I Earn Online Front Page

Posted by ruby on August 14th, 2008 in Building Your Blog

I mentioned the free blog earlier and a major turn off is the limitation in theme flexibility. Even with a purchased domain name (blogger start > settings > publishing > custom domain), the interface is still limited by the themes and the overall feel of a blogger blog.

Wordpress is a system that allows more creative tweaking. If you browse through blog communities such as Entrecard.com, you will find that blog owners want some features on their blogs that others don’t have. For example, my contact form is something that other blogs don’t have. I was able to put that up by using Wordpress Plugins, something that you won’t find in your free blogspot blog.

These plugins alone can be enough reason to go Self Hosted, but there are more. Depending on the hosting plan, I can clone a wordpress site easily and put up several blogs under different domain names. Remember that if you earn through one blog, you could earn more by having several blogs.

Here’s a Quick Start Guide to Getting Your Own Self Hosted Wordpress Blog

1. Sign up for a Hosting Account using my link: Bluehost ( I will only be able to answer upload/downoad and cPanel questions if you use this Hosting service since I am using this and hence, most familiar with it)

2. Avail of your free domain under Bluehost and pay the necessary fees. When you receive your cpanel username and password via mail, log into your cpanel (they will provide you with the link) and find a blue smiley icon named “Fantastico”.

3. Click Fantastico and look for “Wordpress” in the list. Select new Installation.

4. Follow instructions and put in the information required. You have to take note of the admin username and password you put in.

5. After installing, type your domain name on the browser and add “/wp-admin”. This will take you to your log-in page. Use your admin username and password and you can start blogging immediately.

Important Notes:

• You will be using the default blog theme Kubrick, but this can be changed. I will tell you how in another post.

• Take note of the terms “File Manager” and “Legacy File Manager” on your cpanel because you will be accessing them a lot when you start itching to customize your blog further.

• There are hundreds of CHEAPER web hosting companies in the web, but the main things to look into are SIZES of storage and bandwidth limit.

Learn from my Initial Hosting Horror Story

The 100 or 150MB storage size in other (cheaper) hosting companies may seem big at the onset, but as your blog grows, you will need more space and bandwidth. I busted my bandwidth in my old host and my site went down during the time when the social network craze was sweeping the blogosphere. I was forced to upgrade my plan and lost more money in the process. Don’t be a cheapo, just invest in the best plan you can afford.