Every person who has his or her own blog or website should take advantage of free money that can be earned with Google Adsense.  You, too, can earn free money very easily with a minimum amount of effort. Even when you don’t have a lot of time to write many blog articles or website content. However, if you write frequently and your articles have quality content, you will attract more readers and keep followers.

I don’t write many articles for my blog, but I still get a significant amount of money through the Google Adsense program because several articles are read frequently by visitors of my site, and while reading my articles, visitors click on the Google Adsense banners. In other words, I generate revenue on my blog without doing a lot of work. The amount I earn through my blog is set aside for a new notebook. Of course you can choose for yourself what to do with your revenue.

I will be honest, with the revenue earned on my blog, I can’t quit my day job.  Relatively, I earn more money per hour by blogging online than working in the office for my employer. There are several bloggers that do write many quality articles frequently, and thanks to advertisement they are now professional bloggers.

What is Google Adsense

Let me quote from Wikipedia: “AdSense is an ad serving application run by Google Inc. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and video advertisements on their websites. These advertisements are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis.”

Google AdSense is the program that can give you advertising revenue from each page on your website—with a minimal investment in time and no additional resources. AdSense delivers relevant text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content. And when you add a Google search box to your site, AdSense delivers relevant text ads that are targeted to the Google search results pages generated by your visitors’ search request.

How to start with Google Adsense

• Create your own blog or website, preferable with your own domain name so you have a unique identity. You are not allowed to run Google Adsense on a blog published through the WordPress domain. You can run Google Adsense through your own domain by using WordPress templates. Try one of the WordPress  plugins for Google Adsense: http://WordPress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=adsense

Check out my (revenue generating) article: Everybody can start a WordPress blog with this process flowchart

• Write several quality articles that inform and create interest for your visitors. Write about knowledgeable topics. Good research and planning will help with writing good articles.
• Sign up for Google Adsense
• Follow the easy setup steps outlined in the Google Adsense help section.
• Read up about what advertisement placement and color schemes are most successful
• Frequently visit the official Google Adsense blog at: http://adsense.blogspot.com/
• Review your Google Adsense reports. Creating different ad channels can help you to determine what area of your blog or website is most successful.
• View YouTube videos on how to set up Google Adsense

It’s really simple to set up Google Adsense. There are many resources that can help you out. Search on Google, visit Youtube for tutorials and visit the Google Adsense site to stay up to date on changes. Google has excellent report features to track your Adsense earnings. It takes patience to earn your first check, but when you have the ball rolling, you will earn a check every month. Don’t give up quickly and keep writing quality blog articles.

One warning:  when you have Google Adsense enabled on your site, don’t click on your own site advertisement banners. Google has a very strict policy that prohibits you from clicking your own ads. Google can very easily track your clicks on your own site. If you find an interesting advertisement, access the site directly by entering the url address or click on the ads through other people’s sites. Read the Google Adsense policies.

If I miss essential information in the list below, please feel to leave a comment so I can improve this list and flowchart. If you have good resource information on how to create a successful blog, please leave the web site address behind with a comment.

Again, I just started myself. The number of posts that I have written is still very low but I can use constructive comments and opinions.

Process flowchart: How To Start A WordPress Blog

A picture outlines the process better than 1,000 words so I thought it is a good idea to provide a high level overview of the process steps that I took for my WordPress blog. Please click on picture below to see whole the process flowchart in large view.

click on image to enlarge

Process steps with sub process steps

With a few sub bullets, I provide you more detailed information.

Not listed in the process steps are testing and back up steps but we all know to do this as much as possible.

• Register/obtain domain name
  • Select a name that reflects your blog purpose
  • Select a short easy to remember domain name
  • Good sites to buy a domain:
    • GoDaddy.com
    • Register.com
  • “domain name selling stores” are called domain registrars

• Select a web host provider that:
  • supports PHP scripts
  • allows execution of PHP scripts and provide you with a least one MYSQL database
  • provides you enough network bandwidth for a lot of visitor traffic
  • is known for high ratio of server uptime. Server uptime is important because web host server down equals blog site down
  • installs and upgrade WordPress with a click of a button:
    • InMotion Hosting
    • Globat
    • Lunarpages

• Point your domain name to the web host provider’s name servers (DNS servers)
  • The Domain Name system (DNS) serves as the phone book for internet
  • Translates an IP address to a readable domain name
  • Get the DNS address from your web host provider and add this address under your domain name account from GoDaddy.com, Register.com or any other domain registrars
  • Example: To make DNS link to a domain name that you have registered through GoDaddy.com:
    • Go to GoDaddy.com
    • Click on “My Account” (upper right area of screen)
    • Enter your login name and password provided by GoDaddy and click “Secure Login”
    • Click on “Manage Domains”
    • Click on the domain name you wish to modify
    • In the Name Server Summary area choose “Click here to see details or modify”
    • Enter the new Name Servers from selected web host provider
  • Example: To make DNS link to a domain name that you have registered through Register.com:
    • Go to the Register.com
    • Click on login to go to the Account Management area
    • Enter the username and password provided by Register.com
    • Select the domain name for which you wish to change DNS Servers

• Create an email account under your new domain name
  • This email address will be used during the WordPress account creation
  • You can create a separate email account for blog feedback that you might receive.

• Register for a WordPress account with your new domain email account
  • WordPress sign up link: http://WordPress.com/signup

• Install WordPress files
  • If you have a web host provider that has a one click install than you are lucky and you can skip the following sub bullets;
  • Download WordPress files at: http://wordpress.org/download/
  • Follow install instructions at: http://wordpress.org/docs/installation/5-minute/

• Select a WordPress theme (blog template)
  • Stay away from one column templates. One column templates often limits your freedom with widgets and plugins
  • Choose a WordPress template at: http://themes.wordpress.net/
  • You can sort available theme templates by descending order on number of downloads so you know which templates are very popular

• Install your selected WordPress theme on your host provider server
  • Upload your theme to your web host server with a free FTP Client from CNET Downloads:
    • Core FTP LE
    • Leech FTP
    • CoffeeCup Free FTP
    • AceFTP Freeware
    • FileZilla
  • Using an FTP client to access your host web server, create a directory to contain your theme in the wp-content/themes directory provided by WordPress. For example, a theme named Test should be in wp-content/themes/test. Your theme may provide this directory as part of the archive
  • Additional Wordpress theme installation instructions: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes

• Configure your WordPress blog
  • Logon to your WordPress blog at: http://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin/
  • After logon, bookmark the WordPress admin blog page because you will go to this page very often
  • Go to the menu/toolbar option: Presentation and ensure the correct theme is listed under current theme
  • Under Presentation, you will also find a sub menu with a choice to select Widgets. Drag and Drop the widgets you want to see on your sidebars
  • Under Options on the menu/toolbar you will find menu sub menu choices. Go through each of them and adjust settings as you wish.

• Update Permalinks
  • Change your Permalink structure. Change the default permalink choice that displays your links as: http://www.your-blog.com/?p=123 to date and named base or create a custom permalink. One of the best permalink choices for search engine optimization is: date and named base as shown in the following format example: http://www.your-blog.com/2008/01/01/my-first-post/Search engines will now use the keywords in your web links in their search engine database.

• Install and configure WordPress plugins
  • Wordpress plugins are the true power behind Wordpress, they are tools to extend the functionality of WordPress
  • Wordpress plugins simplify your Wordpress customization by adding additional blog features
  • You don’t need programming knowledge in order to use plugins
  • Must have plugins:
    • All-in-One SEO Pack – Optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines
    • Comment Timeout – This plugin automatically closes comments on blog entries after a user- configurable period of time.
    • Google Sitemaps – This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog
    • Subscribe to Comments – Subscribe to Comments is a robust plugin that enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries
    • WP-Polls – With this plugin you can add web polls to your blog.
    • Search WordPress plugin site for other good plugins: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/browse/popular/

• Create static WordPress pages
  • Create an About page (still on my To-Do list for this blog)
  • Create: what is RSS page with an RSS link to your feed
  • Create a custom 401 Error Page (still on my To-Do list for this blog)

• Subscribe to Feedburner
  • Read: what is RSS if you don’t know what RSS is
  • Feedburner will show you statistics about your RSS Subscribers
  • Sign up for Feedburner
  • If not done yet, install Feedburner Feedsmith plugin
  • Create large RSS icon link so your visitors can subscribe to your RSS Feed

• Setup statistic tools for your blog
  • Measure how successful your blog is
  • Set realistic goals for your blog and monitor your goals with statistic blog tools
  • Statistical blogging tools:
    • Google Analytics
    • Feedburner
    • WordPress Statistics plugins
    • Your web host server statistical logs and tools

• Write quality posts
  • Place yourself in the shoes of your readers when writing a blog article and ask yourself the question: what did this article teach me and did it help me.
  • Only quality posts will generate traffic
  • Quality is more important than quantity
  • Use accurate grammar and spelling

• Promote your blog
  • Enable RSS feed for your site and ask people to subscribe to your blog feed. Look at my what is RSS that explains the reasons
  • Visit other blogs and leave constructive comments (networking is important)
  • Submit your site to search engine directories
  • Add Digg.com and Sphinn.com buttons
  • Respond to comments left by visitors
  • Remove inappropriate comments on your blog
  • Use Ping-o-Matic service for post promotion
  • Set expectations for your visitors. In the about page, you list your goals and provide useful information about the intent of your blog

• Improve Your Blog for Search Engine Optimization
  • Use All-in-One SEO Pack plugin
  • Create a different title for each post
  • By reading the title only, the visitor must be able to know what to expect from your blog article
  • Create a different blog post description, through the All-in-One SEO Pack
  • Use blog post tags to add additional search engine keywords
  • Create a sitemap for your blog with the Google Sitemaps plugin

WordPress For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

WordPress Theme Design

SEasy Guide to Blogging (vol.1 ) – Wordpress Blog Basics