Today's Checklist

1. Setup Blog
2. Join MyBlogLog
 

Setup Blog

I installed Wordpress at my sites, which you can do very easily @ bluehost (see Setup Blog (Bluehost) below), but you can get a free wordpress or blogger.com account and set it up without a domain (definitely recommended that you get a blog, even if you don't get a domain).

http://www.blogger.com
http://www.wordpress.com

• Play around with the look and feel of your blog.
• You want it to be "clean" and "easy to read".
• Delete all the test posts/comments (wordpress)
• Get familiar with your blog.
• Post your SGR Affiliate link or domain to the LINKS.
• Write your first post about SGR, even if it's just a test post.

Blogging is great for so many reasons, but most importantly, blogs can drive traffic to your site, get you ranked higher in search engines, be seen as an expert, has RSS capabilities (which you can submit to RSS Sites which I'll talk about in another email), and is more "personal" than a website.

• Blogs can boost your search engine ranking
• Blogs offer multiple ways to deliver your message. If you're not the best writer, you can start an audio or video blog and can therefore still reach your customers in a personal way.
• Blogs help you expand your reach online. By pinging search engines and using RSS feeds you can syndicate your content online, boost your reach and influence, and allow customers to control their communications with your company.
• Blogs are much more personal than a corporate website and because they are regularly updated, customers can remain informed about your business and feel more connected to you.

* This tip will probably take a couple of hours.

Setup Blog (Bluehost)

To setup Wordpress in Bluehost:
http://store-find.com/bluehost

1. Login to your cpanel.
2. Scroll down to "Software/Services" -> "Fantastico De Luxe"
3. Blogs -> "WordPress" -> New Installation
4. Install in directory: blog
   Admin Access Data: any username
   Password: any password

   Base configuration
   Admin nickname: Your Full Name or "Administrator"
   Admin email: Your email
   Site Name: YourDomain.com
   Description: Will show up in search engines, so a brief description about SGR will do to start with (you can modify it later)

   Email account configuration
   This is not important, it's used if you want to "email" your blog from your normal email account.. but you can set it up if you want to do that.
    

5. Click on "Install WordPress" -> "Finish Installation"
   It will then tell you the URL of the ADMIN area for your blog.
   yourdomain.com/blog/wp-admin/
    
6. Click on the link, login, then Add it to your Bookmarks or
   Favourites so that you can easily update your blog at least 3x a
   week :)

I created a quick 1 minute video on how to install Wordpress on your Bluehost blog. Click here
(Please note, you must be logged in to see the video)

* This tip will take 5 minutes for the install, and about 1 hour to "play-around" with your blog themes and settings.

Join MyBlogLog

Today's Date: 30th May 2008
Profile Views: 220 times
Member Since: May '08

Wow, I just joined this site last week, and just noticed it today.. and so far, my profile has been viewed 230 times!

What a great "unexpected" traffic and exposure resource!

So join now: http://www.mybloglog.com

Add me to your friends, and I'll add you when I login.
http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/happyches/

Make sure you setup your profile.. mine was empty when I got all those views.. so take a guess what I'm doing now lol :)

Oops, just found out you can only join 15 communities a day..  :)

-- 14 hours later...
Google just indexed my site! Just 14 hours after I wrote my first post on my first blog!

This is just from weblog and a blog.. that's soo fast!
I found this out by submitting my sitemap to Google!

Submit your sitemap to Google to see if your site is indexed..
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dashboard

(Use my sitemap plugin below to create a Google sitemap for your Wordpress blog)

WordPress Plugins

A cool thing about self-hosted WordPress, is the additional plugins you can install, have fun with this :)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Also there are some great free Wordpress Themes on this site:
http://www.wpdesigner.com/category/free-wordpress-themes/

I've also added my favourite Wordpress themes to the members area.

You can also download 2 Official SGR Wordpress themes from the official SGR Affiliate site.

Don't forget to share your gem finds (just add a comment below this post).

Listed below are my gem-finds:

You can download all of my plugins in one zip file here:
http://leveragethesecret.com/my-wordpress-plugins

(Just extract and upload to your /wp-content/plugins directory. Then go to your admin panel, click on Plugins, and activate each one.. then you can upgrade any that are prompting you to upgrade and start configuring them to your liking!)

See video Help on this topic (you must be logged in to the site to see the videos)

Add Sig
Add a custom signature to the bottom of posts with the author’s information

Add to Any
Share/Save/Bookmark Button (Digg, etc) Lets readers share, save, and bookmark your posts and pages using any service.

Adsense-Deluxe
Place Google AdSense ads in your WordPress Posts.

All in One SEO Pack
Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog.

Auto-TrackBack by Category
Enables authors to associate trackback URI’s to WordPress categories, and WordPress will autofill the URI into the trackback field for any posts in that category.

Auto Links
Automatically turns keywords to popular websites into links. (ie: turn every instance of "The Secret" into a link to your affiliate url!)

Google Sitemaps
This generator will create a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog.

SEO Title Tag
Search engine optimize your blog’s title tags. Create a customized title tag for posts, static pages, category pages, etc

SubMark
Displays subscribe and bookmark buttons.

Top10
Top 10 Posts/Views

TwitThis
TwitThis is an easy way for people to send Twitter messages about your blog post or website.

Wordpress Navigation List Plugin NAVT
Create, organize and manage your web site navigation by logically grouping your pages, categories and user's via a drag'n drop interface.

wordTube
This plugin creates your personal YouTube plugin for WordPress.

One that I found later is TwitterDoodle, it's not yet part of the zip file above but you can go to their website to grab it: http://www.lessnau.com/twitterdoodle/
TwitterDoodle allows you to have automatic posts by Twitters on keywords that you select.. ie: The Secret, The Law of Attraction, etc.

Also, setup a new Twitter account and setup a TwitterFeed which will automatically post your blogs to your Twitter. Then put a link for people to subscribe to your Twitter Feeds on your Blog.

Download More Blogging tools on this page:
http://leveragethesecret.com/blogging-tools