If you or someone you know is an author, this is the video to watch! It’s a great illustration of where most people are immediately after they accomplish a major goal…in this man’s case, he just finished a book.

Wow, you’d think you’d finally arrived, you’ve written a book, gotten it published…but wait, there’s more. Lots more. Now you’re faced with all the wonderful places the internet provides us with to market it…oh, not so wonderful, huh? More than overwhelming? It sure can be! This video is great the way it hits home to anyone that has been navigating the ‘waters of marketing online’! Watch….

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/yxschLOAr-s&hl=en]

Frustrated with all the dead end searches in trying to figure out how to put RSS on your site? I was. It seemed that all the searches were either telling me how to pick up someone else’s RSS to read, or was a lengthy article explaining all the boring technicalities about what RSS is, not how to put it on my blog. You already know that you want RSS on your blog and it will help your traffic. So when I finally figured it out, I decided I would chronicle my stupidity and give you the short answer on RSS.

First of all, if you are using Wordpress.com, or Blogger, your RSS tag is probably already there. Duh. Most of Wordpress.com themes include it as part of the template, or you can ‘plug it in’ . On Blogger, at the bottom of your blog page, if you see a “xml” icon, then you have a version of it. If you want a pretty orange RSS icon at the top of your blogger blog anyway, Feedburner makes it extremely easy to generate the html, and then you just put it in ‘Add html or javascript’ (NOT ‘Feed’) in the ‘Add Elements’ part of the ‘Design’ area. Then, just move your elements around so it’s at the top. *see note at end of post

If you are on Wordpress,  Become a Blogger tutorial #10 shows you how to get your RSS feed from Feedburner and  put it on Wordpress. There is also another site on toprankblog.com that creates the html you need for a large variety of RSS buttons. Be sure to watch the video at becomeablogger.com before you start anything, it’s a lifesaver…well, at least a time saver!

Feedburner is now owned by Google, and has some great tutorials designed for beginners, according to what type of blog you may have (Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, etc). You can learn everything you need to know – and you NEED to know this – here.

RSS video tutorial

Feedburner

Top Rank Blog, RSS buttons

Today I watched over half of the blogging tutorials that Yaro Starak has posted online to see if they were worthwhile, and was really impressed! I’ve gotten Yaro’s blog Entrepreneur’s Journey via RSS for awhile now, and it’s not the best of the entrepreneur blogs, but he does have alot of good information. The biggest downfall of his blog, IMHO, is he is too wordy. They say you are bothered the most by faults in other people that you struggle with personally….so be it.

These tutorials at Become a Blogger.com are a little annoying because they cover every little detail, right down to how to type in an url and fill out a form. I can deal with it though, because I know there are people that are very new to everything online, and, well, been there, done that! Ideal for the ground zero newbie, there was also good material on how to put an RSS feed on your blog, which I had been anquishing over the last 3 days. Every place I went to assumed I knew MUCH more than I did, or was teaching you how to place someone else’s feed on your site. This alone has endeared these tutorials to my heart. Thank you, Yaro!

Starting with reasons to use WordPress hosted on your own domain, moving on to getting your own domain name to signing up with a web host, I have a big money saver to add to his suggestions: use wordpress.com (it’s free) with your own domain name. You can get domains for $6.99 at One & One, and it’s very easy to navigate their site to make the changes, and if you can’t figure it out, they have fairly quick tech support.

If you do want to sign up for a web host because you are in this for the big bucks, then be sure to get the coupon codes on this site to save substantial moola. I try to keep them current, and if you can’t find them, just do a search in the search box (at top of page) for “Host Gator”. You can always email me, if you still can’t find it, it’ll be worth your time, I promise! Host Gator is being recommended more and more by the online ‘gurus’, and for good reason. They are feature-rich, reliable and no gimmicks! And their support is in-house! Anyway, this post isn’t about Host Gator…sorry.

So, other than disagreeing with Yaro’s domain and hosting recommendations, these videos are perfect for anyone just getting started. I think I’m going to do a separate post on how to figure out the RSS post via these videos, just so others don’t have to go through what I did trying to find info on it.

Find the videos at: Become a Blogger

or on Yaro’s blog: Entrepreneurs-Journey

Have a great weekend!

Ok, now the last 3 blogging “lessons” have been on getting your blog set up, and hopefully you have found a comfortable home for your blog. I have hopped around looking at and trying different platforms and it’s such a pain to move your blog once you’ve started, be ABSOLUTELY sure you are happy where you’re at before you get started and you will save yourself alot of time and frustration.

There are two books that I have bought and will try to pass along the essentials to you. One of the books is a Startup Guide by Entrepreneur Press called Start Your Own Blogging Business (Startup). It’s a 96 page paperback that is very basic, and is seems to be more theory than actual how-to’s. It’s also a good primer if you have never had a business before.

My favorite part of the entire book is a little story they tell at the very beginning that I think you find encouragement in also. It’s a story about Caroline, who publishes a blog on everything about iPods, her favorite thing in the world. Currently, her blog receives an average of 15,000 visitors per day-reportedly a modest amount of traffic for her chosen topic, receiving the “typical” amount of ad revenue of $.80-$1 per click from her readers. If only 1% of her daily traffic of 15,000 (150) click on her ads, she will earn between $120-$150/day in ad revenue. That’s $4500/month, or $54,000/year with very little business expense, which isn’t bad at all considering she is doing something she loves!

This gets better… NOW…if Caroline increases her traffic, let’s say to 150,000/per day with the same daily percentage of 1% clicking the same ads at $1/click …that’s $1500/day or just over a half million dollars per year.

Seem a little outrageous? Not really. 1% is a low percentage as well as $1/click is a low estimate, too. As your traffic increases, your advertisers pay you more to advertise for them. Granted, 150,000/day visitor traffic will take a bit of work (duh), but it is not an unrealistic goal if your subject matter is a popular one.

If you’re thinking that you could never acheive 150,000/day traffic to your blog, there are a variety of opinions on this. In the reviews of ProBlogger’s new book, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, the point was made that it is more likely that your average blogger will make that 6-figure income with many blogs, not just one gigantic one. However, considering there are an estimated 1.6 billion internet users world-wide, 150,000 seems like a small number. Suggestion? Open a file on your computer or in your favorites and start recording your blog ideas and as you come across information for those ideas, copy the link and keep it with your idea file(s).

What is the final lesson here? It’s two-fold: choose your topic carefully, and really work at building your traffic. Go to the website Problogger.net for lots of tips and information on building traffic, or check out their new book, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. Another good site is Dailyblogtips.com, a clean, well organized blog that you can learn alot from.

As a fellow blogging newbie, the blind leading the blind has it’s perks. For instance, much of the blogging advice I run into is assuming I know much more than I do. I know there are blogger wanna-bes out there that have no clue how to install a Wordpress plug-in. There are so many articles telling us the must have plug ins, but how do you “plug it in?”

Help is here! I found a website that has video tutorials telling us HOW to install those plug ins. Tubetorials is a site of video helps on all things blog. There’s even “Blog Law 101″ to get familiar with the fine print aspect of writing a blog.

So, part 3 of your blogging class assignment is to get your blog running smoothly and clearly. Be sure to keep writing at least 3 posts per week, 2-3 per day if you are really serious about making money with your blog.