A couple of months ago I wrote about how Google killed my online business, taking a big chunk out of my monthly revenues, but today I have good news. I have very good news! My Adwords account has been reinstated!

For those of you who didn’t read my previous article about my experience being kicked out of Adwords, let me recap for you. Basically Google suspended my Adwords account because it was violating their landing page guidelines policy. After many email exchanges, Google pretty much told me to F off and that they were done with me, banning my account. Forever.

My Life Without Adwords

For someone who makes money online, being banned from Adwords sucks. I was completely desperate for a few weeks. I had a hard time getting over it as I was trying to deal without it.

I tried MicroSoft Adcenter. The interface is awesome, but the results are very poor. While it does bring a bit of traffic, it just doesn’t compete with Adwords at all.

After a few weeks though, I realized that I didn’t really need Adwords per say. Sure, it really sucked that I couldn’t advertise my sites as much as I wanted to, but I still had my affiliates promoting my sites for me, so I was still making money.

My rough estimate is that without Adwords, I would generate about $3,000/month. Cost of traffic: $0 since it’s all affiliate driven.

With Adwords, I would generate up to $8,000/month. The downside is that I would have to pay $2,000+ in advertising cost. So basically, Adwords just brought in $6,000/month NET.

It’s clear that using Adwords generated more sales and more income but one of the “pervert effect” of using Adwords is that I have to monitor it. I have to look at my clicks, impressions, costs, and everything. This is stressful!

It is stressful on some days when you see you spent $100 in advertising and you sold products for only $50. It was stressful when this situation happened several days in a row and when I was actually losing more money than I was making.

After being banned from Adwords for a while, I didn’t stress about these numbers anymore. If the money was coming in, great. If it wasn’t, well at least I hadn’t spent any. And THAT was the good thing about being banned.

How I Got My Account Reinstated

I owe everything to Twitter. Or I guess I owe everything to how I use Twitter and the connections I made on it.

When I first found out my Adwords account was banned, I tried to figure out if I knew someone at Google. I don’t. Then I thought that maybe I knew someone who knew someone at Google. I sent a tweet asking for help and a few peeps were kind enough to tell me they would pass on my info to their “friend at Google”.

Then I remembered that the Editor for one of the top SEO blogs was following me (mind you, I’m one of the few 600 he follows). I will not give his name here because he might not want to have such requests every day.

So anyways, I DM this person and asked him kindly if he would be able to help me out since he probably knew a lot of people at Google. He replied to me saying that he would do his best to pass the information to someone. A few weeks passed and it seemed my savior had forgotten about it. Then 2 days ago, he emails me saying that he finally sent my info to his contact at Google. Great!

Two days later, I get this email from Google Adwords:

Hello Sebastien,

Thank you for your patience. I wanted to let you know that your AdWords
account and website were escalated for review as requested in your
previous emails. Per our investigation, your account was disabled for the
following Landing Page and Site Quality violation:

Customer ID: xxx-xxx-xxxx
Example URL: xxxxxxxxxxxx.com
LPQ Violation: Webmaster Guideline Violation

To learn more about Webmaster Guideline Violations, please visit
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guidelines.cs&answer=73762&adtype=text.

Upon re-reviewing your account, we discovered that the violation was
removed. Given this, we were able to re-enable your site
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx and your account, Customer ID xxx-xxx-xxxx.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Sincerely,

I like the “re-reviewing” part!

Really, if I hadn’t made this connection on Twitter in the first place, I would still be banned from Adwords.

What Now?

When I got this email from Adwords this morning, I literally woke my fiancee up to let her know. She was still sleepy but I could tell that she was very happy to see me happy about it. A few minutes later, after really waking up she asked me “what are you gonna do now?”

I told her that maybe I didn’t need Adwords after all and that we’ve been doing pretty well even without it (the blog for example has been generating great money lately).

Then of course I realized that this was stupid of me to pass on an extra $3,000/month. I don’t mind having the stress of spending money in Adwords if that means I can increase my revenues by 100%.

*Sigh*. I wish I didn’t have to be so dependent on Google.

In my previous article about how I make money online, I briefly mentionned that to run a blog, you need expertise about a given topic, time, and dedication. I think those are the three pillars of blogging.

When I tell people how I make money blogging, they get really excited and want to start their own blog. Some of them actually do start their own blog but the majority fails because they either lack expertise, time, or motivation. If one of the pillars is missing, your blog is going to collapse.

Let’s have a look at the three pillars.

Expertise

Expertise doesn’t mean being a living encyclopedia in a certain field. It simply means knowing more than most people in a certain field. That’s a big difference.

For example, I blog about the iPhone but I really don’t consider myself an iPhone expert. More often than not, I will find myself confused when reading technical information about the iPhone. However, I know much more about the iPhone than 99% of iPhone owners. In their eyes, I am an expert.

We’re all expert at something. It sometimes takes time to figure out what we’re good at or what our special skills are, but the reality is we all have skill sets that can make us look like experts in the eyes of many.

Are you a good cook? Are you passionate about tropical fish? Do your neighbors come ask you about gardening tips? Those are areas of expertise that you can take advantage of and leverage on your own blog.

Time

Being an expert is one thing, but having the time to show your expertise is another. Blogging is time consuming and you will need lots of time if you want to run a blog.

Last year I set up a blog for my accountant. As the guy who filed my taxes, he saw how much money I was making from blogging and he thought he could just start his own blog about taxes. He sure had the expertise, but the poor man didn’t have the time.

He didn’t have the time to put at least one article up a week, and he didn’t have time to reply to comments. Basically, he didn’t have time for something that wasn’t generating income as quickly as his business. He gave up within days.

If you’re serious about blogging, make sure you have the time to blog!

Dedication

Being dedicated is very related to having time. You obviously can’t be dedicated if you don’t have time. But having time doesn’t mean you will be dedicated. You might have all the time in the day to blog, but the truth is that if you don’t feel like blogging, well, you won’t!

I am very dedicated to my iPhone blog. I write at least one post a day, every single day. I am so dedicated that I sometimes get up at 3 in the morning to cover breaking news. I buy every new iPhone coming out. I read over 50 iPhone-related sites. I answer questions on Twitter about the iPhone. I reply to people’s comments on my blog or on Facebook. I do this because I am committed and dedicated.

There are some days when I don’t feel like writing an article because I lack the motivation to do it. Well you know what? I still move my ass and write an article. That’s dedication. No matter what happens, I’m going to publish one article/day, and I’m going to be as helpful as I can to people who think I’m an expert. They trust me, they give me their time (and their money); my part of the job is to being there to deliver what they come for.

Is that it?

Can you be a successful blogger simply by being an expert, having time and being dedicated? Absolutely not! These are just the basis of a blog. There is obviously much more to it than just the three pillars but those are the foundations and support of a solid blog.

What’s your take?

When you meet someone for the first time, there is always a time in the conversation when you’re going to ask each other what you do for a living. When I was working for the man, the answer was easy. I would simply say “I’m the Vice President of Marketing for a web company that offers various services to franchise companies”.

Now that I am self-employed and that I generate 100% of my revenues on the Internet, I find it a bit harder to explain what I do in one short and concise sentence. The best answer would be that I make money online. I’ve found that telling this usually generates about 60 more questions about the possible ways to make a living off a computer and an Internet connection.

In this article, I would like to discuss the various ways I make money online, mostly through blogging, content publishing and projects for clients.

How I Make Money Blogging

To me, blogging is one of the easiest ways to make money online. The start-up cost is extremely low. All you need is a domain name, a hosting plan, and a blog set up for a total cost of about $100/year. Of course, besides this you’ll need some time, expertise in a given field, and some serious motivation and dedication.

I run several blogs but there is one that I am completely dedicated to: my iPhone blog. I’ve been running this blog since May 2008 and at the time I am writing this, it is one of the most regarded iPhone blogs out there and it gets about 1 million visitors per month. Yes, you read it right. About 1 million people come visit my iPhone blog every month. Google “iPhone Blog” and you’ll see the iPhone Download Blog up there in the top results!

This didn’t happen overnight, but I can’t say that it took me forever to get here either. I’ve invested a lot of time in it. I really know what I’m talking about. I am very motivated and totally devoted to this blog, which I update at least once a day, every single day.

This being said, here is how I make money blogging:

Adsense

Adsense is a a service offered by Google that allows you to be paid everytime someone clicks on an ad on your site. This is basically how it works. You sign up with Adsense, Google gives you a piece of code to put on your site. This code will look at what your site is about and will display relevant ads. Whenever someone visits your site and clicks on one of these ads, Google will pay you a little commission. These commissions can go as little as $0.01/click to well over $50.

Although many A-list bloggers will tell you that Adsense sucks because it drives traffic away from your site, it still is a great and easy way to generate money easily. The downside to this is that you have no idea how much Google is really making thanks to you. When they pay you $0.25 for a click, they might actually make $4 for it, keeping the largest piece of the pie.

Banner Ads

I make quite a bit of money with banner ads without having to spend time managing them. I work with a company called BuySellAds (BSA). This is how it works. I tell BSA that I have a few ad spots available on my site and I also tell them what each spot is worth. That’s my part of the job.

BSA has a huge inventory of advertisors and puts my site in front of them. When an advertisor thinks my blog would be a great fit for their products, the advertisors can look at my ad spots options (placement and price) and decides to buy an ad.

From there, BSA collects the payment and takes a 25% cut. That’s their commission for their service. After collecting payment, it will automatically display the new ad on my site and send me an email telling me I just made money (I love receiving those emails).

The benefit of using such a service is that BSA helps me connect with advertisers that I may never find otherwise. Additionally, it makes it very easy and safe to collect the payment. Finally, and more importantly to me, all this is handled without me having to do anything.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing where the affiliate (me in that case) promotes a business or service in exchange for a percentage or fixed commission of the sales they generate.

Let’s take the example of my iPhone blog. Invisible Shield is a product that helps protect your iPhone from scratches. I placed a banner for their product on my site and every time someone clicks on this banner and buys an Invisible Shield, I get about $5.

There are affiliate programs for virtually every product or industry out there. Here are 5 of my favorite affiliate marketplaces:

• ClickBank
• Regnow
• Share A Sale
• Commission Junction
• LinkShare

On my iPhone blog, I promote several affiliate programs ranging from accessories to softwares for iPhone. This generates pretty substantial revenues every month.

In-Text Advertising

In-Text advertising refers to links placed inside your text, that come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links. Once the user rolls the mouse over the link, the advertising will pop.

Although these in-text ads, also known as contextual ads, can seem annoying, they’ve been generating quite some income for me since I started using them.

I was very reluctant to include them in my blog until I realized that 1) my readers don’t mind them at all, and 2) they can generate thousands each month.

I use Kontera for my in-text ads. I even cut a pretty sweet deal with them, which is probably why I generate so much income from these ads.

Sponsored Tweets

Just like in-text ads, it took me a while to jump on the sponsored tweets bandwagon and so far, I’m not really impressed by the results. I do get people to pay me to send a tweet promoting their products from time to time, but not as often as I would want it.

There are 2 ways I go about it. The first is that I let people pay me directly via Paypal to send their sponsored tweets. That’s my favorite way because there is no middleman.

The other way is to use a service called Sponsored Tweets. It’s like a marketplace where advertisers can find tweeters like me. Although this service is very respectable, I don’t like it as much as the first method because it takes a pretty big commission, which means less money for me.

Content Publishing

Publishing and selling content is my favorite way to make money online because if you do it well, it doesn’t require much work at all and can provide a steady revenue stream.

Writing & Selling eBooks

eBooks are hot and they’re about to become even hotter. They allow anyone with a little bit of knowledge about a given topic to be published at a very small cost.

The concept is very simple: you find problematic topics and give the solution under the form of an ebook. I wrote a few eBooks on my own that I am now selling via the ClickBank marketplace.

Blog Building and Internet Marketing Consulting

I recently started offering my services to a select group of clients. From constructing a new blog from scratch, through to writing killer articles that attract more traffic and links, I help individuals and businesses, large and small, every day. Here are some example services:

• Blog building
• Blog teaching
• Social Media consulting
• Search Engine Optimization
• Content creation

More to Come

As the Internet evolves, new ways of making money online are created. I believe that what I’m doing now online has nothing to do with what I’ll be doing in 10 years.

How do you make money online?

Being on Twitter is like being at a cocktail party. Would you go to a cocktail party wearing shorts, a t-shirt and sandals? Of course not. You want to look presentable on Twitter. Even better, you want to look good and sexy.

While Twitter is not a beauty pageant, having a nice and attracting profile page will draw interest and trust in you, ultimately helping you build a follower base. Just like a beautiful woman attracts all the guys and is the talk of all women at a party, we’re going to do just that with you Twitter page.

Your Username

Your username tells a lot about you and it is a key element of your personal branding on Twitter. There are two schools on how to handle the username dilemma on Twitter:

1. There are those who think you should use your name (ie. @SebastienPage)
2. There are those who think you should use a nickname (ie. @Dudeman718)

I personally think using your real name is a better way to go about but let’s see the pros of each option.

Why Use Your Real Name

1. It reinforces your name as a personal brand.
2. It will attract more followers (people prefer following a real person that a brand).
3. You don’t want people to squat your name on Twitter.
4. People will easily be able to locate your in the “Find People” search tool.

Why Use A Username

1. You’re already known online as BigTimeBlogger (or whatever your nickname is). That’s your own brand. Keep it!
2. Your boss really wants you to use the company name.
3. You have things to hide and would rather not “be the real you” on Twitter.

About Company Usernames

As I said above, if your boss doesn’t understand that Twitter is all about people talking to other people, and not companies talking to potential customers, then he might want you to use the company name as your username.

An alternative would be to do like Dell does with its employees: @RichardATDell, @Kara_atDell, etc… This helps put a human face on a corporate account.

Quick Notes About Usernames

You may change your Twitter username at any time in the settings without losing your followers or having to start all over again. Changing your username may confuse your followers at first so make sure you let them know about it.

If you tweet for your company, make sure to figure out sooner rather than later what will happen to your username should you leave the company.

Your Profile Picture

If a picture is worth a thousand words, your profile picture on Twitter is probably worth an encyclopedia.

Instead of using the default icon that comes with your Twitter account, or instead of using a funny/stupid/cute icon, I would suggest you upload a real picture of you. It’s about personal branding. You are the brand!

You don’t need to have your picture taken by a professional photograph for the occasion but having a real picture of you will entice trust and will most likely increase your “follow rate”.

Your profile picture is one of the things people will see first while visiting your page, but most importantly, it is what they will see in their streamline if they follow you.

Here are a few advice to have an attractive profile picture on Twitter and build your personal brand:

• Don’t use a logo – Twitter is not about companies, it’s about people! Potential followers are more likely to follow a real person that a company.
• Smile – it seems like an easy one but many people don’t smile on their profile picture
• Be consistent – use the same profile picture as you use on other social sites to build continuity. This helps you solidify your personal brand.
• Be consistent (again) – do not change your profile picture every week. Your followers will be used to seeing your face and they might be confused if you change your avatar all the time.

Show Off With A Slick Background Image

This is the very first thing potential followers are going to see, so don’t hesitate to show off! If you’re serious about your personal branding, you should really consider getting a good Twitter background.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a graphic artist; there are many sites out there that allow you to create Twitter backgrounds in less than 2 minutes:

• www.TwitBackgroundImages.com ( I own this site)
• www.TwitrBackgrounds.com
• www.TwitBacks.com
• etc… Google it for more options…

If you’re really serious about it, I suggest you get a custom background designed for you or your company. I partnered with an amazing designer to offer custom Twitter backgrounds for less than $70. You can find more information about it here if you’re interested.

Your Bio Is A Mini Resume

Think of your bio as your resume in just 160 characters. You should give a good description of who you are and what you do by trying to be as descriptive as you can.

The bio is one of the few things I really pay attention to when I look at someone’s profile because I know it gives me a pretty good impression of who this person really is, and what I can expect from him/her.

This is my bio. It tells everything I want people to know about me:

Founder of the iPhone Download Blog, and serial tweeter with a healthy addiction for blogging, SEO, surfing, and traveling.

Warning: stay away from these words: guru, social media, expert. Gurus and experts don’t call themselves as such. Let other people call you this. Besides, social media doesn’t mean much these days.

Link to A Personalized Page On Your Site

Most people will link to their homepage. That’s fine. A better way to do it is to create a personalized page on your site to welcome your Twitter friends who click on the link on your profile. From there, you can introduce yourself in more than 160 characters and most importantly, you can set some expectations for your future followers.

I had a very good feedback from people by implementing such a landing page.

Warning: Do not link a sales page or anything pushy. Doing so is the best way to scare people away and miss out on a potential follower.

Location

You don’t want to lie or make up a funny location. I’m from San Diego, and that’s what my profile shows (unless I am traveling). Don’t write something such as “everywhere” or “universe”. This is stupid and might do more harm than good to your follow rate.

Showing your real location is an important point as it might help you meet or get in touch with people in your area.

What Says You?

Obviously there is no right way to go about it. You are free to do whatever you want with your Twitter profile page. I just think these are “best practices” that might make you look more presentable on Twitter.

What do you think?

I sometimes look at how people interact with Twitter and it surprises me to see how few understand take advantage of the “instantaneousity” of this tool.

Let’s take my fiancée for example. She rarely goes on Twitter and when she does she usually spends 5 minutes scrolling down to see what the 5 people she follows were saying up to 10 days ago. That is not the way Twitter was intended to be.

Twitter is a tool designed to capture the present, not the past.

Don’t bother looking back at what happened on Twitter hours or days ago because it is obsolete. Focus on what’s happening now!

Of course one can argue that you can do whatever you want on Twitter and that is your right to look at what people were tweeting last month. Sure it is, but how relevant is this information now?

How do you use Twitter?

Congratulations, you just set up a WordPress blog, now what? WordPress is pretty much a turn key platform but there are still a few things you need to tweak in order to unleash its full potential.

In this article, I will share with you 7 options that I like to set right after installing a WordPress blog. Obviously these settings will not fit every one but I think they are good base for a solid blog.

Deleting the Default Admin User

Security first, right? When setting up a WordPress blog, the system will automatically create an Admin user. Hackers sometimes hack their way into your blog through this Admin user (don’t ask me how). The solution is to this is simple: we just have to create a new user and delete Admin.

1. Log in to your WP admin panel.
2. Go to Users > Add New.
3. Create a new username. My advice is to NOT use your name for the username and to use a strong password with letters and symbols.
4. Make sure you set the role of this new user to Administrator.
5. Finish adding the user.
6. Log out.
7. Log back in under your new user credentials.
8. Go to Users and delete the Admin user.

Your blog just got this much safer and it took you just about 2 minutes.

Setting Up Spam Protection

Next on my list is to make sure those spammers don’t waste your time. WP comes with a great plugin called Aksimet. It’s a spam filter for your comments.

To set it up, follow the following instructions:

1. Go to Plugins > Installed.
2. If Akismet is not activated yet, click on Activate.
3. After activation, you will get this message: Akismet is almost ready. You must enter your WordPress.com API key for it to work.
4. If you don’t have one yet, you will have to register for a free WordPress account (different from your blog).
5. Create your account and get your API key.
6. Copy/paste your new API key in Akismet.
7. Make sure to check the box that says Automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month.
8. Click Update Options.

You are now very well protected against spam comments. Akismet is a must-have! Don’t think you’ll be safe from receiving spam comments because you won’t.

Installing A Temporary Theme

When you install WordPress, it usually comes with pre-installed themes (aka templates). I like to get my own themes and I cannot stand the default theme that comes with WP so I usually install one very quickly, until I find a better one.

To do so,

1. Go to Appearance > Themes.
2. Browse the various themes that are available.
3. To see a preview, simply click on the thumbnail of the theme you want.
4. If you like it, click Activate.

You now have a not-so-boring-looking blog. Later on, I suggest you get a better looking template. There are thousands of them available online. Just search for “WordPress themes” or similar queries.

General Settings

I like going through all the settings of my blogs, one by one, to make sure everything is set to my liking. The first settings to tweak are the General Settings. From there, you can change the following information:

• Blog title – you can change this at any time.
• Blog tagline – you may change this at any time as well.
• The admin email address – make sure it’s correct.
• Membership – I make sure to uncheck that box because I do not want people to register for an account on my blog.
• New user default role – leave it to subscriber.
• Timezone – make sure to select the timezone you are in. It’s handy when you receive email notifications because they will display the current time in your area.

There is more information available there but that’s all I really care about.

Writing Settings

There you can change a few settings that are almost useless. I don’t touch any of these settings except XML-RPC under Remote Publishing, which allows me to publish posts from iPhone apps and more.

Discussion Settings

These are the settings for relative to people leaving comments on your blog. You obviously want people to leave comments, but you don’t want them to abuse it by spamming you either. Here is a screenshot of what my discussion settings look like.

This way, I receive an email anytime someone posts a comment on my blog. I don’t have to moderate comments unless they contain one link or more. That’s how you recognize some of the spammers out there. They come to your blog and leave a comment full of links.

If someone leaves a genuine comment with a link, I then have to approve it manually, which is never a burden.

Permalinks

Basically, permalinks are the structure of your URL and how they appear. This is a pretty important one to me because it will influence how search engines will index and rank your content. By default, WordPress will display your URLs like this: http://www.domainname.com/?p=123. It’s ok but it could be more descriptive.

I like to set up my custom structure like this:

This way, my posts URLs will display as follow: http://www.domainname.com/title-of-my-post.

See the difference? Doesn’t it look cleaner and more professional? Google will love you for that!

Conclusion

As I mentionned at the beginning of this article, these settings may not apply to your usage of WordPress but I’ve found them to work incredibly well for me and my clients. If you have any question, please feel free to ask by leaving a comment below.

This article is going to show you how to set up a WordPress blog. Before setting up WordPress and starting blogging, you will need to register a domain name and find a hosting plan. That might sound obvious to most of you but I want to make sure to be as clear as possible for beginners.

In my last article, I suggested you use DreamHost for several reasons. I use this hosting company and have been very satisfied with them. For the purpose of this article, I will assume that your domain name is registered with GoDaddy and that your host is DreamHost. If you have a different domain registrar and host, steps would be somewhat similar.

Adding A Domain Name to Your Hosting Account

First things first, we have to add your domain name to your hosting account. We are going to tell your hosting company that we want to host your domain name on their servers. By doing so, we are going to create some space on your server so you can install WordPress (or whatever you want for that matter).

1. Log in to your DreamHost panel.
2. Go to Manage Domains.
3. Click Add New Domain / Sub-Domain.
4. Under Domain to Host, enter your domain name.
5. Don’t touch any other settings.
6. Click Fully host this domain to finish the set up.

If successful, you should see the following message:

See the note about nameservers on this image? That’s the next step in setting up your WordPress blog.

Changing the Name Servers

Every time you use a domain name, you use the internet’s Domain Name Servers (also known as DNS) to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable address. In other words, a DNS is the location of your domain name on the web.

Consider your DNS as your internet address. You have to give this address to your domain registrar so it knows where to send people when they access the domain. I don’t want to be too confusing here so check out this great explanation of what DNS are.

1. Log in to your GoDaddy account (or whererver your domain is registered).
2. Select Domain Manager.
3. You should see a list of your domains. Select the domain for which you want to change the DNS information.
4. Look for DNS or Nameservers in the menu.
5. Select I host my domains with another provider.
6. Then enter the information for nameservers 1, 2, and 3 (NS1.DREAMHOST.COM, NS2.DREAMHOST.COM, NS3.DREAMHOST.COM)
7. Done!

How to Install WordPress

We are almost done. Now we need to install WordPress on your server. This is actually pretty easy because DreamHost offers a “one-click install” service for this.

1. Go back to your DreamHost web panel.
2. In the sidebar, under Goodies, select One-Click Installs.
3. Select Install New Website Software – Advanced Mode.
4. Several options will be offered to you. Click on WordPress (it should be selected by default).
5. Under Install To, select the domain name for which you want to install WordPress. If you have only one domain name, it will be selected by default.
6. Do not touch the other settings.
7. Click Install it for me now!
8. Done!

You should now see this message on your DreamHost panel:

You should also receive an email with instructions to finalize the set up. In this email, click on the very first link. That will take you to the backend of your new blog. From there, simply enter the name of your blog and your email address, then click Install WordPress.

This will create a default Admin username and will generate a random password for you. This information will be emailed to you as well.

Now login using the information that was provided to you. I suggest to change the automatically generated password right away so you can set it to something you will remember.

That’s it! Congratulations, you have successfully set up a WordPress blog. In future articles, I will teach you how to configure your blog efficiently, install themes and plugins.

In the meanwhile, feel free to leave a comment below. Also, if you like this article please make sure to share it on Twitter and to subscribe to my RSS feed.

In a previous article, I gave a few tips on how to find and register a domain name. The next step to setting up your own blog is to find a good hosting plan.

People are sometimes confused about what hosting is. Many think the hosting is the domain name. It’s not. A domain name is the “address” of your site (ie. http://www.DomainName.com). A hosting plan is where the actual content of your site will reside online.

Think about it as a hard drive. The hosting company provides a hard drive where your website will be stored and accessible to everyone thanks to the magics of the Internet.

There are tons of information online on how to find a hosting plan and I’m certainly not going to try to reinvent the wheel. I’ve been working with the same host for about 3 years now and I couldn’t be more satisfied with them, so I might be a little partial here…

What to Look For in A Host

When looking for a hosting plan, I think it all comes down to the following criteria:

Price – if you’re just starting your blog, you certainly don’t want to spend $150/month in a hosting plan. I’ve been blogging for a few years and I own several websites that generate some nice income, but there is no way I’m going to spend that much money on hosting.

Service – what’s included in the price? How much disk space do I get? How much bandwidth? How many domain names can I install on one hosting account? How many databases am I entitled to? How many email addresses can I set up? Does it provide one-click install for blogs (very important)?

Support – is it easy to get in touch with customer support? Are they fast to respond? Support is something you may not be able to rate until you become a client and actually have to deal with the customer support. Just ask around in forums to get a quick idea of what people think of a potential host’s customer support.

Reliability – how reliable is the hosting offered? Again, ask around. If they are down half of the time, that might not be worth your money. Serious hosts guarantee you at least 99% of uptime. That means your website is going to be online 99% of the time.

Respectability – how reputable is the hosting company? Hosting company can offer very cheap plans but if they are out of business by the end of the month, you’ll end up losing time, money and efforts. Just like for domain registrars, I like to work with serious and established hosting companies. Safety first!

My Recommendation

As I said above, I am completely partial to DreamHost (affiliate link). A friend of mine recommended I use them a few years ago and I have been a loyal client ever since. I like DreamHost for several reasons:

• They are cheap: it costs me about $120/year
• I have pretty much “unlimited everything” (emails, domains, databases, bandwidth, etc…)
• The customer support is very fast and helpful
• They are a large company and I know they’re not going bankrupt anytime soon
• My websites are up over 99% of the time (they claim 100% uptime but I don’t believe them)
• They provide “one-click installs”, which allows you to easily set up blogs
• I can host unlimited websites on one hosting plan (that’s a great plus!)

They’re obviously not the only hosting companies out there but they are the one I use and recommend to every one because I know they offer a high quality of service.

If you’re looking for a reliable and inexpensive hosting plan for your blog (or website), make sure you check out DreamHost.

Next…

Once you have found a good domain name and a reliable hosting company, the next step will be to set up your own blog.

A good domain name can be a very valuable asset for your business or your online presence. In many cases, it will appear on your business cards, stationery, etc… In short, it is completely part of your branding.

Finding the right domain name is not always easy and can be a decision that will stick to you. This article will give you an overview on how to find, buy, and register a domain name. Before hurrying to register a domain name, make sure you take the following advice into consideration.

Things to Consider When Buying A Domain Name

If you’re going to start your own blog, I suggest you buy your name (ie www.SebastienPage.com). If you don’t want to use your own name, then try to find something meaningful and related to the topic you’ll want to cover in your blog.

If you want to blog about gardening tips for example, look for a domain with the words “gardening” and “tips” in there because these are your main keywords and they will help you rank better in search engines later on.

When searching for possible domain names, always remember that it has to be simple, short, descriptive. I always say that if you had to advertise your site on the radio, your domain name should be concise enough so people remember it. Could people easily remember www.Buy-Another-Domain-Name11.info? Pronounce this out loud and you’ll realize how “radio unfriendly” it is.

Tips For Selecting A Domain Name That Doesn’t Suck

Choose a .com domain – avoid .net, .info, .org, etc… Maybe you’re going to find a great deal on a .name domain name but really, stick to .com. It sounds more professional and it is much easier to remember than any other extension.

Avoid dashes – again, dashes sound unprofessional and kinda messy when you say the domain name out loud.

Avoid numbers – they are hard to remember and can be confusing.

Keep it short – more than 15 characters in a domain name is too long.

Include keywords – including keywords will help your search engine rankings.

Check Your Domain Name Availability

Many websites let you check the availability of domain names. I like to use the tool provided by GoDaddy. Enter the domain name you want to check and if it’s not available, it will give you several alternatives.

Once you have found the right domain name for you, next step is registering it.

How to Register A Domain Name

While you can buy domain names from hundreds of different websites, I like to buy mine from GoDaddy. Their website is very simple and prices are in the average. What’s great with GoDaddy is the support they offer. They have a very friendly customer service staff on call 24/7. So you know if you have a question, there is always someone to help you, for free!

I also like GoDaddy because it’s a large company and I know it’s not going out of business anytime soon. Many websites can offer domain name for a bit cheaper but I really don’t mind paying $3 extra per year to have the safety an established company like GoDaddy can provide.

Once you have found a domain available on GoDaddy, start the registration process. Like any other domain registrar, GoDaddy will try to upsell you on a bunch of stuff. Say “no, thanks” to any option they might offer you.

You do not need anything but the domain name. Proceed to check out and give your credit card information. The whole process shouldn’t take more than 3 minutes.

Next…

Now that you have your own domain name, next step will be to find a host.

I wanted to start a personal blog like you have done about business, life, health, politics, history.  Here’s the issue.  If I use my real name, and then connect it with my username and then link it to a blog with that same username, my real name would be exposed.  Do you think it’s a liability for an entrepreneur to have his personal and political views so openly espoused?  I have a business partner, employers, vendors, sales prospects that assuredly do Google searches on me before doing business with me…Do I run the risk of jeopardizing business because of my personal views?  And at what point does transparency become too much?  I figure that I can write in a sterile business like fashion, but that’s not me.  I’d love your insight.

You Are What You Say Online

Whatever you say or write online is a liability. There are many reasons why you wouldn’t want people to find out about your true identity. Eric’s problem is that he doesn’t want to associate his name with his political views, etc…

If you work for an employer and if you’re going to blog about hot topics (politics, religion, sex, etc…), make sure you don’t mind losing this job because it might get back at you faster than you think.

As Eric mentioned, people search more and more for names on Google. I do! When I meet someone I will potentially work or deal with, I Google them. That’s my way to do a quick informal background check.

This being said, if you work for the man and want to start your own blog about a hot topic, I suggest using a strong username.

A Username Can Be A Brand

A username for an online service or for a blog domain name doesn’t have to be something meaningless like “Eric1983″. If you want to hide your online identity behind a username, I suggest you choose one that may translate into a brand.

There are many examples of strong and smart usernames/URL that become their own brands: CopyBlogger, ProBlogger, TechCrunch, etc…

These guys chose to reveal their real identity but they didn’t have to. They could have chose to hide behind their usernames.

The Problem With Hiding Your Identity

There is a downside to hiding your identity and not being willing to reveal it. When I created my first website, I didn’t want my boss to find out what I was doing. The website, a franchise directory, was directly competing with the company who was employing me.

The problem is that the site started gaining popularity in the industry and people soon started offering me money to advertise on the site. I hadn’t created a legal entity and was just charging people with PayPal, which made it mandatory to reveal my identity, at least to the people who were paying me.

It became a little awkward when I once had to call a person on behalf of my employer and the guy on the other end of the line thought I was calling on behalf of my website.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s really hard to hide behind a username and things may really well catch up with you one day or the other.

Real Name Vs Username

In the end, it all depends on your needs and goals. In the case of Eric, I’d recommend using a username. That will prevent people from linking him to content he wouldn’t want to be associated with.

If you’re going to write a blog about the iPhone for example, then it’s no use hiding your identity. In this case, using your real name is the way to go as it will most likely help you build your personal brand.

Do you use your real name or a username online? Why? I am curious to read what you think about this.