My friends and family are still very surprised (sometimes shocked) at how much my web sites earn. Average over $7,000 USD per month now, and I’m still shocked. Even more shocked that it keeps pouring in. After all – all I did was build some web sites and write some articles on them – of course I had to learn the right way to do this, and that took me 2 brutal years of blundering and guessing.

What I’ve been trying to do with this web site (blog) is shorten that pain for new-comers to the business of Internet income. The ridiculous thing is that this one web site costs only $9 a year for the domain name and $5 a month for the hosting fee. I have to have an Internet connection of course but that is it. When my father talks to me about the online business and this site, he still shakes his head in disbelief.

For The Absolute Beginners Who Have No Idea What I’m Talking About

You may have heard about online income, and I’m sure you’ve heard of scams and all that. Multi-level marketing (MLM) sites, etc. etc. Well guess what….I tried them all! (no…there is not a buy now button at the bottom of the page) I tried gaming the search engines, using fancy software, buying numerous ebooks, picking brains, begging, paying for traffic, you name it – I tried every stupid idea out there. I fell flat on my face many times, and all someone had to say to me was, “Build a WordPress blog properly and live happily ever after”. Simple right. Well no it’s not – learning how to build a WordPress blog properly took some serious effort.

That is also what this post is about. I have created some free WordPress video tutorials that show exactly how to create a WordPress blog. They’re really easy to use and new-comers should have their Blog up and running in short order. Don’t be swayed, or talked into spending a bunch of money on short cuts, tricks, magic scripts, and special software. All you need to invest is your hosting cost ($5-6 per/mo) and your domain name cost ($8-9 per/yr). WordPress is free to download and you don’t need ANY software that costs you money. All the software I use for setting up this WordPress blog is freeware.

If you are interested in creating your own WordPress blog I would watch some of the video tutorials (free) that show how to do so. All you will need to accomplish this correctly is; Filezilla FTP File (free), the WordPress File (free), and your domain and hosting (price as mentioned above). I review some of my favorite domain and hosting companies here.

Don’t Be Intimidated By Anything That Sounds Complicated Because It’s Not

I know when I started out I was saddened by how dim I was when it came to computer jargon. I thought that building a web site or blog was geek level stuff, and I could not have been more diluted in that stream of thinking. When it comes right down to accomplishing everything I’ve mentioned above, there is not much to it. Just download the free software in the paragraph above and start building. Pick a hosting company you like the looks of (they’re all good ones in my review), follow the video tutorials and away you go.

How A WordPress Blog Makes Money

So how does this site (WordPress blog) makes money? Simple. I display Ads By Google on each one of my article pages and when visitors click them I get paid. That’s it. Period. I don’t sell anthing, mail anything, talk to people on the phone, sell anything, refund anything, DO anything. Just traffic coming through this web site results in clicks and that results in money. Google send me a check every month (on time) and I cash them. I show you how to put Adsense on your WordPress blog in this video. You may think there is more to it than that…….but there is’nt. You can sign for the Google Adsense program for free as well by going here. Pretty cool right – free to join and they send you checks in the mail.

At this point you are likely saying PROVE it! Ok. Here is a Google Adsense report for April 2006. It’s higher than that now. keep in mind that is American bucks. Click the image below to enlarge the earnings report. Or click here.

A Little More Info Regarding Blogging Platforms

There are many different blogging platforms to chose from, but these days I suggest using the WordPress platform. I’ve tried using TypePad, Movable Type, and Radio Userland, but WordPress has become my mainstay. The WordPress script is free to download so all you need is a domain name and hosting account. I’ll get into what kind of hosting and domain services I use in another post.

If you are an abecedarian (new-comer) in the blogoshpere, and in the process of making a platform choice, do yourself a favor and make WordPress your choice. I strongly suggest using WordPress because you have control over your own domain and content. When you are using a service like Blogger.com you can never be sure your content is safe and sound. I want you to read this post and that should be enough to convince you to start your blogging journey with your own private hosting package.

Now don’t get me wrong; I have some good friends who blog on shared servers (and services like Blogger.com), and they make some pretty serious cyber-cake. Mind you, they build smaller niche blogs which don’t ever require serious amounts of bandwidth. Along with the problem of bandwidth elbowroom, you have the customization issue.

Customizing your blog is something you will indubitably venture towards as you become more demanding and seasoned. You will want to have full control of your blog layout; including color, advertising, links, navigation, scripts, php code, asp code, css (cascading style sheets), comments, trackbacking, rss feeds, atom feeds, reading choices, writing choices, posting choices, etc……Wordpress does all of the above.

WordPress is an open source technology which enables anyone to write code into the fray. This can be good and bad, as not all coders are equal. WordPress plugins and themes can be created by anyone who decides they want to create one. For example, the Zulit blog is using a WordPress theme written and created by Kaushal Sheth. He created this theme for WordPress bloggers to use for free, and all he requests is that we leave his link at the bottom of the page. Not a bad deal right!

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 2nd, 2006 at 11:47 am and is filed under Wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.