Work From Home

Archive for the ‘Blog Help’ Category

I recently came across a new site which I think will prove to be not only a great way to build the readership of your blog(s) but also allows you to explore other blogs in your chosen field(s)

BloggrZ.com is sort of a mix between Stumble upon and Digg etc. By installing a toolbar you can quickly and easily explore blogs based on your preferences as well has having your blog explored. You can submit blogs which will in turn show up in both the toolbar and on the main page where they can be voted on.

Taken from the Bloggrz.com about page:

BloggrZ.com allows you to submit blogs that will be reviewed by all through BloggrZ Toolbar and BloggrZ.com website and will be promoted, based on popularity, to the main page of BloggrZ.com. Anyone can submit a blog. The blog will then be shown through toolbar and will also be available on BloggrZ.com website for votes and comments. When a user submits a blog it will be placed in the “Recently Submitted” area until it gains sufficient votes to be promoted to the main page.

Through the use of BloggrZ Toolbar, bloggers get to explore other blogs, get their own blogs explored and increase readership. Blog-explorers, on the other hand, get to view the online world through bloggers’ eyes. The toolbar remembers the preferences set by a user and shows blogs based on those interests. Preferences can be updated any time.

When you love blogs so much, why stumble all over the web? There is a better way to easily discover great blogs and let your blog get discovered. All based on your preferences. Get your BloggrZ Toolbar today! BloggrZ.com always keeps you within the blogosphere.

Take a look today and and get your blog off on the right for in the new year: Bloggrz.com

For previous parts:

Setting Up Your Work From Home Blog - Part 1
Setting Up Your Work From Home Blog - Part 2

Getting Traffic To Your Blog

Now that you’ve set up your blog, got it looking the way you want and added a few posts  comes the most important part - Getting people to come and look at it.

All too often it seems that it’s at this point people give up on setting up their own work from home blogs (or other niche sites/blogs) as they feel they’ve put in all this work and have received no reward for it.

One of the very first and most important things to remember is that it takes time - much like setting up an offline business would, you can’t expect to open the doors one day and earn enough customers to retire the next. Instead you need to take the time to provide people with what they want (good content) get some publicity (inward links) and take the time to show others you’re not a fly by night business - open one day and having a closing down sale the next (age of blog, page rank etc) there are a variety of ways to do this and I have written several articles and posts  on it (some you can find within this blog)

But here’s a few things you can try.

Write and submit articles to as many of the free article directories as you can (NZPCS members will have received as part of their free downloads an article submitter and rss announcer program)

Submit your site to the major search engines - and rss directories.

Use social networking - Social Networking and Bookmarking 

Take the time to visit and join related forums (for eg - for mums that work from home join my work from home mums forum and add your link to your signature)

Visit related blogs and if you have relevant information to add take the time to leave a comment.

Update your blog on a regular basis - if people (and search engines) can see you taking the time to update with good keyword related content they will come and keep coming back for more.

Be patient - you may not get traffic overnight but it will happen and what starts as a trickle will eventually build to regular traffic everyday.

For part 1 please visit Setting Up Your Work From Home Blog - Part 1

Part 2
Customising Your Blog

Once you have your work from home blog up and running you’ll see you have a fairly standard theme along with some default links etc. The first thing you’ll want to do is to log into your blog’s dashboard and have a little look around at all that’s there, for the most part it’s pretty self-explanatory and you’ll see that it’s easy enough to change your blog’s title and subheading (via the options tab) add or delete links (depending on the version of WordPress you’re using it may say either links or blogroll) and make any other standard changes.

Members of the NZPCS program will have received amongst their downloads a zip file of the theme we use along with some plugins that help when it comes to search engine optimisation (non members can find new themes and plugins via a quick search of the internet or Guide To Blogging - NZPCS members may also find it useful to search out other themes for when they’re ready to start their next blog)

You will also want to take the time to update your permalink structure (this is what defines the look of your blog post urls etc (eg your blogurl/post-title etc) Within the autoblog program it explains how and why along with giving you a custom structure to use) you will also want to update the standard ping list (this automatically pings the engines to let them know you have an update on your blog and again with in the NZPCS Seo pack you’ll find an extensive list to add)

The next thing you’re going to want to do is create your first post (you can either edit the default welcome post or delete that and start a new one from scratch) when it comes to search engine optimisation etc you’ll want to take note of things like using the correct keywords etc and you can find more information on that within this blog (eg: Finding the right keyword )

Once you have a few blog posts up and running you’ll want to join some affiliate programs to start monetising your blog(s) I have a list of some of what I use within the affiliate page - affiliate programs - NZPCS members will want to set up a page similar to this - substituting my urls for theirs.

You will also want to change the general look/layout of your page:

Changing Your Wordpress Theme

Once you have the basics set up and you decide to change your theme, you’ll want to find the one you want and upload it to your wordpress folder. When uploading any new theme you need to make sure you set it to the correct path - via your chosen ftp program - open your work-from-home subdomain, click on wp-content then wp-themes it is here you upload your new theme. Once done (if done correctly) when you open your dashboard and click on the presentation tab you’ll see your new theme, click on it and it is now set as your theme.

You upload plugins in much the same manner only this time you go to wp-content/plugins.

For NZPCS Members.

The theme we use is an older theme and therefore doesn’t have widgets etc. what this means is that to change our sidebar etc we need to do it manually (while this may seem like a scary process it’s actually not - and it’s a good idea to learn how to do it this way as it may help you troubleshoot any problems you may have down the track)

The first thing you’ll want to do (after signing up for and being approved by google adsense) is to change the footer.php and header.php file - as a side note - for non NZPCS members - there are many themes available to you that are adsense ready themes - you might want to take note of this as you’ll sometimes need to change the adsense set up on them as well

Open your footer.php file via your presentation tab/theme editor (I always suggest at this stage that you hilight all the information here and copy it onto a separate notepad page - just save that on your desktop in case you need it) you’ll see there’s a code for adsense there - you need to change that to put your publisher ID in - once you’ve pasted your own code in - save this file and do the same with the header.php (make sure if you’re pasting a new code in that you are using the right banner etc size otherwise it might affect the layout of your page)

You’ll also want to change your sidebar.php file to add other products/affiliates etc. Again save the original to your desktop (that way if a mistake is made you can just copy the original back in - or you can also just upload that file from the original zip file you received)

Decide where you want to put things in your sidebar - to make it simple - when you see the initial code on the sidebar.php edit page - you can simply paste in your chosen affiliate links/banner codes etc above the information already there. If you want it underneath the information already in your sidebar go to the bottom of the code already in place and paste it in there.

Some quick code you may need.

To add a line break type in < br >
to centre the banner etc < center > and < / center > to end (without the spaces)(take note of the spelling here too for those of us who like to use British English when it comes to spelling.)

That’s the basics of customising a Wordpress Blog - remember there’s plenty of helpful information to be found both by searching the internet or taking note of the NZPCS instruction guides and videos.

Setting Up Your Work From Home Blog Part 3

After joining the NZPCS program one of the very first things you need to do is set up your own work from home blog similar to this one.

For those not joining the program many of these steps can still be applied but remember you won’t receive the added benefit of all the free tools and software mentioned within some parts of this series of articles. You will also need to arrange for your own domain and hosting (I used Netfirms for my domain name and recommend either Hostgator or LunarPages for hosting your blog(s) )

Once you have your domain and hosting and have changed your DNS (further information can be found via your hostgator etc support pages) you’re ready to start on your blog.

Setting Up A WordPress Blog
The very first thing you need to do is create a new subdomain to host your blog. You can do this via your control panel (cPanel) of your hosting company. Click on the subdomain tab in your control panel and you will see you can create a new subdomain from here - in the blank tab (alongside your domain name) type in work-from-home (remember when creating new subdomains or folders to not have a blank space between any words use - or _ ) once you have you new subdomain created you’re ready to start your blog
In the beginning, particularly if you’re new to WordPress, you may want to set your blog up via Fantastico (you’ll also find this in your cPanel) click on Fantastico and then to the left of your page under blogs - click on WordPress - from there you want new installation and just follow along with the instructions - remember though - you want to install this in your work-from-home subdomain so make sure you make that is selected - NZPCS members will see a video in the blog section of the instruction site