Gather the folders for all plugins and put them into one folder to speed up set up later.

Have your Wordpress theme selected and downloaded and put it in a folder you can find easily.

Step 1: Log into the cpanel of the site and click on Fantastico Icon

Step 2: Select wordpress and install wordpress (which installs the core files) 

Step 3: Log out of the cpanel and launch your FTP software. Using FTP, copy the folder of the theme into the wp-content/themes folder

Step 4: Using FTP, copy the folders of the plugins into wp-content/plugins folder

Step 5: Log into Wordpress dashboard on one site, go to Appearance and select/activate the theme.

Step 6: Go to Plugins and ativate plugins – also for any plugin that requires it, look under Settings for that plugin to add information. One example is the All-in-one SEO plugin that will need the title, description and keywords added.

Step 7: Go to Settings (on the dashboard) and select “General” to check that the url and email are showing correct info

Step 8: Under Settings, select “Writing” and add the Update Services that you want to ping

Step 9: Under Settings, select “Permalinks” and change the Custom Structure to /%category%/%postname%/  … or just to /%postname%/ (note, I recommend this for advanced users only – it will require an .htaccess file and that can get complicated).

Step 10: Click Pages on the Dashboard and add or edit pages for “about us” and other pages if necessary (such as terms or privacy policies) – a Contact us page can be added with a form in it too if you are using a plug in such as cformsII.

Step 11: Select Appearance and then select widgets to add items to the sidebar of your blog (if you are using widget ready themes).

Step 12: Click “Posts” from the dashboard and select “Categories” – enter the categories you want posts to be shown under

Now your blog is ready for you to write your posts. Go to it, and be original, add value with what you share and be interesting!

Note: If you are setting up multiple websites, keep a matrix (using an excel spreadsheet or create a Word file or even a Google doc) of the urls and cpanel logins, as well as wordpress user names and passwords for easy reference.

Technorati Tags: checklist, new wordpress blog, Plugins, set up, setup, steps, Wordpress Tips

Here are a few things that are recommended to do – especially for those of you that host your own blog:

1,  Keep your version updated

2.  Update/ugrade your plugins

3.  Backup your database

Easy Way to Get the Latest Version of Wordpress

The older, unpatched versions of Wordpress (older than 2.8.4) are not secure and are vulnerable to being attacked by a worm that will infect your site. This is what Wordpress.org says about it:

Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.

These things are similar to doing routine maintenance on an automobile – and the ones I am recommending are as easy as putting in windshield wiper fluid or adding oil to your engine. I won’t recommend the ones that would be as difficult as doing a complete oil change (because I am too busy to do any of these things the long and boring way). So, my recommendations are to use more automated methods (which have been created by brilliant programmers for people like me to use – I am not a programmer).  I have written before about a plugin that helps you upgrade your Wordpress to the latest version in an automated step-by-step process. And really, this is so easy! You don’t have to download software and know anything about programming. All you need to do is download a plugin and put it in the “plugins” folder. To get the plugin go here: Download Upgrade Plugin. Then you log into your wp-admin (Wordpress admin) dashboard. Click on the Plugins on the left, activate your new plugin. Then, at the top of your Wordpress administrative dashboard a prompt will appear that says, “Click Here to Automatically Upgrade WordPress to latest Version.” Basically, if you click that there will be instructions that walk you through upgrading. It’s so easy to do, and it will keep your site more secure.

Update/upgrade Wordpress Plugins

I also think you should try to keep any plugins updated. Here is some good information on the Wordpress.org site about site maintenance – http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Site_Maintenance. Ugrading plugins usually only requires you to click the “update now” links on the plugins page. Sometimes you may have to actually download the latest plugin and then upload it to your hosted files.

Keep Backups of your Wordpress Database

After you get your site upgraded, there is also a plugin to use to have backups of the database (which holds all the posts, comments, user and other data for your blog). If you were ever to experience a site problem or hosting problem, you can use the backups to set your site back up. My favorite plugin for scheduling these backups is the WP-DB-Backup plugin. This one is really easy and can be downloaded here: Wordpress Database Backup.

Technorati Tags: database, latest version, maintenace, Plugins, security, update, upgrade, virus, wordpress, worm

The Internet is becoming the only “real estate” worth investing in at the moment. So many people are trying to sell you on how to make money online. The websites that sell products or have a shopping cart that is integrated for taking payments are called e-commerce websites. Websites used to be time consuming to create and many web owners had to depend on a webmaster to fix things or changes things. Those days are over!

I have built websites from scratch and have started using tools that help build them faster and easier – to save time and money. There are several that are not worth the time, and I’ve noticed a trend of large companies coming up with “make a website” kits. Some of these are probably good, while others may not have the options you really need. I want to recommend one website builder (for business or personal websites) that is a great, low-cost solution with tons of features. The place to go for building your own website is Quick Pro Website Builder.

Free 15-day trial – Full featured service to
make your own website with customizable templates.

Wanna know what features are included?

Here is a summary of the features and they are compared to other popular website builders: Compare Website Builders. A few of those features are:

• Builder starts by helping you build a site for your industry
• Domain registration included
• Hosting included
• Customer Database and Stats
• Add Appointment Schedulers, Calendars, Feedback & Contact Forms
• Auto Responder, Article Pages, and Event Calendars
• Ecommerce Shopping Cart  integrated
• Easily Add Product Pictures and Descriptions to your Ecommerce Shop
• Configure Shipping and Sales Tax
• Merchant Account

And there are more features that you won’t need at first but can grow into. They have a package that includes hosting and there are many templates to choose to start building a website in 5 minutes. Then, you can upload your own photos or website banner and change everything. You can also add e-commerce (a shopping cart) easily because they are one of the few services that have that ability as a built in option. Again, you don’t have to worry about what to do with hosting because they host your website for you!

If you are thinking of making a website to promote your business (such as a doctor’s office, dental office, vet services, real estate, automobile sales, beauty salon, books, gardening supplies, etc.) or sell your own products (including crafts, knitting, clothing, beads, or gifts), please check out this great place to make a website! I also want to add that their customer service is excellent – something that is hard to find online these days. Ask for any kind of help, and you will get a detailed reply (plus they have online help available).

Note: for selling affiliate products, read this post: My Secret Weapon – Building Affiliate Marketing Websites

Technorati Tags: affordable, Best Website Builder, Business Website Builder, easy, ecommerce, Ecommerce Package, Ecommerce Shop, Make My Own Website, online, Shopping Cart Hosting, store, templates, website builder

I want to recommend the easiest to use (and a low cost option) for buying domains (domain registration). For buying domains, I totally recommend Namecheap. Their interface is really easy to use (I have never gotten confused with it, as I have with other places I have bought domains). Compared to 1 and 1 (which is awful) and GoDaddy (which is just ok) I think Namecheap is far superior and the domains cost less. For the first year, the privacy feature for your domain is free.  There are many coupon codes available – look them up online whenever you are about to buy a domain – one place that seems to keep them up-to-date is retailmenot.

For hosting, I have never had any problems with HostGator – in fact I like this hosting company a lot! You can host one site for less than five dollars a month – of course, few people do that anymore. For multiple (unlimited) domain hosting (with all the bells and whistles) it only costs 7.95/month – though there is a slight “catch” – you have to pay for an entire year to get that low price. Still, there are other payment plans (monthly or every 6 months). And there are often coupon codes to be found to save extra money, so don’t forget to look those up before you plan on paying for hosting. There are also reseller hosting accounts that are great and don’t cost too much (for you webmasters and graphic designers).

I hope these tips help you when you start building your web empire

Technorati Tags: companies, coupon, domain, domains, host, HostGator, hosting, namecheap, register, Tips, url, web, website

I say that for those of you that are not risk takers (I really am not).  So, when I have taking a chance on things, I have tried to make those the most informed chance with the least financial risk possible. There are ways to get into affiliate marketing with very little up-front investment. That is why I posted about the Thirty Day Challenge in other posts – it is a free course on how to use Wordpress and do affiliate marketing online. It is far superior to the many subscriptions being sold (and really you should do the free course before you start paying for one). Though it has a particular strategy (using Wordpress blogs) the information is useful to selling online using other types of websites or online stores.

My other favorite low cost way to get started in online selling is with affiliate product stores (using Bizzites award winning website builder) but those are not free. The play I have costs less than $100 per month. As I have learned how to use the affiliate stores I have not had trouble making a profit each month. It did take me a few months to get to that point – but a few months at less than $100/month is a very small price for a business start up!

So, whichever way you plan to build websites to sell anything online, you have to start with a niche – you have to know what products you will be selling and what kind of customers buy those products. These are the harder things to do. Making websites is easy. Getting traffic is harder. Making actual sales is the thing that you have to do to survive in any business. And you have to find a niche and know how to provide what sells in that niche.

There are lots of niches (for physical products) that have online traffic, but much of that traffic is just people looking for information or for something free. One thing I have advised people about is this: think about what the customer is searching for and if possible try to focus on search terms that are for things people buy. For example, the search term, hardwood floors could include any number of people searching for how to install or to find someone to install them, or for looking at samples online. They may have no intention of buying flooring from a website. So, the flooring niche would have to be studied to make sure you get the buyers to view your website – and possibly the niche would never be profitable! This is where researching a market and understanding it and what goes on in the online marketplace is essential.

One thing that is helpful for new internet marketers is to find a niche where items are purchased and used up and purchased again. For example, hobby supplies that are used or tools that are necessary. It is likely that if you were selling a specific product for hobbiests, that many of the people searching for those products have the intention of actually buying them when they find them online (instead of just looking at them or finding information about them). For example, if you sold some kind of saw or drill, it is unlikely that many people would be looking for them online just to see what they look like (whereas in decorative items, a higher percentage are just looking at them and comparison shopping).

So, to summarize some of the things I have learned about finding niches for selling stuff online, here are some key points:

• Try to focus on areas that you like or love – you may find that you become successful in a niche and you will need to keep up-to-date with it, and you may need to write articles about it.
• If there are industry magazines for specific topics, these generally are good niches with customers willing to buy products in those niches
• Do online research about things you have a strong interest in (or a passion about) to see if they might be a niche for you to sell products in (such as pets, hobbies, health, etc.)
• Some niches may have pricey products that you want to try to sell – be aware that these niches are often far to competitive for new internet marketers.
• Try to identify the sub-niches to start out in (also called micro-niches), for example, Automobiles is a general category (not even a niche), hybrid vehicles is a niche (but is probably very competitive), price comparisons of hybrid vehicles or the top 10 benefits to buying a hybrid would be more micro niched.
• Once you even know that you have a few niches that could be possible avenues for you to sell in, please do keyword research! If you haven’t used keyword tools, you will have to in order to get found in the search engines.
• Don’t be afraid to try out SOMETHING (but not something that will break the bank), even if your first attempts fail or don’t make a ton of money, because while you make the effort, you are learning valuable things (even from mistakes) that will help you in the future.
• For those that are not risk takers, don’t wait until you think you have found the perfect product to sell – nothing is perfect and everything that matters requires hard work. There is no way to have instant success, but there are tools and knowledge to help you be successful.

I wish I could say I have the magic formula for making tons of money online. I can make money online, and hope to make more than I currently do – and as I learn I intend to keep sharing what I know here on this website!

Free Resources (that I do not own or profit from but I think are invaluable):

www.thirtydaychallenge.com

www.nicheaday.com

Technorati Tags: advice, affiliate marketing, finding, help, how to, keyword research, niche, nicheaday, niches, thirtydaychallenge

• I don’t have to buy the products and store them to sell them.
• No customer service needed, no 800 phone numbers, no dealing with shipping hassles.
• I can test markets cheaply and easily to see which I want to spend more time or money on.
• The products sell themselves and I don’t have to create a squeeze page or separate website for each one.
• Products do not change as rapidly as other affiliate stuff (like CPA offers which come and go all the time).
• I can set up a niched product website with departments and categories (which customers AND search engines love)
• I can make an online store with many pages and products – which is considered more authoritative than a blog with a couple of products.
• I can do market research in order to convert a store from affiliate marketing to drop shipping if I decide the products will sell.
• And I make money WHILE I SLEEP!

My Secret Weapon for Creating Web Stores for Products

I use this inexpensive but powerful affiliate store builder that gets my products found in the search engines. This system is the best I have seen for adding affiliate products with the image, price, affiliate link, description and the ability to edit all of those things. Plus you can put in your own meta tags (for those in SEO, you know how important that is).

The system I use is from Bizzites (which used to be Traffic Genesis and My Affiliate Store). With it, I have build several successful websites that look like e-commerce stores but are actually affiliate marketing websites. The customer comes in, finds a product and the product pages link to the vendor that sells them – where the customer uses their website. EVERYTHING they buy in that session counts toward my commission. And the cookies that keep track of where someone went to that vendor from last for a month or more. So, if that customer goes back to purchase something within that time frame, I am credited with that sale, too.

The commissions are not high for physical products (not like selling downloadable stuff from Clickbank), but you CAN add clickbank products or any affiliate product from any affilate network or even a store you are an affiliate of.  

Here is the BIG difference – this is a store builder that has products (from datafeeds) already loaded into the system. All you do is add them to your website – they come in with the price, picture, description, keywords, etc. and you can design your store to have departments and categories to make it easy for people to find what they are looking for.

Actually, there are so many features I find it hard to tell you all of them, so click on that banner and try it out! If you end up buying the system, I would recommend the plan that allows you to build multiple sites. I am telling you, this is NOT expensive – and you can get the hosting included, which makes it really easy for a new online marketer.

Here are some stores that were built with Bizzites:

Drawing Tables and Easels

Woodworking Heaven

All Scrapbook Albums

On the first one, there is not even a custom logo or banner, but the site converts and sells really well – an real no brainer to make a site like this!

The other 2 example sites have had more artwork added, but nothing that difficult (except for the professionally designed banner at the top of Woodworking Heaven which was something I did to customize the template).

I’m telling you, if you’d like to try this out for yourself, go check out the promotional page. There is a free trial. You have to get on their mailing list to do the trial. Als, if you do the trial, contact me and I will personally give you some tips from the standpoint of someone who’s been using this system for 2 years (only contact me if you are serious about this, though). I give better tips than the guys who sell this, so trust me, I can help you if you need it.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate store, Bizzites, physical products, store builder, template, website

In the process of learning about marketing online,  I have signed up for many “guru” marketers email lists. One of those “gurus” is Perry Belcher. I have just learned that he was charged with internet marketing fraud in 2008. He entered a guilty plea to multiple felony and misdemeanor charges. He was given 10 years of probation and there were many special conditions to his probation. His property was seized including his home, the money in his many bank accounts, his audio/video equipment, his four ATVs, his Harley motorcycle, his vintage Desoto, his Jaguar, and a Toyota and a Dodge truck were also seized. All of his property was sold at auction in order to provide the funds to pay his victims back. (see more about the court records). This means he’s gellin’ like a felon (for real, people are calling him the Internet Felon).

I knew he sold programs to internet marketers, but I was not aware of the medical products he sold. This is the shameful part, in my opinion. Selling fake pills to sick people is just PITIFUL and evil. He had a company called Selmedica. He created a persona of a doctor (using a clip art photo and made-up name) in order to give his products credibility. He also quoted fake statistics about supposed medical trials for his “cures”. This type of snake oil product promotion is as old as the hills, but the internet allows unscrupulous people to put a slick new spin on selling ineffective and unproven medicine. It is really sad that people don’t know any better (some say they are just plain stupid) to buy pills to enlarge breasts or dissolve freckles (yes he sold stuff like that). But the worst offense is the supposed cures for serious diseases and medical problems that he was selling. Here is a page that explains the fraudulent medical remedies in detail: Perry Belcher Victim Search.

The search is on for victims of Perry Belcher’s marketing schemes.

If you bought his Secret Cure Disease Ebook, any Selmedica or Increase Media product, the police want to hear from you. To contact them, call the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office at (901) 545-3268 or email them at selmedica@shelby-sheriff.org.

Do I still belive there are reputable products being marketed online? Yes, I do, but I will be far more careful and will check out the websites, their owners,  the products, and the claims being made about them. I hope everone will do the same.

I first read about this at a seriously entertaining website (from which I borrowed the term “Internet felon”): Salty Droid. Hat’s off to that site for covering the topic so well.

Technorati Tags: criminal, felon, fraud, guilty, Internet Marketing, perry belcher, Selmedica, victims

Stomperwhat, you might ask? Well, they are the most elite group for getting an  internet marketing education and learning about search engine optimization (SEO).

To get all the information as an early bird, go sign up here: Stompernet Early Bird. I remember 07/07/07 when I was first introduced to this organization, and my life will not be the same – I joined and the stuff I learned is awesome! The things I learned helped me know ways to make money online (the best part is I can make money while I am asleep). You might like learning all about Internet Marketing and SEO. If so, go check it out.

Just a note, this is not a membership that will teach you one “killer” technique for Internet marketing cash – it is a full education about many ways to increase your search engine results, make a better landing page or home page to your site, you get actual coaching, too - and basically you’ll learn how to build authority in your niche. It is not for someone who is just playing around with the internet – it is for serious internet business people. So, if that sounds like you, I can highly recommend this.

999 Update – There will be bonuses and the price for Stompernet is actually AFFORDABLE (gasp)! Don’t forget to to go to page with all the information: Stompernet Reopening.

Technorati Tags: 09/09/09, 999, Internet Marketing, join, membership, open, SEO, Stompernet

I think for new marketers who are trying to monetize blogs, or those who don’t want to spend time building a site (and instead want to write killer copy and do promotion) this affiliate theme builder for Wordpress blogs is a great thing to try. There are levels of service available, too – the basic package is a one time payment of $97:

• Use Affiliate Theme on a single domain/website
• Six (6) unique page templates
• Access to Video Tutorials, Knowledge Base, and Support Forum AND Affiliate Interviews

Perhaps you realize that there are not too many things in the marketing world these days that don’t require a subscription – so take advantage of this offer which will require you to only pay once. There are other packages for those who wish to use these themes on multiple websites (and another package for super affiliates).

I recommend going to take the test drive, since it is hard to describe in words something that is so well explained visually here:

So as a “mini-review” I would say this  theme builder for affiliate marketing in wordpress blogs is going for a reasonable price and it saves you a ton of time.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, blogs, Internet Marketing, Themes, wordpress

Thesis Demo Site — See the Thesis Theme in action!

Check out the many ways Thesis can be customized:

Thesis Gallery Showcase — See killer customizations from around the Thesis community!

Technorati Tags: coding, designs, developers, professional, SEO for wordpress, support, Thesis theme, wordpress themes