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How To Pick A Domain Name And Places Where You Can Buy The URL

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One of the most important first steps in setting up your blog is to choose a name. This is one area that a lot of bloggers end up making a mistake in because they choose something that doesn’t make sense, is hard to remember or is just plain too long.

Choosing A Name For Your Site

There are two main types of names for a blog.

  1. Brandable name: A brandable name is about creating a name for your blog that is memorable, and that can be used to help build an identity for your site. Examples of brandable names include sites like Boing Boing, DoshDosh and Dooce.com.   Note: Brandable names can also be keyword rich depending upon the name you choose. For example a site like Engadget has a name that is brandable, but it also includes the word “gadget”. Double duty name!
  2. Keyword rich name: A keyword rich name will include keywords in the title that can give cues as to what your blog is about. This can be great for search engine traffic as search engines will often look to your url to determine whether your search results are relevant to a given topic.   Try brainstorming names for your blog by choosing a list of relevant keywords, putting them together in different ways, and seeing what you come up with.  You may also want to try and do some keyword research to find some popular but not over-saturated keywords that you can use for your site.

Personally I prefer keyword rich names because of the SEO boost they give you, and because they help you identify what your site is about before the visitor even comes to your blog. Either way, make sure you do some careful research before deciding on a name.  Coming up with some blanks for good keywords? Get out a thesaurus or research top search keywords for other sites in your niche.  Be creative!

Choosing A Domain Name And URL

If you’re going to be trying to come up with keyword rich name like I did, a fantastic site to check out is NameBoy.com. The site will allow you to enter in a couple of keywords you are considering, and then it will come up with a list of possible domain names and tell you which ones are already taken.

When choosing a domain name you’ll have the choice of a variety of different domain extensions. Some of the most popular ones include .com, .net, .info, .me, .us. I would recommend only using a .com or .net domain name as they are the gold standard, and most users will trust a site with these extensions more.

Once you find a couple of names that you like you’ll want to run it by a few people to make sure it doesn’t sound funny, or conjure up things that you didn’t intend.  (Have you ever heard f the site www.expertsexchange.com? No, it isn’t a site about sex changes) Remember, once you choose a name, you’re probably going to be stuck with it for a while, so choose wisely.

Register Your Domain Name

The next step is to register your domain name. Some of the places I would recommend to
register a domain name include:

  • Godaddy.com: This is where I have my 5 domains. Works well for me, and there are usually coupon codes available.
  • Enom.com: Another popular domain registrars that a lot of bloggers use.
  • NameCheap.com: Most people I’ve talked to lately seem to use this one.

These are just three registrars, but there are thousands of places that you can register your domain. My advice is to go with one of the big reliable domain registrars like godaddy or namecheap because managing the domains on their backends is easy and hassle free.

A Few Things To Remember When Buying Your Domain Name

There are a few things you should try to remember when buying your domain name:

  • Try to register your domain name separately from your website host or other provider: Some website hosts will give you a free domain name when you sign up for hosting with their service. The problem is that often they still own the domain name, or it is tied to your account. That often makes it troublesome to switch hosts in the future if your traffic has grown or if you aren’t satisfied with a certain host. By registering your domain name separately you can guarantee that you’ll always have control over your domain.
  • Try registering your domain with a company that will keep your information private: When registering your domain you will have the option to register your domain name privately, or to have your name and contact info available to all who look up your site’s “WHOIS” information. If you can, register your domain name privately to avoid having everyone know your name/address/phone.
  • Make sure your domain name is easy to spell: If your name is hard to spell or if people are unsure of it’s meaning, it can be tough to get people to remember it.
  • Choose a domain name with only words, no dashes: When picking your domain try to stay away from names like money-with-a-blog.com or the like. They can work, but they’re harder for people to remember, and are longer. Just leave the dashes out.
  • Consider buying both the .com and .net version of the name: If you plan on being in it for the long haul, buying both domain names may be a good idea to protect your brand.
  • Keep the domain name as short as possible: Having a shorter domain name makes it easier to remember.

Do you have any advice for folks picking a site name or domain?  What sites did you buy your domains at?

What WordPress Plugins Should I Use On My Blog?

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One of the first things most bloggers do when starting a site is to realize that WordPress is super flexible, and that you can add a ton of functionality to your site by adding WordPress Plugins. The problem is, there are so many of them available, how do you know which WordPress plugins you should use?

Today I hope to take a quick look at some of the plugins I’m using, and talk about why I think they’re important.  While you may not want to use the exact ones I mention, finding one that is similar would be a good idea.

Don’t Use Too Many Plugins

Before we go any further, I want to put a word of warning out there for all of you newer bloggers. Plugins can be fun, and they can add a lot of wonderful functionality to your site, but you don’t want to go overboard.  There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

If you add too many plugins to your site, you run the risk of having some of the following problems.

  • Slowing down your site:  Too many plugins can mean too many database calls or processes that use too many resources.  It all depends on what plugins you’re using, and what they specifically do.
  • Security holes:  Some plugin authors may not have your best interest at heart, and plugins can lead to security holes in your site. Be careful about which ones you use – and make sure it’s from a trusted source.
  • Cause problems with your site, or conflict with other plugins:  Sometimes a plugin might have poorly written code, or doesn’t use server processes as efficiently as it should. This can lead to conflicts with other plugins, and with WordPress core files.  Worst case scenario, it could bring your site down.

Plugins I Use

You can find a ton of free WordPress plugins at the WordPress plugins depository.  Plugins that have a cost associated you’ll need to find via their creator’s sites as they won’t be in the repository.

Here are some of my favorite plugins that I use on most of my sites:

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How To Backup Your WordPress Database And Site Files

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One of the most important things that you can do when first setting up your site is to put in place automatic backups for your blog.  There’s nothing worse than having  your site go down, or having a host with a disk failure, and you not having a backup of your WordPress database and site files.  It will only take one scare for you to realize just how important this is.  If you don’t backup you could potentially lose hundreds or thousands of posts, customized theme files, photos, plugins and more!

Why You Need To Backup

Your blog took a lot of hard work to get up and running, and to build up over the long months and years.  Backing up your site is just an insurance policy against losing your valuable property – your site.  Why might you need to backup – what might cause a need for restoring your site?

  • You get hacked:  This is one of the more common reasons I’ve seen that people need to revert to a backup copy of their site.  They find out that their site has been hacked and malicious code inserted into their database.  Once they figure out at what point the hack was implemented, they can restore to a backup from before that date.
  • Upgrade gone wrong:   Sometimes a WordPress upgrade or plugin update will cause a problem, and the site files or database  might become corrupted.  Having a backup means you’ll have something to go back to.
  • Host Errors: I just read one horror story of a woman who didn’t have a backup, and her host “accidentally canceled her account”.   She lost her entire site.   Make sure you have insurance against the stupidity of someone who might accidentally flip a switch somewhere on the interwebs.

What  Should I Backup For My Site?

There are a few main things that you should consider backing up.

  • WordPress database:  Always make a backup of your database. It contains all your posts, comments, settings and more.
  • WordPress plugin: You’ll want to make sure that you download and backup all of your WordPress plugins, so that you can easily re-upload them.
  • WordPress themes: Most serious bloggers have a custom theme or framework that they run their sites on.  Backing that up is critical.
  • User Images and Files(wp-content folder):   You’ll want to make sure to backup all of your user created content and uploads.  That includes images, videos, etc found in your wp-content folder.

How Often Should I Backup My Site?

You should be backing your site up as often as you think it is needed.   Personally I back the site up as often as I post on the site.

If I post daily on a particular site, I backup the database every day as well. If I post weekly, I backup weekly.

As far as site files, they tend not to change as often, and I’ll usually only backup the site files on a weekly basis.

Another time you should always do a backup is right before you do an upgrade or update of  the WordPress core files.  Things sometimes go wrong during that process, and having a backup in case something does go wrong is important.

WordPress Backup Plugins To Make It Easy

Trying to set up a backup for your site can be a bit intimidating.  Luckily these days backing up your WordPress site and database is easier than ever.  There are quite a few plugins available for WordPress that will allow you schedule a regular backup of your database or your site files – or both.

Here are some of the backup plugins I think are the best that I’ve used. My current favorite is Backup Buddy for it’s ease of use and reliability.

  • Backup Buddy: Scheduled backups for all your data, posts, files, media, themes, & more.  Basically, it backs up everything!  It’s a premium plugin, however, and a license for 2 sites is $75.  Be sure to find a coupon code, and read my full Backup Buddy review.
  • WordPress Database Backup: This is the main database backup plugin that I use.  You can set it up to do scheduled database backups to be sent to your email address, as well as a ton of options to include or exclude parts of the database.  You can also do manual database backups before doing an upgrade or something along those lines.  Backs up the database only.
  • WordPress Backup: I just discovered this plugin which allows you to back up your site’s plugins, theme files and uploads directory. In other words, most of the site files you would need in case of a catastrophe. Good to be used in conjunction with a database backup plugin. I’m using this now in conjunction with WordPress Database Backup. Backs up site files only.
  • WP-DBManager: Another good database backup plugin that a lot of folks use. Tons of options for backing up, optimizing and repairing your database.  More of a swiss army knife type database plugin.
  • BackWPup:  Another all-in-one backup solution that allows you to schedule a backup your database, site files or schedule regular optimization of your database.   I’ve just started testing this one, but if it works as advertised it should be pretty cool, and could possibly replace the two plugins I’m currently using.
  • Automatic WordPress Backup:  Another plugin that backs up everything including your database, site files, and more to an Amazon S3 server.  Storage space at Amazon will cost, but it’s pretty reasonable and very reliable.

So those are the main backup plugins that I would recommend.  There are others available, but the ones above are among the best in my opinion.

NOTE: Always keep several backups of your database and site files.   I keep a copy of my site files on each of my home computers, as well as zipped and sent to my gmail account, and on an online backup service. My database is backed up and emailed to my gmail account daily, while I also download a copy of the database every week or so. The key here is to keep several copies in different locations, just in case.

Your Host May Offer Automatic Backups As Well

Most website hosts will provide some sort of  software to backup your site. Check with your host to find out what services and programs they provide.  For mine, I just went into the hosting control panel, and there was an option there to setup a backup.

It should be noted, however, you probably won’t want this to be your only option – just in case your host makes an error and deletes your account, or there is a disk error or other hosting mishap.  Always keep a backup separate from your hosting account.

For information about backing up a database or site files manually, please see these articles from WordPress.org: Backing Up Your Database or Backing Up Your WordPress Files

Conclusion

Backing up your site is one of the more important things you can do when first setting up your site.  It will ensure that you don’t lose all of the fruits of your hard labor if the worst case scenario happens.  Unfortunately, it happens more often than you might think.

Make sure you backup, and backup often! Otherwise you could be in for a world of trouble!

How do you backup your site?  Do you use one of the plugins above, or do you prefer to do it manually?  How often do you backup?  (or do you not backup at all – hoping that nothing will happen?) Tell us in the comments!

http://codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database

How Can I Make Money With My Blog? 10 Monetization Strategies For Bloggers

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When starting a blog one of the first things most people are going to start thinking about is how they can make money with their sites. While you might be better served by doing other things like building content and backlinks to build up your traffic first, having a monetization strategy is definitely an important piece of the puzzle if you plan on making money with your blog to start you need content and an idea or even a product, you can get a loan and visit this site to find how and all the pros and cons of a loaning system.

When I first started blogging seriously in 2008 I didn’t really know what revenue sources were available to me as a blogger. About the only things I knew about were Adsense and CPM (cost per thousand) ad banner types. What I didn’t realize is that there are a plethora of other ways to make money with a blog.

10 Ways To Make Money With A Blog

After about 6 months of blogging, and a lot of research I realized that there are a ton of ways you can make money with a blog, and it wasn’t just Adsense.

  1. Pay Per Click (PPC) Ad Networks:  You can make money with pay per click ad networks along the lines of Adsense and Chitika.  These types of companies will pay you anywhere from pennies to dollars every time someone clicks on one of their ads on your site.  Google Adsense is by far my biggest money maker currently – and can be a good source of income even for newer bloggers.
  2. Private Ad Sales & Sponsorships:  Selling your own advertising space can be a very lucrative monetization method, mainly because it allows you to cut out the middle man (third party ad networks) and keep 100% of all the money you make instead of just getting a commission from a network.  Of course you have to do the hard work of selling the ads too!
  3. CPM Ad Networks: Another great way to make money based on your site traffic is through CPM ad networks.  CPM networks are a lot like PPC networks, except in the fact that they don’t pay you for
    clicks, but instead pay you each time their ad is served.  So if they pay you a $1 CPM, you’ll receive $1 for every thousand ads served.  Finding a premium network for your niche that pays a high CPM is key to making good money with this.
  4. Affiliate And Referral Networks: Companies and individuals are more than willing to pay you if you can get someone to purchase their product or sign up for their service.   It usually works best when you promote products  you actually use and believe in.  Usually a company will pay you a  percentage of a sale or a flat fee.  It can be quite lucrative if you do it right.  Promoting these affiliate type offers does the best via reviews or via an opt-in email list.
  5. Referral and GPT Networks (Get Paid To Websites):  There are quite a few sites out there that will pay you to fill out surveys, sign up for trial offers, buy products and refer new users to the programs.  I’ve signed up for several of them, and found that the real money is to be made in referring new users.  One example that has worked the best for me is  Cash Crate.
  6. Creating Your Own Product To Sell: A lot of bloggers will diversify their income by creating their own products that they can sell on their site. Things like creating their own e-book (like the one I’m selling!), online classes, selling a service and membership websites have all become very popular.
  7. Text Link Ads:  Some newer bloggers find that once their site gets a page rank above zero, they’ll start getting offers from other sites and individuals who want to buy a text link ad on their site. While you can make some good  money doing this, I have chosen not to partake in text link ads because Google has stated that they don’t like them, and it’s possible at some point sites that sell them could be docked in the search engines.   And you NEED search engine traffic to be successful.   So seller beware.
  8. Sponsored Reviews:  Some companies will pay you to review their products or to do a sponsored post.  Just make double sure to post a notice that these posts are sponsored as required by the FTC.
  9. Paid Writing Positions: Once you’ve built up some content on your own site, sometimes higher profile sites will offer to pay you to write for their sites as well. Your blog can stand as a resume of sorts for those looking to hire writers.
  10. Selling A Service: Some people will use their site promote a service that they’re offering.  For example, you may offer consulting services via your blog, or maybe you offer design services.
  11. Bonus Idea – Sell Your Blog:  I know some folks who enjoy the process of building a blog, but don’t want to continue doing it long term. Instead they build the site up to a decent amount of traffic and content, and then sell the site itself!

So those are a few of the ways I’ve found to make money with my site – although there are other things I’ve done as well.

What it really comes down to is that your options for making money with your site are only really limited by your creativity.  The key is to diversify, and create multiple streams of income via your site(s).  That way, if one source of income dries up, you’ll still have others that you can fall back on.

Do you have other ideas for making money with a blog?  What strategies do you use for monetizing?  Tell us in the comments!

How To Come Up With Content Ideas For Your Blog When You Aren’t Feeling Very Creative

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When you start out on the adventure of writing a blog, the first few weeks can be a lot of fun, and the ideas for great post topics will flow from you with relative ease.  New ideas just spring to mind out of nowhere.  After you’ve been doing it for a short while, however, I’ve found that ideas start getting tougher to come up with, and you’ll often need to be a bit more creative in finding things to write about. You may need to find some creative inspiration.

I’ve been writing 5-7 regular weekly blog entries for 3 years now, and as such I’ve had plenty of time to run out of ideas, and I’ve had to be creative in finding things to write about.   Here are some hints and tricks that I’ve used in order to come up with ideas for content for my blogs when the well is running dry.

Ideas For Coming Up With Blog Content

There are a lot of places to look to for inspiration when trying to come up with ideas for blog content.  Here are a few that I refer to.

  • What are others writing about?:  While you never want to steal other people’s content, it’s definitely OK to be inspired by what they’re writing on their site.  Perhaps you’ve seen a couple of popular sites writing about a certain topic in the news. You might consider writing about it as well, but putting your own spin on it.  I always have a ton of other sites in my RSS reader to look to for inspiration.
  • Keep an idea file: Keep an idea file handy with ideas for future posts. Whenever you think of a possible topic, write it down in your idea file for future reference. Personally I keep my idea file on my Ipod Touch for future reference.
  • Look to books on the topic for inspiration: Go to Amazon.com and search for books in your subject matter.  Look to popular books in that niche, and see what they are about. Consider writing about those topics.  Also look to the comment areas to see what people still are looking for information about – or what certain books were lacking. Amazon can be an invaluable resource for this type of information.
  • Mind mapping:  Come up with a general topic to write about, and then do a mind map as suggested in this post on how to write an ebook.  (see a screenshot of one of my mind maps above)  This can help you to come up with many post ideas at once – even a whole series!
  • Do keyword research on a general topic:  Figure out a general topic that you might want to write about, and then do some keyword research to narrow down the topic a good subject for a post.
  • Ask yourself what information you would find useful:  One thing that I find always brings about some of my best posts are the ones where I just think about what information I have searched for on Google for answers in the past.  If I was looking for information on how to start a blog, what topics have I searched for in the past?
  • Free writing:  Just start writing about whatever comes to mind.  Usually one idea will lead to another and before long you’ve got a post!

So those are a few of the main ideas I use to get the creative juices flowing again.  It usually just comes down to searching for ideas in new and different places, free associating off of those ideas and coming up with new ideas for content – or putting my own spin on an old idea.

Do you have your own ways that you get the creative flow going?  Tell us what you do to come up with content in the comments!