How to Start a Blog

What in the world is a Blog?

The word “blog” is a contraction of Web-Log. In Basic terms, it is a normal website, but presented in the form of a diary, in which the author or publisher can write every day or as frequent as he likes and visitors will see the latest entry first. A blog is written like a diary because it makes reading a snap and finding content is easier than traditional website layouts. So now that you know that a blog is a website, let’s keep going.

How do I Start a Blog?

First of all, you need to know that there are many blog platforms available online to start a blog. A blogging platform is a software that helps the author or writer of the blog, manage the content easily and be able to interact with the visitors by allowing comments on each entry. The most popular platforms are Wordpress and Blogger. These two blogging platforms offer free blogs for the general public and you can start a blog in as little as 3 minutes; But there is a catch! yes, some free blogging platforms do not allow bloggers to use their blogs for commercial purposes, and that includes not being able to monetize your blog with advertisements or affiliate links (check their terms of use for the latest details) plus, your blog address will look something like http://yourblog.blogspot.com which is not as appealing as having your own domain name like http://Yourblog.com which is more attractive and you own the contents of your blog. Read the rest of this entry »

HHUUYoutube.comUUHH is the world’s leading website to share videos with friends and the rest of the world. Youtube is also one of the top websites in the world, which means that it is one of the most visited on a daily basis. The service is free, you can upload a video and the system will automatically convert your video to flash system and the systems automatically assigns a unique url for your video if you want to send it to a friend. The advantage of the system is that when you upload a video, you can assign specific keywords to identify it’s content and the system automatically adds it to the public video library. Anyone searching for the keywords you assigned to your video will most likely see your video and click on it. The amazing thing is that it is very similar to a search engine and you can get first page ranking in a matter of days by making a good quality video.

How do we make money with Youtube?

It’s very simple; We just create an online video about a niche website to promote. People watch it and if they are interested enough, they will click the link or type in the url you are promoting. The best way to monetize on a video is to create a viral video, which is very difficult but if you have some creativity it is possible and the results will blow you away. A very good example of a viral video is the Blendtec® “Will it blend?” show where the host shows how powerful their blender really are by crushing ipods, cellphones, rocks, etc. Since the videos went online, their sales have skyrocketed as it is a very original idea to sell a blender!

You can see an example of the “Will it blend?” viral videos here: HHUUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YIUU

Our Real Life Example: We created a video to promote our Ferrari merchandise website. We started showing Ferrari cars photos, videos, and Ferrari merchandise in the youtube video we uploaded. At the end of the video, we displayed a message with the url address of our website. People who were interested automatically typed in the browser our website URL or clicked the link you are allowed to insert into the video’s description. We received over 200,000 views and 9,600 clicks/visits to the site and made a profit of over ₤1,200 in just two weeks; and all that traffic was for Free!

After this test, we decided to make 5 more videos on other niches. We noticed that youtube is spidered constantly by search engines and started receiving traffic from not just youtube, but also google, msn, yahoo etc. Your profits will double or triple with this strategy as you don’t need to pay for clicks.

Other video sharing sites you should use:

HHUUhttp://www.youtube.comUU

HHUUhttp://video.yahoo.comUU

HHUUhttp://video.google.comUU

HHUUhttp://video.msn.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.blip.tvUU

HHUUhttp://video.aol.comUU

HHUUhttp://uncutvideo.aol.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.metacafe.com

HHUUhttp://www.current.tvUU

HHUUhttp://www.vimeo.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.revver.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.motionbox.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.dailymotion.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.webshots.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.esnips.comUU

HHUUhttp://stage6.divx.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.addictingclips.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.collegehumor.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.tubetorial.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.ourmedia.orgUU

HHUUhttp://www.ifilm.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.ning.comUU

HHUUhttp://www.atomfilms.comUU

A Common Problem: You want to make an online video to promote your affiliate links and/or websites. The problem is that you don’t know how to make a video (editing, add music, transition effects, etc.) and you don’t have that kind of cash to buy a video editing software (most are over ₤175).

Solution: There is a FREE website we strongly recommend for beginners where you can upload your video clips and you can edit them online, add music, photos, text, transitions and publish it! It is truly an amazing website and you should definitely try it to edit your videos and Make Cash.

The website is HHUUhttp://www.JumpCut.comUU

External Video Editing Software we use and recommend:

Final Cut Pro, Ulead Media Studio Pro, Adobe Premiere

If you want to do a little more in-depth research of a website to make sure you target the right customers, then you should definitely check out HHUUwww.Quantcast.comUUHH – Type any domain name in the blank and Quantcast will show you the complete site monthly traffic, the site demographics (age, race, salary, etc.), business activity and similar related websites people visit in addition.

What else can you ask for? This is the results page you will get after doing a search on any domain you are interested in advertising:

This is extremely valuable data for FREE! UUUse it to your advantageUU

A successful way to target your google ads is to setup a “placements” campaign rather than a keyword-based campaign. Placements are simply “existing websites” that offer adwords publishers a chance to place their ads in their web pages directly instead of the ads appearing on the traditional search engines.

The great advantage of using placements is that you already know what your customers are really interested in. For the example above, High-Def Digest is a website dedicated to the next generation of high definition equipment and media. Obviously, the site visitors are interested in 1 thing: High Definition consumer electronics. As you can see above, the advertiser’s ads are of high definition equipment. Using placements is a great way to grab a highly TRAGETED audience from an already popular website + Placement ads are usually cheaper!