Tools for Developing Your Blog

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This page takes you through the different products that will get you started on blogging. I’ve used many of them myself, and recommend each of the tools that is currently linked below.

Step 1: Getting Started – Basic Reading

Blogging To The Bank – This is a popular book that provides a system for encouraging bloggers and webmasters to earn. Spending the money on this blogging book could save months of frustration and failure as Rob Benwell takes you through his insiders method for blogging that helped him to earn up to $34K per month! Why wait? Order “Blogging to the Bank” now.

Blogging for Dummies – What is Blogging? The perfect companion to WordPress for Dummies or those thinking of using another blogging platform. Though more generic it covers much of the same ground but with a platform neutral view. Order “Blogging for Dummies” now.

Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income offers a great book as well as an active website that teaches the basics of blogging. Problogger will teach you how to select the subjects that works for you, how to evaluate and direct your blog’s success, how to keep content fresh and exciting, and how to develop income sources from your blog. Order “Problogger’s Secrets” now.

There are other books on blogging these days, so check these out as well.

Step 2: Finding Hosting

There are thousands of hosts on the web nowadays. Some good, some not. If you don’t have a host already checked out, you can look at these two companies. I’ve hosted InvestorBlogger almost continuously on Dreamhost. I have also used several others, but quite liked BlueHost for the way they used CPanel. Overall, I’d say Dreamhost is easier to use.

Dreamhost Hosting – This is the first company I used and the deal is a great deal. For Blogging, this company offers two types of setup: easy and advanced. Truthfully, advanced isn’t much more complicated than easy mode. But there are a lot of advantages: FTP access, generous bandwidth, lots of great features, … Order Your Dreamhost Plan now.

BlueHost – is a suitable alternative and offers a lot of power, space and flexibility for the blogger. You get 1,500GB of space, 15,000 GB/mo of bandwidth, simple install of Wordpress, FTP access, and a bunch of other great features that you can use as well. Order Your BlueHost Plan now.

Step 3: Installing WordPress

WordPress for Dummies – This book introduces the WordPress platform as a basis for blogging. It will take you through choosing a host, setting up a domain and install, personalizing your format, theme, writing and plugins, and much more. It’s the perfect companion to WordPress that I wish I’d had when I started InvestorBlogger three years ago. Order “WordPress for Dummies” now.

WordPress.org provides a free download that you need to decompress, and upload to your hosting company server in the main folder of your URL, like “mydomain.com” or wherever you decide to host the blog. Download Your WordPress now.

You shouldn’t have to pay for your Wordpress download, though you might need a little help installing it the first time!

Step 4: Start Blogging

Learning the craft of blogging is the next step as you familiarize yourself with the technology of blogging, the craft of blogging and the art of building an audience. You can read my own basic series or one of the other suggested readings below.

Further Reading: There is also a short series of posts on this blog that takes you through the steps of setting up, managing and posting your first blog posts called Getting Started With Wordpress.

Step 5: Tricking Out Your Blog

Themes for WordPress – When you download the theme, or buy hosting with Wordpress included, you will likely get tired of the standard themes quickly. Then it’s time to trick out your blog with a new theme, esp. one that isn’t used on thousands of other sites! Buy your new theme now.

Step 6: Monetizing Your Blog

OIOPublisher plugin – This plugin offers you a realistic and very manageable way to earn your own money from your blog. It allows you to sell all manner of advertising on your blog, and keep 100% of the income for yourself. It’s got a Paypal Module, a Tracker Module, an in-built Ad Manager Module, and much more. Order “OIO Publisher Plugin” now.

Adsense – This has been a great way to start earn money on my sites. I quite like the simplicity of this system, and the responsive of the ads. However, you may find that the earnings are pitifully small compared to others, and if you forget to make sure your site complies with Google’s Adsense TOS, you may find that your account is closed.

Step 7: Keep Checking This Page

I’ll be adding more great offers, great tools and much more useful information for this page in the future, so don’t forget to bookmark the page!

Updated 11/3/2013.

Life on InvestorBlogger: What’s new?

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In recent weeks, I have made a number of changes to InvestorBlogger Dot Com to see what the effects would be.

1. Static/Dynamic frontpage

The first change was a complex one but one native to WordPress 2.5. I discovered that WordPress could set static pages as the front page, and another page as the blog. But I didn’t want to have a static page as the front page, I set up a dynamic front page that was independent of the actual choices I made for the blog page.

wordpress static page settings

It’s easy to do: create a page for each of the “frontpage” and “post page” above. Call it what you will. I called them Home for Front Page, and Blog for… well, it’s obvious. It wasn’t quite obvious that I had to set a static page for the posts page (since that’s always changing).

My tweak was to copy the code from the original front page, tweak the code inside the loops to show one full post, four partial posts, and five headlines (in effet, creating three mini-loops). Obviously, this could be better done than you see on my blog, but I quite like the page. Is it increasing pageviews? I don’t know yet.

I saved it as frontpage.php, then added the following code to make the page show up as a template. Templates are a part of WordPress, but it’s not immediately obvious if any templates aren’t included with that theme that you are using. I inserted the code right at the beginning of the frontpage.php.

<?php
/*
Template Name: StaticFrontPage
*/
?>

Also another oddity vs earlier versions of WordPress was that I couldn’t create a new file in WordPress, I had to do that through FTP, by creating the file on my desktop first then uploading it.

OK. Now remember that page I created at the beginning (I called it ‘home’ but it could’ve been anything). Find the page, edit it, then set the template like this. If you can’t see the template option, it means that your install didn’t find any templates to offer.

page template php

Then save. Voila. It works. I now have a front page (that is dynamic but selected so it’s different to Google, and a BlogPage that is fullsize).

2. Tidied up the Page List

I’ve also edited the page list at the top. It was getting unruly and disorganized as the page list kept getting longer and longer. I also couldn’t organize them properly, so I took the easy route…

page list

I edit the wp_list-pages function by listing only the pages I wanted then requesting that they be sorted by post title. Now whenever I create a page for some reason or other, it won’t show up unwanted on the top bar.

<?phpwp_list_pages(‘include=2,152,157,754,…etc…&sort_column=post_title&title_li=’); ?>

3. Tweaked the Sidebar

I’ve tweaked the sidebars also a little by messing around with the advertising and creating extra opportunities for those who use Entrecard to get traffic and eyeballs. This javascript widget takes the cards that people drop on your widget, and then converts them to links in the widget. It’s called: “You drop, I link” widget.

4. HubPages and Squidoo Lens

To increase awareness I also signed up for a HubPage where I’ll post the occasion tip and video to draw traffic from there. I had the review written by someone else to see how the review would handle my blog.

hubpage investorblogger

You can check out the Squidoo Lens, too.

squidoo lens

5. Advertising.

I’ve made a lot of changes to the advertising options over the last few weeks. You can read about what works and what doesn’t here. In the post, I look at Adsense, Amazon, TopSpots, etc. to show what works on this blog, and what doesn’t work.

6. Updated the OPML

I’ve finally updated the OPML download that is headlined on this page. I’ve included two new feeds and corrected one. Do download it and save yourself a ton of time in finding good quality reading for your FeedReader.

Top feed Subscriptions

I’ll be posting a Make Money Page soon, as well as Lesson #2 in the Quick Start to Blogging on Tuesday.

Harley Davidson Launches in Taiwan

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All week on TV we’ve been treated to a Harley Davidson Ad that says “We’re coming to Taiwan”. I first came to Taiwan in 1992 and I can remember there being a special squad of police officers who rode Harley’s. They were the only guys in Taiwan who were legally allowed to ride ‘big bikes’.

After Taiwan joined WTO, the importation regulations were relaxed and you can now regularly see many BIG bikes on the roads, they all have the distinctive RED license plates to differentiate them from the two-stroke lawnmower engine sized bikes that are common here. And they are accorded different privileges than regular bikes.

When we went to 101 today, little did we know that we’d be walking by all of these fantastic bikes at today’s launch!

Outside the venue…

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Oh, no where are the bikes… I can’t see any…

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and…

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This is my favorite here bike!

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And of course, my favorite of the day…

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A kind gentleman who had a far more environmentally friendly way to get around Taipei. He was quite happy to pose for a photo-opp. Oh, and those booth-babes… Well, I got some pictures on the video… I’ve already uploaded it to YouTube. But it’s processing, and I have to go to bed! So I’ll add it tomorrow.

Have fun! Have a Harley weekend!

(ed. I updated the post with a video, but I can’t convert the original video to AVI to edit it yet…:( )