How Much Does Blogging Costs?

This is a rare question that everyone seems to forget about. Even the person who teaches you how to blog doesn't talk about how much does blogging cost you. Or maybe it is a taboo question for any internet guru to explain to their disciples. But as everybody's concern, it is important to tell a newbie how much does blogging cost. This was one of my personal question when I was going to start a blog.

I bet that every newbie has this question in mind. They don't know what to pay, how much to pay and what are the alternatives.

There are a few free alternatives to paid ones. But, it is not as good as the paid versions. For example, there are a few free email autoresponders out there but some people complain that they never deliver! This is a big loss. A non-responding autoresponders costs you the customers.

These things below are the things that a blogger should have when they want to start blogging. It is including free versions.

Hosting
Web host is where you put your website (I try to make simple explanations). It acts like a platform to everything you have on your site. Imagine it as your office table. All your stationery are on top of it. That is how it works.

The best choice for hosting is the paid version because bloggers can take control of all the contents inside their website. Even better, it looks professional.

Paid version:
HostGator.com
I took their Baby Plan as example here because in my opinion, it is the best plan for an individual. Monthly cost is about $22.95 WITHOUT the domain name. I'm assuming that you want to register your domain name with another hosting company because it is quite expensive with HostGator. It is about $12.95 per year.

For a cheaper choice, you can register your domain name at NameCheap.com where it cost $10.69 per year.

The $22.95 value is including web hosting ($7.96 after 20% discount) and a website addon called Sitelock ($14.99 per year). This means the first payment that you have to make is $22.95 and the next month you only have to pay $7.96 for 12 months.

The cheapest rate at HostGator is the 36 months plan valued at $6.36 monthly. But you have to pay the lump sum at $228.96 for 36 months not including Sitelock.

BlueHost.com
With BlueHost, there are no alternatives with domain name registration. It is included in their package which is free for primary domain name. This means only ONE domain name is free.

There are NO monthly payment. BlueHost only take 12-36 months lump sum payment. For the 12 months package, you have to pay about $133.37 including Sitelock ($19.99), Site Backup Pro ($19.99) and Domain Whois Privacy ($9.99).

Free version:
Blogger.com
WordPress.com

Email Autoresponders
When you are trying to find quality traffic, it is good to have email autoresponders. It will automatically reply for any incoming emails from your website. This is a very helpful tool because emails are replied instantly without your presence.

Email autoresponders are used by internet marketers to build their email list. To make sales from your website, email list is the first thing that you might want to contact.

Paid version:
Aweber.com
I use Aweber as an example here because most people use it and it provides good services to their customers. In my own opinion, it is the best email autoresponders ever!

For the first month, they charge $1 for the trial version. And the coming month will be charge at $19.99. For some people they think this is expensive and not worth it to have an email autoresponders.

That is really a bad kind of thinking because your customers are inside your email list and you want to neglect the list? If you haven't heard before, there are saying "The Money is in The List".

Traffic Generators
When you own a website, you surely want to have as many traffic as it can for a day. There are a few ways on how you can do that whether it is paid or free traffic.

To generate traffic, you still can choose to go for free or paid. Both works great if applied the right way. Some people don't like to pay for traffic but it is your choice.

Before you choose, consider on how much time you have or how much is your budget. Paid traffic is the best because you will get fast quality traffic to your site. But don't ignore free traffic because there are also quality in them.

Paid version:
Safe-Swaps.com
Here is where you can buy traffic or exchange them with other people. The price varies and not fixed. Negotiate with other members for best price and from who to get quality traffic.

Pay-Per Click Advertising
PPC is a common way to get traffic. The price are also varies according to the keyword used. But I think this is the best way to get quality traffic even if you have to pay for it.

We saw ads everyday and we do not click on it unnecessarily. We only click on it when we are interested.
That means you don't force people to go to your site, only interested people will. So, its a win-win situation for a paid service.

You can use PPC service from Google Adsense, Nuffnang, Yahoo Publishers, Facebook and many more. There are a lot of varieties to choose from.

Image: Source

Free version:
Join online forums
Emails
Yahoo Answers
Social networking sites (e.g Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr etc.)
Youtube

Conclusion
Blogging cost is about $50 per month but it depends on how are we going to pay for it. You can choose the lump sum value or the cheaper value that is can be paid monthly.

This looks cheap for some people and very expensive to the others. It depends on your budget. The free versions are also great but for hosting, it is advisable to get the paid version.

The main thing is the web hosts. These should be paid! The others depends. Pay for what you really need first then you can go for the others. Don't pay for something you don't need or rarely use.

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Top 5 Website Display To Be Considered

In one day, how many websites that you view or read? What do you think when you look at other people's website? Some websites are nice to view and some are not very nice and sometimes really confusing. Look at the content elements in the website. What's making the website looks good and what doesn't.

To build a website, look at other website. It will give some good ideas of do's and don'ts in your own website later. There are also some element that should be avoided (read it here). People mostly look at how neat at beautiful your website is before continue reading the content.

Before continuing to embarrassed yourself by displaying not-so-cool website, look at the top five website looks to be considered first. It is a basic on how the website should be displaying itself.

Image: Source

1. Background Image/Color
Are you using a picture(s) as background? What kind of picture is it? Does it suits your niche? Ask yourself these questions before putting up some image as the background. Make sure that the image's color is contrast with the color of the font to make the website readable.

This goes the same with the background color. If the color is not contrast with the font, it will make your visitors leave because it hurts their eyes. Try remembering when was the last time you visit a website that are hard to read. Do you ever come back? Better stick to plain white background to be safe if you are not good in arranging colors.

2. Font
Don't use unreadable fonts. When people have trouble reading your posts, why should they continue to read? It doesn't matter what language you use, just make sure it can be read.

Use large font size to make it easier to read. You are not the CNN who write stories everyday and your website is not that full anyway. And the most important is the color. Make the font color contrast with the background.

3. Website Heading
The heading should not be very large and visitors have to scroll down to get to the content. Know how you read other websites then you will know how you feel when you become a visitor yourself. Most of the time, people will not bother to scroll down for the content.

Make the heading short and simple so visitors can have a glimpse at the content of your website. When they see it looks interesting, then people will scroll down. Some people also tends to put a lot of banners under the website heading. What was that for? No one will click on that for sure.

4. Pictures and Links
To add more spice to your content, add large pictures and links. People love pictures and people love sharing. This can help you to get traffic to your website. You can ask permission from other websites to use their pictures or you can upload it yourself, which is a better option.

Inserting links can be helpful to readers. They can click your link after they finished reading your site content. Make sure the links are appropriate with the content and make sure it works. A broken link can be frustrating for visitors and it will make you look bad.

5. Arrangement
After setting up everything, its time for arrangement. Remove everything unnecessary like Facebook fan page likes (if it contain puny likes), excessive ads, texts and others. Look for it yourself, it is your website anyway. Website tends to slow-load when they contain too many things.

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Must-Have Blogging Products

To start blogging, you must at least learn the basics. I started to love blogging by reading other people's blog. I like to read on other people's opinion and their strategy according to their topic. By reading, you will come out with your own opinion. This personal opinion is what I want other people to know about.

Blogging can create positive and negative controversies. That is why bloggers love to write about controversies. They sees this as a quick way to gain readers. If the topic is controversial enough, it will create a massive comment on their comment box. The best way is to create positive controversies. Negative controversies can get you in trouble or even in jail.

If you want to start a blog but you don't know where, you can start by reading other people's blog on how to start blogging and download their free report (usually PDF file). This is the first step. Almost all blogging gurus will tell you the same thing and they are right. Listen to their advice. Even if you find thousands of blogs about blogging, it will go the same way and there are no other way.

I continue to write on this blog because of my frustration on how the blogging gurus teach others to blog. It is not that they are wrong but at least tell the newbies specifically what did they mean. I mostly don't understand what the blogging gurus are trying to say. In the end, I create my own personal notes here, in this blog, from what I had learn and I share it with everyone.

Personally, I have three websites that I like when I want to start blogging. They are Problogger.net (their blog), Yaro Starak's Entrepreneurs-Journey.com and Alan Tan's Bloggingsutra.com (download PDF). These websites will help you with blogging and gives you tips on how to blog. P.S I don't have any personal gain or personal connection introducing these websites.

Then, I bought a few books. I love to read. Reading can give knowledge and also some ideas for your next blog post. These are the books I recommend for further reading and to give you some ideas on how to start blogging.

                               

After gaining all the informations you need, consider on which web hosting service you like to prefer. You can use free web hosting like Blogger.com or Wordpress.org like what I use here. It is free of course but the negative effect is, it doesn't look professional.

If you are serious about blogging and want make a living with it, I recommend you to use Hostgator.com. It is cheap and have many satisfied customers. If you have been using another web hosting service before and having problems, switch to Hostgator.

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5 Website Design That Should Be Avoided

Creating and building website is a passion for some people. Bloggers especially the newbies often get carried away in building their content. Their greed can overcome their passion in writing so they will make huge mistakes in creating their website. 

When internet mentor, guru or whatever they call it tells you 'content is king', they are damn right. Forget about blogging for money at first. Create a good website where content is the main thing that you should focused on. 

Of course for internet marketers, their goals is to sell something to their visitors. Even internet marketers also have to eat and live. I am not stopping anyone from selling their products or services online but visitors like you and me want to see the real content of the website, not just banners and ads.

Before you try to do something silly on your website, lets take a look at 5 website designs that you should avoid. You will lose a lot of visitors if you don't realize your mistakes. What do you do if you visit a website  is full of crap? Remember this question when decorating your own website.

Mistake #1 - Too Many Banners and Ads
Everyone got it that you want to sell your products or have some income from the internet but with too much banners and ads will take you nowhere. Even when people are interested with the product, they will buy it somewhere else. Your web design will drive people away because your website is giving the idea to visitors that it is full of scams.

This is an example of a website that is full of banners and ads. You may not understand what it is written there because it is written in Malay from Malaysia. You can check out the website for yourself at http://addin77.blogspot.com/

Mistake #2 - Provide Little Information on Article(s)

Have you ever come across a website that provides you little information but tries to sell you something? I bet you want to shoot your monitor with a rifle. Especially if you just want some information about a certain topic. 

In the early days of the internet, that is how you market your product. If the visitor wants more information, they have to pay for it and buy the product. In these days, information is given free and you only buy the product if you want to. For example, the ebook or software.

Most of these websites don't exist anymore so, you better not make one. Try not to confuse visitors by putting product links everywhere on your website. Be honest and gain trust from visitors. This is an exception if you are building a website and send it to clickbank. 

Mistake #3 - Provides Link To Nowhere or To Different Page

I have seen this in a few websites. It is not many but I add it here for a reminder. I am a big fan of anime and I always check on certain websites for new updates. There is one particular website that I enjoyed much because they have anime manga that I can read weekly. You can check it at http://www.mangareader.net/.

If you read one of the manga, you will notice a few links with thumbnails with very unique titles below the manga. It looks interesting enough for me to click it and hoping to read something interesting. Unfortunately, these links will bring you to other page and then another and another. What even worse is, it does not cover the title. Some does brings you to the right title but it is just another crap.

For me, this is such a waste. They can provide you with interesting title but came out with crap. If they can come out with something interesting, they sure can market good products.

Mistake #4 - "Invincible" Fonts
I'm sure everyone are aware of this issue. Don't use font color that are not contrast with your website background. The fonts will make it hard to read or unreadable at all. How can you expect visitors to come if they can't read anything on your website?

The same goes for font style. Some fonts are hard to read and the alphabet is just hard to recognize. If its too hard to choose the font color or style, use white background. It is as simple as that and it doesn't hurt the reader's eyes. More like this website, check it on http://fish-killgore.com/

Mistake #5 - Never Ending Scrolling
In some websites, the above for example, will make you scroll a long list of articles or stories in one web page. Time is money my friend. Not all people have the time to scroll down everything on your website. Add a few tabs will not hurt.

If you have a long article, I mean just one article, it doesn't matter that much. If the article is great, people will keep on reading. But if you have like forty articles and you put it on a single web page, you are standing on  a cliff with never ending bottom. Keep your website clean and simple for easy reading and navigating.

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How To Join Two or More Pictures

1. Open the first picture using any picture viewer application

2. Copy the picture

3. Open Microsoft Powerpoint

4. Paste the picture and resize accordingly

5. Open the second picture and copy

6. Paste the second picture to the same Powerpoint template

7. Resize both pictures according to desired position. The pictures can also be rotated.

8. Lastly, save the Powerpoint presentation as JPEG, TIFF, GIF or PNG picture format (choose save as)

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No Adsense Click? Try To Put Your Google Adsense Inside Your Posts/Body Text

I will explain to you on how to put your Google Adsense code inside your blog post. It is a different method from what we used to do it because adsense code cannot simply be paste inside your blog post. This is the step by step guide:

1. First, log in to your Google Adsense account. Create any ads that you require. I guess you already know you should do this.

2. Go to AdParser. It will look like this:

3. Paste your Adsense code in the box and click "PARSE" at the red button.

4. Your Adsense code will be parsed. This parsed code will be used inside your post.

5. Log in to your blogger account and go to template and click on to edit HTML.

6. Check the "Expand Widget Templates".

7. Press ctrl+f on your keyboard to search for <data:post.body/>

8. Paste the parsed code right above <data:post.body/> and save. In some template, there are more than one  <data:post.body/>. You have to try one by one. But make sure you download the template first to restore your previous template if you paste the parsed code at the wrong place. The adsense will appear under your title of your post.

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Basic HTML for dummies, idiots, fishmongers, taxi drivers, homeless etc.

Like the title don’t you? Lol.. well, I like to make a note here at this blog about HTML basic. HTML is an acronym for Hypertext Markup Language. When you open a website, you actually open the HTML but the HTML is hidden. Website only can understand HTML. No matter how awesome or how creepy the site is, it is still made from HTML.

I know some of you don’t like to learn HTML. It just a pain in the ass for some people to learn. But learning HTML can make many things easier for you especially if you own a website. You can easily tweak your website according to what you have in mind and you don’t have to pay for someone else to do it.

If you search the search engine, they will show you something like this:

<html>

<head>

<title> Your Title Here <title/>

<head/>

<body>

<p>Example</p>

</body>

</html>

I was thinking, what are you posting here? And that was the time when I first learn about HTML. I am really frustrated why the owner or authors of the website won’t just give us the explanation about the HTML. It is just the basic and if you make an e-book and try to sell about basic HTML…well, screw you!! A basic thing is a basic. Trying to make money about something like that is just not acceptable.

Here it is, the explanations..for FREE:

<html>

This is the opening of your web page. Imagine the website as a blank piece of paper. This html is an act to open the paper..sort of. <html> tag is the opening tag.

<head>

The <head> tag is where the most top part is. Like a letter head. <head> tag is the opening tag of the header.

<title>

This is where you put your title of your web page. <title> tag is the opening tag and type your title after the opening tag.

</title>

This is the closing tag of the title. As you can see here, there is an opening tag and closing tag. In order to make the word you type are visible, type inside the tags. The tags are the container of your webpage.

</head>

Like the closing title tag, this is also a closing tag for the head. The opening and closing head tags now is the container of the title because the title is still in the head section.

<body>

The content on your webpage goes here. Everything under the header to the bottom is inside the <body> tag.

<p>

This is the paragraph tag. Every content or some people called it meat is typed after the opening paragraph tag.

</p>

After you finish all your crap stories (lol), put this tag. It is the closing of the paragraph tag.

</body>

And then the closing of the body tag. This is the ending of your body content. You will realize again that the opening and closing the paragraph tag is inside the body tag.

</html>

The last part of your webpage. Like when you are printing in a roll of paper. After printing, you tear the end to get your document. The ‘tear’ in a webpage is the closing html tag.

Conclusion

There you have it, the explanation of every tag in a webpage. I hope that with this kind of explanation, you will understand what each tag mean and what it do. There is a reason for every tag in a webpage. The combination of these tags will create a complete webpage. It is not rocket science.

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