Low-budget blog

9 years ago

Originally Posted by rodpap

-1 domain for it

You can find GoDaddy coupons for $0.99, $1.99, etc. domain names here: http://www.namepros.com/577802-godad...codes-414.html (Check the latest posts.)

Originally Posted by rodpap

-SEO fiverr gig to get the best possible niche and domain name (I found a guy to do this)

Hmm... I see you have already decided that SEO is your main form of generating traffic. Well, if you're going down that path, at least don't go for Fiverr SEO gigs. They're complete B.S. If you only needed $5, $10, $15 whatever to spend on SEO and see results, everyone would be all over it in heartbeat.

Originally Posted by rodpap

-1,000 words of content to start things off with.

I can't comment much apart from congratulating you for not asking to pay $1 per 100 words of content.

Originally Posted by rodpap

After the initial investment I believe I would just write content carefully myself. But I don't know what else to do, and where else to go. Is it just that? Initial investment + content + ads + afilliate = money?

Well, in a way, yes, but you do have to do all those things very well. I mean, you need to have lots of traffic, great content and great affiliate products. Plus, for affiliate products, you most likely need to do email marketing.

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rodpap 9 years ago

Cool discounts! Thanks!

So where would you suggest me to get SEO services? I know some stuff about keywords and what not, but niche research and off page SEO... ouch
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writeaway

9 years ago

Spend some of that money on niche research. You'd be glad you budgeted for it.

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rodpap 9 years ago

Originally Posted by writeaway

Spend some of that money on niche research. You'd be glad you budgeted for it.

How? The only niche research I know is doing it myself, which isn't great
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Knightsofusa 9 years ago

Originally Posted by writeaway

Spend some of that money on niche research. You'd be glad you budgeted for it.

How do you research that?
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ttados

9 years ago

Originally Posted by rodpap

Hi all

So I just want to make a blog as a hobby, but I want to get some cash back on it too. The niche is not yet decided, but I guess it will be one as profitable as possible.

I got 75$ to invest into it. I guess I will spend this money on:

-1 domain for it
-SEO fiverr gig to get the best possible niche and domain name (I found a guy to do this)
-1,000 words of content to start things off with.

After the initial investment I believe I would just write content carefully myself. But I don't know what else to do, and where else to go. Is it just that? Initial investment + content + ads + afilliate = money?

Any tips would be appreciate!

Thanks in advance.

Honestly, I would just save your money.

For your domain and hosting you can use Siteground. You get a free domain and hosting is $10 a month.

For SEO don't pay someone to do that for you learn how to do it yourself. Find a niche that you are interested in, not one that you think might make you money. If you aren't interested in the niche it's going to be very hard to create enough content to make your blog profitable.

If you are planning on writing a blog than you might as well write the first 1000 words. 1000 is not hard at all. Write two 500 posts if you need to.

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Bob Reynolds 9 years ago

Yes, I agree, do not waste it on a fivver for something like seo ranking. Get your own content out there and learn, and practice. Find something you are passionate about and break it into several sub-categories and focus on those few areas.
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Curtis2011

9 years ago

Originally Posted by rodpap

Hi all

So I just want to make a blog as a hobby, but I want to get some cash back on it too. The niche is not yet decided, but I guess it will be one as profitable as possible.

I got 75$ to invest into it. I guess I will spend this money on:

-1 domain for it
-SEO fiverr gig to get the best possible niche and domain name (I found a guy to do this)
-1,000 words of content to start things off with.

After the initial investment I believe I would just write content carefully myself. But I don't know what else to do, and where else to go. Is it just that? Initial investment + content + ads + afilliate = money?

Any tips would be appreciate!

Thanks in advance.

I wouldn't start off using a fiverr gig to find a niche for you, or a domain name. I also wouldn't start off by buying content from someone else.

There are tons of free guides around the internet on how to find a niche and how to find decent keywords to focus on.

With $75 you could easily get a domain and about a year's worth of hosting. If you are dedicated, you could write a lot of content in that time yourself, and learn the traditional way: trial and error.

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Mike Carter

9 years ago

I would suggest not to go with fiverr when it comes to SEO since it will not benefit you in the long run.

Though fiverr Might be good for services like logo creation, promotional video etc.. I haven't found any luck on fiverr SEO gigs yet.

Instead you could take some time to learn some basics of SEO and do it yourself.

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Altered State

9 years ago

I don't understand your plan at all.

1st you say that your blog would be primarily a hobby. But then you say that you are willing to spend a good amount of your low investment in 1000 words of content. That doesn't make much sense to me :S

I don't know what kind of people you find on fiver since I don't use it myself, and I might be a noob here, but if I know one thing about the Internet business is that you should NEVER ever spend money on SEO if you are not already a pro of it and understand everything about it. When you already have positionated a blog yourself, and your SEO plan was successful, then you can start thinking on paying someone else to do it, but this is the last thing I would recommend someone to outsource if you don't have a huge knowledge about it. I tell you this because I lost money years ago on my first attempts trying to make money online exactly like this.
If you spend on that your investment, I can tell you almost for sure that you will waste that money in 99% of the cases.

The domain it's ok. But you can get one year for a few bucks, dont need more.

What to do with the rest of the money instead?
No doubts here, spend 50-60$ on one year of hosting and install Wordpress and make a proper blog of yourself. If you still have some money and like one particular WP template, you can go for it.

The next investment step, depends of your traffic generation and money generation plans, which can vary on a very wide range, which I don't know much about, so I won't recommend anything further, but I believe that most people here would agree with the basis I've just pointed out: domain and hosting+wp

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rodpap

9 years ago

Thank you for your answers everyone. I am pretty much a noob at this. So I got another question: the blog is never supposed to make 4 digits at any given month, so is it worth to buy hosting on a wordpress platform when blogger does it for free?

Please don't kill me on this one, I know pretty much everyone prefers wordpress

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Alexa Smith Banned 9 years ago

Originally Posted by rodpap

Please don't kill me on this one, I know pretty much everyone prefers wordpress

I don't use WordPress. I don't like WordPress. But I'd still use it in preference to "Blogger", with 100% certainty.

Originally Posted by rodpap

is it worth to buy hosting on a wordpress platform when blogger does it for free?

Yes.

(You can get hosting at hostica.com for $1 per month, for one single site. It's not the best hosting in the world, natch, but it should be perfectly adequate to get you started.)

This explains why you shouldn't use Blogger. Read carefully, and follow links: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post9412758

.
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sunoy14

9 years ago

Fiverr seo can only give you useless stuffs like forum links, links on high pr websites' pages which don't have actual pr, links from profiles on high pr websites which too don't have actual page pr, etc. I would hesitate to buy contents too. You might get low quality contents or even duplicates. You can assure of quality if you create contents yourself.

And besides, seo is not that hard. You just need to create high word count articles with keywords in it and then get lots of backlinks from relevant websites. There are some other stuffs like keyword to article ratio, keywords in image alt title, keyword diversity, etc. but you can learn them quickly by reading seo blogs.

If by chance you decide to write contents and do the seo yourself and you use wordpress, you should get the "wordpress seo by yoast" plugin. It shows you the keyword density of your article, image keyword check, article readability check, and other useful checklists which are impottant for seo.

Seo outsourcing is usually quite expensive. If you have the time, you should try to learn it yourself.

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DenEdBiz

9 years ago

Start a free Wordpress blog. Pay a fiverr guy to write a 500-1000 word article for $5-10. Go over to NameCheap and register a domain for around $10-$15. Then go back to Wordpress and pay $13 to have your Wordpress blog forward automatically to your newly registerd domain. Boom, you're good to go, with money to spare.

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Alexa Smith Banned 9 years ago

Originally Posted by DenEdBiz

Then go back to Wordpress and pay $13 to have your Wordpress blog forward automatically to your newly registerd domain.

Sorry, but this is awful advice. And will get you into terrible trouble with wordpress.com over their terms of service. You'd be permanently taking the risk of having the blog removed (without appeal) for breaching the terms. Wordpress.com is not the way to do this.

You'd be paying that $13 not (as you suggest above) to "have the wordpress blog forwarded to your newly registered domain" but exactly the opposite: to have the newly-registered domain attached to the blog, which would still be hosted at wordpress.com, where all wordpress.com's terms of service would still apply to you.

If you've done this yourself, without realising that all of wordpress.com's terms of service still apply to you, you might want to read their terms of service very carefully indeed. Many people have done this, and been horrified to wake up one day to find that their blog no longer exists there, and that there's absolutely nothing they can do about it.

Don't imagine that redirecting your own domain-name, whether registered through WordPress or elsewhere, to a blog hosted at wordpress.com somehow, magically, exempts you from their terms of service: it doesn't.

Wordpress.com is for "hobby bloggers" only, whether they use their own domain names or not.

Commercial/marketing blogs are not allowed there just because people are using their own domain-name rather than a wordpress.com subdomain.

You've been very badly advised indeed, if this is what you've been told. Internet marketers wanting to use WordPress need to host it themselves, somewhere other than at wordpress.com.

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- rodpap 9 years ago
  
  So what alternatives are there to WordPress and Blogger?
  
  I understand that Google might just delete blogs at any given time without warning. But it is possible to save the content in the blog and the code in a folder or in an external device. Would this, however, affect the SEO of the blog? Besides the age of the domain it was on.
  
  Free web hosting sounds great, but I do know that the time a page takes to load hurts SEO.
  
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  Alexa Smith Banned 9 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Sam Zachuth
  
  hubpages sounds perfect for you
  
  The irony of it!
  
  People are explaining in great detail why Blogger and Wordress.com are so inappropriate because you don't own them yourself, and are dependent on the restrictive terms of service, have no long-term control, and all the obvious problems ... and at the same time others are recommending "HubPages" which is even worse, even more dangerous and even less appropriate!
  
  Originally Posted by Sam Zachuth
  
  save the 75 bucks for hosting
  
  If you want to save the $75 on hosting, then host free of charge somewhere like Byethost.com, freehostia.com, or 000WebHost.com. They may not be the best hosts in the world (actually Byethost is pretty good), but at least you'll own your own site and be in control of it, which is more than can be said for HubPages!
  
  Hostica.com is also ok, for $1 per month.
  
  Originally Posted by rodpap
  
  So what alternatives are there to WordPress and Blogger?
  
  I think you're a little bit confused about WordPress?
  
  When Warriors here are talking about "WordPress", they're mostly talking about self-hosted blogs/sites made from WordPress software, which you yourself own and control. And those are fine. Wordpress.com is a hosting site (not available for marketing purposes - it's for "hobby bloggers" only).
  
  Originally Posted by rodpap
  
  Free web hosting sounds great, but I do know that the time a page takes to load hurts SEO.
  
  Yes, it can.
  
  I would look at Byethost and Hostica, if I were you.
  
  But for heaven's sake stay away from things like HubPages. This post was actually written about Squidoo, rather than about HubPages, but all the underlying points and principles are exactly the same, and it explains in detail, with references and links, why you need to keep away from Web 2.0 sites of that kind.
  
  .
  
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Sam Zachuth

9 years ago

hubpages sounds perfect for you, save the 75 bucks for hosting and put it all on content for on and off page.

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wfletch24

9 years ago

I would spend some more time researching. I have personally used WordPress for many years and its great. Yes it has its flaws just like anything else but it can practically do anything with plugins. Before you even think about SEO dig deep into niche research as others have mentioned. Start with something you have an interest in and find out of there are already quality blogs/websites on that topic selling products. This can be a good indicator that it is a decent niche. But definitely dig deep into research instead of throwing away money on SEO before you have done your due dilligence.

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teeowl

9 years ago

I paid $12 dollar for a year for wordpress hosting on Godaddy and I got a free domain name registration. So in my second year I would be paying about $25 a year for both wordpress hosting and domain name. Sounds affordable enough when you are just starting out.

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Alexa Smith

Banned 9 years ago

Originally Posted by teeowl

I paid $12 dollar for a year for wordpress hosting on Godaddy and I got a free domain name registration.

This forum (just like many other IM forums) is full of "horror stories" of the unforeseen "accidents" (some of them in fact "disasters") which people could so easily have avoided simply by registering and hosting in two different places. Having the registration and the hosting in the same place is really very inadvisable. In a sense, admittedly, it only really matters if/when something goes wrong. (But, as we all know, that "only happens all the time").

If your host isn't also your registrar, then in the event of any accident/problem, if anything ever goes wrong with your hosting, you're in control, not them. And can avoid nightmares, disasters, long delays and entirely unexpected "ransom demands". And can re-host your site somewhere else the next day, minimising the commercial interruption.

Brad expresses it very well, with several well-known examples, in this post.

It's one of those issues which so many people look at and think to themselves "Eew, well, those are all other people and they must have done something wrong: it wouldn't ever happen to me".

Until someone on one of their lists reports them, even with absolutely no justification at all, to their host for alleged "spamming" and their website disappears and the host (in accordance with its TOS which few people have ever read all the way through at the time they registered the domain) suddenly wants hundreds of dollars to release the domain so they can get it back online somewhere else.

As a search of this forum will show, Go Daddy, in particular, is notorious for causing major problems and interruptions to its clients' businesses in this regard. But it can be done even by some "good hosts", too!

The point is that "whether something goes wrong" may not be within your own control - it can be just fairly random.

Paul Myers' comment in this thread is significant, also.

Just my perspective, but threads like this always make my blood run cold, a little, when I see some people saying that they registered and are hosting in the same place, because experience has shown that some of those people will be back at some future point to announce their own personal "terribly unlucky" story.

.

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Michael Shook

9 years ago

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

This forum (just like many other IM forums) is full of "horror stories" of the unforeseen "accidents" (some of them in fact "disasters") which people could so easily have avoided simply by registering and hosting in two different places. Having the registration and the hosting in the same place is really very inadvisable. In a sense, admittedly, it only really matters if/when something goes wrong. (But, as we all know, that "only happens all the time").

If your host isn't also your registrar, then in the event of any accident/problem, if anything ever goes wrong with your hosting, you're in control, not them. And can avoid nightmares, disasters, long delays and entirely unexpected "ransom demands". And can re-host your site somewhere else the next day, minimising the commercial interruption.

Brad expresses it very well, with several well-known examples, in this post.

It's one of those issues which so many people look at and think to themselves "Eew, well, those are all other people and they must have done something wrong: it wouldn't ever happen to me".

Until someone on one of their lists reports them, even with absolutely no justification at all, to their host for alleged "spamming" and their website disappears and the host (in accordance with its TOS which few people have ever read all the way through at the time they registered the domain) suddenly wants hundreds of dollars to release the domain so they can get it back online somewhere else.

As a search of this forum will show, Go Daddy, in particular, is notorious for causing major problems and interruptions to its clients' businesses in this regard. But it can be done even by some "good hosts", too!

The point is that "whether something goes wrong" may not be within your own control - it can be just fairly random.

Paul Myers' comment in this thread is significant, also.

Just my perspective, but threads like this always make my blood run cold, a little, when I see some people saying that it's ok to register and host in the same place, because experience has shown that some of those people will be back at some future point to announce their own personal "terribly unlucky" story.

.

Almost everyone on this forum has gone to sites besides those selling hosting and has experienced the barrage of upsells, downsells, cross-sells and bundle offers. The hosting sites that do this, in particular GoDaddy are run by very experienced marketers and they know the chances are good that these marketing tactics are going to work to get you to fill up your shopping cart.

The issue is not the marketing tactics, but the idea that if you give control over your business to a third party, you will have lost the singular asset you have in your online business if that third party decides to shut your site down for TOS violation. Or image copyright infraction, or SPAM complaint or DMCA complaint.

While not on the top of the list, the practice of holding you hostage until you can follow up and take care of the issue or pay "ransom" to set your site free is an income stream for the hosting company.

Its not that hard technically speaking to register in one place and host in another. Please do it that way.

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teeowl

9 years ago

It is good to take precautions. Even though, I know that can happen, I decided to just make money to pay for a whole year of Aweber first before I started taking action on things like that.

I am using single opt-in, so I guess it is possible for something like that to happen. I think I would transfer the domain name registration to Name.com - it should be around $12.

PS: You give a lot of good advice for free - WarriorForum are supposed to be paying people like you. I know whenever I have a question, you are among the few people that I know would answer.

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

This forum (just like many other IM forums) is full of "horror stories" of the unforeseen "accidents" (some of them in fact "disasters") which people could so easily have avoided simply by registering and hosting in two different places. Having the registration and the hosting in the same place is really very inadvisable. In a sense, admittedly, it only really matters if/when something goes wrong. (But, as we all know, that "only happens all the time").

If your host isn't also your registrar, then in the event of any accident/problem, if anything ever goes wrong with your hosting, you're in control, not them. And can avoid nightmares, disasters, long delays and entirely unexpected "ransom demands". And can re-host your site somewhere else the next day, minimising the commercial interruption.

Brad expresses it very well, with several well-known examples, in this post.

It's one of those issues which so many people look at and think to themselves "Eew, well, those are all other people and they must have done something wrong: it wouldn't ever happen to me".

Until someone on one of their lists reports them, even with absolutely no justification at all, to their host for alleged "spamming" and their website disappears and the host (in accordance with its TOS which few people have ever read all the way through at the time they registered the domain) suddenly wants hundreds of dollars to release the domain so they can get it back online somewhere else.

As a search of this forum will show, Go Daddy, in particular, is notorious for causing major problems and interruptions to its clients' businesses in this regard. But it can be done even by some "good hosts", too!

The point is that "whether something goes wrong" may not be within your own control - it can be just fairly random.

Paul Myers' comment in this thread is significant, also.

Just my perspective, but threads like this always make my blood run cold, a little, when I see some people saying that they registered and are hosting in the same place, because experience has shown that some of those people will be back at some future point to announce their own personal "terribly unlucky" story.

.

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thedark

9 years ago

Great advice you got from warriors here. Read all replies now then come back after 1 month and read the replies again, and after 1 month until you get everything.

There are few things that I wished I knew when I started out: ( all of them posted in the replies above ):

* Get your own domain. Preferably .com, if it not possible, try .net or .org but avoid other tlds, especially .info, .to, etc.
* Ask your trusted friends if anyone can host your blog for free on a good hosting until you have some traffic. If you don't have any friends with a reseller or VPS hosting that can host you up then you can go with free hosting too. ( Not wordpress.com or blogger ).
* Install your own self hosted wordpress
* Do not spend any money on buying traffic, content or links, especially sold on forums or fiverr.
* Choose a niche and topic that you already have knowledge in. If you don't, then it will take you much more time to make money.
* Don't submit your website into search engines, directories and don't build forum profiles just to post your links.
* Write as you already have 10,000 readers. Try to write the best content as possible.
* Build friendships with other bloggers in same niche.
* Participate into forums related to your niche ( don't post links )

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QueenMelanie

9 years ago

It doesn't even have to be as much as 70$ . You can get a domain for 0.99$ , and get hosting for as low as 2$ a month. It is not heavy duty hosting but it is fine while the blog is getting up and running!

once you'v got your keywords, just focus on your content, keep building it up.. You can do all sorts of fancy tricks to promote your blog, but at the end of the day, if you don't have quality content, then you are nothing..

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LynnLinde

9 years ago

Since you've mentioned it's a hobby site that you want to monetised, why not do a little more hands-on on this site instead of outsourcing everything off to someone else? You can learn up some useful skills from doing so.

Once you know how things work around, then you can outsource it out if you intend to scale it up.

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Low-budget blog

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