifications and went to check one, it would make all the other notifications become marked as read, even if they weren’t. Also, when I checked notifications, not all of my alerts were shown in the tab. In addition, it also learned a Facebook mistake. If you commented on a popular status, you’ll still receive notifications about that status. In return, it fills up your inbox.

Location – Minus

Locations didn’t seem to tag where you were pretty well. Some users I have asked told me that their locations were tagged streets and even cities away from where they were. Also, on the iOS mobile application, I wasn’t always asked to check for my location. This meant that locations weren’t always refreshed and even instances where my location from days ago was still shown when I was 50-100 miles away from it. This is a problem that can easily be fixed with a native application.

Hangouts – Plus

This is the most sought after feature on Google Plus. Google Hangouts lets you video chat with a multitude of individuals on the website. It pops up in each user’s timeline that so and so user is “hanging out” with a certain amount of people. You can then click the green button to join them. The group creator can also invite others to the hangout. You can also add text chat as well. If you want to add some entertainment, Google Hangouts also have a YouTube component. The outlook is simple but nice!
Are you on Google+? What are your favorite features?

3 Tips to Creating SEO Attractive Titles

With SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, titles mean almost everything. The title of your web post is the first thing that most web searchers will see when they search for your website. However, some people who are new to SEO sometimes overlook titles and focus more on the content. While we can’t obviously emphasize more that content is very important, the title is the second most important thing to a popular article.

With these tips, you can create SEO appeal for your articles.

1. Take Advantage of Title Tags

Title tags are found when you get down and dirty with HTML in your editing software that you use. This goes beyond the visual aspects of SEO. Title tags are the technical aspects that point search engines to your site and they result in the visual way of seeing your website in engines.
In HTML when you pick your title (i.e. <title>), it is important to sum up your page in a couple of words while still being accurate. Another important tip is to remember to follow this tip for your other pages on the website. Search engines will pick all these up.

2. Pick the Right Words

The important tip to this is to keep the words of your title short but informative. This means taking the important must-have words of the title and keeping them. This also means that filler words don’t always have to be used. For example, your original title can be “How to Bake a Cake”. The SEO attractive version can be “Baking a Cake”. In addition, title tags allow you to elaborate in the title with a dash. For example, “Baking a Cake – The Full How To From Start to Finish”.

3. Keep It Relevant

Whatever you do, don’t pick a title just for the views. This may, at first glance, seem like it’s going against everything we are saying. However, having a title that creates views and creating a title to get views are two different things. The main difference is accuracy. It is important to make sure that the title relates to the content. If it does and it’s good, then you have a title that creates views.
In addition, having a unique, relatable title will also forward quality views to the page. This is because the visitors will stay longer since that is the page they searched for.

Dangerous Internet Marketing Myths

There is prevalent internet marketing myth that if you get ranked highly by the search engines, you will make a lot of money. This is far from the truth, because by simply getting traffic doesn’t equal profits. You must get targeted traffic to your website by using the right keywords.

For example, if your website is about “dog training” where you have articles published about the topic, you need to have keywords related to this topic in order to get people who are interested. Don’t forget that your keywords must be very targeted and not too generic. Your SEO efforts should be targeted towards getting traffic that converts not just any traffic.

Most new internet marketers also believe the tall tale that they’re going to make lots of money in a very short period of time. There are so many internet marketing so-called experts who tout the get wealthy fast routine and people still fall for it all the time. Internet marketing is nothing more than a regular business that requires one to toil away until success is found. Sure, you can make a great income with internet marketing, but it’s not something that’s going to be automatic. The only thing that happens quickly in this business is starting out.

You will progress a little at a time until eventually you reach the point where your business can really expand. Until that time comes, however, you’re going to have to put in the work required so that you can see the results you’re after.

Last, it is a myth that you don’t have to rely on SEO anymore after you get a high search engine rating. The truth of the matter is that you will always have to use SEO in order to keep ahead of the competition and continue to rank high. So if you really want to reap the benefits of search engine traffic, then you’ll have to do the maintenance work. This doesn’t take too much work once you get a high ranking.

All you must focus on is putting fresh content on your website and making good solid backlinks. A good way to keep track of your rankings with the search engines is to utilize automated software. If you don’t want to invest in one, you can do it manually too.

There are certainly more internet marketing myths where those came from. Always do research on anything serious or major you learn about, and get in the habit of trusting your gut. The more you know about where you’re going, the higher will be the chances of your success.