In this video, I give you the basics of using OIO Publisher to create ad zones and ads for your blog. This plugin is a staple on almost every blogger that monetizes their blog.

OIO Publisher allows you to create ads of any size, custom ad opportunities, text links, and sponsored posts. And you can sell the ad spaces and sponsored posts automatically.

As I mention in the video, you can create any type of banner ad, of any size for any section of your blog and it's really easy to do. I show it step by step in the tutorial.

The video may seem long but I address a few important topics related to your monetization strategy as well as some questions and feedback. From the previous video and I broke down the timecodes in case you want to skip around.

During both parts of the video, the driving part and the tutorial I cover two methods you can use monetize your blog, including a hands-on WordPress tutorial on how to do it.

One thing I didn't mention in the video is that you can use the code area to insert your Adsense ads or Media.net ads or another type of ad codes as well.

Links and references:

• OIO Publisher - Get it here.
• Adsanity - Not shown but mentioned, get it here. Will cover in a future blog post.

Monetizing your blog with content and OIO Publisher

There is a timecode table below the video if you want to skip to certain areas.

Timecodes:

0:00 to 2:00 - Recap and follow up to video about how much to start your affiliate business. (https://notagrouch.com/how-much-do-i-need-to-start-an-affiliate-marketing-business/ )

2:00 - Two methods to make money with your blog.

3:15 - First method.

4:20 - Sourcing new content.

6:15 - Doing reviews with a low budget.

8:15 - Getting products for free

8:24 - Disclosure with the FTC - I'm watching ya guys.

9:25 - The review policy for free stuff.

11:03 - Method 2

12:03 - OIO Publisher - Get it here.

14:15 - Tutorial start, install and basic OIO Publisher configuration.

17:35 - Adzones and banners.

20:11 - Adding media for an ad.

20:39 - Add a banner section to the sidebar (widget area)

23:00 - Getting an affiliate link and banner from Shareasale ( http://oglink.it/shareasale-youtube )

25:13 - Adding an ad using HTML (or Javascript, or PHP) code.

26:50 - Adding an ad using image and link.

29:55 - Creating your own advertisement ad.

31:00 - Inline ads for every post.

32:00 - Define your own ads.

The post Introduction to OIO Publisher and Two Methods to Monetize Your Blog appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This series of blog posts and videos cover all steps and necessary information for you to make the right decisions and start your blog in the right direction.

Let's Talk About Web Hosting Video

Notes and Additional Info About the Web Hosting Video

In this video, I talk about web hosts. Selecting a web hosting company is one of the most important decisions you'll make when starting a blog. If you buy the cheapest option, you may be fine for a long time. The quality of the hosting will come into question if somerthing goes wrong.

You could get lucky and never have a problem. Or you could be like one of the dozens of people I help each month after their host fails to support them properly.

If you go with the first host that shows you an advertisement, you'll probably go wrong as well. In the video I cover some of the most important factors to consider when choosing a web host for your blog. Take a few minutes to watch it.

At the end of this blog post, I also have a list of my recommended web hosting companies.

Age of the web host

This may be unusual, and many other bloggers won't even talk about this. It may or may not be essential to talk about it, but I think it is.

I mention considering the age of the web host (how long have they been in business) because when you're starting out, you want to go with a company that has been around for some time.

It is true that sometimes a brand new (6 months - 1 year) company may offer fantastic web hosting services with lots of features and benefits. But you just don't know if they're going to last and be able to work for you and with you when things get difficult. When starting out, stick to the veterans in the industry. 6 - 10 years or more.

Reviews and Public Comments

Reviews are important but don't make a rash decision because you see a few bad reviews or a few amazing reviews.

Dig deeper into it and make sure you understand why people are praising the company or complaining about it. Generally, the list of web hosts I recommend below are all excellent in all the critical aspects of web hosting --If you want to save yourself some time.

Support for WordPress

Do they provide WordPress-specific support and services? -- Webhosting is a bit of a utility nowadays, almost anybody can do it, so in a general sense, it almost doesn't matter which one you pick.

But some real differences will make deciding a little bit more easily. Since you're looking for a host now, the real benefit of picking a good host is picking a host that supports the application you will be using.

In the case of a blog, you will likely be using WordPress. WordPress is also what I recommend 98% of the time. All of the hosts I recommend have WordPress specific services and expertise and support WordPress.

Customer Support

Not only does WordPress specific support matter, but general customer support is important as well. Do they provide phone, email, or chat support?

Or maybe all of them? Most of the hosts I recommend provide at least two of these methods. My favorite kind of host provides phone support, chat support and email support. I expect them to respond to email requests within 12 - 24 hours, simple requests should take less than 4 hours.

Phone calls may take 3 - 10 minutes to be answered and generally, the issues are resolved within 15 - 90 minutes. Chat support is usually the best because it's real-time but you aren't waiting on hold or wondering if anybody's working on your email support ticket.

Cost of Web Hosting

Whatever you do, don't go cheap for sake of being cheap!  There are a few different types of web hosting. I broke them down in practical terms and highlighted the price range at the end.

Regular shared hosting.

Also known as shared hosting, it works for 95% of the blogs out there. It's simple to use, you control everything via web interface. The main downside to shared hosting is that you are using a pool of resources distributed amongst any number of customers.

So for example, when you sign up for shared hosting, you will be put into a server with a number of other customers, maybe 150, maybe 2000. It all depends on the company and the type of resources.

The problem comes in when you are put into a server that already has for example, 300 users but it's really designed to host 200. They tend to do this because they know that statistically, most users won't use any resources so it's okay to have a lot of people there.

They handle this as they go, and if a customer complains a lot, they may get moved over to a server that is "less crowded" to put it in simple terms.

That's the problem with shared hosting, the other customers may affect the performance of your website. If one of the other customers gets featured on a viral post in Facebook, or makes the front page somewhere, the traffic coming to that site may affect all the other customers in that server.

There are VPS (virtual private servers) services, there are also managed hosting services and there is also dedicated server hosting.

When you are starting out, you will most likely use a shared web hosting account. This ranges from $2.95 per month up to 15 - 17 per month.

The next best thing is a Virtual Private Server.

VPS and Managed hosting.

VPS means Virtual Private Server which guarantees a certain amount of resources, and you have a little more control and options than you do with regular shared web hosting. Prices for VPS services range from 15 to 30 dollars per month and up.

Managed hosting is somewhat of a newer service in the web hosting space, especially when it comes to WordPress. It generally means the quality of service somewhere in between shared hosting and VPS or Dedicated hosting.

Many companies offer shared hosting and VPS and dedicated hosting and you can seamlessly upgrade as you need through their various offerings. so if you start with shared hosting, you can probably upgrade to any plan you need if your blog grows, they will help you and I know everybody that I list here and I recommend is able to do that, it's one of the requirements I have before I can recommend a company.

Generally, VPS hosting plans and managed hosting include high-end guaranteed resources but they also manage and control the application; often these services don't allow you to install other applications and access to files or database may be limited.

Managed hosting plans range between $16-$35 per month and more. These are highly recommended if you're willing to pay for it and really value the purpose of your blog or website. Most times these services come with dedicated support staff, faster response time, automatic backups and other nice perks. Your web developer, or web guy, or web designer will love you if you have this kind of service or better because fixing issues is much easier.

To decide, work out your budget

Decide what your budget is per year and then break that down on a per month basis and that way you can see which type of hosting you can afford.

Having a budget is a good thing, but you also need to know that you will need to spend some money on your blog. Your budget should be around $120-$500 per year to start.

With the hosts I recommend below, if you use the shared plans you'll probably end up between $80 and $100 for the year.

Additional Notes, Questions, and Answers

• How do you actually get the low rates that are advertised? And how do you save the most money? Answered at timestamp 2:48.
• How I pick web hosting for my clients and why. Growth and expansion are important too. Answered at 3:45.
• If you need to upgrade, will the web-hosting company help you? I talk about this at the 4:20 mark. All the services I listed below will help you move up to a larger plan when you need with minimal or no hassle at all.
• What are the value-added services and items you get with web hosting companies? I cover this around the 4:55 mark

I also mentioned that I would put a link to my recommended web hosts, so here is that list, in order of preference:

My Preferred web hosts

These are my preferred go-to hosts for myself and my clients when they are starting out and or are budget conscious. Perfect for personal blogs and business starter blogs. These companies and all their plans will upgrade nicely as you grow, you just need to contact support when you start hitting your limits. That's a nice problem to have, right?

• ** Inmotion Hosting - They have it all. This link goes to their current best deal. ** RECOMMENDED **
• GreenGeeks * - They're great, they also have a better-than-zero carbon footprint.

Managed WordPress Web Hosts

There is only one web host in this list, and it is the top WordPress-centric web host. It is super fast and very efficient. Though, there are a couple of downsides to using this. Primarily the price and the restrictive nature of a "WordPress only" host, but if you can afford 29/month and you don't need a lot of custom software outside of WordPress then you can go with these guys. They also take care of hourly backups which can make a huge difference if something goes wrong.

• WP Engine

Other Recommended Web Hosts for WordPress

These are web hosts that I am comfortable recommending because I have used them personally in the past, or currently manage websites running on these services; they generally run well.

• Dreamhost * Please note, Dreamhost uses a custom management panel and it can be frustrating to use at first but once you get used to it, it's great. Its performance is generally fine, but management can be difficult for people without prior experience. If this is your first time hosting a website, you'll be fine since you don't know any different.
• Hostgator * This also has fans and haters. Some big bloggers use it, some bloggers hate it. I have a plan with them and run a lot of projects with them, Never had a problem, and support has been great every time. I also manage a few customers there with no issues at all.

As I continue with this launch your blog series, I will add more information and videos. Be sure to subscribe to the email list to receive the updates and don't miss a thing.

Please help me help others by sharing this post on your favorite social media sites too!

The post Let’s Talk About Web Hosting – How to Pick a Good Web Host for Your WordPress Blog appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Here's an example of my social media links using my blog:

• http://notagrouch.com/facebook
• http://notagrouch.com/snapchat
• http://notagrouch.com/twitter
• http://notagrouch.com/instagram
• http://notagrouch.com/fitbit

Managing your links like this makes you look professional. As a side effect, this helps people learn about your website without you having to send them the link to it. Another benefit is that you never have to look up any link that you setup like this; the perfect example is my fitbit address. Who would remember that? But I don't have to remember it, I just type it and voila, it works!

Use Cases:

These are ideal when you want to send links to people via SMS, or Snapchat, or just in regular messenger conversations. These are great to put in your business card too, or a banner, or a brochure. It helps you brand yourself better and also lets you control the traffic.

If you ever want to change where that link goes, you can. Just edit the redirect and change it wherever you want it to go. Perfect if you get a new Twitter account, or a different Facebook page. Ok, here's the video:

You can use this for affiliate links, or social media profiles, or specific blogposts. This video shows you how you can create redirects using your WordPress blog, and a very popular plugin. The plugin is called Redirection and it's available here. There are a few other plugins you could use or if you are feeling adventurous, you could do this at the server level using Apache redirects, but we'll leave that for another tutorial.

Video: How To Create Custom Social Media Links Using Your Blog

This same method can be used to create links to anything you want, like a specific blogpost or an affiliate product. It's very similar to using a custom short link like bit.ly or j.mp or even your own like I described in another blogpost.

Ultimately, this is up to you to get creative and use it however you want. The custom social media links is the easiest and most common place use of this. How would you use this?

The post How To Create Custom Social Media Links With Your Blog appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

To create a blogpost follow these steps

1. Login to your website
2. On the left hand side, click on Posts, then click on Add New, you can then fill in the title of your post and then write the blogpost in the big text section below the title. You will have controls similar to other programs in your computer like Microsoft Word so you can format the text like you want it.
3. On the right hand side you have the Publish section that allows you to publish your new post so people can see it, save it as a draft so you can edit it later or schedule it to be automatically posted at a specified date.
4. You can also assign tags and categories.

To create a page you follow similar steps as the ones above, but instead of clicking on Posts, you'll click on Pages. Another difference between blogposts and pages is that generally pages don't have categories associated with them.

Once you create and publish a blogpost, it should show up on your blog page. After you create a page, you can then add it to one of your navigation menus, add it to a widget or just link to it from anywhere on your site.

The post How to create a blogpost or page in WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

When I build people's websites I often hear what the previous "wordpress person" told them... Everyone tells you something like this: It's WordPress, so it's easy to use. Anyone can do it!. That followed by the wink and a smile. The truth is that most people (maybe you too), don't like dealing with this stuff. It may be easy for them to do it because they do it all day long for many websites. But for you as a business owner, you don't need that added pressure.

So here's another simple video for your new free WordPress site. This is how to update plugins. It's simple but useful.

The post Updating Plugins on your Free Website appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The post How to Curate Content with WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Lots of people start blogging at WordPress.com. WordPress.com is easy to use, you can get started quickly and it's free.

Other benefits include the built-in community that exposes your blog to millions of potential readers and a technical benefit is that WordPress.com is robust and reliable.

Your blog there will probably never go down. If it goes down, there are some major problems going on and you can rest assured that someone is working on it, double-time.

But then there is WordPress.org the Open Source version. This is the WordPress that you can install on your own server or on a hosting account that you buy from a hosting provider.

Hosting your own WordPress website comes with its own list of benefits. More control, no restrictions, and the ability to do pretty much whatever you want with your blog or website. This is the best choice for many people that want more control than WordPress.com allows.

Practical examples of having more control are

• The ability to run your own ads or ad network.
• The ability to charge for special access to restricted content. Courses, private support, product downloads or sales.
• The ability to customize it and build any functionality you can imagine.
• Building your own photo gallery
• Building your own ecommerce store
• Building your own social media platform

It's awesome to have the WordPress.org website instead of just WordPress.com -- don't get me wrong, I have several WordPress.com blogs too. I use them to support other efforts. I can talk about that later if you're interested.

So what happens if you start out in WordPress.com and then later you want to move to WordPress.org? Moving is relatively easy.

Updated for 2015. I updated the entire post with some new information and finally answered the most asked question. What host do you recommend? I answer is at the end of the document so it doesn't get in your way of the instructions. But if you want to know right away, just scroll down until you see: Webhosting Recommendations.

If you don't have a custom domain already, you'll need to buy one. But if you already have one, you can transfer it over.

Once you have a hosting account and your new domain, then you can move over your WordPress.com blog into your new hosting account and start showing your website under your own domain.

The following video shows you how to do it.

In this video I show you the mechanics of exporting your blog posts from WordPress.com and then importing them into a brand new installation of WordPress.org in a webhosting account (there's that 50/50 link again!)

The post Moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org (video tutorial) appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

How to Share Adsense Revenue With Your Authors in WordPress: "It would be quite useful in attracting new authors to blog on your site, in return for some Adsense revenue for what they’ve written."
(Via Wptuts+.)

The post WordPress Tip: How to Share Adsense Revenue With Your Authors appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.