Want a WordPress blog you can monetize? Need a Geek to professionally set it up for you… for FREE?

Installing WordPress and setting up your own self-hosted blog with your own domain name is not difficult, but you do need to be quite technologically savvy to be able to do it properly, and if you’ve done your research on how to do it but never done it before, you’ll need at least 3 to 4 hours to complete.   I realize that if you’re not a computer geek you probably won’t find that appealing at all!  You’d like to bypass all the geeky part and start doing things you enjoy, right?  That’s where I come in.  I will setup a professional looking self-hosted WordPress blog website for you.  And I can do it for you for FREE – click here to see how.

My aim is to remove the technical hurdle that keeps you from having your own self-hosted blog website, so you can focus on the fun part: blogging!

Why do I need self-hosted blog and my own domain name, while there are free ones?

Having a blog in one of the free blogging sites are cool, if you just want to use it as a personal journal to share with friends and family.

But that is where it stops, because:

• You don’t own the website, it is just a sub-domain of the blogging site.  For example, instead of yourname.com it’s yourname.blogger.com or yourname.blogspot.com.  See?  It’s theirs, not yours!
• They can shut you down immediately if they think you breach their terms of service, which means…
• You can lose all valuable content you’ve put so much time and energy into, literally in an instant.
• You may not be able to sell or advertise on your blog.  Or even if you can, it is very limited. It’s all dictated by the blogging site’s terms of service.
• You have no control on what advertisements are put on your blog.

Why you should consider having a self-hosted blog:

• You get more respect.  People are less respectful to a blogger who uses a free account on a major blogging site.  Although your content can be very good, many readers will not value it as much.  People have much more respect for bloggers who use their own websites to host their blog.
• You have the power to use many more features and tools that are not available with the free ones.  WordPress has 1000s of powerful plugins you can add to your blog – that’s why it is the blogging platform of choice for me and my customers.
• You can monetize it so much more, the only limit is your imagination (but please keep it legal ).  There are many advertising programs that will only work with self-hosted blogs.  And do you know that you can sell your blog for thousands of dollars, if you wish to do so in the future?  Many people do.  But it applies only for self-hosted blogs, not the free ones!  A self-hosted blog is so much more valuable.
• You can really create a brand for yourself and your blog.  You own all the naming rights, and keep your image exactly you want it to be.

To summarize, the point I want to get across to you is:

If you do not blog on your own self-hosted website, the blog is not actually yours. It is the property of the free blogging site and you have no control.

Yaro Starak from BlogMastermind who teaches people how to make a full time income from blogging part time made it very clear why Self-Hosted blog IS the way to go if you are serious about blogging for profit.  He says:

DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU

Let me tell you a story about Steve. Steve is a niche blogger. He set up lots of little blogs on all kinds of topics (niches) aiming to make a few dollars from each blog by placing Google AdSense advertisements on them. Google pays you when someone clicks on the ads.

After a few months he did really well and built up his income. None of his blogs had a lot of traffic, but they got enough from search engines that each blog earned between $1 and $10 per day.

In total he earned over $2,000 per month from his blogs – not a bad effort.

One day he turned on his computer and all his blogs had gone. Disappeared. Vanished without a trace…

What happened?

He was using one Blogger.com account to manage his blogs and Blogger.com determined that what he was doing was violating their terms of service.

They thought all his blogs were what are called “splogs” or SPAM blogs.

Splogs are blogs set up to get traffic to other sites. They are usually automatically generated and the owners have no intention of producing a useful website – they just want to get traffic. They are the SPAM of the blogging world.

Steve contacted the support staff at Blogger.com to explain that his sites were not SPAM sites but it was difficult to convince them and he never got his blogs reactivated. Overnight he lost his  regular $2,000 per month income in one hit.

OWN YOUR BLOG

If Steve had hosted his blogs on WordPress on his own servers with his own domain names this simply would not have happened. It may cost a bit more upfront to buy the domain names and rent the server space (WordPress itself is free) but the security and control you have makes it worthwhile.

The only “drawback” with self-hosted blog is that it costs some money.  You need to register a domain name – approximately US$10 for the whole year, and pay for web hosting –around US$8 – US$12 monthly depending on the plan you choose at the hosting company.  These are just normal operating expenses in an online world, which is unbelievably cheap compared to renting premises for an offline business, which could amount to thousands of dollars each month!

In case you still need a better understanding of the differences between having a blog at a free blogging site and having a Self-Hosted one, you can watch Dr.Ket-Sang Tai explains it in this short video:

Why WordPress?

I love WordPress because it has so many useful features available compared to other blogging platforms.  These features make it so powerful and easy to monetize and customize your blog.

However, installing and configuring WordPress on your own web host involves several steps – when I setup a blog for a client, I get through more than 60 items in my checklist!  The process can get technical and perhaps even frustrating, especially if you see yourself as somehow ‘technologically challenged’.

So why don’t you let me do it for you, especially when you can get it for FREE?

What you will get

• Your own WordPress blog website ready in 48 hours or less
• Your own email address you@yourblog.com
• The latest version of WordPress installed on your blog.
• Anti-spam to protect you from people leaving spam comments.
• Ability to put Google AdSense and other affiliate Ad codes, so you can start turning it into a money-making blog!
• A selection of 60+ well-designed, well-featured “themes” installed for you. So you can easily choose the look-and-feel of your blog.  This saves you hours of browsing through 900+ themes available out there!  Of course you can easily add more “themes” later too – I’ll show you how.
• A selection of 30+ most popular and useful plugins I install for you to add cool functionalities to your blog.
• A “Contact Form” on your blog website, to make it easy for readers/clients to contact you.  When they submit an enquiry, their name and email address are automatically saved to your database.
• A spam-prevention for your Contact Form using CAPTCHA, so you don’t get spam robots sending you spam messages using your Contact Form.
• Ability to add to 100+ social bookmarking and sharing sites including Facebook, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Digg, etc.  Make it easy for your reader to share the valuable content on your blog to their favourite social networking sites!
• Ability to easily embed videos from various video websites such as YouTube, Viddler , Google Video, Vimeo etc into your posts.
• Your WordPress database backed up and delivered weekly to your email.
• A Search Engine Optimization pack installed on your blog.
• A robots.txt installed to prevent search engine bots crawling your admin area.
• Your permalinks configured to be more search engine friendly.
• An “Email Immunizer” configured for protection from email harvesters.
• A standard “privacy policy” page for your blog included.
• If you are on Twitter, let me know your Twitter ID and I will get your tweets (and your profile pic) displayed at the sidebar of your blog.  People can click on it to follow you!  I’ll also make it easy for your reader to Retweet about your post.
• Once your blog is setup, you get access to my “What’s Next” page, which will help getting you started with your blog.
• and more… I can’t possibly list everything here!

How on earth can I do it for free??

I got asked that question a lot, you know … well here’s how.  You know a self-hosted blog requires you to have a web hosting account, right?  I could offer the service for free because I do get a small commission from the web hosting company when my client signs up with them.  It is definitely a win-win-win situation…

• You get your self-hosted WordPress setup for free
• The web hosting company gets a new customer when you sign up
• I get paid a commission for doing the work

So the only ‘catch’ is :

To qualify for my FREE blog setup service, you must sign up for web-hosting using ONE of the links I provided in the “Web Hosting Links” section below.  Deal?

[ If you want your blog setup but already have existing hosting or want to use other hosting providers, I do charge a one-off setup fee of US$65.  Please click here to pay via Paypal and submit your hosting account info using the Blog Setup Request Form ]

Web Hosting Links

1. BlueHost:

How much: US$6.95 per month (same price if you pay for 12, 24, or 36 months)

Domain name: 1 domain name included on signup.  You must choose at least the 12 month plan as there is no monthly payment plan available the last time I checked.

Plan to choose: only one available.

2. HostGator:

How much: US$9.95 per month if you pay yearly (US$7.95 if you pay for 36 months).

Domain name: NOT included.

Plan to choose: “Baby” package under “Shared hosting”.

After Signing Up for WebHosting

Once you signed up with one of the web hosting companies above, you will receive a Welcome/SignUp email from them with a subject like “New Account Information” or similar.  This email will contain login name and password for your hosting account – which will be required for me to setup your blog.

After you receive the email from the web hosting company, please fill up the Blog Setup Request form below.

Blog Setup Request Form

Fill up this form ONLY after:

1. You signed up using one of the Web Hosting Links above
2. You have received the welcome/signup email from your web hosting company, containing the username and password for the hosting account.

Make sure you fill it up correctly as I will be setting up your blog based on the information you put in.