Who is HostGator?

HostGator was established in 2002 with just 3 servers and has grown to be a worldwide web hosting provider to more than 8 million domains. Their clients range from novice individual users all the way up to large Fortune 500 companies. In order to handle all this large customer base, the company currently employs over 750 people that range from support staff to management, each dedicated to providing the best user experience possible.

What do they offer?

Shared Hosting

Hostgator currently has 3 plans in their shared web hosting category. They are the Hatchling, Baby and Business plans. Each one is setup to meet the specific needs of a user and can be upgraded at any time. Some of the highlights of the shared hosting plans include:

1. Unlimited disk space
2. Unlimited Sub Domains, FTP Accounts, and Email Accounts
3. Latest cPanel Control Panel
4. 24/7/365 Premium Support via Phone, Live Chat, and an Email Ticket System
5. Automatic Weekly Off-Site Data Backups
6. 24/7/365 Server Monitoring

Virtual Private Servers – VPS

Hostgator offers a solution for people looking to get the benefits of a dedicated server without the high costs associated with one in the form of VPS. All VPS plans come with full root access giving you the ability to install software and make any changes to suit your needs. They even include cPanel or Plesk to help with administration.  There are currently 9 different plans that have disk space ranging from 10GB to 231GB. The list of features also includes:

1. Unlimited Domains
2. Unlimited Sub Domains
3. Unlimited Email Accounts
4. Unlimited MySQL Databases
5. Weekly Off Site Backups
6. Unlimited FTP Accounts
7. Free Site Builder Software
8. Private Name Servers
9. Full Root Access
10. VIRTUOZZO Power Panel
11. 24/7/365 Support

Dedicated Servers

Do you need full control over your server with no restrictions or limitations? Then getting a dedicated server is the answer. Some of the other reasons people opt for a dedicated server are reliability, security and a unique IP address. Hostgator offers you the option of either a Linux or Windows based system and cPanel or Plesk control panels. If you are planning on offering space on your server then Hostgator also offers WHMCS or WHM AutoPilot billing systems to fully automate your billing needs for free with each plan.

Reseller Web Hosting

Are you looking into having your own hosting business without all the hassle? For very reasonable monthly fees, you will be able to manage and provide your customers with hosting so they can create and modify their own web sites. The best feature is you determine the prices and get to keep 100% of the profits for yourself. There are 5 different plans ranging from 50GB to 200GB of disk space. Each plan also gives your users access to cPanel and unlimited domains.

What forms of support are available?

Hostgator provides award winning support. If you are experiencing any problems or difficulties, you can visit their forums, access their video tutorials or even talk to someone via live chat. No matter what your web hosting related issues are, the available support options will get you back on track quickly.

If all these benefits and features don’t make you want to check out Hostgator for your web hosting then here is one more reason. If you type in NEWTOBLOG25 in the coupon area, you will get 25% off your hosting plan. In these hard economic times, every penny counts so why not save a few dollars on your hosting that you can use somewhere else?

Articles related to web hosting:

Web Host – Picking The Right One
Setting Up A Blog – The Planning Phase

When you write for the web, it is not the same as writing a paper for school, an article for a newspaper or any other form of print media. Blogging has a whole different set of rules that if reviewed by your 10th grade English teacher, would land you in detention so fast your head would spin.

The main thing to keep in mind is that you are writing for two different entities – humans and search engines. Here are just a few of the guidelines that can give you an advantage with article readability and getting indexed by search engines.

Blog optimization for humans:

1. People want information and answers fast. When writing, use simple, easy to read content that is to the point.
2. Make important information easy to scan to by altering the text style – bold, italic and underlined.
3. Use headings that are descriptive for your visitors and optimized for search engine spiders.
4. Use white space to help separate topic elements.

Blog optimization for search spiders:

1. Make sure your title contains your keywords
2. To help with search engine ranking, your title should begin with your keywords
3. Your title should contain at least 3 words consisting of no more than 66 characters
4. Make sure your permalink contains your keywords and not just a post number
5. Just like your title tag, the description meta tag should begin with your keywords
6. The description meta tag has up to but not more than 160 characters
7. Although not adding much SEO influence, the keywords meta tag should contain your keywords
8. Each post should have an H1 tag that begins with your keyword
9. Each post should have an H2 tag that contains your keyword
10. Each post should have an H3 tag that contains your keyword
11. Not mandatory but you content should contain at least 300 words
12. Keep your keyword density around 2%
13. Your post should have your keyword in the first 50-100 words
14. Your post should have your keyword in the last 50-100 words
15. At least one image should have your keyword in the ALT attribute
16. Try to add one bold keyword, one italicized keyword and one underlined keyword
17. For a little extra help, you can include your keywords in both internal and external links

I cannot guarantee that these suggestions are going to get you a #1 rank in the Google search results or keep your visitors reading more of your high quality posts, but I can guarantee that you will do better than you are now.

 Articles related to blog optimization:

• Content Writing – 21 Steps To Success
• Keeping Your Blog Content Fresh

No matter how you look at it, nothing is ever free. This includes the costs of running your affiliate sales funnel. Your first cost is going to come in the form of time. Crossing your arms and blinking 3 times is not going to get traffic to your blog, generate content, and develop a funnel. It is going to take time – remember that this is not going to be your get rich quick solution. The second cost is monetary. How much you spend is up to you, but there are a few necessities that cannot be overlooked.

The basics

1. Having a domain name will cost between $8 and $40 depending on who you choose.
2. Web hosting can cost as little as $4 a month.
3. An autoresponder which starts at $20 month and gets cheaper based on the purchase term.
4. Advertising which is totally up to you on how much to spend.

The first two will give you the ability to have pages that can generate leads. The third will allow you to create follow-up emails to the leads you get from your opt-in pages. Finally the fourth will get people to your pages to start the whole process of getting traffic so you can convert them into customers.

So let’s review real quick. You want get your affiliate products in front of the largest amount people as possible using the four resources above. Then generate a high enough conversion rate to make all this hard work worth it. Also note that the amount of money you make grows exponentially with each increase to the conversion rate.

In the example below we are going to use $5 profit for each confirmed sale.

• 1000 visitors X 2% CR = 20 buyers
• 20 buyers X $5 = $100

Now increase the visitors and conversion rate.

• 1500 visitors X 2.5% = 37 buyers
• 37 buyers X $5 = $185

The best case scenario for a sales funnel to work

Increase your conversion rate by providing quality content first and then increase the amount of people that you put it in front of. This plan of attack works best because your chances of having the current buyers recommend your content to others increases as well.

The methods you use to promote your affiliate products can hurt you just as much as help. How you ask? When you go to a blog that has more ads than content, do YOU click them? Of course not, because what value have they added? So what are the chances of someone clicking on your blog if you did the same thing?

Although there are so many factors to consider when implementing a sales funnel, I hope these few suggestions will get you started on the path to success.

More articles related to creating a sales funnel:

• Make Money Online – Passive Blog Profits
• Affiliate Products – Yours Or Someone Else’s
• Does An Affiliate Marketer Need A Website?

Related Products:

• For 25% off your new Hostgator hosting use NEWTOBLOG25 coupon code!

Blog banners are useless unless you are paid up-front for advertising someone’s product. If you are not getting paid, then don’t distract your visitors from the real reason they came in the first place – providing a solution for their problem.

Some people just make sales pages all day long, but if that is all you are doing, then when do you have time to create problem solving quality content which your visitors are looking for? That content is going to sell your product for you. Let it do its job, while you do yours – build credibility. More credibility means better conversion rates.

Do you click on blog banners?

The bottom line is – put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. Are you the kind of person who clicks on banner ads without knowing anything up front or do you utilize the information they provide to help make an educated decision about a recommended product to solve your problem? Hopefully the latter and that is how you will increase your credibility by warming them up to a product instead of just selling it to them via some big splash ad. It is far easier to  let your visitor click a link because they want to not because you want them to.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

People like options and that is why when you create your pre-selling content, offer more than one suggestion – just not too many or it will seem pushy and come across as selling. So what is your number one goal? Do not sell! Promote!

Articles related to using blog banners:

• Marketing – A Strategy For Success
• Blog Promotion – 33 Things You Should Be Doing
• Blog Marketing – 27 Things You Should Be Doing

 Products and services to help you with advertising:

• Affiliate Marketing Training
• Aweber
• Clickbank

When is it time to change your blogs theme? To start with, you need to answer why you want to change it. For some it is because they were new to blogging and didn’t have much experience with design, layout and usability. Others have come to the conclusion that their blog does not deliver the level of intended professionalism and doing a blog makeover is their last resort. One of the last reasons is, some people are looking to add functionality that is not possible with their current theme. Whatever reason you have, there are a few things to take into consideration before you do.

First, no matter what theme you decide to use, it is a good idea to take out the old pencil and paper and sketch out what you want your new theme to look like. There are millions of blogs out there and you are going to want your look to be unique. You have two choices to provide the world with your own special style and branding.

1. Use one of the many free themes

Although this is one of the most cost effective methods, finding the one to suit your needs could become a daunting task. Before going this route, you will need to look at what features the theme provides. These include built in plugins, simple non-code related customizations and advertisement management. Whatever blog theme you consider, it is also advisable to check what levels of support are available in case you run into any problems.

2. Use a premium theme

The benefits of this choice more than outweigh the costs. There are too many bonus features to list but here are just a few to help justify making that purchase. For starters, you can be assured that the coding and framework will be more optimized for SEO. Another great feature is the level of flexibility you are given. You are not constrained to some of the features associated with free themes like: restricted color palette, limited modifications to layout elements or developer updates to stay current with any changes with WordPress itself.

3. The affects of doing a blog makeover on your visitors

If you already have a decent amount of repeat traffic, then you need to make sure the navigation and ease of use remains intact or relatively close. It does no good to make people re-learn how to get around your blog to find the features they are familiar with using.

Finally make sure that the theme you choose gives you the ability to easily adapt it as your readership increases. You need to be able to spend your time creating useful, quality content instead of having to pick a new theme all over again because you realized that your visitor’s needs can’t be met after a few months of just implementing the one you just used.

Articles related to doing a blog makeover:

• Treating Your Blog Like A Resort
• Premium Theme – Choosing The Right One
• Mind Map Your Blog

Related products:

• Use the Genesis theme for a blog makeover

At one time or another, every blogger has a burned out phase. You sit in front of your computer with your notepad of ideas and none of them seem to get the ball rolling. An even worse situation is not having anything on your pad at all. Here is a list of things you can do to get those creative juices flowing.

1. Do you watch television?

I don’t know about you but while I am blogging, the television is on in the background. If this is true for you, then why not use it to your advantage. Depending on the topic of your blog, see if you can apply any of the latest headlines and information towards creating some new content. There might be something on the political scene that has all forms of media buzzing, so why not jump on the wagon and catch some of the hype? Or there might be some new recipe on a cooking channel that you are willing to give a try and write a review or even list the recipe with your own variations that you used to make it better.

The television can be an idea source for not only content but design as well. The networks spend millions of dollars for designs, color schemes and methods of delivering their content to their viewers. Why not implement some of the things they are doing to give your blog a visual overhaul? Look at the colors they are using. How do they make you feel and what mindset do they put you in as you are watching the show? Maybe they are bold colors that create a feeling of urgency or possibly earthy colors that give you a down-home relaxed feeling. While colors play an important part, layout does as well, so don’t forget to look for ideas there as well.

2. Do you go places when you are burned out to get away from it all?

The next place that can get the fuel burning is utilizing some of your recent experiences. Have you been on a trip lately? Write about it. The trip itself might not be directly related to your blog, but find a way to connect the two. I recently wrote an article on my experience while visiting a resort. Now does this blog seem like it has a travel theme LOL? I joined areas such as customer service, appearance and how I felt while there with what a visitor might experience while coming to a blog.

Maybe you went clothes shopping and saw the latest spring fashions. Tell your readers about them. Add pictures and where they can find them. Maybe there is even some place online that offers the clothes that you could get a few affiliate sales from.

A good idea is to carry a notepad with you or if you are a techie, just jot some stuff down on your phones notepad. It is with you anyways, so why not use it to help further your creative endeavor.

3. Share your new found knowledge?

The last suggestion is to use something you just learned pertaining to your blog’s niche. Suppose you just found a new way to grout tiles with the use of a new bonding agent. Share that information with the readers of your DIY home repair blog. Maybe you had to repair something on your car that you couldn’t find info about anywhere on the web. Chances are someone else has the same problem and here is your chance to help. How about technical stuff? Maybe you just created a widget for WordPress or created an app for the iPhone. Share your techniques with your followers so that they might be able to contribute their respective communities.

Inspiration and motivation are everywhere. Sometimes it takes someone to point out where to look once in a while. I am extremely guilty of putting the “blinders” on and then it hits me with an Oh Yeah moment and the next thing you know, I am typing. I hope this article can help you get rid of those burned out feelings and open your eyes to the vast amount of potential inspirational resources out there.

Articles related to being burned out from blogging:

• Keeping Your Blog Content Fresh
• Blog Topics – Is There A Demand For Yours?
• Blog Traffic – Expanding Your Personal Highway

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You have a blog that has great content, good traffic and is socially connected, but are you taking advantage of the possibility to make money online at the same time? This article is not about putting tons of affiliate links and advertising banners all over the place to distract your visitors from getting the information they are looking for. It is geared towards passively suggesting useful products and services that can help further solve your reader’s problems.

Make money online doing what you already do – writing articles

One of the best ways to make money from your blog is to write a product review. You can either buy the product or service yourself and then create an unbiased review for your readers. Remember that you are trying to help the people that come to your blog so be truthful. If there are features you like, promote them and if there are features that impede its use then explain them. You might even get a response in your comments from the author describing how to use certain functions or what they are doing to fix errors.

Using the review method, you are less likely to come across as seller and will actually gain credibility with your readers. Just remember to provide a link so if they are interested, there is a way to get credit for the recommendation.

Using content related advertising

Another method to passively make money online from your blog without having to do any real work is to implement a text based advertising program. One of the most popular is Google Adsense. After you sign up and incorporate it into your blog, ads related to your content will appear. Google Adsense is a Pay-Per-Click system that pays you after someone clicks on a link. One of the nicer features allows you to filter the ads that appear on your blog so that your competition or anything unwanted appears.

If you have a blog and would like to recover some of your expenses (hosting, domain registration, etc.), then maybe you might try one or both of the techniques. No matter what you do, just remember to not sell for the sake of selling. You will see greater results from suggesting (soft selling) solutions to your visitors problems.

Articles related to helping you make money online:

• Affiliate Marketing – The Basics
• Affiliate Marketer – Do You Really Know What One Is?
• Affiliates – Are They really Needed?

During all phases of working on your blog, you should be analyzing your competition. Knowing where your blog stands in relation to its competition and what they are doing to outrank you will help you add or delete elements that could get you closer to or beat them in search results.

Before you implement any new strategies for online marketing, you need to generate some data. In order to do this the correct way, you are going to ask yourself multiple times – who, what, when, where, why and how. The process might seem a bit long and drawn out but the data you accumulate will provide you with an edge that the successful bloggers have and the unsuccessful bloggers don’t.

Let’s start with “WHO”

First you need to find out who your competition is. Start by doing a search using your keyword or phrase. All of the results that appear may not be totally relevant so a little filtering may be necessary. In order to not overwhelm yourself, I suggest only analyzing the first 10 sites that are directly related to your blog’s topic.

“WHAT” qualities do the successful bloggers have in common and what sets them apart from each other

Now create a spreadsheet with headings for design, layout, theme, usefulness, products, services and prices. Insert all of the elements you have along with what your competition currently has. Your spreadsheet data can be as in-depth as you want. Just make sure the data you are entering is specific to that topic. If you find yourself adding too much information, then create a new heading that is more specific to each piece of criteria you are reviewing.

The bottom line you are looking for is – what strategies for online marketing are your competitors, who are successful, doing that you are not. This part of the analysis is the broad overview of your competition. Next we need to dig deeper into their sites for more tidbits.

“HOW” do they use SEO to beat others in the same niche

You should now look at the key elements of what makes up your competition’s sites. Look to see how they use the title tag. Do they have simple, easy to understand wording or are they composed of numbers and odd looking code? Also look to see what keywords or phrases, if any, that are used in the tag. Next look to see how they are using their heading tags. Using both of these elements correctly can greatly increase your search engine rankings, so that is why it is imperative that you mimic the techniques that other higher performing blogs use.

“WHERE” do your competition’s visitors come from

This is easily done by checking  your competition’s statistics. The first thing you want to know is who is visiting their blogs? Using resources like Alexa or Compete, you can get the full demographics of your competitors visitors. Find out if their target audience is the same as yours and then determine if you might need to readjust your current target market.

“WHY” do people visit and return to your competitor’s blogs

Here is where you get to create a few persona. Visit your competition’s blogs using different mindsets based on the demographics you previously documented. Try to set up scenarios as if you were new to or experienced in the niche using the different qualities from each of the criteria. The questions you need to ask are:

1. What is the new user looking for and does the blog provide the answers
2. What is the experienced user looking for and does the blog provide the answers

Take the time to document the pros and cons and then use this list to help further the development of your blog.

“WHEN” and how often does your competition provide information to their followers

There are so many useful  tools to help keep you up to date on what is going on in your niche market. Here are couple that can let you know the current “buzz” on the web:

Google Alerts – Can notify you when information is available based on your chosen keywords

Technorati – Has a watch list feature

To be able to keep up with and hopefully surpass your competition, you should do a review monthly in the beginning and quarterly as your blog matures. Maintaining a blog is an ongoing process and knowing who is doing better than you along with why will help you to better achieve your goals and expand your reader base.

Articles related to Strategies For Online Marketing:

• Marketing – A Strategy For Success
• Blog Traffic – Expanding Your Personal Highway
• Blogging Goals – What Are Yours

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I recently took a trip with my family and for the most part, had a good time. Once we returned home, I started to reflect on the positives and negatives of the trip and immediately saw the correlation between going on a trip and visiting someone’s blog. Below is a simple comparison of the two.

Appearance:

Resort – Upon pulling up to the resort, I was impressed with the size and their attempt to stimulate my senses.

Blog – When someone visits your blog, you need to do the same thing for them. The reason they came in the first place was for information.

Atmosphere:

Resort – They made every attempt to make me feel like I stepped through a magic door. From the birds chirping at the entrance to the theme specific decor.

Blog – The first impression someone gets after your page loads is key to the rest of their visit. No matter what your blog topic is, the overall setup and appearance will dictate whether your visitor stays or leaves. A good example would be if you have a cooking blog – keep the content relevant to cooking. People are looking for information on that topic, not lawn tools.

Another thing to keep in mind – make your visitors feel welcome. Set the tone that you are there to help them with their problems not create more. No one should feel more stressed or confused after they visit your blog.

Customer Service:

Resort – A few things happened while staying there. Based on the money I paid I would have expected the best. My family stayed in the highest priced suite and some things were not really up to par. There was a torn chair, the lock on the door to the patio was missing and when my wife went to get a coffee, she sent it back because there were something unknown floating in it. The resort did everything in their power to remedy the other minor issues we had but in my opinion, they should have never happened in the first place.

Blog – You should do everything possible to help your visitors. This comes in the form of providing quality content, relevant links to products that can help solve their problems and answering questions they might have as long as it is within your knowledge range. If you can’t answer their question, look for an answer on the web and once you have found it, not only have you helped your visitor but bettered yourself as well.

Cost:

Resort – As would be expected, staying somewhere costs money. My wife is the extreme deal finder as was the case in this trip. Had she not done her research, we would have had to settle for something much less and not been able to enjoy some of the associated perks.

Blog – Cost for your visitors does not come in the form of money. Instead it comes in the form of time. If someone has to hunt to find an answer then the chances of them staying or coming back is pretty slim.

Would I go back:

Resort – Under the right circumstances maybe. I was not overly impressed but at the same time, my children enjoyed themselves which made me happy. The previous year we went on a similar trip which cost a bit more but the overall experience was far better and actually worth the extra money.

Blog – You need to give your visitors a reason to come back. Continually update your blog with fresh content. If you don’t have something relevant to write about, do not waste people’s time with filler material. You should also provide a way for them to be updated when something new is posted or if there is a special message that needs to be sent.

I hope the comparison between the two helps to provide insight into what it takes to help build and run a successful blog that generates new and repeat traffic.

Following these simple guidelines will help your articles deliver the necessary punch to ensure success.

Content writing checklist:

1. Know why are you writing
2. Make sure you are focused on your topic
3. Always know who are you writing for – a.k.a. target audience
4. Do not write above your readers ability to understand your message
5. Make sure people want what you are writing about
6. Have you utilized any case studies or surveys
7. Check that your sources are reliable
8. Checked SEO forums for guidance
9. Start by picking your keywords and phrases
10. Are you using the Google keyword tool
11. Pick popular keywords that have mid-range competition
12. Use phrases to help reduce your competition
13. Your keywords need to target what people would type in search engines when looking for information on your topic
14. Identify related words and phrases
15. Plan your content writing to provide useful information
16. Give search engines the right information to accurately index your blog
17. Make your content unique
18. Content writing needs to done with plain, understandable wording
19. Sending the right emotional message with your writing
20. Incorporate your own life experiences to connect with readers
21. Ask questions with your writing to create user engagement

As you can see, none of these steps is really that complicated, but you would be surprised at the impact each one has on the quality and success of your articles. I created this list based on information I researched from all of the pro bloggers out there. These people consistently deliver quality articles geared towards their target audience and so can you.

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• Online Content – Doing It The Right Way
• Keeping Your Blog Content Fresh

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