Starting with Nothing but a Blog

To be quite honest with you, I would actually suggest you invest about $20 into your business and get yourself a domain and web hosting. Here are two great places to start:

Web Hosting: hostgator.com
Domains: namecheap.com

If you are planning on going anywhere with your business, you are going to want to have your own domain. Not to rag on Blogspot, but a real domain would just look so much better for you.

And YOU own the blog, not Google.

Just my suggestion.

Hi I have a shopping review blog that does ok and have had it a few years.
My advice is to have a domain name thats easy to remember. The one you have now is long and hard to remember.

And also you should have your own domain. I think you'll see success faster owning your own blog on your own domain instead of going with a free hosted one. Free hosting has a "cheap" and "Newbie" feeling and not a professional and confident feeling you want to project.
You cant write about making money if your site doesn't project a feeling of quality and success.

And just keep pushing and pushing it adding more and more content. It took about 8 months before I saw any traffic activity on my blog and about 16 months before it took off, and I was adding 3 to 7 new original posts a day.

My last advice about blogging is to blog about something you LOVE. because if you dont totally love the topic youll probably burn out after a few months.

Just my opinion from my experience, others may have a different opinion.

Hi,

For a start, since you are new to Internet Marketing, I would suggest you don't start with the Internet Marketing niche. This is a tough niche for newbies. (I am assuming that the blog you are talking about is the one mentioned above)

Rather, try other niches that have demand and yet are relatively less competitive. For example, car auction sites.

If you have done your homework in Keyword research and have SEO optimized your content, the rest is just promoting the blog like what you are doing, article writing. Getting backlinks will also improve your search engine ranking.

Hope this helps

@drooblez,
But I don't have any uses for a domain, for now. Should I buy a domain and host it regardless?

@mg1000,
My friends and family told me about the long name, too. I'm posting an average of 1 article per 2 days now, for around 2 weeks, and I am having 20 visits per day. Is this normal?

@geolt7,
Yes, I have only one, internet business blog. I know it's tough and all, but the problem is that I can't find a niche for myself. How do I actually find niches? There's too many areas.

And if I change my niche, should I continue my blog?
Note: No, I made no SEO(looks hard) attempts and no keyword research.

@alexa_s,
Actually I have 10+ informative articles, only the latest being posted is promoting something, since I have not posted any of its kind before.

Buying a domain name and getting a service would cost me some cash, and I would have no use for it now. Is it worth it getting the hosting service and the domain nevertheless?

Note: I haven't spend anything on AdWords, yet. And for that book recommendation, I'll find it at local bookstores(not living in US) if they have it.

------------------
I love this place. Lol.

I would really suggest getting your blog hosted yourself and not through a free site as if someone reports it or they pick up on one keyword and decide its spam they will shut it down straight away and you wont have any say over it.

It has happened to many people that i know inc myself here is a free tutorial showing you how to set up your own and getting it indexed in under a day:

free wordpress tutorial set up your make money online blog

kind regards


sam
X

@dsmpublishing,

Makes sense. They could have shut down all my hardwork. @.O

Reading your recommended product, once it is done downloading.

@alexa_s,

Actually, I didn't realise there was a startyourinternetbusinessnow.com when I chose my name. Anyway, I look at all comments as constructive as possible, so you're actually helping me!

Alright, I'm going to give up on this blog, and start fresh in some other niche.

Question: How do I find my own niche?

No matter what people say. Make money online niche has still a lot of potential. To get some free video tutorials on how to reg a domain name, how to host sites etc visit Learning Resources

You can absolutely make money in the make money online niche but you have a credibility problem. Your signature advertises how to start your business online when you are asking a question here how to start your business online.

Why don't you get into one specific area (say blogging) and then you can offer value to others and sell your own products or affiliate products.

BTW - if you are serious at all then $9 for a domain and $5 a month for hosting is not too much to ask to get your own site up.

@Russ Reynolds,

I can't decide what niches to work on, so I started with the niche I assume most people are interested(I know I am).

Actually, the costs would be reasonably cheap if I am living in the US. But I'm living in Malaysia, so it would mean MYR33 for the domain name, and a recurring fee of MYR18 per month to host my website.

You definitely can use the natural power of blogs to start a business model. Test the waters, get some high rankings, and decide what to do next. If you decide to move to a site, you keep the blog to send traffic to sales page.

I agree that you should absolutely save up and do what you can to have a more professional look and get your own domain and a good blog template.

I think if you are new a blog in the MMO niche that kind of goes over your journey can prove to be pretty profitable. You can even blog about the other niches that you enter (generally if you don't want to name the exact niches). Then as you find success people will want to return to your blog to see how they can find success too. Then more and more you can add in affiliate links to good products that you have found helpful.

I wouldn't start with a blog unless you already have an audience. Instead of linking to your blog, link to a landing page and grab leads. Then communicate to them through your newsletter. After you have a big enough audience, start a blog.

Tyrus

Hey SrLee,

Im a recent addition to the IM thing too. I started my blog about 5 months ago and have really just started learning how to do this the right way a couple weeks ago. So I don't have much experience to tell you what really works or not but this is what I've done to increase my traffic and hit my first $10 dollar day yesterday just from adsense ( Im pretty pumped by it lol ).

Like it's been said, you should definitely get a domain name and hosting just for the professionalism. I always try and think of myself as the buyer. What would I need the site to look like for me to buy the product?

Keep up the content creation and posting to your article directories. I've been taking a good look at where my traffic comes from on a daily basis and am trying to figure out what I should focus more on. This will probably be different for each niche I would assume but I like to use more than just article directories just for the increase in traffic. For each article I will post to 10 article directories, 10 forums, 10 blogs, and 20 various other social bookmarks. Things like ezinearticles, twitter, and facebook bring in the most views for me. 3 weeks ago each of those would bring about 10 views a day and my other 40+ backlinks bring in around the same amount as these 3. Each week, my main 3 have been bringing in more and more daily. They average about 50 visits a day each now but thats mostly because I have more content.

You are also going to want to start paying attention to your SEO when you write articles. This is what has made my traffic boom in the past few weeks. I didn't do this at first and I was getting no traffic from my articles which I thought was normal, but once I went back and rewrote my articles using good long tail keywords my traffic started rolling in more and more. I have few pages on google first page which is awesome for the monetary value. I used to have to search my http address to even see one of my pages on a search engine.

Im in the same boat as you looking for that 10k/month paycheck to start rolling in lol. With making a blog, you want to get a email list going asap. I still haven't gotten to this point myself. I just added CB to my blog and am doing affiliate marketing, once I make my first sale i will invest that money into a aweber account. But from my research a newsletter will increase your traffic and increase your sales.

Just try and get a routine down to do daily and you should be alright, thats whats worked for me. Good luck with it.

@Fernando Veloso, sorry, but I don't get what you're trying to say.

@geosohail, what does both the sites do?

@Lindsay Brynn, I'm going to get my own domain name and find a hosting company(JustHost I think) soon. Any ideas on how to determine a good domain name? And your idea of writing about my success is awesome! @.@

@Tyrus Antas, what's a landing page? I think leads are generated when people sign up to my opt-in form, yes? So I should get an autoresponder service this early? I just started studying this field 2 weeks ago. Also, since I'm living in Malaysia, autoresponsder services cost a bomb to me.

Hi Shaun,

There are many ways to get started - don't worry too much about the blog vs. domain issue. Frankly, I prefer using free blogs such as Blogger rather than my own domain for any affiliate work or Ad revenue. The only time I use a domain is for my own product or my business front end.

The nice thing about using a blog service is that you can start out virtually free, without the headaches of setting up your domain, learning to build web pages, etc. And, remember, a blog doesn't have to look necessarily like a blog - you can customize something like Blogger to look like a normal web site.

My only concern for you is that you've started with Online Business as your first area to market - that's a tough one to work with. Why not try a popular niche in a topic area you're familiar with? That makes online work much easier.

If you want I'll PM you some examples. Good luck!!

@petelta, thanks for the very informative reply!

Well, I have yet to get my first sale too, but I'm just into this thing 2 weeks ago. So I'm not really expecting massive income right now. I'm not even on Google Adsense, but I'm in the process of applying for it.

10 article directories, 10 forums, 10 blogs, and 20 various other social bookmarks. Do you manually submit your articles? How do you submit articles in forums, blogs and social bookmarks? I'm 100% blank on this thing. Actually, I'm having an average of 20+ first-time visitors per day, and I don't even know where they come from lol. I just checked, 1 hour into today, there was 11 first-time visitors. Weird, but definitely good to know.

About this SEO thing, how do I do it? It looks kind of hard. I just write articles base on what I'm thinking that moment, like writing my personal opinion or essay.

I was thinking of getting Aweber, but then I thought, I got 20 first-time visitors per day. That's like nothing, and Aweber costs a bomb to me(I live in Malaysia). I, too am doing affiliate marketing. I'm promoting the products through my articles.

There are many free autoresponders out there. Just one thing to remember though - if your list gets large and you want to move to a paid service you'll have to find a way to move your list. I believe GetResponse.com still offers 1 free autoresponder - which would allow you to stay without moving your list.

I found a good article about free autoresponders here:

www freebielist.com/reviews/category/free-mailing-list-services/

If you are new, i don't recommend adwords. It can really make a big hole in your pocket. There are many free ways to generate traffic Like:

1) you can submit your blogs to "blog directories". Just search for Blog directories on google.

2) submit press releases

3) search for forums in your niche and advertise via signatures

4) use free credit-based safelists and traffic exchanges

5) join google and yahoo groups in your niche

6) you can also use ebay and craigslist to generate traffic

hope it helps

Alexa is quite right about the Blogger nav bar. It's up to you to live with it for free hosting or create a domain and publish the blog to a separate hosting center (to remove the nav bar). I've done both and have had success with both.

I will PM you some examples.

Shaun, I sent you some examples by Private Message (PM). Take a look.

If your funds are limited and you wish to get started using free blogs the best course on this I have seen is one by Steve Wagenheim on using Google Hot Trends. If you subscribe, he will give you hot trends daily along with ways to monetize them.

Just search this forum under Warrior Special offers and Steve Wagenheim. He definitely knows how to make money from this and is a great way to learn internet marketing without breaking the bank.

It is also a great way to teach newbies most of the basics of marketing.

Yes but if you are starting out I would say Free blog is great but hosting your own Wordpress blog is soooo much better. I would not invest a ton of time on a free site. Like what was said above you are limited to what you can do. But, use it for a satellite site for a Silo Seo structure

Creating a self-hosted blog is the way to go. I actually teach people how to do this. So many people want to make money with their blogs but often set them up incorrectly. If you do create a blog, make sure you take the time to set it up right with the right permalinks and all.

I never expected to rake in 350 views for this plain topic. This only proves that WF is a kick-ass forum!

Anyway, can I transfer my articles over to the new, self-hosted domain(provided that I have one)? And could I change from Blogger to Wordpress?

If you are relying on your blog
to be the main thing for your
business to get momentum of,
I would suggest getting domain, hosting and switching to
wordpress platform.

Igor