How To Build My Own Website ( Blog )

If you’re interested in building a website / blog, then go ahead and register for my FREE blogging / Website course.   Many people are currently on a variety of Web 2.0 sites like Blogspot, the WordPress.org, Tumblr etc.  What I will be showing you is how to setup a self-hosting website.  If you want to know how to do that them please signup for the FREE course right here:

http://snagalife.com/training/build-your-blog-101/ 

Note: I will not be offering any type of support or advice on how to download a xml or exported backup of your current content if you are on a Web 2.0 setup.  Please check with your helpdesk to find out how that works, and let htem know you want to use this to upload your content into a self-hosted wordpress site.  Tip:

IF your Web 2.0 is pretty new and you haven’t done a ton of backlinking or bookmarks for your webpages, I say just leave it be, update your pages/posts to your new site and just repurpose the content.  This, I will show you how to do : )

 

Do You Really Want to Build Your Own Website Right Now?

Before you spend the next week or so setting up a new website for yourself, please pause to ask yourself if you really want to build your own website right now?  I can guarantee you – you will spend several weeks, maybe even several months, “tweaking” your site once I show you how to set it up.

This is not a profitable task.  It is a housekeeping task.  Income generation through blogging is a long term strategy.

Having your own site should definitely be part of your long term online income plan, but if you are JUST starting out I recommend you start somewhere a little more simple that will allow you to take action now to see income generation.  If you don’t – you might just burn out of the process beofre you ever see any real results because again, blogging is a long term strategy.  It takes a while to rank you blog and post.  Your page rank / site rank will take a while to gain any traction and the age of your domain plays a big part in that – so if you’re new there isn’t any super duper shortcut to fix it.  Yo ujust have to write great content and make sure it’s optimized, optimized and optimized some wmore. (we’ll take about this in the course).

So if you want Right-Now-Money I recommend you learn how to earn your first dollar online with an affiliate program and then build your site.  Having some cha-ching in your pocket from effectively marekting something will go a long way to keeping your from giving up on this “online thing”.

So, just remember, you do not have to wait to get a website up and running before you can dig in and get your online business going   There are a lot of options for your.  My favorite options is beginning with a Facebook Fanpage.

But if you determined to have a site now instead of later – or you’ve already been doing work online and you’re ready to build you blog as part of your online business plan – then let’s get started!

What will you learn?

These are the things we are going to be going over:

• Use Keyword Search To Find A Great Domain Name
• Go Search For A Domain Name’s Availability
• Purchase A Domain
• Get Hosting
• Redirect Your Nameservers
• Install WordPress
• Optimize Your WordPress Settings *This is Key*
• Install A Theme
• Tweak Your Widgets
• Install The Basic , Yet Necessary Plugins
• Write Your First Post
• Upload Your First Image
• How to Set Image Alt Tags…..

                     and much, much more.

These are the basics you need to know when setting up a website.  We will be building your own website on a wordpress platform.  This will allow you to create a traditional looking website WITH a blog built into it or a standard front page blogging website.

Of course there are about a gazillion different customization you can do – and while we won’t be getting into that too deeply – I’ll show you a few quick tricks.

Why are you saying website / blog like it’s the same thing?

The simple fact is – if you want to be online in today’s internet environment - you need the super responsive and dynamic content type that comes with a blog.  You need to be updating you website with new posts at least a few times a week.  This pings the little webots to come take a look at your site. And if you didn’t already guess – Yes, that is important ; )  So when I say create your own website or setup a blog – I am talking about the same thing.  The only different would be if you are doing a strictly e-commerce site.  I still recommend you only do that with a shop solution that allows you to incorporate your blog within your main domain and not have to push it off to a subdomain.

The main costs associated with making your own blog

1) Hosting ( 60-150 per year)

2) Buy a domain ( 5-15 usd per year)

3) Purchase a custom theme (if you choose to, but you don’t have to – $30 – $300 one time cost)

I will walk you through what each of these items are, where to get them and how you install them.  Good thing for you, the platform itself – WordPress – is a “open source” software.  So that means it’s free!

All the best ~!

Patricia