Peter Downs offers the following royalty-free article for you to publish online or in print. Feel free to use this article in your newsletter, website, ezine, blog, or forum. ----------- PUBLICATION GUIDELINES - You have permission to publish this article for free providing the "About the Author" box is included in its entirety. - Do not post/reprint this article in any site or publication that contains hate, violence, porn, warez, or supports illegal activity. - Do not use this article in violation of the US CAN-SPAM Act. If sent by email, this article must be delivered to opt-in subscribers only. - If you publish this article in a format that supports linking, please ensure that all URLs and email addresses are active links. - Please send a copy of the publication, or an email indicating the URL to [email protected] - Article Marketer (www.ArticleMarketer.com) has distributed this article on behalf of the author. Article Marketer does not own this article, please respect the author's copyright and publication guidelines. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not use this article. ----------- Article Title: Blog Training - Where To Start Author: Peter Downs Category: Word Count: 664 Keywords: blog training,blog setup,blog education,blogging Author's Email Address: [email protected] Article Source: http://www.articlemarketer.com ------------------ ARTICLE START ------------------
Weblogs, or 'blogs', according to Wikipedia are "a blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video." There are certainly many examples how people have made a very good living simply out of blogging. So how easy is it to setup and run a blog? What type of blog training, if any, do you need? Setting up a blog is easy and free. Free blogs are the way to go if you are starting out with blogs. You could go to http://www.blogger.com and start setting up your blog immediately. The advantage here is that Blogger is owned by Google so the chances of you being noticed by the biggest of search engines is good. Possibly a better option is setting up a Wordpress blog. Wordpress is the blog platform of choice for internet marketers. Simply because of the flexibility if offers and the scope there is to customize to your own niche and style. The technical requirements of setting up a blog are minimal but do still require some learning to maximize the effectiveness of your blog as a money earner. As a quick step-by-step guide you will need: 1) A registered domain name (for example with GoDaddy or Namecheap) 2) Web Hosting (fro example from HostGator) 3) To change your Domain Name Server (meaning you simply tell your registered domain to your host so that it can be seen as a website) 4) A File Transfer Protocol program so that you can upload your created website to your host (for example, FileZilla) 5) Some knowledge of 'cpanel'. This is simple the administration element for your blog provided by your hosting company Once you have gone through this process you are ready to start customizing your blog and preparing it for income generation. For a complete beginner some of the terms used here may seem daunting. But it does not usually take long to become accustomed to the new language of blogs. Blog training is often 'on the job' as you negotiate your way around hosting, cpanel and WordPress admin areas. Naturally, it's better to take some more formal blog training - more on that later. Once you have your blog up and running you will need to do a few tweaks to optimize it for your business. Whilst this may depend on your business objectives a little there are some standard tasks you will need to do immediately. This blog training will need to include: 1) How to create new posts 2) How to create new pages 3) How to format images 4) How to install plugins. These are addons to your blog that helps you add features and customizations to suite your niche. 5) How to upload and install themes. This will determine how your blog looks. 6) How to use widgets in your sidebar. Again, this allows you to add more features. 7) How to protect your blog from spam. 8) How to create backups for your blog content. This is essential if anything goes wrong with your valuable content. 9) How to add RSS feeds that will help you gain more traffic over time. Don't worry if this is a foreign language to you right now. WordPress is extremely well designed and easy to follow, making the creation of pages and posts a breeze. You will be amazed at how fast and easy it is to do a blog setup and, with the minimum of blog training, you'll have an attractive blog setup and pulling in some traffic and, in time, some income. Naturally, this article is only scratching the surface of blog setup. Your blog education and blog training is a never ending process. But it is an enjoyable and rewarding one that will stretch your creativity. If you have been thinking of setting up a blog as a viable business then the best advice I can give is simply to get started now. Take action and keep an eye out for blog training resources as you go. Peter Downs is a blogger, internet marketer and addicted scribbler. If you would like learn how to setup your blog through video tutorials go to: http://www.blog-training.org/Wordpressvideos/index.html ------------------ ARTICLE END ------------------ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
