Posts tagged: Social Networking

Making Money online DAY 3

October 10, 2011, by No comments yet

Day 3: Loose Ends…

We are coming along, just 2 days ago we had nothing, now we have our blog, with 2 pages of unique content. Social Networking accounts ready to use… It’s nearly time to start thinking about money however there are a few loose ends to tie up first.

Today is going be the last day we spend any time doing any major onsite stuff for the next week, and I will introduce a few nifty tricks which I like.

  • How to check Google Indexing
  • Google Webmaster Tools
  • Site Statistics
  • Youtube video plugin
  • Scheduling Posts

How to check your Google Indexing

One of the most basic things you can do online is to check if your website is included in Google. Generally the more pages you have included in google the more chance there is of gaining traffic.

  1. Goto http://www.google.com
  2. Enter “site:www.yourwebsitedomain.com” into the search box and click search
  3. It’ll tell you how many pages are included on google, or give you nothing found if Google hasn’t found you yet.

This is how it looks for bestfootballgoals.info. I’ve not submitted the site or anything, however I do have a link to the site both from this blog and BHW which may have affected the speed with which it has been indexed.

Google Webmaster Tools

Google has a set of tools which will tell you more about how Google see’s your website, and what Google thinks it is about. Even though you can add multiple websites you own into one Google account I personally will create a new Webmaster tools account for each website. This prevents Google from seeing that a lot of websites are owned by a single person and automatically thinking that they can’t be quality because of this. When you add your website you have to confirm that you own it, and I cover how to do this below.

  1. Goto http://www.google.com/webmaster
  2. Click signup, since we already created a google account when we signed up to youtube we can sign in with this account.
  3. Click Add Site, enter your website address and click Continue.
  4. We need to verify we own the website, google gives us a file to upload however I prefer to cheat (I recommend watching the video here)… Copy the name of the file google gives us.
  5. Goto your cPanel Control Panel and click File Manager, when it loads click Create File, and paste the name google has given you in.
  6. Select the new file in the list and click Code Editor, accept defaults and click Edit.
  7. Go back to the google webmaster tools, click on the download link, click open and copy the contents of the file. Goto the Code Editor and paste the file contents, click Save File. Then click close File Editor.
  8. Go back to google webmaster tools, click the confirm link (number 3 in the list). If it works, go back in the browser and click Verify.
  9. It’ll take a few days for Webmaster Tools to become useful to us, however we can goto the Site Configuration menu, and click Settings. Then we can choose to use the www.sitename.com option in the prefered address format.
  10. The search queries, keywords, crawl stats will all help us in a couple of weeks… For now we are done with Keyword Tools.

Whilst this will be empty to start, Google will start building data on your site over the next few days and it will eventually become awsome for finding new keywords. The video is here:

Site Statistics

It’s always nice to know when you are visited, till now we’ve not had no content so there has been no need. Now we are starting to develop our content it is important that we can track what people like and where they are coming from. The easiest way is the StatPress Visitor plugin which we install now…

  1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard, click on Plugins.
  2. Click Add New, enter “StatPress” and click Search.
  3. Find “StatPress Visitor” in the list and click Install Now, and Ok.
  4. Click Activate Plugin.
  5. This adds a new option to our menu called StatPress V, click this.
  6. At the moment you will see it is blank (or 0). From now on each time someone visits your site StatPress will track which pages they look at, where they come from, and what country they are in.

The video is here:
Site Statistics

It’s always nice to know when you are visited, till now we’ve not had no content so there has been no need. Now we are starting to develop our content it is important that we can track what people like and where they are coming from. The easiest way is the StatPress Visitor plugin which we install now…

Login to your WordPress Dashboard, click on Plugins.
Click Add New, enter “StatPress” and click Search.
Find “StatPress Visitor” in the list and click Install Now, and Ok.
Click Activate Plugin.
This adds a new option to our menu called StatPress V, click this.
At the moment you will see it is blank (or 0). From now on each time someone visits your site StatPress will track which pages they look at, where they come from, and what country they are in.

The video is here:

YouTube Embed Plugin

I like things being simple, and trying to use the embed code that youtube gives us on WordPress is just agony… It hurts badly so I have my favourite alternative, the youtube Embed Plugin which is so simple even a baby could do it!

  1. Log into your WordPress dashboard
  2. Click Plugins, Add New.
  3. Enter “Youtube Embed” and click search. Find Youtube Embed in the list and click Install Now, click Ok.
  4. Click Activate Plugin, goto the Settings menu and click on the YouTube Embed option to configure some of the settings.
  5. In the Style information box enter “text-align:center;” to center the video in the post. Set Show Fullscreen Button to Yes, Show Search Box to No, set Show Annotations to No, and then click Save Changes.
  6. Scroll down to preview how the video will look.
  7. Click Posts, Add New and enter a title and select the appropiate categories.
  8. Search YouTube for a video related to your post title, to include the video in your post you just need to write the Video ID in the code shown in the video below.
  9. Click Publish, and then preview the post to make sure that the video is working.

I love this plugin as it makes YouTube so easy to use, to find out how to include a video in your blog watch the end of the video below for the code to use.

How to Schedule WordPress Posts

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you can just add a years worth of content to your site, and have wordpress publish it automatically throughout the year? Well you can, and we are going write and schedule the next 5 days posts to be published automatically.

  1. Login to your WordPress Dashboard
  2. Click Posts, Add Post.
  3. Enter the title, write your post as you normally would, and select the category.
  4. In the Publish box next to where it says Publish immediately click the Edit link.
  5. Select tommorow’s date, and a time during the day.
  6. Click Ok, and then click Schedule which will publish the post automatically on the date and time specified.
  7. Do this for 4 more posts so that we have a new post each day until the weekend…

A video demonstration is here…

Summary…

We should now have our blog loaded with 5 articles to be published over the next 5 days. Personally I normally pay an article writer to write these for me (saves me time), however if you are just getting started they are easy enough to write. Today is the last day we will be doing these basic but necessary tasks, tommorow we will be starting to Monetize. We will look at the different options we have for earning money online and how we can tie them into our blog.
 


Making Money online DAY 2 (b.)

October 8, 2011, by No comments yet

Day 2: Getting Social…

Today is a little more interesting, there are several things we need to do including working out a bit more about what our website is about. We are still in the housekeeping phase, however what we do today will set us up well for traffic later…

By the end of todays task you will have:

  • An understanding of why I think Social Networking is important
  • Twitter set up and configured
  • Youtube set up and configured
  • Facebook page set up and configured
  • A list a keywords related to your site
  • Add the first post to your blog

Why I believe Social is important

Over the last few years the use of social networking has changed rapidly, and now everyone and their pet seems to have at least account somewhere on the social net. Major brands now find Facebook so appealing that they even base multi-million dollar TV Advertising Campaigns around people ”Liking” their page on the social network.

However what I consider key (and often overlooked) is that Social is based around human intelligence and interaction. For many years Google and other search engines have tried countless mathematical algorithms to determine the best results to a search query. The number of websites which have links to your website, the types of website that has links to your website, how many blogs meantion your website… All of which could be artifically manipulated.

Now if you picked someone of the street and asked them how they cooked a curry they’d tell ya, no mathematics involved and without being influenced. Its the same on Social networks, I’ll ask what films are good to watch, which is the best garage to use… And my friends will answer me. It fixes the problem of artifical manipulation.

Now all Google needs to do is work out just how to link the two together, in the meantime we can be prepared, and also get shed loads of free traffic. Generally a social network will allow us to link to our website from a page on an authority site and also make other users aware of that page or account.

Twitter Setup and Configuration

Google has already done great things for Twitter, and linked it directly into Google search. If something suddenly gets a lot of attention (Tweets), and someone search for it in google they will be shown the Tweets related to it in the search results!

To get set up to use twitter…

  1. Goto http://twitter.com
  2. Enter your site name, email and a password you want to use and click Sign up
  3. Now play with your username until you get one with good keywords, less than 15 characters long and is avaliable… Your address will be twitter.com/username – Click create my account
  4. Enter the confirmation captcha code and confirm
  5. Now enter your subject/topic into the Search box and click search… Look through the people that are found a click Follow on any people you think are perfect for your niche/topic
  6. Goto the email you used to sign up and open the email from Twitter. Click the link in the email to confirm you own the email address…
  7. Now if you click the down arrow in the top right corner and then click settings we can edit our profile. First thing to change is the Timezone.
  8. Click the profile button of the settings page. Enter a Location (somewhere important to your niche is always good), your website address and a quick description about your site. I usually put “owner of http://website.com” in the end for an extra link as people are curious and will check your website out. Click Save.
  9. Now click the design button of the settings page. Click on a design you like and then click save.
  10. Click the twitter logo on the top left, enter a tweet in the the What’s Happening box and click Tweet to post it to your profile. (The number next to the Tweet button is how many characters you have left for your message).
  11. Now click Profile on the top menu to have a look at how other people will see your profile.

Watch the video demonstration here:

Youtube setup and configuration

Youtube gets so much traffic that even 0.00001% of it would be amazing for us to capture. Also we get our site name and link onto another authority site so it’s all good. Many people are put off by the thought of video, however I will show you later in the series that video is simply for anyone…

Lets get started…

  1. Goto http://www.youtube.com
  2. Click on create account in the top right.
  3. Enter your email, and play with the username until you get one that matches your website. Enter the post code, DOB and click Accept.
  4. Now make up a password, untick the Web History box, and then enter the Captcha.
  5. Now go to your email account and find the email from YouTube, open this and click on the confirmation link inside.
  6. On the confirmation page click the account preferences link, when this page loads click the Profile Setup link on the Left.
  7. Enter a description about your website, and then your website address. Enter a city + hometown important to your niche. Scroll down and enter keywords related to your website in the Intrests box.
  8. Click Save Changes

Watch the video demonstration here…

Facebook Page set up and configured

Probably the monster in the world of social networks, even my friends goldfish has it’s own facebook account! However we are going go for what facebook calls a business registration which means it is seperate from our personal account.


Lets get started…

  1. Goto http://www.facebook.com/pages
  2. Click Create Page
  3. I usually limit myself to the last two options here as they seem to be the least regulated… Pick a category then enter a Page Title, accept the terms and conditions and click Get Started. Enter the Captcha…
  4. Enter in your email address, a password, your DOB and the captcha code. Tick to accept the Terms and Conditions and click Sign up now.
  5. Now goto your email to find the confirmation email from facebook, open this and click the confirmation link. This will take you straight to your new page.
  6. If you have a photo related to your topic/subject, click upload image to add your photo to the page.
  7. Click Edit Page, then click Basic Information on the left menu on the next page.
  8. Enter a sentence into the about box, a quick description and then your website address in the websites box… Click Save Changes.
  9. Click View Page, then on the page menu click Info to see the changes you’ve just made.
  10. Click Wall on the page menu, and write a quick status saying how you are launching a new website and how exciting it is!

Watch the video demonstration here…

Find some keyword ideas related to your site

I’ve never been big on keyword research, I always believe that with quality content traffic will follow. To get started I look at what google expects to find on the website based on the title…

  1. Goto https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
  2. Enter your site name and a couple of variations. Do the Captcha and click Search.
  3. Scroll down and set it to show 100 rows.
  4. Click the download button, select the CSV for Excel format and click download. Save the file and when it is downloaded open it.
  5. Google gives us the competition for each keyword on a scale of 0 – 1. If you know how to sort it by this in excel do this and save it for later to make it easy to find the lowest competition keywords.

This will then be used to add posts to the site over the next few days. Watch the video here…

Add your first post to the blog

There’s no point having a site if it has nothing useful on it, the first thing that I will add to a blog is a general post on the subject/niche. And now I have some rough keyword ideas I will be able to write a quick 400-500 word post to get the blog started.

  1. Login to your wordpress and click Posts
  2. Click Add New
  3. Select the categories you want your post to belong to.
  4. Enter a Title, and then write your post below.
  5. You can click Save Draft which lets you come back to it later, or click Publish to make it visible on your blog.
  6. This will automatically ping most of the search engines to tell them that new content has been added… This is good as it encourages them to come find you, instead of you having to go find them.

Video demonstrating this is here…

Summary

Today we have also spent some time laying the groundwork to grow, not only do we have 3 very strong links into our website. We also have a way to engage with an audience, and more important for them to engage with us. I honestly believe that Social Networking is going become crucial to search engine algorithms as it provides easy access to human reviews of websites or ideas. I will cover how we can use these mediums to generate traffic later in the challenge, however now we have the basics done we will start thinking about how we can monetize and profit from our work.