GailFay.com – Newbie Guide to Internet Marketing
Newbie Guide to Building an Internet Marketing Business

Newbies Guide to Getting Started Online

Whatever you ultimately plan to do online, you really need a blog. A blog is an excellent way of internet marketing – promoting what you do or sell. The search engines love blogs because they are content rich and ever-changing – a great way to attract traffic. Follow these steps to get started online.

Step 1. Hosting

This is like renting a shop in a shopping centre. Your blog is the shop and the host is the shopping centre you rent the space from. The “rent” is very inexpensive – around $7.95 a month. My favourite hosting company is Hostgator because they have an online Support chatbox 24/7 if ever you need any help. I wouldn’t go anywhere else. I have arranged for my subscribers to get a discount through the link below.

I recommend you opt for the Baby account to start with, which entitles you to unlimited domain names (websites).

Click the banner below to sign up with Hostgator:

DISCOUNT COUPON For a discount of $9.94 enter this code: gfaygatordisc

You will receive an email containing your login and Nameserver details. These are very important and you should write them down. I suggest you purchase a big blank notebook, as it is advisable to keep a  journal of everything you do within your business.

Step 2. Domain Name

This is going to be the name of your blog/website. The best one to begin with should be or include your own name, so that you can brand yourself online. I have used gailfay.com. It is best to get a dot com if you can. If your name is not available, try adding a word like online or marketing or even try your initials (eg gfay.com or gdfay or gaildfay).

Click this link below to register your domain name:    

Before you check out and pay for the domain name, you can get a DISCOUNT COUPON from Fat Wallet.

Clicking on the FatWallet image above right will take you to a page with various coupon codes. Sometimes you may be lucky to find 99 cents .com coupons, but usually the price ranges from $6.89 to $7.49. Copy the code and enter it in the box on the GoDaddy page before final check out. You can change your registration to 1 year before checkout also (default is 2 years) if preferred, but if you get a .99 cent coupon, no need to worry.

Step 3. Reset Nameservers

This step will send your new domain name to your Hostgator account, where you will be installing your blog. (It is usually done before paying for the domain, at the question that asks “Hosting these domains elsewhere?” but it’s just as easy to do it after payment.)

In the left (Grey) column click on Domain Manager and you will be taken to a page showing all domains you have purchased. Click the box next to your new domain name and then also click on the small icon called Nameservers.

On the next page, replace the addresses in Box 1 and 2 with the nameserver addresses provided by Hostgator (in their welcome email).

Step 4. Install Blog

The installation process is really quite simple. You need to log into you Hostgator cpanel by typing into your browser http://yourdomain.com/cpanel (replace yourdomain with the new name you purchased). Enter the login details sent to you by Hostgator.

You will now be taken to the control panel of your site, where you can add more domains, set up email addresses, do backups and many other things. Don’t worry about having to know everything yet. You will learn as the need arises. For now we just want to install a WordPress blog. During the installation, remember to record the user name and password you chose during the installation.

Here is a short video to help:

Step 5. Change Appearance & Add Functions to Your Blog

Now that you have a basic blog installed, there are several tasks to do before adding any text.

• Change theme (appearance)
• Add plugins
• Configure widgets

The easiest themes and plugins to select from are from the official WordPress site, because they can be loaded directly into your blog from your administration dashboard. But first, put some thought into how you want your blog to look.

When looking at themes, do try to find ones that are “widget-ready”. (Widget is a fancy word for tools or content that you can add, arrange, and remove from the sidebars of your blog. Widgets make it easy to customize the content of your blog sidebar.)

There are around 1,200 themes to choose from at http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ Write down the names of themes that you like and then log in to your blog administration dashboard.

Go to http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin and enter the user name and password you decided on during installation. From the left column click on “Appearance” and select Add New Themes. In the box, type in the name of the theme and click “Search”. When the new theme displays, you can install it.

Repeat the same steps with a few other themes. When done, simply activate your theme and arrange the widgets you want to appear in the sidebar.

Step 6. Make Your First Post

Here are some free WordPress video training tutorials to help you.

==>> FREE WORDPRESS TRAINING <<==

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