Step 4 - Your Web Presence

by GinaGaudioGraves on June 16, 2008, 03:58:00 AM

STEP 4 -- Putting Together Your WEB PRESENCE

The first step in putting together your web presence is to get your domain name and hosting account set up. On that hosting account, you’ll need to set up your blog IMMEDIATELY and start generating traffic to it.

Domain Names

So where do you get your domain name? What domain name will you choose? Where will you purchase it? How do you tie it to your hosting account?

Let’s tackle these questions one at a time.

Your domain name should be a URL that is:

1. Easy for your audience to remember

2. Includes at least one keyword that is highly searched for by your audience

3. Adds credibility to your website and your business

This means that you want to:

a. Get a .com name and not a .info or .biz name

b. Do some keyword research to determine what the most highly searched term is in your market

c. Say the URL out loud several times and ask others to do the same thing. If you can’t say it easily, it’s not the right domain name for you!

I like to use Domain Tools’ Domain Suggestion tool for finding domain names. The way that it works is that you go to http://www.domaintools.com and select the “Domain Suggestion” tab. This will change the word to the left of the search box from “WhoIs” to “Domain Suggestions”.

Put the keyword that you have selected into the search box and hit “enter”. This will bring up a list of a variety of domain names that are available using that keyword.

To the right of the domain, you’ll see a series of circles. The white circles indicate the domain extension is available and the gray circles indicate the domain extension is taken.

If you were searching for the keyword “health”, you’re screen would look like this:

Domain Tools Domain Suggesstions

You’ll see that “FunHealthClub” appears at #9. All of the circles are white which tells you that you can purchase:

· FunHealthClub.com

· FunHealthClub.net

· FunHealthClub.org

· FunHealthClub.biz

You are able to get 20 domain name suggestions without ever registering at Domain Tools. With a registration, you can get a few more. I maintain a silver account which costs me $15 amount and allows me to get 100 domain suggestions for each keyword.

You can actually click on the white circle corresponding to the URL that you want to purchase and place it into your shopping cart right there on domain tools. The registrar that will process your transaction is:

http://www.spry.com

I have a number of my domain names through Spry and they’re pretty good. However, quite often, I’ll think of a domain name when I’m away from the computer so I like to have the flexibility of being able to call 24/7 to order a domain, make changes to my account, etc. and Spry only offers support Monday through Friday on the phone.

So, I keep 2 separate registrar accounts. My other favorite registrar is:

http://www.domandiscover.com

It’s really a matter of personal preference between these two. They offer very similar features. Spry charges about $8 for a domain name and Domain Discover charges about $9.95.

The one registrar that I do not recommend is GoDaddy. Every time I’ve done a search on GoDaddy and hesitated even a few minutes before buying the domain I had looked up, GoDaddy went and bought the domain out from under me and THEN turned around and offered it to me at a substantial premium. (Once, it was as much as $5,000!)

You don’t need to deal with companies like that.

How long should you register your domain name for?

That’s a great question as well. Many people will tell you that registering a domain name for only 1 year will hurt your search engine rankings. However, this isn’t necessarily true. I have been able to achieve great search engine rankings with only a 1 year registration. In more competitive markets, though, it might make a small amount of improvement in your rank to have a 2 year or greater registration.

One big note on domain names …

Save your money! Don’t waste it on the privacy registrations! This will actually hurt you in the search engines. Many companies will charge as much as $25 for this worthless feature and it isn’t going to do you any good.

The way that you tie your domain name to your hosting account is through the “Nameserver”. Each hosting account will have its own nameservers. You’ll need to list at least 2 nameservers for each domain name. These look like this:

Ns1.YourNameServer.com

Ns2.YourNameServer.com

If you know what your nameserver will be at the time you register your domain name, then go ahead and list it. Otherwise, after you register for your hosting account and get your nameserver info, then go ahead and modify your domain name account.

Hosting Accounts

Hosting can get really confusing since there are so many different types of hosting services available. I’m going to make this really easy for you …

When looking for a hosting company, you want to look for the following:

Cpanel – this is the type of panel that you will use to reach all of the features in your account and control how your website and email function. Other types of panels/platforms include Plesk, Windows, and many others. Cpanel is probably the easiest platform to work with and it offers the greatest flexibility to newcomers and experienced business owners alike.

Fantastico Plugins – these will allow you to add functionality to your website easily and include plugin scripts like WordPress blogs, forums, support desks, etc.

Storage Space – you’ll want a minimum of 500 meg. of storage space

Additional Domain Names – ideally, you want to be able to add more than one domain name to a single hosting account. For example, perhaps you sell 3 separate ebooks and you have only a mini-site consisting of a few pages for each one. Why should you have to pay for 3 separate hosting accounts? Many hosts allow you to add multiple domains to a single account for a small, one-time fee. Try to find this flexibility in your host.

Other than these essential features, anything else on your hosting account is truly optional.

My favorite hosting companies are:

Third Sphere – http://www.askggg.com/recommends/hosting

Kiosk – http://www.askggg.com/kiosk

I like these hosts for different reasons. With Third Sphere, I like the added benefit of having their “Automation Station” system included with my hosting account. This gives you a shopping cart, complete with affiliate program, unlimited sequential autoresponders, and ad trackers all built into the system for one low monthly fee.

SIDENOTE: “Sequential Autoresponders” and the autoresponders that come with just about every hosting account are NOT the same thing! Regular autoresponders that are part of your hosting allow you to set up email addresses that respond on your behalf. So, if you set up an autoresponder called support@mydomain.com and someone sent an email to that address, your autoresponder would send out whatever message you had included in your setup.

With Sequential Autoresponders, though, you are able to set up an unlimited number of messages within them instead of just one. A Sequential Autoresponder keeps a database of those who opt into the list. And sending a message to the autoresponder, will trigger the entire sequence to be sent, one after the other according to the time you specified in your set up, to the requester.

I use Kiosk as my host for my dedicated servers. I like their compensation plan as well. And, they have a variety of different types of accounts available. One thing that’s great about Kiosk is that you can get 70 Gigabytes of storage space (as opposed to Third Sphere’s 500 megabytes of storage), with UNLIMITED domains, for a single price of $44.95 per month. And you’re first month is only $1!

So if you plan on having a lot of websites, or if your websites are going to host a lot of audio and video, then Kiosk might be a better option.

However, since you’ll lose the shopping cart, affiliate program, and autoresponder, then you’ll need a second system to handle that for you.

For my websites that are on my Kiosk Dedicated servers, I use a service called “Ebiz AC” that you’ll find at:

http://www.askggg.com/ebizac

This is a stand alone service that can be used on as many domains as you would like. It provides the following features:

· Shopping Cart

· Affiliate Program

· Sequential Autoresponders

· Ad Trackers

· Support Desk for your customers to contact you

· Membership site manager

The service starts out at $29.95 per month for up to 30,000 subscribers, affiliates, or members in your account.

So let me summarize this for you:

Features	ThirdSphere	Kiosk	eBiz AC
Hosting	500 meg.	70 Gig.	None
Shopping Cart	Yes	No	Yes
Affiliate Program	Yes	No	Yes
Sequential Autoresponders	Yes	No	Yes
Ad Trackers	Yes	No	Yes
Support Desk	No	No	Yes
Membership Manager	Limited	No	Yes
PRICE	$24.95 / mo.	$44.95 / mo.	$29.95 / mo.

So, if you get Third Sphere, you’ll get everything you need for only $24.95 per month. But, realistically, you’re probably not going to be able to host more than 2 (possibly 3) websites on that account. If you’re hosting a lot of audio or video, you won’t be able to go over 1 website. (They charge $10 per domain to add additional domains to any account.)

SIDENOTE: With my course, “Abundant Info Products: How To Make Big Bucks On Info Products … FAST!”, you’ll get one free month of service with Third Sphere. Since the course is only $17 for 30-Day Challenge participants, this will save you almost $8 and you’ll get the course for free! Grab the special at:

http://www.askggg.com/aip30day

If you go with Kiosk and eBiz AC in combination with one another, you’ll be spending around $75 per month, but you’ll be able to host an unlimited number of websites, with an unlimited number of products. You’ll have plenty of storage for audio and video with this option!

Tie Your Hosting Account and Domain Name Together

Now that you have both a domain name and a hosting account, you’ll need to add your nameservers to your domain registrar’s account.

After registering for your hosting, you should have received an email from the service telling you how to access your cpanel, what you nameservers are, etc.

After locating that email, login to your domain account and look for the nameservers area. On Domain Discover, it looks like this:

Nameservers

Under “Advanced Settings” you see “Nameservers”. Click on that link and it will take you to the page to update your nameservers.

This will cause your registrar to send the new information out across the internet. It can take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours for the new change to propogate through all ISP’s and hosting companies. During that time, your new domain name might not be visible on the internet.

You’ll know when the propogation is complete when you see a screen that says “Index” at the top left and has files and file folders below it. If you’re getting a page cannot be found error, this simply means that the domain name hasn’t propogated yet.

Until the domain propogates, I would hold off on going to the next step – installing your blog. It’s not that you can’t do this until the domain propogates. Rather, you have to do things slightly differently in order to use your IP address instead of your domain name and there is a lot of room for error.

Just be patient while waiting for the propogation to take place and work on getting your products and your funnel ready in the meantime.

SIDENOTE: Need some help getting your domain, your hosting account, and the little details pulled together? Then I have 2 suggestions for you:

7 Killer, Step-By-Step Videos

—> http://www.askggg.com/7videos

For less than the price of a McDonald’s lunch, you’ll get 7 complete sets of videos that cover everything from setting up your domain, hosting, and website to blogging to creating your information products in DETAIL!

I’ve personally watched 2 of the video sets and they are absolutely fantastic! Even as a non-technie person, I easily figured out how to install a script on my own website — a task that I’ve not been able to complete in the past without a LOT of gray hair and nail biting!

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a complete set of videos on marketing. Not anywhere. Not at ANY price!

With these videos, you’ll learn:

* How to choose and register a domain name
* How to work with your cPanel
* How to set up a mini-site to sell any product you’d like
* How to set up a blog, write powerful posts, and do it in such a way that you’ll drive organic (free) traffic from the search engines right to your blog
* How to create an .exe ebook
* How to create and compile a .pdf ebook
* How to add a merchant account or PayPal to your website
* How to install scripts on your site
* How to build a list in no-time at all!
* How to set up your autoresponder
* How to create your opt in page
* and much, MUCH more!

This is one of those products that is sure to get at least a 100 times return on your investment — and probably a lot more!

With this package, there ARE NO MORE EXCUSES!

If you’ve been struggling to figure out how to do all this “marketing stuff”, then this is the one thing that can help cut through the clutter and make it crystal clear. Grab it now before this guy realizes how crazy he is for selling it at this price!

http://www.askggg.com/7videos

3 Step-By-Step Newbie Guides

One of the best resources I’ve ever seen walks you through every single step with complete screen-shots and hand-holding details. Not only will you learn how to register your domain, set up your hosting, and get your nameservers set up, but you’ll also learn how to:

Get and install a simple (and free) web page editor. With everything laid out in illustrated steps, you'll soon be zipping out websites like a pro.

Set up the backbone of your webpage, with a controlled-width, white background for easy reading ... and a coloured surround of your choice.

Easily place pictures and text side by side, for a crisp, professional-looking website.

Create an attention-grabbing, benefit-shouting bulleted list -- just like this one.

Add clickable links to your page, with a few clicks of your mouse. Put in those links that make you money (Affiliate commissions anyone?)

Even drop snippets of code into your website, in just 3 simple steps. Yes! It's not as difficult as you feared.

Install an easy to use FTP program, that lets you easily drag'n'drop your website files from your computer onto your Internet domain.

In fact, there are 3 complete Newbie Guides included in the package. You’ll even learn how to set up your affiliate marketing promotions and your affiliate website. You’ll get all 3 for the low price of only $9.97.

These guides will get you off to a fast start in building your online presence! You’ll find them at:

http://askggg.com/newbietools

Installing Your Blog

So what are you going to put on your new website?

There are many different types of websites out there. These include:

· The standard “Mini-Site” consisting of a sales letter selling a product, an upsell sales letter, and a download page such as http://www.abundantpositivity.com.

· There’s an article directory site such as http://www.ezinearticles.com.

· There’s a hub site that’s nothing more than a collection of links and feeds for blogs on a given topic, such as http://www.milblogging.com, http://www.autism-hub.co.uk, and http://www.rv-hub.com .

· There are social networks like http://www.myspace.com, http://www.joint-venture-seeker.com, and http://www.facebook.com .

But the site you’re going to create isn’t like any of those. The site you’re going to create is more like this:

http://www.TheIMUniversity.com

If you said, “Well, that’s just a blog!” then give yourself a pat on the back … but only a light one. It is a blog. But, it is also so much MORE than a blog at the same time!

That site is really the heart of a strategically designed Traffic Generation System.

It is through this blog that I am able to direct traffic to ANY product in my profit funnel AND build my list at the same time. I can even direct traffic to affiliate offers through the individual posts.

Notice that I am including each of the lessons in the 30-Day Challenge as Pages on the blog. Why would I do that?

Again, it’s part of the strategically designed traffic generation system. By having the lessons show up as pages, it keeps readers right on my blog where they’ll be able to see my other products, read my other posts, etc.

When you use your blog in this fashion, you’ll be able to get visitors to take the precise actions that you want them to take!

For example, my ultimate goal with my blog is to have people either opt into my list or get to one of my products or get to one of my affiliate offers. Everything about it is designed to do that from the placement of each item on the sidebar to the fact that it is a 2-column blog with a right hand sidebar.

And it works to do precisely that! I can tell just by looking at my stats:

MyBlogLog Stats

In these stats, I see that 17 people viewed the 30-day IM Challenge page that day, 12 people viewed the main page of the blog, and many viewed either individual posts or individual lessons.

There were 3 new subscribers that day, 8 clicks on affiliate products, and 2 on my own products. Those clicks resulted in 1 sale of my own products and 5 sales of affiliate products. PLUS the 3 new subscribers!

And that was for only about a 12 hour period in a single day.

SIDENOTE: The stats are tracked using http://www.MyBlogLog.com which allows you to see this detail as well as the precise link that brought each visitor to your blog.

In the prior lessons, I explained that your goal is to become an influencer with your audience. That is exactly what you are doing with your blog. You are using the content of the posts to develop a relationship with your audience and through that relationship, becoming an influencer.

You can also use your blog to get to know your audience better, figure out what their problems are, establish a 2-way communication with them through the comments they leave, etc.

SIDENOTE: You might even consider setting up a poll on that blog so that you can find out more about the problems people have in your market. That will help you to build a better pr’ofit funnel because your products will be better solutions for your prospects.

Use your blog to attract experts in your niche for the interviews that you will use to create your products.

Before we get into writing powerful posts and driving traffic to your blog which is the subject of Step 5, I want to cover the basics of getting your blog set up.

I’m only going to cover the basics here. If you prefer to have step-by-step instructions for getting the technical side of your blogging taken care of, then I have a few suggestions for you in the “Sidenote” below.

SIDENOTE: If you still have no idea of where to start with blogging, I highly recommend the following info products. Each one is a little different so I will explain the benefits of each one.

MULTI-MEDIA: Giveaway Secrets of The JV Queen

http://www.theimuniversity.com/blogging

This package is not what the name implies! It’s really a course in blogging.

You see, one of the fastest ways of building a list is to participate in a JV Giveaway. However, you can’t even get in on a single one unless you have a way to promote the giveaway first. This is usually done by promoting to your list.

But what do you do when you don’t have a list or your list is very small? Use your blog, of course!

You can actually generate even more traffic that some of the gurus with big lists simply by using your blog and really concentrating on using a system that drives a TON of traffic.

In “Giveaway Secrets of The JV Queen”, I share the precise strategy that I use to promote giveaways through my blog, bringing in sometimes thousands of new subscribers to my list in only a few weeks.

This multi-media course contains audios, powerpoint slides, checklists, flowcharts, and much more that will have you not just setting up your blog but fine-tuning it for maximum results in minimum time.

I’ve paid well over $100 for blogging courses that don’t even have half of the info that I’ve packed into this course! And as a participant in the 30-Day Challenge, it’s yours now for only $27 at:

http://www.theimuniversity.com/blogging

VIDEO: 7 Killer, Step-By-Step Videos

http://www.askggg.com/7videos

Remember those awesome videos that I told you about back on page 13 in the Sidenote? Well those same videos even cover getting your blog set up! As I said before, with this set of videos, there are no more excuses!

http://www.askggg.com/7videos

VIDEO: Learn How To Create Automated WordPress Blogs In Minutes

http://www.askggg.com/blogging

This great video course that walks you through every step from setting up your blog to creating high quality, keyword rich posts that generate traffic. The course contains the following videos:

Install Wordpress 5:20
Installing Plugins 4:05
Installing The Theme 9:02
Modifying The Theme 14:31
Setting Up Syndication 5:49
Blog Automation 10:11

Total Time -- 48:58

The kind of blog that I’m talking about having you set up is one that would net benefit from having automatic content posted to it if you are using that as the sole method of generating content.

In order to become an influencer, it’s important that you write at least SOME of the content yourself. It’s totally fine to subsidize your own content with automated content, though. Especially if the automated content can really help your audience solve a problem.

Adding the automated content to your blog will probably result in driving more than double the traffic that you would bring in with your own posts alone.

It is for this reason that I give this product my 2-thumbs up! Besides, the other 38 minutes and 47 seconds of videos are EXACTLY what you need to get your blog set up in record time with your fingernails still in tact and your hair the same color it is right now.

At only $7, this package is a steal! You’ll find it at:

http://www.askggg.com/blogging

For now, you’ll need to get your blog installed and completely set up.

Installing WordPress On Your Own Hosting Account

Perhaps the most important reason for installing your blog on your own hosting account is because of the increase that you will get in your search engine rankings when using a blog. You’ll lose this benefit if you use a free blogging platform.

The other benefit is the added functionality that you can have when you have complete control over the blog. This functionality will help you to drive traffic more effectively and therefore, to increase your revenues.

To install your blog on your hosting account:

1. Login to your cpanel and go to the “Fantastico Plugins”. With most hosting companies this is on the bottom line of the cpanel and is represented by a small smiley face. If you are using Third Sphere’s hosting platform with its modified cpanel, you’re looking for the “Snap In Script Center” at the bottom of the left column of options.

a. Once inside Fantastico, select “WordPress” under the “Weblogs” heading.

b. Determine which folder you will install WordPress in. I recommend making it the index page of your website so that when people go to www.YourDomainName.com, they actually arrive at your blog. On the other hand, if you have some particular reason to not do that, then you can install it in the /blog folder.

c. Click the “Install” button and let Fantastico install WordPress for you.

2. Set Up Your Theme - Now that WordPress is installed, login to your WordPress Dashboard. Select the “Presentation” tab. This will show you which themes are already installed. Most likely you’ll see only the default Kubrik theme.

a. Find a theme that you want to install on your blog and ftp it to your server. Make sure that you install it in the /wp-content/themes folder by setting up a new folder for the name of your theme. NOTE: You want a 2-column theme with a right hand side bar like the blog at www.TheIMUniversity.com. This will help to get you maximum results from your visitors as your conversions to both subscribers and customers are likely to increase by 30% or more.

b. Once you have ftp’d your theme to your server, select the theme on the Presentation tab to make it active on your blog.

3. Now you’re ready to install your plugins. At a minimum, you’ll want to locate and ftp the following plugins to your server:

a. Sociable – this allows you to display social bookmarking icons at the end of each post – http://www.maxpower.ca/bookmarking

b. Ultimate Tag Warrior – this allows you to add tags to each post. Tags are essentially the keywords that people will use to find your posts in sites like the social bookmarking sites, from tag clouds, etc. Get it at: http://www.neato.co.nz/

c. Akismet – this is installed in WordPress by default but you’ll need to activate it. It’s important to do so in order to prevent spam comments on your blog.

d. Evemore – this is what displays the “Read More” tags at the bottom of the posts on the index page. The default for this plugin is to display the “read More” at the end of the first paragraph. However, you can change that to any number of paragraphs you’d like. Ideally, select a different location for each post based on the content. Give the reader a sample of what the post is about and at the right moment, display the “Read More”. Do this by selecting “more” in the “Write” tab of the blog as you are creating your post. -- http://www.thunderguy.com/semicolon/

e. FeedSmith – this redirects your feeds to your FeedBurner account so you can track every subscriber -- http://www.feedburner.com/

f. WordPress Reports – this will allow you to track your stats from your FeedBurner account or from Google Analytics right inside your dashboard. -- http://tantannoodles.com/

4. After you ftp each plugin to your server, go to the “Plugins” tab in your dashboard and select “Activate” for each plugin. For Akismet, this will require you to register at www.WordPress.org and obtain a license key that will be sent to you via email. Enter the key to activate Akismet.

5. Go to the “Options” tab of your dashboard. You’ll want to complete the requested info on the General, Write, and Read tabs. Make sure that in your title and meta tags you are including your primary keywords!

a. On the “Discussion” section, make it easy for people to leave a comment on your blog.

b. On the “Permalinks” section, change the setting to “Date and name based”. This will put the title of each post into the link to that post. Since you’ll be using your keywords in your titles, this will also help to increase your search engine rankings as a result.

c. On the “Sociable” section, you’ll need to decide which icons you want to display. Select at least 8 to 10 making sure that you include all of the major sites such as Digg, Delicious, Technorati, and StumbleUpon.

d. On the “Tags” section, following the instructions that came with the plugin for setting up the various options. For TheIMUniversity.com blog, I am using “tagsetsimplelist” for the Secondary Content Tags and “technoraticommalistwithlabel” for the Primary Content Tags. To make it easier when you create new posts, make sure that you select “Drop Down List” at the bottom of the options when it asks “Show Existing Tags on post editing page”.

6. Register for a FeedBurner account at http://www.feedburner.com. Then go back to the “Options” tab in your dashboard and select “FeedBurner”. Put in the name of your feed.

7. Register for a MyBlogLog account at http://www.mybloglog.com. Then login to your account and get the code for:

a. MyBlogLog Widgets – this will allow you to add a box to your sidebar to display your visitors’ pictures. Get this code and put it to the side for now. You will use it in #8 below.

b. MyBlogLog Stats – this is how you will track the visitors coming to your blog. You’ll get a snippet of code that you will need to install on your blog. Simply follow the simple instructions to add the stats to your blog.
NOTE: I STRONGLY recommend that you upgrade to the Pro account with MyBlogLog. This will cost only about $25 per year and it will provide you with more detailed stats that are more current.

8. Go to the “Presentations” tab and select “Sidebar Widgets” or “sidebar” (depending upon your version of WordPress). This is where you’ll layout your sidebar using drag and drop icons. On the “Sidebar Widgets”, you are allowed up to 9 text boxes. I simply leave the number set to 9 so that you can use them whenever you’d like. Here’s the order you want to place the items in:

a. Text Box 1 – this is for the opt in form code from your autoresponder. You’ll use this to allow people to subscribe to your list.

b. Text Box 2 – add the html code that you get from FeedBurner to allow people to subscribe to your feed.

c. Text Box 3 – create html code in your favorite editor to display an image for your low end product or a free ebook. Link it to the sales page. Place the html code in this box

d. Categories

e. Pages – add this even if you don’t currently have pages on your blog. It will only display once you add pages.

f. Recent Posts

g. Recent Comments

h. Archives

i. Blog Roll – this is where you will list links to your other products/services/etc. or to affiliate products you would like to promote.

j. Text Box 4 - MyBlogLog Widget that will display your visitors’ pictures. You get the code for this in your www.MyBlogLog.com account.

k. The rest of the sidebar is up to your discretion.

9. Write Your First Post.

a. Either:

i. Login to your WordPress dashboard and select the “WRITE” tab, or

ii. Download BlogJet from http://www.blogjet.com where they have a 30 day free trial. (RECOMMENDED)

b. Before beginning your post, add a few appropriate categories to your blog by either selecting the plus sign next to categories in the dashboard or “Add Category” on the right side of BlogJet

c. Write a short post introducing yourself to your readers. Discuss the topic for your blog. Write your post in a story style. You’ll want to ASK QUESTIONS and then PROVIDE ANSWERS in a short bulleted list with punchy answers. (Use the POP! Style explained at http://writeideasmarketing.wordpress.com/2007/01/17/get-noticed-with-pop/ )

i. Remember to make your post look attractive

ii. Consider sharing a recent conversation you’ve had with your readers and write this in such a way as to draw your readers into the story

d. When your post is finished, add TAGS that are appropriate to the topic in the area provided of the WordPress dashboard or BlogJet. (TAGS are similar to keywords and are those things that will be used by social bookmarkers to add your post to their bookmark list. They should be those keywords that will get your post noticed and should be appropriate to the topic of your post.)

e. Make sure that you have first included your PING LIST in either your WordPress’ dashboard under the “Options” tab and then the “Writing” link at the bottom of the page or by adding the list to the PING area of BlogJet.

A PING LIST is a list of those search engines and sites that you want to contact automatically to inform them that your blog has been updated. To locate a list of those sites, use your favorite search engine and search for “Ping List Blog”. Another alternative is to use http://www.pingoat.com . However, there list of sites is MUCH smaller than what I use and what you are likely to find if you search for a ping list.

SIDENOTE: In my course “Giveaway Secrets of The JV Queen”, I include my personal Ping List as one of the resources. Also included in the course are blogging checklists, flowcharts, slide shows, screen shots, and well over 4 hours of audio that will get your blog set up in record time. You’ll find it at:

http://www.askggg.com/gsjq

f. Select ”Publish” when your post is complete

9. Social Bookmark your post. Social bookmarking sites are sites like Digg, Delicious, Technorati, StumbleUpon, and the many others that allow you to include your bookmarks on the web and then share your bookmarks with the other members. Think of this as a way of creating your “Favorites” online for all to see instead of in your browser.

Social bookmarking can bring a SUBSTANTIAL amount of traffic to your blog, often very quickly. However, if your posts are not intriguing and interesting, then this strategy is unlikely to help with anything other than increasing your search engine rankings.

For each post that you create, you can only bookmark it twice with any individual bookmarking service. Bookmarking more than twice will get your account banned.

Each time that you bookmark your post, it jumps to the top of the list on the index page of the service. On Digg.com, for example, this would also increase the number of “Diggs” displayed to the left of the post.

As new posts are added, your post will move down in the list. When another person sees the post, it brings it back to the top again, making it more visible to other members. This is why it is beneficial to include the social bookmarking icons at the bottom of each post on your blog. That way, as your readers add your posts to their social bookmarking accounts, it will increase your traffic because of the increased visibility.

You want to use as many social bookmarking sites with your blog as you can. At a minimum, use all those sites that are included in http://www.SocialMarker.com , a free social bookmarking tool that allows you to bookmark in many different sites from one location. I use a combination of SocialMarker.com and Bookmarking Demon which is available from http://www.BookmarkingDemon.com for doing my bookmarking.

NOTE: When social bookmarking, it’s extremely important that you make what you are doing look as natural as possible to the services. If they realize that you are using their service ONLY to drive traffic to your own site, they are likely to ban your account. Therefore, you want to alternate your bookmarks between your own posts and posts from other blogs, sites you enjoy, etc.

SIDENOTE: In my course “Giveaway Secrets of The JV Queen”, I include my personal list of social bookmarking sites as one of the resources. Also included in the course are blogging checklists, flowcharts, slide shows, screen shots, and well over 4 hours of audio that will get your blog set up in record time. You’ll find it at:

http://www.askggg.com/gsjq

10. Develop a system that will drive traffic to your blog over and over again. You should spend a concentrated amount of effort (i.e. 1 to 4 hours) each day repeating these same tasks over and over, starting with adding a new post each day, pinging the search engines, and social bookmarking your post. Some of the other strategies that you’ll want to use each and every day include:

a. Commenting on other blogs in your niche – the higher the Google Page Rank (PR Rank) of these blogs, the better for you in terms of the weight of the link back to your blog. Ideally, locate 5 blogs with a PR rank of 5 or higher each day.

b. Adding your blog to RSS Directories – ideally, you want to add your blog to between 5 and 10 new directories every single day.

c. Joining Communities in your niche for other MyBlogLog members – search MyBlogLog.com for other blogs in your niche. Join these communities and add a comment with your blog’s link when you join. You’ll want to join a minimum of 5 new communities each day. When you run out of communities to join, you can either broaden your search to other niches or go to another similar site such as BlogCatalog.com and do the same thing.

d. Posting in Forums – you should locate as many forums as possible in your niche. Each day, spend 30 to 60 minutes in these forums answering other people’s questions. Make sure that you are talking like an expert in your niche as you do so!

As you are talking in these forums, you’ll want to have a signature line for each post. In that signature line, you’ll want to use a tool found in your FeedBurner.com account called the “Headline Animator”.

The Headline Animator allows you to display a banner as your signature. This banner contains the title of your blog with a link to it, a link to your feed, and it then rotates through a certain number of headlines from your posts along with the first sentence or so.

By writing powerful, intriguing posts that solve problems for people in your niche, you’ll be displaying content that your audience – the people in these forums – are interested in. This allows you to use your content to sell your products while driving traffic to your blog.

You’ll find the Headline Animator tool inside of your FeedBurner.com account on the “Publicize” tab. It looks like this:

Headline Animator by FeedBurner

If someone clicks on the name of the blog, they’re taken to the blog itself. If they click on the headline or the RSS icon, they’re taken to the post.

When you’re truly talking like an expert in forums, displaying the Headline Animator will help to bring dozens of very targeted visitors to your blog every day.

11. Each week, you’ll have Weekly Tasks that are part of your traffic generation system. These are tasks that you repeat 1 to 3 times. This includes things like:

a. Writing articles and submitting them to article directories or syndicators. You’ll find a great list of reasonably priced syndicators at:

http://www.abundancegroup.com/advertise

b. Submitting videos to YouTube and other video sites,

c. Creating Squidoo Lenses

d. Creating Hub Pages

e. Creating profiles on Social Networking sites (consider adding your blog’s RSS feed right to these sites for an added traffic boost!)

f. And more

12. If you’ve PINGed the Search Engines & Social Bookmarking sites properly, and you’ve started your daily and weekly traffic generation plan, you should see the spiders visit your site within 24 hours and visitors will start to trickle in.

Over the coming days, you must maintain CONSISTENCY in your blogging efforts. This is the KEY to success with a blog! That means that for the next 90 days, you’re going to want to repeat this process every single day.

What you’ll start to see in your stats is that each time you post, ping, and bookmark a post, you’ll bring in a certain number of visitors. Well guess what?

If you were to post to your blog twice each day, it would literally bring in TWICE the number of visitors as well! That’s how things work with blogging.

What this means is that if you’re getting 100 visitors per day to your blog and you really want 500 visitors per day, then simply post to your blog 5 times each day and do everything that you’re doing to get the 100 visitors.

As your adding all this content to your blog, this system will bring you traffic directly from your efforts (i.e. from the social bookmarking sites, the directories, etc.) as well as from the search engines.

As you are adding backlinks to your blog because of your daily and weekly efforts, your search engine rankings will grow little by little. This will bring you much more traffic in the long run than the traffic coming directly from your efforts

Where do you go from here?

Once your blog is set up, you’ll want to be writing a new post every day. At the same time, you want to continue working on your free report (product #1). When it is completed, add it to your blog.

Until your second product in your profit funnel is ready, you can point any ads in the free report to a webpage that says “Coming Soon” with a brief description and an opt in box. That way, when product #2 is ready to launch, you’ll already have a stream of interested prospects!

Continue to do this with each product in your funnel until they are all completed!

In “Step 5 – Writing Powerful Posts That Get Results”, I’ll share with you some strategies for improving the quality of your blog posts so that you can build stronger, more profitable relationships with your audience while at the same time, driving more traffic to your blog.

Action Steps for Step 4

1. Research your primary keyword(s) for your niche

2. Use DomainTools.com to locate ideal domain names

3. Purchase a domain name through your favorite registrar or through:

a. www.Spry.com or

b. www.DomainTools.com

4. Open your hosting account at either:

a. www.askggg.com/recommends/hosting or

b. at www.askggg.com/kiosk AND www.askggg.com/ebizac

5. Add your nameserves to your domain’s registrar account

6. Wait for your domains to propogate!

7. Install your blog

8. Download an appropriate theme and ftp it to your blog

9. Download all needed plugins and ftp them to your blog

10. Sign up for a FeedBurner account at http://www.feedburner.com

11. Sign up for a MyBlogLog account at http://www.mybloglog.com

12. Login to your WordPress dashboard and:

a. Activate your theme

b. Activate your plugins

c. Arrange your sidebar

d. Setup your “Options” tab for General, Reading, Writing, Permalinks, Sociable, FeedBurner, and Tags

13. Each day, write a powerful post and then:

a. Ping the search engines

b. Bookmark the post at social bookmarking sites

c. Join 5 MyBlogLog.com communities

d. Comment on 5 other blogs in your niche with a PR Rank of 5 or better

e. Add your blog to 5 RSS Directories

f. Setup your Headline Animator tool inside of Feedburner and then spend 30 to 60 minutes each day in forums in your niche, focusing on responding to posts made by others.

14. Three times each week, write an article and either submit it to article directories manually, or submit it to an article syndicator

15. Check your stats on MyBlogLog.com each day to see what your visitors are doing on your blog!

16. Continue working on your low end, entry level product until it’s ready so that you can get it added to your blog as soon as possible

17. Locate additional affiliate products that you can include in your posts and in your Blogroll

18. Each day, visit the forum at:

www.TheIMUniversity.com/forum

and let us know what progress you’ve made!

“RESOURCES” For Lesson 4

1. “21 Days to Blogging Profits”

http://www.askggg.com/newblogging

I created this package especially for those participating in the 30-Day Challenge! This package contains everything that you’ll need to get started with blogging FAST and drive a maximum amount of TARGETED traffic to your blog in a minimum amount of time.

Inside the package you’ll find:

'21 Days to Blogging Profits” Guide

“Red Hot Traffic in 10 Days: A Guide to Blogging Success”

1 ½ hour audio recording – “Getting Started With Blogging”

PowerPoint Presentation with screen shots to follow along with every detail as you listen to the audio

2 Flowcharts – “Blog System Flowchart” and “Blog Layout”

5 Blogging Checklists – “Which Blog Should You Use?", "Installing/Upgrading WordPress", "Titles/Tags/Meta Tags/Categories", "Installing WordPress On Your Host", "Setting Up Your WordPress Blog"

A list of Search Engines to Ping

2 Bonus Videos on using “Bookmarking Demon” to improve your Social Bookmarking Results

I originally planned on releasing only the “21 Days to Blogging Profits” Guide as a stand alone product at $47. But because I truly want to help you succeed during the 30-Day Challenge, it’s all yours right now for only $37 at:

http://www.askggg.com/newblogging

2. "Giveaway Secrets of The JV Queen”

http://www.askggg.com/gsjvq

This is my other blogging course. It covers a very specific strategy for list building using a combination of your blog and JV Giveaways. Using this exact strategy, many of my students have been able to build lists of between 5,000 and 10,000 subscribers in less than 30 days!

Using the “Giveaway Secrets of The JV Queen” strategy along with the system outlined in “21 Days to Blogging Profits”, you’ll be able to increase even those stellar results! Get all the details now at:

http://www.askggg.com/gsjvq

3. Copy and Graphics Resource - If you need someone to create a new header for your blog, graphics for your low end product, etc. then you can find graphic artists at: www.DirectResponseJobs.com .

This is the Job Posting Board for AWAI (the American Writers and Artists Institute). I use it to find graphics people as well as copywriters, ghostwriters, and article writers. I’ve even had some success finding people who will work on a percentage basis instead of requiring cash up front.

My favorite graphics person is Michelle Brouse. She does an AWESOME job (she created all the graphics for TheIMUniversity.com as well). You’ll find her site at:

http://www.ecoverfx.com

4. Blog Installation – If you just can’t tackle getting your blog set up on your own or if you just don’t have the time to do it, you can outsource your blog installation. Some of my favorite guys to use are:

Tony Newton – http://www.askggg.com/bloginstall

Michael Paetzgold – http://wptutorial.com/blog/

Both of these guys are friends of mine and I’ve used both of them for my own blogs. You should expect to spend anywhere from $100 to $500 to get your blog completely installed, depending upon how customized you want your blog to be, how many plugins you want installed, etc.

Make sure you check out all the blogging tips on their blogs listed above!

If you want the barebones minimums that I’ve suggested in Step 4 as far as plugins go, contact Tony Newton and tell him that you want a “Gina Blog”. His charge for creating and installing this for you (including a header appropriate for your niche and a semi-custom theme) is only $100. You can reach him at:

http://www.askggg.com/bloginstall

5. There is a fantastic video on using WordPress at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWYi4_COZMU&eurl=http://www.tonynewton.co.uk/

This video shows you how to use an account at WordPress.com instead of installing WordPress on your own hosting account, which I do not recommend. However, it does have some valuable information in it.

Other Resources That Will Help You Get Better Results

“Abundant Info Products: How To Make Big Bucks On
Info Products … FAST!” –

http://www.abundantinfoproducts.com/30day

The most helpful resource to you at this point is my course, “Abundant Info Products: How To Make Big Bucks On Info Products … FAST!”. In this course, you’ll find a TON of resources for finding hot markets. It’s the resource that my Apprentices use to learn all about researching their target market.

The course will be an invaluable resource to you in completing both Step 2 and as we move into “Step 3 – Planning Your Profit Funnel & Your Products”. To help you even more, I’m even going to give you a $10 discount and drop the price to only $17. The course comes not just with an ebook explaining every step of finding your target market, but with 35+ tools that are ESSENTIAL for building your business online. You’ll find the 30-Day Challenge Special at:

http://www.AbundantInfoProducts.com

You'll even get a free month of hosting, complete with an autoresponder, shopping cart, and affiliate program! That will save you more than the cost of the course!

A Look Ahead to "Step 5 – Writing Powerful Posts That Get Results! And Beyond"

1. In order to monetize your blog, you’re going to need to have some tools assembled. These include:

a. ThirdSphere’s Automation Station –http://www.askggg.com/recommends/hosting OR

b. eBiz AC – http://www.askggg.com/ebizac and Kiosk Hosting - http://www.askggg.com/kiosk

c. aWeber - http://www.askggg.com/aweber

2. You’re also going to need to have copy on your opt in pages and possibly on sales letters as well, as well as graphics for your blog and webpages. You can find a great copywriter (as well as graphics people) at:

a. Direct Response Jobs – http://www.directresponsejobs.com

3. You can find a ton of products to sell as an affiliate at:

a. Commission Junction – http://www.cj.com

b. Link Share – http://www.linkshare.com

c. Share a Sale – http://www.share-a-sale.com

4. TAKE ACTION and start turning your plan into reality!

When you have everything in place, and you’re ready to show the world, make sure that you tell me too!

If you have questions, comments, etc. about the 30-Day IM Challenge, leave a comment or jump into the conversation on my blog at:

http://www.TheIMUniversity.com

Or, jump into the discussion on the 30-Day Challenge Forum at:

http://www.TheIMUniversity.com/forum

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