Blogging Startup Step 5: Submit Sitemap To Google Webmaster Tool

Google Webmaster Tool is a another free utility that bloggers can use to make sure that the Googlebot can crawl and index all the pages of your site. You just need to submit your site's sitemap and wait for Google to scan on it. Here's how to do it.

Go to Google Webmaster Tools website at:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools


For first timers, you can use your existing gmail account to register and then when you login, you'll go straight to the Tool Dashboard. Below the Dashboard title, you'll see a field where you can enter your site's URL, then you can click the "Add Site" button to do just that. See example of what I did with this site below:




After that, you'll see the name of the site listed at the bottom of the field and next to its name there are 2 columns named "sitemap" and a "verify?". Click on the "verify" link at the right portion of your blog's name and a dropdown list will appear for you to choose a verification method. The verification is for Google to know that you are really the owner of the URL that you submitted. At it, choose "Add a meta tag". Then a meta tag will appear below it. Copy that tag into you Blogger.com by creating and pasting it in a new "HTML/JavaScript" page element. Save the page element and then go back to the Webmaster Tool webpage and click at the "Verify" button. It will detect the presence of the tag in your blog and will confirm that your site is verified.

Since the sitemap file has all your pages listed in it, Google will have a clear idea where your pages are and will be quick in indexing them in its search engine directory.

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Blogging Startup Step 7: I hope Simpleology.com can make it simple

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

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Blogging Startup Step 6: Free Blogger Templates

Do you like my new look? The car is not mine :). I used this free blogger template to remind me of my objective to earn money from blogging. I want to have this kind of car in the future and I will work for it. I hope you don't mind if I admit it to you that it's one of my motivations. At least, I am honest :).

The new template is to make my blog site looks more professional (I hope it does look like it :) ) for the new year, 2008. Yes, if you are just starting to carry out your blogging career like me, one of the things that I've learned and I should have done it when I started this blog, is to make the site as professional as possible.

It makes sense to me. When I started this blog, I treated it as business. In a traditional business, a company should have a nice office and the people working in it should be dressed professional too to gain customers' trust. Of course some of you argue that layout is just cosmetic and not everything. Good content is still king when it comes to blogging and to get customers, which are the readers, interested with it. But it is better to have both because good impression last and you should make your site aesthetically pleasing.

Did I mention that I've got this new blogger layout for free? The template was taken from finalsense.com. The catch is simply to maintain a link from this blog to them. I don't mind at all. Imagine how much would it cost me to have this if I hired someone to design something as professional as this? A lot; I am sure about that. A link is just a very small fraction of it.

So if you want to have the same professional look, get your free blogger template from finalsense.com and choose one from a variety of layouts. All of them are for free.

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Blogging Startup Step 5: Analyze Your Site Traffic With Google Analytics

Now is the time to implement a method on counting visitors, knowing their locations, knowing the operating system they use, the keywords (yes this is true and possible) they used to discover your site and other ways of traffic analysis. This method is called Google Analytics. It is a free web tool that webmasters and bloggers can use to discover valuable information about the characteristics of visitors' traffic. This method reveals a lot. And the most important, as I've said, it's free.

Yesterday, I already installed the Google meta tags to this blog so data gathering can be displayed by Google anytime soon. I need to have this to have a proof that traffic generation methodologies that I implemented with this blog is worth to try or not.

If you are new to Google Analytics, you can register at www.google.com/analytics using your Gmail email account. But don't enter yet directly your email account to the "sign in" fields. You have to click the "Sign up now" to register first.

Once you are registered, you can click the "Add Website Profile". A page is displayed to enter the URL of the website that you want to monitor. Another field, Time zone country, should also be filled up and then click the "Continue" button. A javascript called "Legacy Tracking Code" will be given to you and you need to put that in your blog site. As for blogger.com, it is easy, just include that snippet to one of the "HTML/JavaScript" widgets that you have in your blog's "Layout". Or, you can create one, if you don't have one yet. The snippet will not display anything when your page is run in the browser so you don't have to worry about the look of your page.

Once the code is saved to your blog, go to "Website Profile" and click the "Check Status". If your code is included correctly, Google will verify that and indicate in website profile that you've done it good.

The next you do is wait then in a few hours or days you will see statistics of your traffic. Below is an example of the charts that you can see in Google Analytics; click it to enlarge:

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Become a Blogger on Blogger.com

I found this video tutorial on how to start a Blogger.com account in YouTube. It is only appropriate to put it here. The author explains it well.

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Blogging Startup Step 4: Set Your Objectives

When I started blogging 6 months ago, I didn't really plan what to do with my blogs. As I told you, I have already had three of them and I never really had any idea on how to go about it especially on how to make some bucks from it. Slowly throughout the months that I've been doing it, I learned a few details on how to improve my new endeavor. I improved my layout, read few tips and tricks on how to post, and discovered that blogging can be a business to me. So, I told my self that I would go for it and discover and learn even farther, plan for it and eventually, I wanted it to be my business. So I set my objectives. But before I state my objectives to you, here's a SMART tips on how to set objectives. This is very useful in any kind of endeavor.


SMART Way of Setting Objectives

Specific - state exactly and clearly what is to be achieved.

Measurable - set specific description, amount or anything that would determine that the objectives are achieved.

Achievable - it should be realistic enough, given the circumstances in which it is set and the resources available.

Relevant - objectives should be relevant to the people responsible for achieving them

Time Bound - objectives should be set with a time-frame in mind. These deadlines also need to be realistic.

So here are my objectives:

S- I will put up a blog about how I've started my blogging and the learning experiences that I would make while doing it and will try to make money out of it. The blog would become a user's manual of new bloggers in the future. Therefore every single step will be reported and posted in this blog.

M- Since I am doing it along the side with my IT consultancy job, I am planning to earn extra from it of around $200-$500 per month.

A- I think I can achieve that since I already have an internet connection at home (I just got it two months ago) wherein I can do all my posting and research about blog stuffs like internet marketing and search engine optimization, link building. I have two computers. One desktop and a laptop that I can carry around to blog everywhere. I will join the SEO organization in my area.

R- It is relevant to what I want to achieve. Relevancy is important in blogging. You should be passionate about your topic. You know something about the topic and if you have limited knowledge about it, you are at least willing to give in extra effort to research and learn about it.

T-I started 16 days ago and my realistic target date is after 6 to 9 months before I can achieve the monthly income that I have been planning for.

So that's it. How about you? Can you state to me your objectives? Put it in the comment.

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Blogging Startup Step 3: Register with Blogger.com

To start the blog, you need to register with Blogger.com. You need to have an existing personal email before you register. If you don't have one, go to Gmail.com and get one. I recommend Gmail because you can use it with other services of Google like Adsense, etc.

To create an account is straight forward just type in the URL to your browser, http://www.blogger.com (or click here), to go to Blogger.com website. Click on the orange arrow button that says "CREATE YOUR BLOG NOW" and it will prompt you with the register form and of course you need to fill it up. The rest is easy, just follow the instructions.












Once your account is created, you can log in to the website and you will be redirected to your account's dashboard. Right there, you can create your first blog by clicking "Create a blog" somewhere below the word "Dashboard" in the upper part of the page.

Blogger is user friendly and you will not get lost when creating the blog.

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Blogging Startup Step 2: Blog Titles and Keywords, Is There a Difference?

If you put up a business, you need a business name. The same goes when you put up your blog. You need to come up with the right blog title. Something people always looking for. What's the difference? In choosing a business name, you think of a unique name that people can remember, but in choosing a blog name, the name should be a set of common words that you can find in the dictionary (my opinion, you can take it or leave it). You need to use common words so that when people search for those words in the search engines, those words become your first set of keywords. How to choose the right words? I outline here a few guidelines in choosing:

1. List down at least five common word or set of words that you think can best describe your blog, but not more than 10.
2. From the list, try to determine for most commonly searched in the search engines to narrow down your options. How? There are so many utilities in the internet that you can use to know these. After this list, I will give you another list of sites where you can find most searched words.
   
3. In the remaining items in the list, pick the one that has less competitions.
   
4. Decide for the one that you think is more appropriate name for your blog. Another trick is two choose two and combine, just like what I did with this blog. I included the "Make Money" phrase because it has a mass appeal.

These are what I have learned so far. If you know a more advance method of choosing a blog name, please let me know. Write it in the comment area to share it with other newbies like me reading this post.

Utilities that you can use for keyword suggestions:

• Trellian Keyword Discovery
• Wordtracker with Google Trends

If you know of other or even more sophisticated "keyword tools", please share it with me. It might be helpful to my journey.

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Blogging Startup Step 1: Discover Your Niche

This maybe hard or simple, depending on how you look at it. But finding your niche before you start your blogging, especially to those who are starting from scratch, is the best thing that you should do before anything else. Why am I saying this? Well, I've learned it the hard way. If your main objective is to make your blog an online diary open to the world, don't think about niche. You can write anything you can think of under the sun. What you did this morning, what time you fed your cat, how long had you been on the shower room, or you can just put in all your family pictures on the pages (I did the pictures :) ). There's nothing wrong with that if your objective is just to share your personal life.

But if your main goal is to MAKE MONEY out of it, you might as well narrow down the topic you will discuss in your posts. Discover your niche. Again the question is why? Because if you want your readers to come back to you, you should find a group of people looking for the same topics, ideas that they will think they will need to accomplish something.


How To Discover Your Niche?

As I've said, it could be easy or hard on your part depending on the things that you know about something. Anyway, to help you out on that matter, here is a list of questions you should ask your self to narrow down your selections:

1.) What are the things are you most enjoyed doing at? Most of the time, this question is more on the hobbies that you're into. For example, if you enjoy computer games so much, you might put up a blog about computer games providing tips, techniques or hacks about any particular game that you have expertise with.

2.) What is your profession or job expertise right now? Example. If you are a good project manager and have handled multiple successful projects in the past, may be you can start your own Project Management blog. Your actual experiences can give good education to your readers.

3.) Do you know details about something and you can do it even your eyes are closed? You should blog about it, other people might need the information that you can share to them.

The three questions I gave you have something in common. They're telling you that if there is something that you can do best, blog it. Everybody has expertise. You just have to realize and figure out what is yours. So think about it. Niche, niche and niche, that is the first step.

I have to add. Your blog will be your business and businesses MOST of the time became successful because of niche determination.

Note about this project: My niche that made me start this project was I already know how to start a simple blog and after a few research, I learned that there's a lot of people surfing the net that have been looking for tips on how to start a blog. The title of this blog should have been "Blogging and Blogger.com for Dummies". I don't want to gamble on the word "Dummies" because it could have been copyrighted and I didn't want to waste time checking it out so I settled with "Blogging Startup... Make Money?". I will stick with the question mark for now, because I'm not really sure if I can make most of my readers earn money on this. I've just had a good feeling about the phrase "Make Money" and I will tell you why in one of my future posts.

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