Technology Toolkit

Let\’s face it, it takes time and effort to keep a blog going. Sure, the initial enthusiasm will get it off the ground but you need to keep a blog alive with fresh content. Keeping your enthusiasm is usually easier when there\’s a reward for your hard work. Which makes the idea of blogging for profit an attractive one. So what can you do to turn a profit from your blog?

1. Put up adverts

It\’s what everyone else does – television stations, radio shows, newspapers, magazines, and so on. Adverts are everywhere you look. Whilst there was a short time on the internet when adverts were thought to be a bit offensive to users, nowadays near enough every site has them from Google and CNN downwards. So why not get your share of the revenue that\’s available from adverts. The quickest way is to join a network such as Google Adsense and you can start showing targeted adverts that your blog users will be happy to click on within a few minutes.

2. Get stuff to review

If you\’re seen as an authority in your field, this may be as simple as asking for a review copy. If not, start by reviewing things you already own and use. Either way, write up your experience and weave in a few links that will pay you a commission when people click them to investigate the product further. Networks such as Commission Junction will help you to do this or you can sign up as an \”associate\” with Amazon and tap into their vast range of products.

3. Syndicate your content

This used to be something you couldn\’t do from day one as you needed to establish yourself as an authority in your field. But nowadays you can do it even if you\’re unknown! All blogs have a syndication option – known as a feed – that allows other sites to republish your content. How does that make you money you may ask? Well, the syndication normally comes with links back to your site. In turn, these help to boost your site\’s rankings in the searches and as you become more popular, you attract more visitors to your site and earn money from them as with the other points.

4. Create and sell your own product

Now this one sounds scary. But actually it\’s nowhere near as bad as it sounds. You don\’t need anything more than your current computer and maybe a video camera (the one on your mobile phone is probably fine).

Show people how to do whatever it is your chosen niche needs to know. Make it really clear – something even your granny could understand. Then put up a teaser video on your blog and get people to send you money with Paypal if they want the complete set. You could easily have your own product in less than a day and be starting to profit from it soon after that when you put some well-placed links on your website.

When it comes to choosing the best blogging software, there is so much choice available that it\’s difficult to know where to start. Before you can pick the best option for you, you\’ll need to decide whether you want to use a free blogging platform or not. Check below to find out more.

Free blogging software – not hosted by you

A lot of people start their blogging career this way. There\’s no cost of the hosting and there\’s not cost for the domain name as you\’ll be piggybacking on one of the big blog hosts. Which means you won\’t have any choice over your domain name. Instead it will be something like YourBlogName.blogspot.com or Squidoo.com/your-title, which isn\’t as snappy as having your own domain name but in the end it\’s your choice.

The biggest advantages of using free blogging sottware are:

* Cost – by defintion, it\’s free. You may even be given a revenue share on the adverts that appear on your blog or be able to control them completely.

* Quick to set up – there\’s no hosting to organize, no software to upload, it\’s pretty much sign up and start blogging.

* No technical skills needed – the text editors are usually like a cut down version of Word, so if you can type in to a box on a compuer screen, you\’re able to start blogging. To keep support down to the bare minimum, everything is intuitive and easy to use.

* Regularly spidered domains, which increases your chance of getting indexed quickly in the search engines.

The biggest disadvantages of using free blogging software are:

* You\’re not in control. If your free host decides you\’ve done something that breaks their rules or takes exception to your blog they can suspend you in the blink of an eye. This is serious if you\’re aiming to earn money from your blog,

* You don\’t own the domain name. You\’re just hitching a ride and if the owner asks you to leave, that\’s what you have to do.

* Less flexibility. If something isn\’t provided by the domain owner, that\’s usually it. Sometimes you can pay extra for certain features – the free Wordpress hosted blog service offers things like nicer themes as optional extras.

Free blogging software – hosted by you

Without a doubt, the most popular blogging software is Wordpress, which is free. You can host your blog on their domain as in the options above or you can get a lot more control by using your own hosting.

For this, you\’ll need a web host and a domain name. Buy these from two separate places as that gives you more control and flexibility.

Then, with most hosts, it\’s just a matter of clicking a couple of buttons to install Wordpress. Future upgrades are taken care of from the blog control panel.

Once you\’re done that, you can blog away to your heart\’s content, safe in the knowledge that unless you break any major rules (hosting copyrighted files for others to download, that kind of thing) then your blog is safe and completely under your control.

If you are likely to depend on your blog for any income at all, this is without doubt the best route to follow.

The biggest advantages of hosting your own blog are:

* Control. You can decide exactly what goes on in your blog and can add in new themes and extra plug ins to completely customize your blog.

* No policy change worries. Free web hosting sites can and do change their policies. Hosting your own blog puts you in complete control so you don\’t care whether Squidoo, Blogger, Wordpress or whoever don\’t like your content any more.

* It\’s yours – if you want to sell your blog and the domain associated with it, you can. Just like you can any other domain. This puts more value on your efforts.

Setting up a blog is easy nowadays so long as you have a good website host – most of them are pretty good at this kind of thing, so there\’s an excellent chance that your current web host will offer what I describe below. So, how to set up a blog so that it\’s up and running in the shortest possible time?

Start by going into your web host\’s control panel. It\’s a good chance that this will have a button marked \”Fantastico\” (some hosts use a service called \”Softaculous\”, that does much the same thing). Choose that and then follow the instructions to install Wordpress. A few clicks later, you\’ll have a basic version of Wordpress installed. In the unlikely event that this doesn\’t work, you\’ll need to download a copy of Wordpress and then FTP it to your site.

The standard installation of Wordpress needs some tweaking before it\’s useful:

1. Delete the \”Hello World\” post

There\’s an initial post called \”Hello World\” which is included whenever you put up a new Wordpress blog. Delete this before Google gets a chance to index it. Replace it with your first post as soon as possible.

2. Amend the \”About\” page

This is standard text again. You should amend it to say something about you, even if it\’s only a sentence or two until you get going.

3. Amend or delete the Blogroll

There\’s a list of links that appear by default. Delete any that you don\’t want and add in any new links that you would like to include in your blog\’s navigation.

4. Change the settings

The default settings for Wordpress need changing. The Permalinks structure isn\’t user friendly – most people change it to a custom version such as:

/%postname%/

There\’s a good chance you\’ll want to change the discussion settings as well – spammers have been known to abuse the default settings which automatically approve comments from someone who has already had a comment approved.

5. Add extra plugins

Wordpress is highly customisable. Akismet is the included spam protection and it works OK (there are alternatives if you don\’t like it). You\’ll need a Wordpress API key but this is easy to get by following the instructions on screen and you can re-use it on more than one blog,

I add in a smart pinger (there are lots around) which saves you from spamming the ping engines whenever you edit an existing post. I also add in a cache because I\’m optimistic and like to think my blog will cope when it gets busy. I also add in an SEO optimising plugin to help make the default titles and other settings friendlier to the search engines.

6. Change the theme

The default theme is pretty ugly and is worth changing, although that said a lot of people don\’t care and just keep their blog as-is. You can preview free themes from your Wordpress control panel and it\’s worth testing out a few to see which ones you prefer. If none of the free themes meet your standards, there are lots of places that sell themes reasonably inexpensively or you can download a program such as Artisteer and create your own.

7. Start blogging!

After all, that was the whole idea of setting up your blog. Remember to add categories for your posts and to include tags so that your pages are easier to find.

Have you ever had an experience where you lost the password to your PDF file and were in desperate need of it again? Maybe you were heading out of town and needed to print a document to take with you but were unable to print it because you had lost the password. Or maybe a colleague at work had decided to password protect a file and they were uncontactable when you needed to open it. Or a company you work with has sent you a password protected PDF but neglected to tell you the code necessary to open it. Which, of course, you don\’t discover until after the switchboard has closed for the weekend and you need to examine the file before everything opens again.

You may find yourself in a situation like this someday if you have not already. In times like these you must remove the lost password either by hand – which can work if you have an inkling of the password likely to have been used – or by using certain tools.

Fortunately, help is at hand in the form of software. A lost PDF password is actually quite a common event. Any number of reasons can cause you to be in the situation where you can\’t remember the password that was set, even if it was you who set it in the first place – which can be quite embarrassing.

Most PDF password recovery programs work by first using a set of common words. This is called a dictionary attack and providing one of the words in the dictionary you\’re using was used to protect the PDF, the recovery will take a very short time. Some programs come with a free trial that will show you part of the password recovered but won\’t reveal the whole set of characters until you purchase the program.

The better programs will also allow you to use a partial phrase. So if you know that your colleague almost always uses their son\’s name in their passwords, you can give the program a head start in cracking open the password protection.

If neither of those approaches work, you\’re in for a slightly longer wait. The last resort of PDF password removal is called a brute force attack. The program will work its way through every possible combination of passwords until it finds the one that will open the file.

If you\’re certain that the person who password protected the file originally only used letters or letters and numbers, you can usually restrict the brute force attack to that. If they were more security conscious, then you can switch on things like special characters. It should go without saying that it\’s better not to switch this option on unless you absolutely have to because it will increase the combination of possible passwords and therefore increase the amount of time that it takes to find and then remove the password.

Oh, and just as a side note to dispel a specific rumor circulating around: using these programs is not illegal if the program is used correctly.

You\’ve had all the spam emails claiming you can make hundreds or even thousands on the internet just by doing some small thing. Yeah, right, there\’s near enough no chance those will work for anyone other than the spammer. So what can you do if you want to find out how to make money on the internet?

Start out by observing. It\’s difficult to keep your wallet safely locked away at times – many of the people who advertise on the internet are world class copywriters who know exactly what buttons to push to get as many as people as possible to whip out their credit card. But you need to get a handle on what\’s working online. Maybe you are drawn to pages and pages of text – the websites that look like they\’re the sales page for War and Peace – or maybe you prefer the flashy videos and lots of noise. This kind of observation should start to become second nature.

Narrow down what you want to do. The subject of making money on the internet is massive. You need to focus and home in on just one thing. Do that well – ideally at least as well as your competition – and you\’re going in the right direction.

Make yourself a shortlist of ten or twenty possible \”businesses\” you can run – selling stuff on eBay, making websites that get clicks for Google Adsense, all that kind of thing – but narrowed down by topic. So not just selling on eBay but selling non-allergenic hand made quilts with patterns that babies will like. Get really, really focussed. Almost stupidly so. Especially when you\’re starting out, you need the \”rush\” of a quick sale and narrowing your focus will help here as you\’ll likely be one of the very few people in the world who are meeting that exact need.

One sale a month is fine for this. Because you\’re not limited to that one niche. You can move on to selling those same hand made quilts but this time those that appeal to grannies. And then baby boomers. And so on.

You can then hone your skills in these markets. Sure, they\’re small but because you\’re offering precisely what they want to buy you\’re ahead of the curve just by being there.

The beauty of this is that internet is so vast that even seemingly miniature markets are actually quite large. For instance, I make sales most days selling a hypnosis track for a problem almost no-one is aware even exists.

Promote your business. Otherwise no-one will know it exists, apart from maybe Google\’s robots. The promotion can take the form of an article such as this one, with a link at the end to your website. In small markets, even one article will likely be enough. In bigger markets, you\’ll need to do more promotion but the principle is the same.

As with every business, keep track of your overheads including the amount of time you spend. If you\’re not careful, it\’s easy to become a \”busy fool\”, chasing your own tail but not getting anywhere. So monitor what you\’re doing and do more of the things that make you sales.