WordPress:

Building an Online Business with WordPress

Daniel Silver

Contents

Blogging Business Infrastructure

The Blog/Website Host

WordPress

Email Hosting

The Blogs Structure

Your Strategy

Content Production

Monetising your Content

Attracting Customers

Retaining Customers

Setting up Your Blog/Site

Your WordPress Dashboard

The Dashboard

Posts Menu

Adding a New Post

Permalinks

Page Building

Comments

Appearance

Plugins

Users

Themes

Free Themes

Premium Themes

Site Optimisation

YOAST SEO

Smush.it

Disqus

Akismet

Addthis Follow

Google Analytics.

Introduction

If you are using an e-reader: There are links provided in this book via ‘bit.ly’ (they look like this: bit.ly/R4nd0m) they are shortened links. eBook readers do not typically support hyperlinks, making the typing out of a full link pretty tedious. The Bit.ly links are used in their place, they are much shorter and require you to type them out into your browser (they are case-sensitive). Once you type them out you are automatically directed to the link I was referring you to.

Finally, before we start I always provide you with the links you need to contact me and provide you with an introduction to who I am and my other content that you and your business might find useful.

My Other eBooks

As mentioned earlier I do a lot of work in this field and have other titles you may be interested in.

Visit my Amazon Author Page to see what books I currently have out:

(Type out the Bit.ly link in your Browser – Its Case Sensitive)

http://bit.ly/IB88a1ef

Who Am I?

I am Daniel Silver of WebMoneyTutor.com, I have devoted my life to mastering income generation Online, I do this not just for the money but because I genuinely love it. I find the challenge of working in this ultra-fast paced Industry that has numerous fields to specialise in, with incredible rewards, highly entertaining and can safely say it is my passion. This I feel is important to you. I love what I do and I love writing about and developing the successful systems I use, therefore I feel you can rely on the content I produce as you know that I am authentic and driven by passion, rather than greed, to keep my content consistent and of a high practical value.

In this book you get all the latest information without the months/years of research and trial and error.

Hopefully you will find this book of use and if you have any questions or want to get in touch feel free to contact me on my new Twitter Channel @WebMoneyTutor.

Links

Website: WebMoneyTutor.com

My Amazon Author Page: http://bit.ly/IB88a1ef

My Twitter Feed: @WebMoneyTutor (Best way to contact me)

Twitter Follower Building Power Tool: http://bit.ly/15Jba2K (Twitter auto-pilot Channel growth software)

Okay, enough stalling, let’s get into it.

Blogging Business Infrastructure

In the last chapter we briefly covered the principles of blogging, in this chapter we will cover in a lot more detail the infrastructure you will need to actually create a successful modern blog. In later chapters we will run through these techniques step-by-step. It is important that before you begin downloading things and creating your website, you understand what you are doing.

As I cover the Business Infrastructure below I am going to recommend two platforms GoDaddy and WordPress I am affiliated with both these platforms as they work and are the industry leaders in their respective markets. I fully believe you cannot do better for cheaper when creating a website than using these two platforms – there are other methods but I do not think they are as good or as cheap.

The Blog/Website Host

The first step with any website or blog is to select a platform to host with, this choice effects who you purchase your domain and hosting from, the most popular platform on the internet (and the one I recommend) is WordPress. It is an incredibly versatile platform that maintains the design and functionality of your blog/website, it can be edited in incredibly unique ways. Unless you have a budget to pay a web development company, WordPress is the number one choice for online entrepreneurs.

If you choose to go with WordPress and you have your site name you have to seek a hosting company to register the domain name and to provide you with ‘space’ to build your website with WordPress. For this I use GoDaddy which is by far the largest and most useful hosting company on the internet, they have packages that are optimised for WordPress right out the box and are typically as low as $3 a month which is amazing Value. I have been using GoDaddy for years and am a major fanboy of everything they do, their support is ‘above and beyond’ and their value for money is unrivalled in my opinion.

Register your Domain with them here: (http://bit.ly/1B8AzMK)

WordPress

As mentioned above WordPress is ‘the’ platform to use for any website/blog on the internet in 2015, it is quite simple the most versatile platform wherein you can make pretty much any website with basically unlimited features and add-ons. WordPress’s value comes from the third party plug-ins you can integrate into your WordPress Website to edit it and add functionality, the vast majority of them are free and you can create a really stunning, highly profitable website with WordPress and GoDaddy for less than $10 a month.

- WordPress is essentially a ‘skin’ you put on your website, to make it look and function in useful ways.

If you are confused by WordPress and GoDaddy and how hosting works try and imagine it like this; “Your Website is built with WordPress. GoDaddy hosts your WordPress edited site”

Again to get a WordPress site hosted by GoDaddy click here (http://bit.ly/1B8AzMK)

Email Hosting

GoDaddy provides a premium email hosting service where you can get custom email address like ‘yourname@yoursite.com’. This hosting is very cheap and easy to set-up. Once you have registered your GoDaddy account go to the *****email reg page (img) and register for 5 custom email accounts (I say five because you will need different addresses for the different elements of your business. Like Sales and Support for instance.

The Blogs Structure

Once you have your website set-up and ready to start producing content for, you need to plan out how your website is going to be structured. If you are planning to sell digital products you need to consider how you are going to make your products accessible (as these are the core of your business).

You should consider as a basic set-up to have a homepage section, an About-Us section, a categories section, a blog roll (usually the homepage) and a products page. That is very basic and as you find your feet you will optimise the blog’s structure but as a basic layout it is common and easy to navigate.

Your Strategy

Before you begin churning out useful content you need to consider your business strategy. Strategising is something that be focused and adhere to the S.M.A.R.T model of strategising.

Your Strategy or ‘Long-Term Business Goals’ should be

- S-Specific

- M-Measurable

- A-Agreed

- R-Realistic

- T-Time Bound

What this means in a nutshell is that your strategy should have a specific aim or goal to achieve (financial liberation – end world hunger etc..). You should be able to measure your progress (analytics – discussed later), you need to make sure you and any partners agree with the strategy set out. You need to consider how realistic is the strategy chasing after something impossible or too boring can hinder your motivation and progress, then it needs to be time bound by which I mean when is the ‘start date’ and ‘end date’ to each step in your strategy.

Executing your Strategy well will result in a clarity that will guide your business and keep it moving in the right direction in spite of the million and one creative distractions that effect every entrepreneurial venture.

Set a strategy and stick to it.

Content Production

The core of any website based business is content and in today’s very busy internet world there is a large amount of competition, creating content that is interesting, valuable and entertaining is key to building up your business. When considering content production move beyond the old mindset that content is just ‘articles’. It’s not anymore, the 2015 digital landscape favours variety and you can reach new audiences with new content ‘types’. Consider the following and try and create a mix of digital content on your website.

- Articles

- Info-graphics

- YouTube/Facebook Videos

- Podcasts

- eBooks

- AudioBooks

These are just the content types that I use and have used to reach hundreds of thousands if not millions of people in my time working in this field.

“Test different forms of content to reach maximum people”

Monetising your Content

Monetising your content is a lot easier than it used to be there are many ways to make money with a blog and this book is going to cover the three main methods.

1. Digital Products

2. Affiliate Products

3. On site advertisement

There are many more ways to monetise your site and content but the quickest and the most effective for beginners is to either create a digital product (an ebook or course – like the one you are currently reading) or to affiliate other peoples products for a cut of the commission. We will cover on site advertisement however this usually doesn’t pay well until you are seeing consistently high numbers of visitors to your site each day (over 5000 as a minimum).

Attracting Customers

If you have a fleshed out strategy you should be aware that you will need to promote your content in the right places to attract the right audience that you will eventually convert into your customers. Attracting customers is a combination of Traffic Generation techniques and SEO. We will discuss both in this eBook.

Retaining Customers

One of the key elements of running an online business is building up a customer base that are likely to purchase your new products. The way that you do this is through building an email list of people who are interested in your content. The building of your email list is commonly considered the most important element of any online business.

Setting up Your Blog/Site

We Discussed in the last chapter GoDaddy and WordPress, fortunately establishing a WordPress website with GoDaddy is actually super easy.

I recommend GoDaddy because their support is phenomenal, I have had many websites with them and when the inevitable infrastructure problems occur they have resolved those issues quickly, for free, time and time again. I have tried other hosts and have never been as impressed as I have been with GoDaddy

First Step: Register your Website

Go to http://bit.ly/1B8AzMK and register your domain name

(bit.ly links are case sensitive)

1. Follow the Bit.ly link above to be taken to the GoDaddy domain registration page

2. Enter your domain name of choice into the ‘Search Domain’ bar

3. Once you have your preferred Domain, use the top Menu Bar to select ‘Hosting & SSL’

4. Select WordPress Site/Blog

5. Select whichever option is appropriate for you – if you are a complete beginner I recommend you select the cheapest option the ‘Starter Package’ which is usually around the $3-6 p/m depending on the promotions GoDaddy are running

6. Now get your Email Package if you feel you need it at this point. Go to the top menu again and select ‘All Products’ and Select ‘Professional Email’

7. One the Email Panel select ‘Email Essentials’ option

8. Now go to your cart

**DO NOT BE ALARMED BY THE HIGH PRICE THAT GREETS YOU**

You currently have all of your GoDaddy cart options set to the most expensive

9. Set all your filters to the 1 month option

10. Follow the rest of the sign up process and you will now have a Complete Business Website – Congratulations, your online business adventure begins now.

Second Step: Set The Site Up

1. Go to ‘My Accounts’ on the GoDaddy Dashboard

2. On your ‘Managed Wordpress’ Tab select Manage. You will then be promoted to ‘Set Up’ your new WordPress site, click ‘Set Up’

3. You will then be brought to the ‘Set Up Your Account’ – Select the ‘Create a New WordPress Site’ option

4. Select the Domain Address you Just Registered

5. Now Create a WordPress Account

6. Select Finish and you will begin populating your new WordPress Website

7. To Access your new Website once it has completed it population process go to your ‘Managed WordPress’ tab (step 3), select your new website and click Manage. You will now be requested to log-in with the WordPress Logins you created in Step 5. Once you have logged in you will be brought to the WordPress Dashboard (Bookmark this page for easy log-on access)

From this point on you need GoDaddy very little only for support and to access your Email.

To Access your Email account, that will be set-up and registered to your website domain name access the Email Dash Board on the ‘My Account’ Dashboard. The Email system is very intuitive to set-up and use, any issues contact GoDaddy’s helpdesk.

Your WordPress Dashboard

The WordPress Dashboard is easy to use with a bit of practice.

The Dashboard

The Dashboard gives you a general account overview. From the Dashboard Panel you can see what Plug-Ins need updating and any structural issues with your account

Posts Menu

The Posts Menu allows you to create, edit and categorise all of the content you post.

To Create a new Post select ‘Add New’ on the Post menu or Select

On the post menu highlight the post you are working on to be given options on editing the post

Adding a New Post

There are only two things you need to be concerned with at this point. The Permalink of the new post you are creating (explained below) and the publish button. We will cover optimising posts later in this eBook.

Permalinks

As we will mention later in the SEO (search engine optimisation) section permalinks are an essential element of your on site SEO. Permalinks are what follow your Web Address when certain pages come up. It helps to have Permalinks that list your pages title as they help search engines like Google categorise your content. You need to first allow them to be set up properly by going to Settings > Permalinks

Once there select the option Post Name. From now on when creating new posts you need to edit the permalink to fit the keywords you are targeting in your SEO campaign.

Page Building

As mentioned earlier WordPress is a highly versatile platform, you can do pretty much everything on it. One of the most initially difficult things people find on WordPress is building and structuring your Website’s pages.

Pages are static in that they do not change over time (due to inclusion of new posts etc..). Instead they serve typically to host ‘About-Us’ or Contact-US pages, ecommerce stores are also made on a page rather than a post.

You can edit them in the same way you would edit a post. For now do not worry to much about Pages or Ordering them, when we discuss Menu Plug-ins, Templates and Themes later we will cover how to optimise Pages.

Comments

You will find once you activate comments on your site (unless you use third party plugins) you will find that you start to attract spammers. Fortunately you can manage your comments from the Comments Tab quite easily and if you install a Plug-in called Akismet (Discussed Later).

Appearance

The Appearance Menu is where you select a Theme and edit things like your Menus and Plugins. We are going to cover this extensively in the next Chapter but for now just acknowledge that Appearance covers the ‘basics’ of your websites appearance and structure.

Plugins

This is something we will also be covering in the following Chapters. Plugins are the secret to Word Press’s versatility, there are hundreds of thousands of plugins and as you begin to grow your online business with Word Press you will begin finding plugins that are useful to your business. Skip to the Optimisation Chapter to learn the essential plugins you need to run an effective Word Press site.

Users

The Users tab is pretty self explanatory use this section if you are adding users or changing User settings.

Themes

There are thousands of themes available to download and integrate into your site and you do really need to assess each one. One of my first ventures using WordPress ended disastrously as a Theme I actually paid a $99 subscription for had major compatibility issues with mobiles and certain plugins and for that reason I only recommend that you use the recommended themes that WordPress Suggests or use a reputable Premium Theme company like Theme Forest.

Free Themes

On your Themes Menu, click the Add New Themes option to browse the recommended catalogue from Word Press. There are hundreds of great free and premium selections here to choose form so take your time and read the reviews of any themes that you are interested in.

Premium Themes

There are many premium theme companies out there that have extensive back catalogues of high quality themes. Most hwoever do not come with great support which can become a real issue if any compatibility issues arise with Word Press Platform update (every couple of months). For this reason there are only two places that I recommend you obtain Premium Themes from.

- WordPress Premium Theme Catalogue

- Theme Forest Premium Theme Catalogue

You can find the premium themes form simply browsing the Theme catalogue from your Word Press Dashboard (see above). Theme Forest you have to access from their own website. The only reason I have included Theme Forest here is because of the extensive catalogue of useful themes and their support is very good.

Theme Forest Premium Themes:

****LINK***

Once you have a theme installed make sure to read through how to set up your menus, if there are Tutorials Videos running you thorough how to use your theme watch it. Its much better to spend 5 minutes learning than 50 minutes fiddling. Establish your menus so that your site is easy to navigate. Get friends/family to test out moving around the site and get their feedback as site users.

I do not go into how to set up your Menus as each Theme is different and to run through how to use one theme will result in confusion for everyone who does not use that theme. They are not designed to be complicated, if you are really struggling try contacting the support team for your theme or tweet me your question @WebMoneyTutor.

Site Optimisation

With Word Press as I have mentioned a few times before its strengths lie in its ability to be heavily customised to fit individual site needs. In this chapter we are going to introduce Plugins and the ones you will need to install to keep your site functioning at the highest levels. Optimal site function is important for User Experience (UX) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) (discussed later).

To install any plugin go to the Plugins menu and type the plugin name or feature into the Plugin Search Bar

The First Plugin:

YOAST SEO

Yoast SEO plugin (as discussed in the SEO chapter) is an amazing suite of tools that will optimise your site and its content for SEO. As we currently have not covered SEO in this eBook let me give you a brief introduction. In a nut shell SEO is optimising your website and your content so that people can find it on Search Engines like Google and Bing.  SEO is vital for an online business as it generates a steady flow of people coming to your site from Search Engines.

Go to the SEO chapter to learn more.

Search: “YOAST” in the Plugin Search Bar.

Once installed you will be offered a number of tools to begin using, under the new tab ‘SEO’. They are all useful but not all are necessarily for every type of website so we will cover the three essential tools that all websites running YOAST will need to have activated.

- Make sure to optimise your Titles & Metas for your target Key Words

- Make sure XML Sitemap is notifying SEs automatically

- Make sure your Permalinks are set-up in line with your keywords

(see SEO chapter for detailed walk throughs)

You will notice that parts of your Word Press account especially the posting area will now change and will prompt you to update and organise things like your Meta Description and it will evaluate how optimised your posts are for certain Key Words you are targeting.  Get used to using these asap.

The Second Plugin:

Smush.it

One of the big problems that many sites have is that they load too slowly for most users (5 seconds and over – yes that is considered too long in this industry). The main reason for that is typically because the images that are on your site are too big and need to be optimised. Image optimisation is a craft in its own right and would require its own book; however there is an awesome plug-in that will optimise your images for you, saving your site some loading time. The plug-in is called ‘Smush.it’ search for it in the plugin search bar.

Once installed you will now see the option to ‘Bulk SMush.it’ under the Media Tab

Select this option and then select ‘Run Images’. This will start a process that will begin compressing (where possible) all of your images.

Make sure to use Bulk Smush.it every few new images you add to keep your site tidy. A good rule of thumb is to try and have smaller image sizes on your site where possible.

“One of the best things to install for image optimisation is something called a CDN. CDNs are a little too advanced for this book however do investigate a company called MAXCDN if you are interested in implementing a CDN on your site, they are worthwhile just not appropriate for this book.”

The Third Plugin:

Disqus

Disqus is a commenting platform that you can add to your posts that will allow people to use their various social media (or disqus) accounts to make comments on your site. This is a great way to reduce spam on your site and begin engaging with your audience.

- Search Disqus on the Plugin Search Bar

- Install and Add to posts.

The Fourth Plugin:

Akismet

If you have chosen to go with Disqus you may not need Akismet. However if you are using Word Press’s built in commenting platform you may find that you are getting lots of spam each day from random (typically Russian) sources. Akismet will filter anything it finds suspicious and I have found it to be very accurate.

- Search Akismet on the Plugin Search Bar

- Install and maintain in the comments section.

The Fifth Plugin:

Addthis Follow

Integrating your Social Media Platforms into your websites is essential to growing your brand. One of the best tools for keeping your Social Media platforms visible to your audience is the ‘Addthis Follow’ plugin. It displays icon based links to your Social Media profiles wherever you want them to be put on your site.

Edit the placement and links of your Social Media Platforms in the Widgets Menu, under the Appearance tab.

Select the Addthis Follow dashboard, use the More Options tab to add your social media platforms by writing up the URL of your profile.

External Site Analytics suite:

Google Analytics.

If you do not have Google analytics installed on your website, do so immediately. Google analytics is the only way to analyse your SEO efforts and general site performance.

The analytics suite is a free toolset offered by Google to all webmasters. It allows you to analyse all of the traffic that comes to your website. You can analyse things like, where the traffic came from, how long they stayed on the website and where people went on the website. This data is essential if you are to get the most out of your site.

A great guide to installing Analytics can be found here:

http://bit.ly/1BpGoV1

(bit.ly links are case sensitive)

When using Analytics your main focus should be on incoming traffic. You need to analyse where people are coming from and how they are interacting with the content they are finding. This data will allow you to optimise content to increase conversions.

To find the incoming traffic data go to the Reporting Tab

On the reporting tab select the Behaviour Tab

Once on the Behaviour Tab select the Behaviour Flow option.

On Behaviour Flow you can analyse what pages people are landing on and where they go from that point.

To analyse where the traffic is coming from; go to the Acquisition Tab and select All Traffic then Channels

On this tab you can see details for your Traffic Sources

By clicking any of the sources you get a much more detailed overview of the traffic source.  Including the exact links or search terms that are bring people to your site. This is something you need to watch overtime to understand how your site is functioning.

Selecting Organic Search will detail your performing key terms.

Promotional Offers and Freebies

Promo Codes

Reference the Code: 01723Te2015-Forum to gain a free month in the forum.

The link given below for the free eBook gives you a free month’s access to the Forum as well as a free eBook.

Reference the Code: 01723fba2015-ebook to gain the Facebook Affiliate Marketing eBook for free (Usually $4.99)

Links:

Manage Flitter: http://bit.ly/15Jba2K

Mailing List: http:/bit.ly/1yKCICi

Twitter Feed: https://twitter.com/WebMoneyTutor

Free Facebook Affiliate Guide (worth $9.99): http://bit.ly/1ykZCI

(Use promo code ending ‘ebook’ given above)

BONUS PROMO. If you run a Facebook Page there is a service that automates your posts for you. It also allows you to post Amazon Affiliate links that can monetise that Facebook Page. This is an essential tool that I use in all my Facebook groups. I have another eBook out that you can find on my Author profile teaching you how I make $2000 a month from Facebook Pages alone using this tool and a few extra techniques.

FPTraffic (Discounted Rate of $10 rather than $19.99): http://bit.ly/1B7SPYq

My Other eBooks

As mentioned earlier I do a lot of work in this field and have other titles you may be interested in.

Visit my Amazon Author Page to see what books I currently have out:

(Type out the Bit.ly link in your Browser – Its Case Sensitive)

http://bit.ly/IB88a1ef

That’s it for this eBook, make sure you check out my other content and get involved on the WebMoneyTutor Forum. Hopefully we can work together soon.

Best of luck in your Ventures,

Daniel Silver.