First, a little history. I started PaulTouranjoe.com on April 20, 2011. I knew nothing at all about starting or running a blog and absolutely nothing about WordPress, aside from the fact it was the platform most professionals use.
I learned everything I needed to know blog-wise from April until now. When I first started this blog it was ranked around 24.5 million of all sites and blogs worldwide. Today, I’m ranked around 1.8 million worldwide and 150,000 or so in the United States. This didn’t happen by accident. It took a lot of hard work – and I don’t intend to stop there. Set your sights high and achieve them.
How did this blog go so far, so fast? First, this blog never stays static and unmoving. I’m always adding new content and it’s good content. It takes a lot of research for these posts and that leads to another thing- which is the content itself. It’s what people can use, can help them and they can learn from. The hardest thing for me to learn was how to put content in the sidebar. I use Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 for my website design work. Believe me, that has no importance here. To make images and text end up where you want them and are centered, you have to write in code. My background with Dreamweaver helped some with the code but this is still a horse of a different color and I had to learn it. It makes me appreciate people that work on blogs for a living that much more.
There are some things that make life easier with a WordPress blog, mainly plug-ins. There are literally thousands and you can go crazy here but don’t. Just use the ones you need. The ones I like are:
1. Add This Social Bookmarking Widget – allows people to add you to their favorite social site.
2. All in One SEO Pack – Lets you add your post title, description and toss in a few keywords that help you with the search engines.
3. Dean's FCKEditor For WordPress- uses a text editor like Microsoft Word for your posts.
4. Jetpack by WordPress.com- gives you a few different tools you can use to make your blogging life easier, too much to explain here.
5. Smart Affiliate Links – shortens, cloaks and tracks your affiliate links and makes them presentable.
6. WP Super Cache – caches your blog quickly which means quicker page loading for your readers. I get a lots of comments wondering how I make PaulTouranjoe.com literally pop onto your browser. This is how.
You can always disable any plug-ins if you want to turn them off. They’ll stay in your back office area until you enable them again or remove them completely. Once you start to see all WordPress offers you’ll realize why the pros use it. As for learning WordPress, you can select any area on the main sidebar then click help in the top right corner. This will bring you to the help area of the page you’re on and that’s how I learned it quickly. I much rather learn “hands-on” while I’m working than read a bunch of text.
Another great resource is the WordPress documentation itself which you can find at WordPress.org. You’ll also find the plug-ins I mentioned above and themes (the design for your blog) here. There’s also other people’s WordPress sites in the Showcase area where people submit their blogs and people pick their favorites – way cool, and it will give you an idea of how you can push the limits of the WordPress platform when you really know what you’re doing. Get your domain name, get it hosted so you own it and join the fun. But never start a blog and just ignore it. If you’re not going to work on it wait until you have the time to devote to it. When you do, see just how far you can take it. Maybe we’ll see your blog on the WordPress showcase!
There’s one other tip I’d like to share with you before I leave the blog for today. I get lots of compliments on my writing – thank you – and here’s the way you do it. Write like you’re talking to your best friend instead of people you don’t know. When you think about it, your readers are the friends you’ll meet through your blog.
Next up — Advertising
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