The Rich Blog

If you own a small business, you don’t want to pay a web developer thousands of dollars to build a website for your business. All you need is a basic, professional looking website that is inexpensive and easy to maintain. And WordPress offers you such an option.

WordPress has become an amazingly popular publishing platform that anyone can use to create professional looking websites. There are a lot of people who think that WordPress is just blogging software, but it’s much more than that. It can be a website’s entire content management system.

Here are 5 main reasons why you should consider WordPress when building your small business’ website:

1. It’s FREE

First, you need to choose a domain name and a hosting provider. There are a number of quality hosting companies like GoDaddy where you can host your WordPress site. Most hosting providers offer an option that allows you to install WordPress in just a few clicks. That’s how I created this blog. The only thing you’ll have to pay for is the domain name which costs about $10 and the hosting plan which costs as low as $5 per month. After you install WordPress, you can just log into the admin area and start building your website.

2. Ease of Use

WordPress is very easy to use. You don’t need to have any programming skills or anything like that. When you log into your WordPress account, you will see that you can easily create a great content and establish a fully functional website in less than an hour. There are also plenty of tutorials on the web to help you.

3. Themes

A theme is basically a template that changes the look of your WordPress site. There are hundreds of free themes available for your WordPress account. Some of them are even customizable!

4. Plug-ins

A plug-in is basically a tool you can add to your WordPress site that enhances the functionality of the website. There are plug-ins that help you with accepting payments, designing contact forms, building photo galleries and even optimizing your site’s search engine rankings. If you go to the administration panel, you will see a list of plug-ins available for your website. And the best part is most of these plug-ins are free!

5. Support

WordPress is an extremely popular and commonly used piece of software. There are over 15 million WordPress publishers worldwide. If you have any problems, there are thousands of people available to help you on the WordPress forums. So they have got you covered!

If you are a small business owner who wants to provide your customers with online business services like marketing and e-commerce, I would highly recommend WordPress. It’s free, customizable and an all-in-one solution for all your needs.

Good luck!

People start blogging for a variety of reasons. Some people create a blog to express their views or opinions while others do it just because they think they can make money out of it. As it gets very exciting and fun in the beginning, especially when choosing a domain name and a blog theme, not all people can stay motivated for a long time.

Here are the top five reasons why bloggers quit blogging:

Lack of Interest

Many bloggers start blogging just for the sake of it. Free blog providers like Blogspot and Wordpress can entice this kind of people into starting something that they are not really passionate about. If you want to start blogging, ask yourself this question: Would I be willing to pay $20 a month to start a blog? If your answer is yes, then blogging is or at least will be your passion. Otherwise it will become a burden on your shoulders as you progress and you will eventually quit.

Lack of Time

Some bloggers can’t devote enough time to update their blogs and their blogs become boring. They don’t publish new posts, they don’t reply to comments etc…Well, there are many reasons why these people can’t find time for blogging. They can be busy with their daily tasks, browsing social networks, or maybe working on different projects.

Lack of Skills

Blogging requires some basic skills like writing and editing. Some people are actually not that good at writing as they think they are. They start blogging but later they find it difficult to write a new post or an article. If you can’t produce quality content, you will lose your own attention before that of any other readers.

Lack of Readers

We always seek appreciation for our work, right? Blogging is about distributing your messages online and receiving feedback on those messages. Comments, star ratings and social bookmarks are the typical feedback types that bloggers like to see after they publish new posts. If you are not receiving any feedback, this can be very frustrating and a good reason to lose your interest in blogging.

Lack of Income

This category applies to those who start blogging as a way to earn an extra income. Many bloggers get discouraged when they don’t see any earnings in the first couple of months. You need to keep in mind that making decent money from blogging is not that easy. To be realistic, you cannot expect your blog to reach millions of readers and earn you a decent income in less than a year. Of course there are exceptions, but if you keep your expectations low in the beginning, you won’t get disappointed. Patience is the key.

Good Luck!

In order to make money from your blog you don’t need to be a programmer, but you need to have a basic knowledge of some of the web technologies. Before we start, just make sure that you are familiar with some technical terms like search engine optimization (SEO), RSS feeds, pay per click advertising and affiliate programs. If you do not know what these terms mean, look it up on Google right now. To make money from blogging, it’s important to become a web savvy person.

Before we start talking about methods, you need to understand that no matter what you do to make money, first thing you need is to get TRAFFIC to your website. Why is traffic so important?  Because your income is a direct function of your website’s traffic. The more traffic you get, the more income you will earn because more visitors means more ad clicks, more product sales, more affiliate sales, more donations and so on…

If you want to know how to build up traffic, please read my article “10 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website”.

Here is the list of methods:

1. PPC Advertising Networks

Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category. First, you need to sign up for an Adsense account. Then you can either post the codes provided by Adsense on your website (if you know how to) or just use a plug-in provided by your blog provider. The network will then put ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click on your ads.

2. CPM Advertising Networks

CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions. With this method, you get paid according to the number of page views that the ads displayed on your site generate. CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio like online forums and magazines.

Popular CPM advertising networks are Value Click and Advertising.com

3. Direct Banner Advertising

Selling your own advertising space is one of the most profitable monetization methods, because it cuts out the middleman commissions. The downside of direct banner advertising is that your website needs to generate high traffic to attract advertisers.

4. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a very popular method. Merchants are willing to pay other people a commission for selling their products and services. This type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) and CPL (cost per lead). Clickbank is the most popular affiliate network.

5. Selling an E-book

Selling an e-book is a very efficient way to generate revenue. Make sure you have a PayPal account to accept payments.

6. Membership

Although most of the forums and message boards offer free membership, there is always a possibility to create a private one where members need to pay to be able to read and post. However, in order to charge for a membership you need to provide exceptional value for the members.

7. Marketplace

Sitepoint and Digital Point are great examples of online marketplaces. You can allow your visitors to buy and sell products on your website and possibly charge a small fee for new product listings.

8. Paid Surveys

Vizu Answers pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. All you need is to sign up with them and select the kind of poll or survey you want to run on your website.

9. RSS Feed Ads

With the quick adoption of the RSS technology, you can now make money displaying ads on your feeds. You can sign up with Feedburner and start displaying CPM based advertising on your feeds.

10. Donations

Placing a “Donate” link or button on your blog can be an efficient way to earn money. Please do not underestimate the potential of this method and make sure you have a PayPal account to use this feature.

Good Luck!

A blog is an online journal where people can publish their thoughts and opinions. It may include images, audio, video and all other media components. Most blogs are frequently updated to include new posts and commentaries.  And in general, they are focused on a particular topic such as web design, sports or technology.

If you are interested in starting your own blog, here are the five easy steps for you:

1. Decide what you want to blog about. Pick a topic that you are passionate about.
2. Choose a provider. The most popular providers are Blogger and WordPress. These sites are free and offer pre-made templates and easy publishing tools.
3. Find a domain name. This part is really fun. Use your imagination and find a good domain name that would match your blog’s theme.
4. Choose a template. Most sites come with a set of predefined layouts and schemes that you can choose from. Select one and personalize it.
5. After you have set up your blog, write a few posts and make any adjustments to the layout or style if necessary.

Congratulations. You’ve made it! Now it’s time to promote your blog.

Tips:

• Update your blog frequently
• Keep the posts interesting
• Spell check your writing before posting
• A picture is worth thousand words
• Be yourself, it’s your blog!

Good Luck!