First off - the actual upgrade. I didn’t do it myself, as I’m always scared of breaking things - anyways, a friend did for me, but from what I’ve heard it’s fairly simply. All you have to do is backup the database, upload a couple files, run a couple things and you’re (apparently) done. If something goes wrong, hit the forums for support as I cannot help :)

As for the interface… well, I’ll be honest with you - I preferred the old one, but I’ll probably get used to this one in time. It is far less cluttered up than the previous version, and the look is more “Web 2.0ish”, however a couple things are missing that the previous version had - the ability to go direct to websites of commenters from the dashboard, as well as the comment count. However, these are miniscule - improvements include a cleaner layout as well as a one-click upgrade for out of date plugins.

Would I have upgraded?

I thought not after doing so, however I’m growing to like this - the post in which you type posts is a lot better looking that the last one, and it’s now easier to publish.

To be honest, I was forced into the upgrade - Adii released an updated version of this theme which fixed a few bugs, and the thing was that the theme update only worked with Wordpress 2.5 - damn! Anyways, I’ve upgraded, and I recommend the theme to anyone, as they’ve made it even easier to use - there is an auto image resizer and more options in the killer backend, which means a technical newbie like me doesn’t have problems working it. If I can do it, so can you. Get the theme here.

I have also gotten a forum added to the website, which you can access here - it is new, but will be thriving soon enough, and if you get in quickly you can start building links and discussion. Thanks for helping me out :)

Will be upgrading to Wordpress 2.5 today or tomorrow, and also looking at getting in a forum - stay tuned as the work behind the scenes is pretty rough. I will mention this on TUK later today, but if you check out this blogging magazine/RSS feed earlier, you’ll get the news - I’ve put in an order for 100 tshirts to be made (which will hopefully sell quick) and will update on that too.

If you have any suggestions for things I need to do for this to become a success, feel free to let me know :)

Cheers,

Jason

Ask a group of twenty bloggers and they’ll all give you different services… Hostgator, Liquidweb, Hostican, Bluehost, Dreamhost, GoDaddy, Hawkhost… the list drags on. For every positive review, you’ll find two negative ones… which is why you should pick one that you think looks best and just run with it. You WILL have problems, unless you’re very lucky - although I haven’t had problems with my main host, I have had immense problems with hosting I’ve taken in the past, mainly because I tried to be cheap and save money.

My biggest suggestion for those looking at starting is not going for an unknown cheap option, rather a more expensive, yet reliable hosting service… the time you’ll save is worth the couple dollars extra a month. Most people with a computer should be able to afford the $10/month hosting costs, and if they shouldn’t it is fairly easy to work online (even if you have to do boring jobs) to make that amount. Once you’ve worked on hosting, you can concentrate on the bread and butter of a blog - content.

This may seem like a paid review, but this is how happy I am with their service - if you’re going for hosting, Hostican rocks. The amount of problems that bloggers have had with Hostgator and Godaddy is unheard of anywhere else, however most internet marketers continue to push Hostgator despite knowing better, mainly because of the $100 affiliate commission it pays.

I will not deny that Hostican pay a decent affiliate commission (yet another reason you should use their service :razz: ) however from personal experience, they are easily the best hosting company I have ever used. I’m so happy with them in fact that I decided to move to this swanky new dedicated server, one that houses my flagship blog as well as this blogging magazine.

By using their Tera-Host package (which costs just $100 a year if you use the coupon code University-12 and pay up front for a year), you leave yourself open - whenever you want to get up new websites, you can do so without a worry as they offer unlimited domains and unmetered bandwidth/space. Also, they will move your websites from your current hosting if you have any and help you set things up - they generally reply within a day to the questions I’ve had.

Although I’m waxing lyrical about Hostican, and will continue to do so until I find something I don’t like about them, there is no way you should trust only my opinion - do a Google search for the hosting companies above, see how they’re viewed and make your own decision. You should be looking for a decent amount of space and bandwidth, although you probably won’t use too much of it in your first month - look for as many reviews as possible, and it would be better if you had someone already using hosting with the company you’re thinking about that assures you that they have good support.

If you have any questions, just send me an email and I’ll try to sort you out :)

1) Text Blocks

Most of us online will have heard of Google Adsense at one point or another… contextual block advertising is something that works fairly well on niche blogs, especially if you get a lot of your traffic from search engines like Google or Yahoo. Programs like Adsense deliver ads based on certain keywords in your content, and although they can be way off base at times (delivering ads for gastic bypass on a make money online blog as an example) they are usually pretty relevant.

Along with Adsense, similar advertising programs include Adbrite, Bidvertiser, BlgAds… there are few others, but those are the most trustable. With contextual ads, you get paid per click, and each click amount varies depending on which keyword it was for and where the click came from. While text block ads can earn you a fair amount of money on niche blogs, the problem with blogs where most of your visitors are return ones are that those visitors will get “ad blind” - they no longer look at the ads after they get used to the layout of your website, and except for accidental clicks it is unlikely that you will get many from them.

2) In text advertising

In text advertising is exactly what it sounds like… words in the blog posts will be replaced by links to related websites and you’ll get paid for them.

There are two programs you can use for in text advertising - the Text Link Ad Network and Kontera. With the former, links are randomly chosen and inserted into your posts, and you get paid for every link sold; with the latter, words are replaced by hyperlinked text and you get paid for every click. It is more likely that you will receive more clicks as depending on the quality of your post, readers will be interested to see websites that they think you have linked to - however, the payment per click can be extremely low.

A lot more money can be earned with Text Link Ads, however to make money with them you will need to have a website with a high Pagerank (more about Pagerank in a future post), something that new websites often don’t have.

3) Direct ad sales

Depending on your type of website and the niche it is in, you can make a decent amount by selling ad spots directly to related advertising companies; there are many out there and all of them want to promote their websites - while it depends on the traffic you receive, you will be able to make money through direct ad sales. This is best seen on the large websites in the industry - TechCrunch for example receives around 2,300,000 unique visitors a month, and advertising slots go for $10,000 each - with ten ad slots just in the sidebar, it’s quite easy to see that they’re banking money. With your brand new, startup website that amount will be out of the question (for the beginning, at least) but making a few hundred a month is certainly possible.

Some of the common formats used by blogs that sell advertising are the 125 x 125 square, usually shown in the sidebar; the 468 x 60 rectangle, shown below the header or even in the header itself, as well as other less common formats like the 728 x 90 leaderboard, the 234 x 60 half rectangle and the 120 x 600 hanging banner. To directly sell advertisements on your blog to advertisers, you must have a strong advertising page, mentioning all the benefits of advertising on your blog.

4) Paid reviews

Although paid reviews are sold in a similar way to direct ad sales (to an advertiser looking for exposure to his/her website), the way that they are put up on your blog is extremely different to the above. As it sounds like, a paid review is a post on your blog “reviewing” another website, one that is paid for. You can use programs like Pay Per Post, Smorty or Review Me for this - those companies are specifically geared towards providing a marketplace where bloggers and advertisers can meet. Although those companies will provide you with a lot of opportunities, you will often find that they are unrelated - a blogging tips blog being asked to review a technological website or even an oyster producing company.

Another thing that happens is that the above companies take a large chunk of the payment earned for themselves - anywhere between 30 - 50%. While you will still be able to make around $5 - $15 a post with a new blog, I’d recommend mentioning on your ‘Advertise’ page that you do paid reviews on your blog, as that will allow interested parties to contact you directly. By selling paid reviews direct to advertisers without a middleman, you will not just take 100% of the commission, but also ensure that most of the reviews you write are relevant, as you have more control this way.

5) Affiliate programs

Promoting affiliate products where you get paid a commission is one of the easiest ways for bloggers to make money; be it hosting, books or even lingerie, bloggers can make money by promoting the products they love. By writing a review on products and plugging in your affiliate link, you can make money - either a lump sum up front as people purchase something or monthly, recurring payments if people sign up for a long term program.

The vast scope of affiliate products to promote is simply amazing - giants like Amazon and eBay allow you to make money by referring customers to them, while you will usually be able to find an affiliate program for anything you can think of. Affiliate networks like NeverBlue Ads and PepperJam exist solely to show you what possible products you can make a commission off, and the great thing is that those networks usually supply you with an affiliate manager that can walk you through what to do and how to do it.

Remember, only promote products that you have had personal experience with, and be honest - waxing lyrical about something that is ultimately rubbish will not just probably lead to refund requests, but also people losing trust in your recommendations and being less likely to listen to you in the future.

Good luck with monetizing your blog and if you need any help feel free to leave a comment.

1) I Blog To Express My Thoughts

I always thought that having a diary where I stored thoughts was a bit too chick-like for me; having an online blog just seems a lot better, even though it’s essentially the same thing :P. Having a place that will stay up as long as I keep it up is pretty cool, especially as at any time I can go back through my archives and see what I was doing a day, a week, a month ago. I can also keep track of thoughts I had; rather than forgetting the next killer idea I thought of, I can write it down on my blog and it will stay there unless someone deletes it. Far better than writing stuff down on scraps of paper that will inevitably get lost :)

2) I Blog To Network

Apart from expressing yourself, blogging puts you in front of thousands of people if you market it correctly… people with similar aims to yourself, and people that you’ll find extremely interesting and helpful to talk with. By blogging, I provide similar minded people with a means to see what I’m capable of and easily approach me if they want to talk about anything, either business or just to build a relationship. I have met countless numbers of people through blogging, people that I wouldn’t have otherwise - starting a blog is one of the best things I ever did to get my name out there in the online business world and the relationships I have established in the industry - ranging with some of the smallest people around (in terms of power) and even some of the “A-listers” will be of extreme help in the long run.

3) I Blog To Make Money

Although I didn’t make a cent from my first couple of months blogging, the money is slowly beginning to pour in - blogging is becoming a more and more profitable venture. The original goal was just to pay off hosting, however nowadays I earn enough to do far more than that, and I have no doubt that this will increase as the various metrics of the blog do so as well. While breaking into the “Problogger” mould (earning a full time living off a blog) is near impossible, most will be content to make a few hundred dollars off a blog that they own, and now they can do that.

4) Blogs are easier, and cooler than normal websites.

I’ve always wanted to run a website online… the problem is, I have huge deficiencies in both creating design and tweaking code. With the amount of free, extremely customizable themes out there, as well as some killer premium ones (like the Premium News themes for example), I can develop a decent looking website without ever having to touch a single line of HTML (or little of it, if needed); with simple content management systems like Wordpress, you’ll soon find yourself loving blogging. Also, a blog is usually just so much cooler than your average website - it’s hard to make a website look anywhere half as good as a highly pimped out blog.

Those are my reasons; how about you? Why do you blog?

Topics You Like

This is pretty simple, really - choosing topics you like will see you most eager to keep on blogging, as nearly everyone loves expressing their opinion about the topics they love. Be it football, ballet or even how quickly the Earth rotates around the Sun, writing about something you love (and thus know a decent amount about) can help you, blogging as a newbie retain the beginner’s joy that you have when you start out.

You writing about something you love to write about will not just make things easier for you, but it will also for your readers; everyone that stumbles across your blog will see your posts and realise the passion you have, and who knows - they might even come back once or twice after that to see what you’re up to and become regular readers.

Topics that are easy to talk about

Conventional wisdom says that trying to break into a saturated niche like making money online or politics is near impossible as there is no way you will be able to compete with the top dogs unless you have a) a lot of funding or b) a lot of luck. However, what if you don’t want to compete with the elite of your industry? Picking a broad topic means that there will be plenty of readers constantly on the look for new blogs, new content and new viewpoints to read, and all you have to do is aim at securing a small proportion of the population online that are interested in your topic - for example, get 1% of those that follow football to visit your blog and make a comment, and you’re in business.

Topics that are personal

If you have an interesting, dynamic personality you might want to not focus on a topic at all and just run a personal online diary where you talk about everything and anything in particular; although people do not like ramblings on a niche blog, they somewhat even expect it on a personal blog. Depending on how charismatic and innovative you are there is no reason you cannot make it big running a personal blog - there are personal blogs out there with millions of readers monthly and with the right attitude there is no reason you can’t do the same.

The great thing about a personal blog is that you can get family and friends involved; in the previous two instances, they may not be likely to follow what you’re talking about as no matter how big a soap opera fan you are, it is pretty likely that those in your family would not like to read about you drone on about it for days and days; with a personal blog however, you are writing about what happens in your life, and your family and friends should be interested to finding out more about you - there’s always things that you don’t know about people, even those that are close to you, and reading a blog written by them is a great way to learn more.

Remember, you can change at any time during the startup of a blog if you realise that you don’t like your topic and would rather write about something different - I’d advise that you make the change as soon as possible though, as you don’t want to develop a blog with hundreds of subscribers and then suddenly up sticks. Good luck!