To have a fully function Wordpress Blog, you’ll have to externally host it on your own personal domain. By fully functional I mean, to be able to add plugins, install new templates and start monetizing your Blog.

After externally hosting a Wordpress Blog at your personal domain, here is a list of things all must do:

1) Choosing a template:

• Template is the first thing by which a visitor judges a blog/site and as you all know first impression is the last impression. A template should be clean, elegant, simple and unclustered.

2) Study the PHP code:

• Try and study the php code so that you get the hang of it.

3) Add a feed subscription button:

• A feed subscription botton is the most important thing for a blog to have a steady visitor count. To add a feed subscription button use can use this plugin/widget.

4) Install usefull Wordpress plugins/widgets:

• Install all usefull Wordpress plugins/widgets such as subscribe me, All in one SEO pack, statspress, sociable, wp-cache, mighty adsense, related posts, got banners etc. To add plugins to a Wordpress Blog click here.

5) Add nofollow:

• Add nofollow tag to archives, categories and tag archives so that Google does not penalize your blog for duplicate content. To do this use the All in one SEO pack.

6) Monetize your blog:

• As you start getting a sufficient amount of visitors i.e. 100-200 visitors per day, start monetizing your blog. To start earning money with your blog, initially use Google Adsense but gradually as your traffic increases, keep adding more and more money making programs to your blog.

7) Add a Sponsors/Advertise here section:

• To add some more money to your pocket, add a Sponsors / Advertise Here section in your sidebar. This can help you get an increase in your monthly income. To add an Sponsors section to your blog you can use Got Banners plugin for Wordpress. To download Got Banners plugin, click here.

Faster loading of your php Blog/Site:

• To load your Wordpress blog more quickly use Wp-Cache plugin for Wordpress. It minimizes the php requests which your blog sends and receives, it also makes a cache of the links on your blog which helps in faster loading of your page. To download Wp-Cache plugin, click here.

9) Social Networking Buttons:

• The most important thing after starting any type of a Blog is to add Social Networking Buttons to your site after every post. To add Social Networking Buttons in a Wordpress Blog you can use Sociable plugin. To download Sociable plugin for Wordpress Blog, click here.

I would like to give you some Blogging Tips which I have learned from my experience:

1) Keep adding more and more content, your Blog will always grow.

2) “Content is the king”, so always be original. Original content always attracts more visitors and gets you a better position in Major Search Engines.

3) Always write quality content.

4) Keep your blog updated with all the latest happenings concerned with your Blog’s Topic.

5) Write at least 5 posts per week.

6) Link your similar articles to each other or use related posts plugin for Wordpress.

7) Be imaginative.
Add humor to your posts. Generally people come to find something interesting and they will never want to see a plain page with dull content.

9) Try and add relevant images in posts whenever possible.

10) Explain your point in brief. Write short, but to the point posts. Visitors always like Blogs that have accurate and to the point information.

Johntp has written a great post comparing the Blog earnings of some of the great Bloggers who dared to reveal their monthly income.

Money Making from a Blog is the most interesting topic that I can think of. One of my favorite Bloggers, who has made money online with a Blog is John Chow. The thing which I like about him the most is that he reveals his monthly income that he makes from his Blog.

John Chow’s blog was started on September 2006. He made a whooping $352.92 with Google Adsense in his first month after monetizing his Blog and just a year later his monthly earnings had touched $27,240.83 which is quite a progressive development . John kept adding more n more money making sources which helped him to increase his monthly revenue.

Today I’ll compare the earnings of 2 bloggers (John Chow, and Everton) who revealed their monthly revenues:

Page Views and Traffic

• Thilak: 232,120 page impressions/views
• Everton: 220K unique visitors and 452000 page impressions/views
• John Chow: 127,614 unique visits and 266,641 page impressions/views

Earnings Comparison of December 2007

• AdSense $977.60 (John Chow), $2,498 (Everton)
• Text Link Ads $2,097.74 (John Chow), $1,709 (Everton)
• FeedBurner Ads $99.80 (John Chow), $81 (Everton)
• Direct Ad Sales $400.00 (John Chow), $360 (Everton)
• Subscription $40.00 (John Chow)
• ReviewMe $5,400.00 (John Chow), $280 (Everton)
• IntelliTXT $516.98 (John Chow)
• Kontera $1,000.00 (John Chow)
• Linkworth $168 (Everton)
• Sponsored Reviews $163 (Everton)
• Affiliate Sales $5,701.48 (John Chow)
• AdVolcano $375.00 (John Chow)
• TTZ Media $321.14 (John Chow)
• Pirvate Ad Sales $10,480.00 (John Chow)
• TribalFusion $1,333 (Everton)
• TNX $0 (Everton)
• Grand Total $25,040.36 (John Chow), $8,192 (Everton)

Total Blog Income for 2007: $180,305.94 (John Chow)

Total Blog Income for 2007: $103,240 (Everton)

Conclusion:

With this we can conclude that Google Adsense is not the only way to Make Money Online, but still it is by far the best earning program for a blog at an initial stage. Gradually as your traffic increases keep adding more and more online money making sources and programs, this will help you to keep your revenue constantly growing.

This shows that we should never put all our eggs in one basket and Google Adsense is not the end of everything. If these Bloggers can earn a six figure income online, why cant you? :-))

According to my opinion, Blogging is necessary for a site’s quick and progressive development. A Blog, undoubtedly gives a great boost to the site’s Pagerank and even helps a site to get listed under the top results (for the specific keywords) in the Major Search Engines like Google and Yahoo.

It is always advisable for a Blogger to make a blog with the help of a blogging platform such as Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad. Now the question which arises in everyone’s mind is that “Which blogging platform should we choose?” For these questions to be answered I’m giving you the salient features of both of the largest blogging communities i.e. Blogger/Blogspot and Wordpress for you to compare for yourself.

1) Getting Indexed by Search Engines :

As Google is the largest search engine and Blogger comes under the chain of Google, Blogger is always given more preference and it generally gets indexed by Google within some hours of publishing blog whereas Wordpress on the other hand takes more time to get indexed by Google.

This point won by Blogspot (B-1,W-0)

2) Monetizing Your Blog :

If want to start a blog with the sole purpose of earning money from it, Wordpress is not the correct option for you, as it does not allow any kind of advertising to place on their blog until and unless the blog is externally hosted on your own personal domain.

This point won by Blogspot (B-2,W-0)

3) Externally Hosting a Blog :

External hosting means that you create a blog with the help of a blogging platform such as Blogger or Wordpress and then host it on your on domain having its own hosting space.

To externally host a Blog made on Blogspot is quite easy, as you only have to fill in the FTP details and you are done. But to externally host a Wordpress blog you need to pass through a lot of hurdles like: You need to know SQL and a bit of php scripting, which is quite difficult for a new blogger.

This point won by Blogspot (B-3,W-0)

4) Functionality :

Wordpress has a lot more functionality as compared to Blogger as it provides a whole lot of new features and plugins in comparison to Blogspot.

In comparison of functionality, obviously Wordpress is the winner (B-3,W-1)

5) Themes / Templates /Layout :

Of course Wordpress Templates deserved a different section “Themes / Templates / Layout” as Wordpress supports a large variety of Templates and Themes which are of great use and help in increasing the beauty, look and feel of the blog.

This point is won by Wordpress (B-3,W-2)

6) Upload Files

Wordpress allows you to upload files whereas Blogger / Blogspot does not.

This point is won by Wordpress (B-3,W-3)

7) Creating Seperate Pages :

Many time you need to create seperate pages such as “About Me” and “Contact Us” which is not allowed by Blogger but is allowed by Wordpress.

This point is won by Wordpress (B-3,W-4)

Allowing to Change Blog URL :

It may happen someday that you maybe want to change your Blog URL which is not permitted by Wordpress whereas Blogger allows you to change your Blog URL whenever you want.

This point is won by Blogger (B-4,W-4)

Conclusion:

From all the above we conclude that :-

a. If you want to host a Blog for earning purposes, and have some initial amount to spend (i.e. for the domain and hosting space, which sums upto around $100/year i.e. $10/year for the Domain and $7/month for the hosting space),  then go for wordpress. This would give your blog a personalize domain name (http://www.yoursite.com) and also the whole lot of features which wordpress offers.

b. If you want to host a blog for earning purposes/non-earning purposes, but do not want to spend an initial amount, Blogspot is the best option for you. The only drawback in this is that you’ll get a blog which will have a url containg “blogspot”. eg) http://www.yoursite.blogpot.com

Nowadays Blogging is growing on such a large pace that every second a new blog is created which makes the competition more and more difficult for Blog owners. So to make the task easier for the Bloggers it is necessary that the Blogging platform they use is the best.

Blogger or Blogspot, the largest growing blogging platform on the internet has the most simple and easy to use interface. Blogger has many other advantages too as compared to any other blogging platform on net which are listed as follows:

1) First of all the major task of the bloggers is to get their site indexed by the major search engines i.e Google, Yahoo and MSN for which blogger is the best tool. As blogger is under Google, Google gives more preference to blogs made with blogger, also as Blogger is a huge blogging platform with a variety of blogs, it gets indexed by the search engines much faster, so as soon a blog is made on blogger, it automatically gets indexed by Google and visitors start coming right away.

2) Blogspot / Blogger is a very fast way to make a Blog as no experience or prerequisite knowledge is needed. It is by far the fastest and the cheapest way to make a good and a successfully site.

3) Blogger even has one more and a very important feature i.e. it has a variety of templates to choose from. Always try and get a clean and an uncluttered template which is simple to browse, keeping your visitors in mind. To get a variety of templates just Google it, choose the template you like the most, download the .xml file and then upload it to Blogger and Yupee!!! There you go…

4) Now we come to some Business. When you get a good amount of visitors on your blog i.e. about 500 - 1000 visitors per day, start monetizing your blog by joining publisher programs like Adsense, text link ads and Bidvertiser.

5) As your blog grows, with Blogger you can even publish your blog to your own personal domain name which can be useful when you actually start earning a good sum of revenue with your Blog.

6) Last but not the least to use Blogger no prerequisite knowledge about HTML or any other programming language is required. Blogger is such as easy platform that it supports drag and drop of widgets or any HTML / Java snippet. For this in blogger there’s a “Page elements” tab which shows you the structure of your blog from there you can drag and drop any code/widget you want to any place on your blog.