Back in the early days of blogs, I asked a friend of mine what he thought of
the whole blogging thing. His response was something like, “People just get
on there and talk about stupid stuff and make fools of themselves. Viewers
will get tired of that and stop going to them. It will never amount to anything.”

Well, he was partly right. And this was the general feeling around the Internet Marketing community. And people did get tired of the nonsense.

The Internet was still relatively new and people were having fun bouncing around looking at this and that. But, if they were going to spend their time going there,
they wanted more.

Static websites were in command of the Internet and we sat for hours trying to
learn enough about building a website to apply a header graphic. I still attribute
much of my hair loss to that period of time!

Initially, there were a few free blog sites where you could put up your own. These were, by today’s standards, very user unfriendly. Then, after gathering some feedback from users, those platforms started to add features and the evolution to what we have today began.

Then in about 2003, WordPress came along. At that time there were very few users, but it had potential as a core for a CMS. That’s a Content Management System. There were some CMS programs available to the public then. But, they were expensive and the average user could be assured that they were going to have trouble understanding and using it.

As blogging became more popular, the Internet Marketing community became interested in how easily and quickly you could have a website up and running.
With very little knowledge of how to build a website required.

WordPress today, is the largest self-hosted blogging platform in the world. There
are, of course, others and many receive good reviews and get a lot of use. But,
as of this writing, WordPress is the big dog.

If you haven’t been over to WordPress.org, they have a tidy site and provide just about all the basic information you need to download and install the system.

I do my own personal WordPress installations. However, if after looking over the set-up documentation, you may not feel comfortable doing this yourself. Be that
the case, I recommend Alex Sysoef’s Expert WordPress installation package. The program can very quickly install and have your blog up and running very quickly.
This is the best and most secure WordPress installation package that I know of.

Once you have decided what your niche or market will be, go back to the WordPress site and click on the ‘Extend’ tab. You will be given the choice of ‘Themes’ and ‘Plug-ins’.

Let’s start with ‘Themes’. There are over a thousand free wordpress themes listed
on these pages. Plus you will find even more by doing a search online. And,
of course, when you are ready for them there are premium wordpress themes available also to give your blog a more individual appearance.

You may have noticed, when you install WordPress, in your dashboard under the ‘Themes’ category you have three themes pre-loaded. Two are the old faithful,
basic themes that have accompanied WordPress for years. But, recently they have added the TwentyTen theme. This theme is a good starting place to practice your theme customizations, if you are new to the platform. TwentyTen is widget and plug-in ready.

Once you feel that you are comfortable customizing themes, you will want to try a more advanced theme like the ‘Flexibility’ theme, which I am using. Another very customizable, and again not for the beginner, is ‘Suffusion’. Suffusion is in the WordPress theme gallery, ‘Flexibility’ is not.

Now let’s go get some plug-ins to add to your theme to make this puppy talk. Like
the page says, there is over twelve thousand plug-ins available on the WordPress site. And, as with the themes, premium plug-ins can be found with a web search.

Now you are asking, “With so many choices, which plug-ins are the best to use?” That will depend largely on what you want a plug-in to do. I suggest that one of
your first choices be the WP-DBbackup plug-in. This plug-in can send scheduled backups right to your email. So, if there is a problem with your blog, you have the basic settings at hand rather than having to rebuild everything.

Some other very useful plug-ins for your Internet marketing blog are the All-In-One-SEO-Pack (self explanatory), TweetMyBlog! (this sends a tweet to your Twitter account when you post), and many more.

Some words of caution about plug-ins, some do not play well together. Too many plug-ins installed will slow the load time of your blog pages. Some plug-ins require configuration. That could be anything from adding your e-mail address to adding search engine codes to make them function properly.

Unless you are familiar with the functions of plug-ins, just activate one at a time
and deactivate the plug-in until you resolve the issue.

Oh, by-the-way, before adding a theme, be sure that it is plug-in and widget ready. Some are not, but that information will be in the themes’ description. Once, I added an incompatible plug-in to one of my sites. I activated the plug-in and when I refreshed the webpage, it looked like an html spider had exploded in my browser.

WordPress is, no doubt, the way for the inexperienced online business owner to get
a good looking website up quickly and inexpensively. Take your time with it and you can easily add elements as they become a part of your new online business.

And your tool tip for the day: Self hosted is the way to go with your primary website. But, don’t discount the free platforms entirely. WordPress.com is a good free platform and so is Blogger. Both are a good place for the blogging beginner to start.

And there is that authority business. Both wordpress.com and Blogger rank highly in the search engines. So, can a text link from a relevant site of yours from one of these leading back to your primary Internet marketing site be a bad thing? I’m thinking, probably not!

Next time, we’ll talk about your office suite and how the free and open source OpenOffice can fill your Internet marketing business needs.

Until we meet again!

Technorati Tags: Alex Sysoef, All-In-OneSEOPack, Blogging, content management, Expert WordPress, Flexibility theme, inexperienced online business owner, internet marketing, Internet marketing business, Internet marketing community, secure, system, TweetMyBlog, WordPress, WordPress installation

Our guest Expert speaker for today’s segment was Mike Paetzold, ‘The WordPress Guy’.

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as ‘The WordPress Guy’.

After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs, he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses PLR to enter various niches profitably.

As for the some of the reasons for the WordPress platforms popularity among bloggers and marketers, Mike cites the ease of installation, the availability of a huge assortment of themes, and, of course, the ability to install various plugins that enable you to create a fully customized and unique blog site.

However, Mike suggests that you should learn to install WordPress manually as opposed to the simple ‘one click install’ route normally taken. Some reasons for this is, by default, the simple install crates duplicated settings for each installation that you do. And who has just one blog, right?

One of the most important plugins to add to you installation is the ‘All in One SEO Pack’. This plugin provides not only some basic optimization settings, but more importantly, the ability to set your own custom ‘Title Tag’ for each post.

As Mike explains it, by default, WordPress assigns the same ‘General Description tag to every post. Since the ‘Title Tag’ accounts for about seventy percent of your on page SEO, your title tag should be set with your main keywords, for the post, at the beginning of you ‘Title Tag’.

We also discussed the importance of tags for each of your posts, and another plugin called ‘Simple Tags’. One advantage of ‘Simple tags’ is that, at the end of post, it adds a list of other posts on your blog that are related to that post. This provides you reader with direct access to additional relevant information inside your blog.

Of course, these are just a few of the highlights from the show. To get all of the content, download the mp3 and have a listen. As always, I encourage you to do so with a pen and paper nearby to take notes.

Mike provides a program train you to correctly set up WordPress that even includes a process map to guide you through setting up your blogs. It’s called ‘WordPress Made Easy’.

Once you’ve listened to the call and picked up Mike’s program, you will have no trouble understanding why Mike is known as ‘The WordPress Guy’.

Thanks for your time! I hope that you have found this useful.

Later!

Jim

Technorati Tags: Affiliate, Blogging, Blogs, internet marketing, Mike Paetzold, PLR, The WordPress Guy, WordPress Made Easy

Hello Everyone,

The next segment of our Blog Talk Radio show will be Jan. 14 at 6pm Eastern(-5GMT).

Our guest Expert speaker will be Mike Paetzold, ‘The WordPress Guy’.

Mike will be sharing his expertise in WordPress as well as how he utilizes PLR (PrivateLabelRights) products to enter and be profitable in many different niches.

If you are new to blogging, the WordPress platform, or need more information and training on getting WordPress right, I suggest you visit http://WordpressMadeEasy.net.

See you on the call at Blog Talk Radio!

Jim

Technorati Tags: Affiliate, Blogging, Blogs, internet marketing, Mike Paetzold, The WordPress Guy, WordPress Made Easy