The Business of Blogging and/or Building Authority Websites (WP Guide)

For the last few months I have been building and selling websites (mainly WP), but I have been using WordPress since 2008-2009 - sometime in between those two years.
Anyways, I have built many successful websites over the years and now I'm going to provide DP with some insight into how I build and make money from them. I will probably leave some information out as I didn’t plan this article, so if you have questions or suggestions feel free to ask. I don’t go into detail on how to install or configure plugins and other detailed information – if you can’t figure that out then maybe you need to hire someone or buy a website that’s already built.
Install WordPress on your domain to get started…

Then install the following plugins:

• No Category Base
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Maintenance Mode (optional, any of the plugins will do)
• SEO By Yoast
• Social Login

Go to settings - permalinks - and change it to post name.

Pick a good theme, one that fits your website. If you have the cash then purchase one, and if you can make one then do it. If you want to own a successful website that will remain profitable in the long-term, then making your site unique is a smart move. Many free themes, like "Arras", allow you to completely customize the website, so a paid theme isn't always necessary - just make it unique. I like to create logos for each of my websites, something that a visitor can remember. It'll make your website look more professional and less like a junk website trying to make money from ads.

Make your website worth visiting: This can be the easiest or toughest part, depending on how much you enjoy the topic you're writing about. If you are a writer and can write about any topic, then this part will most likely be simple. Post 3-5 posts a day, they can be as short as 300 words but make sure you post 3-5 times a day. Keep your website updated with unique and quality content and Google will reward you. If you operate a news website, then updating multiple times a day is ideal - and yes, it’s OK to take 2 days off every week until you can afford to pay someone else to keep it updated daily. News sites are the easiest to update every day, and news content does not have to be 1000 words, so you won't kill your time or wallet getting that much content. Post what's going on, embed a video, talk about the video, add your thoughts if you're site is personal - 300-500 words.

Optimizing the Posts with SEO By Yoast

You will see a red, orange, yellow and ideally green circle by the publish area when you are editing your post. On the bottom, you will see the SEO By Yoast plugin information where you can fill in the keyword, meta description, and find out what else needs to be done to make your page 100% optimized. Whenever I sell website, I try to make sure I optimize every post, as this is very important if you want to rank for your keywords.

Install Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools on your site

Monitor what’s going on with your website and submit your sitemap to Google. These are the only tools I use to make sure my websites are in good standings with Google, and to monitor my traffic. The traffic sources report is my favorite, as I love to see where my traffic is coming from. Hopefully, your traffic will come from the search engines and social media.

Using Social Media

Avoid automation and try to connect with your target audience. Every time you post news, send out a tweet or FB status message and inform your following - get their attention! Even when you don't post something new, send out tweets about things your audience is interested in. For example, if you have a website on gaming news, then speak about something that is going on - something everyone knows about. Share screenshots of upcoming games, share videos of the gameplay, etc. If your site is related to politics, then talk about what's going on, talk about the issues.

Consistency is key, nothing will work if you aren’t consistent. Some other advice I can give is that a first impression is everything, so make sure your website's theme and content is ready - meaning a full front page worth of post - not one post on an empty looking site. Make sure your website is presentable. Otherwise, people might avoid clicking your links again, who knows…

Just don't rush into promoting an empty site. Oh, and create a FB and G+ page for the site! YouTube is great too, so if you can make videos, maybe talking about some kind of news, or a video review – that would be great. These videos will get your link traffic; just make sure your link is in the video’s description. If you can’t make videos or you can’t afford to have someone do it for you, then try this idea. Text videos with background music. You can find free background music online, and make your video more like a PowerPoint presentation. When people are on YouTube they usually want to see a real video, so these might not convert as well. But, you can make a ton of them if you have the time.

The Social Login program works great, just sign up to the OneAll site and they guide you through the process of getting API info for FB, Twitter, Google, etc. This is an easy way to get members, so don’t pass up on it!

Web 2.0 Sites

Don’t forget about Tumblr, make an account just to post videos and pics and news every time you post something on your main website. My favorite method of getting good backlinks is to build sites on Weebly, Blogger, WordPress.com and Tumblr. I will make websites with 3-5 high quality posts on the same general topic as my main website. I make sure not to target the same exact keywords, as Google simply looks for relevant sites and that isn’t necessary. Make sure it has a good subdomain and you’re good! Create a site on each of those platforms and possibly purchase some Fiverr gigs to get social bookmarks to them.

Earning

Put Google ads on your site, I usually do text ads on sidebar and image ads below post - but this depends on the type of website and your theme. If you don't want to use Google ads then sign up for CJ.com or Amazon Associates and put up affiliate links to specific products. This is great for review websites and informational websites. I have a few pet sites where I inform readers on common health problems and care requirements for animals. So, on a site like that I just recommend helpful products like flea products, dog crates, grooming tools, etc. Every niche will have its set of products; go on Amazon to see what you can recommend. Don't over promote something; just briefly mention how they'll need the item.


At first, don’t focus on earning, focus on delivering high quality content to your website’s visitors.

After you get the people hooked, the money will come. Google traffic will come too, probably before the social media following depending on how good you are at marketing. The point is, Google rewards you for posting high quality content on a regular basis, and so will your visitors when they share an article to their friends on Facebook. If you remain consistent the money will flood your bank account, otherwise you might not earn a dollar. So, pick a topic that you’re really interested in and get to work!!

 

Great post. I use seo yoast on a few of my sites. It can certainly help with tweaking your post so that its more user friendly.

What I also do is have a separate page for news feeds related to the industry. It can sometimes be tough thinking up new content for posts on a daily basis. At least with a news page it means I can add new content regularly.

 

Definitely. This is why I mentioned posting news, because it can become very difficult for someone to post content on a daily basis if they're just posting information, reviews, etc. News content is good and there is news for nearly every niche, which makes it easy for you to have something to talk about. So when you post your news article on social media sites like Twitter you will have the opportunity to engage with your audience and ask them how they feel about the news and what's currently going on.