Where to get FREE images for your blog? Finding quality images for your posts is already a challenge in itself. Imagine how frustrating it can become when you can’t find ones that you can use without having to pay for royalties or subscriptions. Therefore, to make your life easier, I’ve compiled a list of my favorites that I normally use whenever I need a free royalty-free image. These are the sites from where you can get any high-quality images of your choice at no cost – 100% FREE. However, remember to always check the licensing terms of any image you plan to use, crop, edit and photoshop. And, always credit the image owner. Here you go,

17 Best Sites to Get FREE Images For Your Blog:

Image Hosting and Sharing Sites
1. Flickr
The most popular photo repository and sharing application widely used by bloggers. Hosting over 2 billion (and increasing) images, you can find the most categories on Flickr. Also, you can have Flickr photos embedded on your blog to automatically rotate as a slideshow.

2. Photobucket
Another well-known image storage and sharing website where you can access to a huge user-generated content and create slideshow feature for your blog. It is the No.1 image site in the US at the time of this writing.

Image Search Engines
3. Creative Commons Search
Creative Commons Search allows you to easily find free-to-share or Creative Commons licensed images at Google, Yahoo! and Flickr. This tool has also been built into Firefox web browser for easy searches.

4. Every Stock Photo
Every Stock Photo is another image search engine that aggregates Creative Commons licensed images from other sites like Flickr, Stock.XCHNG etc. and present them in an integrated search.

5. Google Image Search
The most comprehensive image search service created by search engine giant, Google. With billions of images indexed, it allows users to search the whole World Wide Web for image content.

6. Yahoo! Image Search
The most visited website in the world, Yahoo! (according to Alexa), also provides a search service that crawls the web for billions of images, on top of that, it also added at least 2 billions (and increasing) images from Flickr into its image database.

7. Ask.com Image Search
Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, initially rode on Picsearch database for its image searching, launched its own image search service in early 2006. Ask.com Image Search is said to be the 2nd best image search engine, after Google.

8. Live Image Search
Live Search, formerly known as Windows Live Search and MSN Search, is Microsoft’s attempt to compete with the two search engine giants. Live Image Search allows quick image searching and browsing with its Smart Scroll, which gets rid of pagination. One of the most notable functions is its Scratch Pad that you can add images for later viewing.

9. Picsearch
Picsearch is another useful image search engine that crawls and indexes the web for images. They have reportedly indexed more than 2 billion images.

Stock Photography Sites
10. Stock.XCHNG
Stock.XCHNG is a free stock photo site providing hundreds of thousands of quality stock photos and royalty-free images for personal use with the restricstions specified by the image owner. Their image content is provided by more than 30,000 amateur and professional photographers.

11. Free Digital Photos
If you don’t want to go through the hassles of checking licensing terms of images, Free Digital Photos is for you. All the images in Free Digital Photos are free for commercial and personal use. Every image is free, and you have an option to buy high resolution versions.

12. Stockvault
Stockvault have won several awards for having the best stock photos in database. You can download all stock photos and high resolution images but only for personal and non-commercial use.

13. Dreamstime
This Romanian based company is one of the top 3 stock photo sites in the world. They have been in the business since 2000.

14. Free Range Stock
At Free Range Stock, you can rest assured of high-resolution or high-quality images available for FREE downloads. They also provide a plugin that you can place into your Internet browser for easy image searching.

15. Unprofound
You can access to the stock photos for personal and commercial use. However, Unprofound do not allow you to redistribute/resale the images to any individual.

16. Photogen
Another great site to download free images for personal and commercial use, again no resale/redistribution. Every image submitted to Photogen is checked for quality before going live.

17. Pixel Perfect Digital
Although Pixel Perfect Digital is currently not accepting new image uploads till 2009 (due to some abuse), you can still download high-quality images for use in your blog or commercial design project. Strictly no resale or redistribution.

1. Do what people don’t do
You probably remember Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart which generated $245 billion in sales last year. He was once asked what his secrets to building the multi-billion retail empire were, and one of the rule of thumbs that he shared was “What people do, you don’t do; What people don’t do, you do“. In today’s blogging world, it’s getting difficult to make money from it as it has become more competitive. What other bloggers are already doing is no longer as worthy because it doesn’t deliver the uniqueness of your blog. Therefore, if you wanna stand out of the crowd, then do something that other bloggers don’t do, this way you will most probably be the first to capture the major market stake. A very good example would be John Chow, he was the first blogger who gave away prizes while converting visitors into RSS feed subscribers, and it created amazing results in his feed count leading to an increasing income. So, start thinking something that the rest are not doing and be the first to do it. I’m yet to experiment this golden secret, let’s try it and let me know if it creates opportunities and increases your online income by any chance.

2. Help others help yourself
“When you help others achieve what they want, they will help you achieve what you want“. This is yet another important factor that should be added to your blogging model. It is extremely true that when you help others solve their problems by providing tips, how-to’s in your blog, they are inclined to like your blog, they bookmark your blog and they begin to visit your blog more regularly, thus, you gain the readership and automatically the money rolls in. Maki from DoshDosh is the best example in this aspect, it is not difficult to notice that most of his making-money-online blog posts are always full of unique information, tips, how-to’s that you hardly see elsewhere. Maki constantly does a thorough research on the topic that he’s writing about, and that’s why he gains the reliability, popularity and readability from his audience. In simpler words, do not hide what you know or are capable of, help yourself by helping the rest SINCERELY.

3. Be relational
Dr Allen also raised an essential point that we should really take note of. He thinks that today’s business models are moving towards a transactional mode. Take fast food outlets for an example, you go to the counter, the girl at the counter takes your order, you pay the ticket, leave with your food and the relationship ends right there while the girl at the counter yells “NEXT”. They are no longer serving customers, in fact they are “processing” customers, and they forget that a good service delivery is what keeps customers coming back. How does it relate to your blogging model? Don’t just write, post and hope to earn a fortune from your blog. You might get a few dimes from some random clicks, but your audience is not going to return for more. In fact, you should personalise your blog, your blog is not a robot. Care about your readers, reply their comments, ask what they want, appreciate their visit, they are your friends, they aren’t your competitors. According to a statistics done by Dr Allen, only 5% of the people who purchase your product or service would give you feedbacks, compliments and complaints, while the remaining 95% would be indifferent. Therefore, if you want to find out what you have done right or wrong, what you need for improvement, what you can do to gain more readers, how you can add value to your blog etc, you should also conduct surveys on a regular basis, ask your readers and get more feedbacks out of the remaining 95%. Be relational, not transactional.

These 3 tips may not earn you your first million, but they are of essential importance to building a different and popular blog. Tell me what you think and do let me know what you’ve achieved after applying these strategies to your blogging model.

Withdrawal limits and fees
There’s a minimum withdrawal amount of US$10. Paypal withdrawal to your Visa Debit Card costs US$5 per withdrawal and you can withdraw up to US$500 per day, meaning that you can withdraw up to US$15k per month, that’s good enough for me since I haven’t managed to earn that much in a month yet.

How to withdraw
According to Paypal, you can withdraw your funds to your Visa Credit or Debit card. However, I’ve tried and noticed that withdrawal to Visa Credit Card doesn’t work for us. At the time of this writing, you can only withdraw the funds to your Malaysian issued Visa Debit Card. Currently, there are only 3 banks offering Visa Debit Card, namely Public Bank (PBB), Al Rahji Bank and UOB Bank. Some bloggers have done successful withdrawals to Al Rahji Bank’s Visa Debit Card. So far, nobody has tried withdrawing to UOB’s Visa Debit Card as UOB Bank requires a minimum deposit of RM2,000 in order to open the bank account that comes with the Visa Debit Card, if you have tried it, let us know how it went. As for myself, I have eagerly tried the withdrawal to my PBB’s Visa Electron Card though.

Withdrawal to PBB’s Visa Electron Debit Card
In celebration of the Paypal withdrawal facility, I managed to make a test withdrawal. I withdrew US$25, and was deducted US$5 as a withdrawal fee, making the total withdrawal amount of US$20 only. (See the screenshot below, you can click to enlarge it)

In just 4 working days, I received the money credited in my PBB’s Visa Debit Card that reads “PAYPAL *WITHDRAWAL” followed by the reference number. (See below)

Total fund received was RM67.19, meaning, the conversion rate used was 3.3595, which was the exact currency rate of the day. I then transferred the fund to my PBB savings account, and it’s free of charge. In conclusion, it costs only US$5 for a Paypal withdrawal and you get your funds in 4 working days. Thank you Paypal.

The news is undoubtedly a good motivator for those who have been earning online for years and those who just started or planned to earn online. So, go get your own PBB Visa Electron Debit Card, it only requires a minimum deposit of RM25 and an annual fee of RM24, which is way cheaper than a US bank account that I previously opened to withdraw the Paypal funds. I hope in the near future, withdrawal to MasterCard will be introduced too.

*Important Notes*
Paypal only allows one Visa Card, one MasterCard and one American Express to be added to your Paypal account. If you added your Visa card but later lost or misplaced the card, you would not be able to add in another Visa card anymore, even though if it’s a replacement card or renewal card. Therefore, try not to lose your Visa Debit Card, make sure you lock it up in a safe place. Happy withdrawing.

Example:

• www.rockyourvote.net has a PageRank of 4
• rockyourvote.net has a PageRank of 2 is having PageRank 4 now

People don’t always link to your domain in the way you want them to. From an SEO perspective, this could hurt your hard earned search engine rankings and link popularity. How to solve this not-many-people-know issue?

The best solution to this situation is to signal to search engines that both domains are the same blog/site by implementing what is known as ‘301 redirect’ or ‘permanent redirect’ from one of your domains to the other. By correctly configuring a permanent 301 redirect, the search engine rankings might improve as all inbound links are correctly counted for the website, thus, your PageRank is theoretically redirected too. It also helps to redirect your visitors to the domain that you want as well as to clear up duplicate content in search engines.

Before implementing a 301 redirect, you should decide which version you want it to be, www. or non-www, then stick to it. In my case, I chose the www. version. A 301 redirect can be done in many ways, but I’m going to only show you two simplest methods that I recommend:

1. Using a WordPress plugin
2. Using htaccess

1. Setting up a 301 redirect using a WordPress plugin

If your blog is on a WordPress platform, you’re lucky! Justin Shattuck came up with a wonderful plugin called WWW Redirect plugin. This easy-to-use WordPress plugin allows you to set up a 301 redirect few clicks away. Go to the plugin page here, download the plugin, extract and upload the file to your plugins folder, activate it in your WordPress admin control panel, go to the ‘Redirect Options’ on the sub menu of the plugins menu and update your preferences. That’s all, you’re done. Your domain is now redirected to the other domain from now on. You can check your redirect validity on Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

2. Setting up a 301 redirect using htaccess

For those on blogging platforms other than WordPress, don’t be disappointed, you can still set up a 301 redirect using htaccess. Doing it using htaccess is highly recommended as it’s easier to manage – copy, paste and save. It’s also the safest method without having to worry about being penalized by search engines. In my case, by adding the redirect code to the .htaccess file on my server, I redirect my visitors to reach my blog at www.wiseblogging.com instead of wiseblogging.com, and below is how I did it.

The 301 permanent redirect code:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^yourblog.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourblog.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

For Blue Host user

1. Login to your Blue Host control panel
2. Select ‘File Manager’ under ‘Files’ session
3. Click on ‘.htaccess’ and select ‘Edit File’ and you will get the screen below
4. Insert the redirect code into the field indicated, remember to replace ‘yourblog’ with your own domain and lastly save changes.
5. Done. Your domain is redirected to the other domain from now on. You can check your redirect validity on Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

For other web host user

If you are not a Blue Host user (advertisement : Reliable, Affordable Business Hosting from Bluehost.com.) , you should still be able to locate the same file ‘.htaccess’ on the root directory of your blog but if you can’t locate it, create one and name it ‘.htaccess’. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open up your notepad or any text editor that you prefer
2. Copy and paste the redirect code into the notepad, replace ‘yourblog’ with your own domain and lastly save it as ‘.htaccess’
3. Upload it to the root directory of your blog and make sure the name remains as ‘.htaccess’
4. Done. Your domain is redirected to the other domain from now on. You can check your redirect validity on Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

If you have a relatively large blog, you will likely not see the big shakeup overnight, as it takes time to move your rankings and pass your PageRank, however, implementing the 301 redirect is definitely going to benefit your blog in the long run.

As explained in my previous post, Link Popularity is the measure of inbound links to your blog and the link text (anchor text) itself. Generally, a site with more sites linking to it will have a higher position as compared to another site with fewer links to it. Link popularity not only gives you improved rankings, it also benefits you through increased traffic.

Basically, to increase link popularity every blog or website needs inbound links by placing a clickable anchor text link on other websites. So, how to increase or improve link popularity? Let’s discuss some methods and techniques for link popularity development which you can use for your blog.

1. Write good content on your blog
This is a passive yet most effective method of improving link popularity. Articles are a valuable way to get recognition and gain reputation while increasing your link popularity. Writing good articles or providing useful information/tools will give you natural linkbacks leading you to a wealth of link popularity.

2. Submit your articles to article directories
After completing your article, submit it to major article directories to get more traffic and linkbacks. One link from an article directory can do much to increase link popularity. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. SEOresearcher has a very nice and complete list of article directories.

3. Submit your blog to blog directories
Getting listed in blog directories will also help to build the link popularity for your blog. There’s a giant list of blog directories available here. You will need some time to add your blog to each of them manually, but remember to add your blog to a relevant category, this helps targeted readers and visitors locate you easily.

4. Exchange links (reciprocal link exchange)
The next step after you have attained directory listings is to exchange links with other bloggers, which is known as reciprocal link exchange. You can email or leave a message to ask if other bloggers or webmasters are willing to exchange links with you. Make sure you get more relevant links of your niche because link popularity is also based on the relevance of incoming links and the number of good quality sites linked to yours. In other words, it’s not just link popularity, but also link relevancy and link reputation. Reciprocal link exchange is time consuming but when it’s done properly, it can be an effective way to increase link popularity and traffic.

5. Comment on other related blogs
One easy way you can start attracting linkbacks is by leaving comments on other related blogs, but make sure you post useful or at least related comments. People often will click links of others that have left comments and this way it’s likely that they’ll also be interested in your blog and might link up to you.

6. Participate actively in forums
You can improve your link popularity rapidly by aggressively participating in quality forums, if you include your blog’s URL in your signature. This way, your signature will be tagged along with every post that you submit in forums, and your incoming links will grow dramatically if you continue contributing to forums. 65% of my incoming links are from forums.

7. Join social bookmarking networks
Many online bookmarking or voting websites like StumbleUpon and Digg can give you a huge number of linkbacks and traffic. Integrate the social bookmarkers into your blog and let your readers submit and vote for your posts. Personally, I like StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us and Technorati.

8. Write testimonials or reviews
Write a positive testimonial about a product or service that you recently purchased or used, and include your blog link. Sometimes, the product owner or service provider will post the testimonial on their website and you gain a linkback already. You can even write a review about other blogs, email the blog owner and they might just link you back for the favor.

9. Get reviewed by other blogs
Invite other bloggers to review your blog and include a link to your blog. Blog like BlogsReview offers free review for your blog but does not guarantee a positive review. If you rather prefer a positive review, you can pay a blogger to write the review through websites like PayPerPost and SponsoredReviews.

10. Giveaways
Give away prizes to other bloggers if they link to you. The prizes should be something that other bloggers find valuable enough to want to link to you, but doesn’t cost you too much. You can even combine method 11 with this method – give away prizes to bloggers who write the best review for your blog. For example, JohnChow always gives away sponsored prizes for bloggers to write reviews about his blog and include a link in the reviews. JohnChow does this continuously and effectively increases his link popularity.

11. Press release
Press release distribution is also one of the most effective ways to increase link popularity as it gives excellent permanent inbound links. You can easily write a press release yourself and distribute it for free. Some of the popular press release sites that you can post your press release on are PRWeb, PRLeap and FPRC.

12. Purchase inbound links
The easiest way to improve your link popularity is to buy inbound links. You can buy one-way and targeted text links from established advertising websites like Text Link Ads and AdBrite. This way you can establish your link popularity shortest time possible.

13. Start a referral or affiliate program
You can give other bloggers or webmasters the incentive to link to you. This way, you can get more valuable relevant links in your target niche. However, the affiliate program must be administered from your site because affiliates are going to link to the third-party’s site if it’s outsourced.

14. Spread your blog link
Just leave your blog address everywhere you can think of, like guestbook, your email signature etc. At the end of the day, you will be surprised with some unexpected linkbacks. However, do it with ethics and professionalism, do not spam or abuse it. Everyone hates spam.

15. Online link popularity service
If you prefer outsourcing the link building work instead of doing the hard work on your own, you can also hire internet marketing experts like AndyHagans and IntraPromote.

The results of your link popularity campaign usually don’t show until after many months. It is always advisable to set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines frequently to see if your link popularity has improved.

Building link popularity is not an easy task, it is both time consuming and laborious but it does bring its rewards. There are no easy ways to build link popularity, thus, be prepared to keep building links until you achieve link popularity stardom. Don’t expect to grow your link popularity overnight. Since link building takes time, the sooner you start the better, why not start building your link popularity today?

Content
I always emphasize “Content is King”, content is the key to the success of blog monetization. The content of your blog decides the destiny and earning potential of your blog. Most bloggers tend to make mistake turning visitors off by giving contentless content with no substance. Visitors therefore never return. Your content must be valuable and of its specific niche, it should attract and retain readers. Always give your visitors good content and strong material that they want and they will automatically stay on. Bear in mind that you only get one chance to make a first impression, so make sure you show what you have to offer. Place stronger visual and mental emphasis on your content, which ultimately determines the size of your readership. By demonstrating emphasis of adding value to a quality content, it increases the objectivity, importance and weight of your blog. In the long run, you will receive a substantial level of traffic to your blog from new and repeat readers, allowing you to get the most out of your blog monetization. Always bear in mind, “Content drives Traffic, Traffic brings Profit”. Therefore, quality content is the first element that you should spend most of your time on before even thinking about monetizing your blog. “What do people expect when visiting a blog?” My answer is: current news, worthy content, valuable information, and at the same time also a space for writers to highlight their personal perspectives.”

Link Popularity
What is Link Popularity? Link popularity simply means how popular and visible your blog is in the online world. It is a measure of the total number of inbound links to your blog that most search engines have found and it has become the determining factor for a successful blog. Link popularity is relatively important as it is a major element used by most search engines in determining a site’s position in search results. Generally, a site with more inbound links will be positioned higher than a similar site with fewer links. And therefore, most blog monetization programs use link popularity as one of the factors to rank your blog. The more links to your blog, the higher your link popularity is, and the better blog ranking you will get.

How do you check your blog’s link popularity?
Websolucing.com has a handy tool on which you can check your blog’s link popularity.

PageRank
What is PageRank? PageRank is Google’s measure of search engine link popularity. Google ranks websites by the links and the quality from the links that point to a website. The PageRank provides a value between 0 and 10, meaning that the most popular websites have a PageRank of “10” and the least have a “0” PageRank. PageRank is one of the important measures of site’s importance and significance but Google only updates the PageRank once in every 3 months.

How do you check your Page Rank?
Google offers a wonderful toolbar for Internet Explorer users, you can download it here if you haven’t got one. For Firefox users, you can either choose to download the Google toolbar or there’s also a PageRank checker extension that you can download and install. After installing the plugin or toolbar, you will see a small green bar which displays the current URL’s PageRank level. Hover your mouse over it and you can see the numerical value, and that’s the PageRank.

Alexa Rank
What is Alexa Rank? Alexa Rank, a powerful and accurate measure of website statistics, is offered by Alexa Internet Inc. – a subsidiary company of Amazon.com. Alexa provides traffic statistics as well as page views of a website based on the information collected by their toolbar installed by several millions of users around the world. The lower the Alexa Rank number, the more heavily visited your website is. Many people dispute Alexa Rank is not accurate and that it should not be used as a tool to determine the value of a website because the tracking is only collected by browser with Alexa toolbar installed. However, as long as Alexa Rank is still taken into consideration by most blog monetization programs, we shouldn’t neglect it.

How do you check your Alexa Rank?
You can check your Alexa Rank directly on Alexa’s website at here, alternatively you can also install the Alexa toolbar for Internet Explorer or SearchStatus extension for Firefox that displays Google PageRank and Alexa Ranking at the same time.

Technorati Authority and Rank
What is Technorati Authority and Technorati Rank? Technorati Authority and Rank, offered by Technorati, are also the measures of how important and popular a website is in the blogosphere. Basically, Technorati Authority calculates the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months and the higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the website has. On the other hand, Technorati Rank’s calculation is based on how far you are from the top. The blog with the highest Technorati Authority is the number 1 ranked blog, and the smaller your Technorati Rank is, the closer you are to the top 100 blogs.

How do you check your Technorati Authority and Rank?
You can find it out on Technorati’s website itself, but before you can check your blog’s Technorati Authority and Rank, you are required to claim your blog – submit your blog to Technorati index. Upon claiming your blog, you will be able to see the Technorati Authority and Rank immediately.

Next, 15 Ways to Build Link Popularity

Before showing you the steps, there are two things that you will need to do prior to creating the blog:

1. Purchase a domain. First of all, you will need to purchase a domain before getting a web host. I know most web hosts offer free domain if you purchase their web host package, but it’s always advisable to purchase your own domain from a domain registrar, and then only host it with your preferred web host. Why? Because, you need to plan for the future. If you get the free domain given by any web hosts, the web host company will be the registrant of the domain, not YOU. If your domain becomes hot and popular one day, your web host can simply sell off your domain and make billions, you won’t get a single cent from it, because they are the legal registrant of the domain. Or, maybe one day, if Google is interested in acquiring your blog or website, you are not gonna get the million or billion dollars from Google, because you’re not the registered owner. Therefore, it is imperative to make sure that you are the legal registrant of your domain name, and the only way to do it is to buy it from a domain registrar. There are many established domain registrars on the market, but personally I prefer NameCheap. Not because they are selling cheap domains, but their service is satisfactory, and the user interface is brilliant. NameCheap offers a yearly rate of $8.88 for a .com or .net domain, I’m having more than 8 domains with them. So, go to a domain registrar of your choice, or simply go to NameCheap to purchase your preferred domain name, I’m not going into details about how to purchase a domain, as I believe you will be able to figure it out by following the instructions on the domain registrar’s web page, it’s pretty straightforward.

2. Subscribe a web hosting plan. Next, after purchasing the domain, you need a web host for your domain. Again, there are hundreds of web hosts out there offering different web hosting packages at different prices. Established web hosts like BlueHost, HostGator, Lunarpages, DreamHost, Globat, StartLogic and IXWebHosting are highly recommended. I’ve been using BlueHost, and they are offering a standard one-year web host package at $7.95/month (about $95.40 a year). The server’s uptime is 100% so far, I am certainly a happy BlueHost‘s customer. Frankly speaking, BlueHost is one of the best web hosts on the market and I will definitely recommend it to everyone. Of course, you can choose other web hosts too as long as they support WordPress or Blogger blogging platform. Besides, make sure you are getting a Linux server if you are planning to use WordPress, and Blogger can ride on both Windows and Linux server. Finding a web host is like finding your new house, you will need to choose carefully, don’t simply grab a web host, always buy from a well-known web host, you can Host Unlimited Domains on 1 BlueHost Account $6.95 Per Month. If you can’t afford that, then I will suggest you get one from IXWebHosting, the Top Rated Web Hosting – $3.95/mo.

By now, I believe you should have gotten yourself a domain and a web host. Now, let me show you how to create your blog using WordPress and Blogger on your own domain.

For WordPress users:

How to create a WordPress blog on your own domain with paid hosting

Step One – Point your domain to your web host
After purchasing the web hosting service, you will need to point your domain to the web host. For BlueHost and NameCheap user,
1. Login to your NameCheap account, select Manage domains and click on your domain
2. From the navigation bar on the left, select Transfer DNS to Webhost
3. Enter ns1.bluehost.com into the first field and ns2.bluehost.com into the 2nd field, and click Save Changes. *Note* (For non-BlueHost users, you can use your preferred web host’s ns1 & ns2 addresses, please check with your web host to get the correct ns1 & ns2 addresses)

Now your domain is pointed to your BlueHost web hosting account. It may take up to 24 hours for the domain to be hooked up to your BlueHost hosting, but normally the changes take effect within minutes. The longest that I experienced was only for 15 minutes.

Step Two – Install WordPress on your domain
While waiting for the changes to take effect, you can take your sweet time to install WordPress on your domain, follow the steps below:
1. Log into your BlueHost control panel
2. Select Fantastico De Luxe from Software / Services section
3. Select WordPress under Blogs — a WordPress info screen will load
4. Place your mouse over the bold text New Installation and click the link
5. Follow the prompts given by Fantastico, then complete the installation

Fantastico will populate the default files and databases for a brand new installation of WordPress in whatever location on any domain attached to your account which you specify. You can choose to install wordpress on http://yourblogname.com or http://www.yourblogname.com or http://www.yourblogname.com/blog etc whichever you like. But I will advise you to install it right on http://www.yourblogname.com , you will know why in my future posts.

You are done! Go to your blog at your domain http://www.yourblogname.com, and you can see your blog is up and running on WordPress platform. Now you can start your blogging career by logging into your WordPress account at http://www.yourblogname.com/wp-admin. Enjoy WordPress’ing.

For Blogger users:

How to create a Blogger blog on your own domain for as little as $8.88 a year

For those who have limited funds or simply not willing to fork out a hundred bucks for web hosting service, you may choose to use Blogger on your own domain. As promised in my previous post, I’m going to show you how you can create a Blogger blog on your domain that you just purchased for $8.88 without paying additional charges for the web hosting.

Step One (The only step) – Point your domain to Blogger
Yes, instead of pointing your domain to a web host, you can point your domain to Blogger and Blogger will host your domain for FREE. For NameCheap user,
1. Login to your NameCheap account
2. Select Manage domains and click on your domain
3. From the navigation bar on the left, select All Host Records under Host Management
4. Enter ghs.google.com into the “www” field and change your “Record Type” to CNAME (Alias). This step is to point your blog url (with www) to your Blogger blog.
5. Enter http://yourblogname.com/ into the “@” field and change the “Record Type” to URL Redirect. This step is to redirect your blog url (without www) to http://www.yourblogname.com when people key in http://yourblogname.com.
6. Click Save Changes. It may take up to 24 hours for the domain to be hooked up to your Blogger blog, but normally the changes take effect within minutes. The longest that I experienced was only for 10 minutes.

*Note* For those who purchased domain from other domain registrars, you may refer to this self-explanatory instructions by Blogger.

Congratulations, you’re done! From now on, you can continue logging into your Blogger account via Blogger website as usual, but all your posts will be published to your domain, meaning that, your blog is now live on your own domain hosted by Blogger for FREE. You only pay $8.88 for the domain, and Blogger host it for you at no additional cost to you. Now go to your blog at http://www.yourblogname.com and check out the wonder.

Create a free blog using Blogger

1. Go to Blogger.com and click on “Create Your Blog Now”.

2. Create a Google account by entering the information required. For those who already have a Google account, for example, a Gmail account, you can sign in first and you will be using your existing Google account to access your new Blogger account after the registration.

3. Give your new blog a title as well as a blog subdomain address as you wish, subject to availability.

4. Choose a template for your new blog. Blogger comes with 12 default templates that you can choose from. Always choose a template that suits your blog topic.

Done, you blog has been created and you can now start posting by writing the content and giving it a title. Try making a test post and when you click “Publish”, your post immediately goes live and you can always go to your blog address (http://yourblogname.blogspot.com) to see how it looks like. Do also go around and explore your Blogger dashboard and familiarize yourself with the features, functions and commands.

Create a free blog using WordPress

1. Go to WordPress.com and click on “Start Your WordPress Blog”.

2. Create a username of your choice, enter your email address, read and check the Terms of Service and choose “Gimme a Blog!”.

3. You may choose to change the default blog domain to a more suitable domain address, name your blog title, choose your primary language and and check the privacy box if you would like your blog to be picked up by search engines.

4. An email will be sent to your account to confirm your registration. Activate your account by clicking on the link in the email. Once that is done, login using the provided password and update your profile.

5. I will suggest you to change your password immediately to a password that you can remember. Go to Dashboard -> Update your profile or password -> Update Your Password and key in your new password, click “Update Profile”.

Your new blog is now created, and your blog address is something like this http://yourblogname.wordpress.com. You can now start posting by going to “Write”, title and write your blog post, and publish. Your post will immediately go live and you can always go to your blog address to see how it looks like. Make sure you go around and explore your WordPress dashboard and familiarize yourself with the features, functions and commands.

*TIPS* The next time you want to login to your WordPress blog account, just go straight to http://yourblogname.wordpress.com/wp-admin

In next post, I’m going to show “How to Create a Self-Hosted Blog“.

Traffic
You will need to consider whether your traffic matters. If you are only planning to create a personal blog ranting about your day-to-day life and thoughts, traffic is not essential. However, I assume you are planning to monetize your blog, that’s why you’re here, you will then require traffic. Your blog’s traffic gains you popularity and popularity earns you money. A successful blog depends a lot on its traffic, thus, you will not only need a lot of traffic, you will need quality and targeted traffic too. How do we bring in more traffic? The topic of your blog, is the core fundamental of successful traffic building, thus, you will need to spend some time on deciding your blog topic. (Well, there are hundreds of ways to bring in traffic, but we’re not going to talk about it in this post today, I will share you the in-depth tips to attract traffic in later posts.)

Topic
What are you going to blog about? Starting a blog is way too easy, but finding appropriate topics to blog about takes a little more thought and effort. Many people seem to blog about something that they’re not familiar with, for the sake of reaping money from it, that is wrong. After a while, or after a couple of posts, you will get bored with it, trust me, I made the mistake, so I don’t want you to repeat that. Try to blog about a narrow topic with informative write-up that helps people, that way you will have a better chance of bringing in traffic, ‘cause the reason why most people go to the internet is because they’re seeking information, tips, advices or even opinions. Two new blogs are created every second, you will need to stand out from the crowd in order to gain a larger portion of the traffic, thus, try to find out others in your same niche and see why they are different from others. If you are planning to monetize your blog, you will need to focus on a niche topic or demographic. Well, there’s no specific subject that you’re required to blog about, in fact, you can blog about anything that you like, any topics of your interests, or anything that you’re good at. For example, if you enjoy cooking and making your own recipes, you can blog about cooking and your personal recipes. Or if you are good at computers, why not blog about computer tips or even programming? Therefore, always go with what you’re good at and the traffic will follow.

Blog name
Naming your blog is as crucial as naming your baby, so name it wisely. You can only do this well after settling on a niche topic for your blog. A blog name is its first impression to your readers, thus, it should easily come to your readers’ minds. Your blog name should be easy to type and spell without too many letters. A good blog name should also say something about the topic, so that when your readers see your blog name, they already know what your blog is about. Take the recipe blog as an example again, if you see “Chris’s Secret Recipe”, I’m sure you can tell it is a blog about Chris’s personal recipes. In simpler words, choose a unique, suitable, readable, spellable and memorable name. Again, if you’re only planning to have a personal blog, your blog name isn’t that important ‘cause you can always choose the topic after naming your blog.

Blogging platform
There are many blogging platforms available on the internet, big names like Blogger(Blogspot), WordPress, Movable Type, TypePad, Live Journal and many other competing blogging platforms, not forgetting recently emerged MySpace. However, different blogging platforms offer different levels of service. Personally I only tried Blogger and WordPress, so I can only comment on these two blogging platforms. Both Blogger and WordPress offer the blogging platform, the subdomain name and free hosting, but there are some restrictions and limitations on customization if you host your blog with them despite both of them are by far the most easy-to-use platforms.

• Blogger. Also known as Blogspot, is owned by Google. Everyone loves Google, ‘cause Google constantly improves and upgrades its products and services, which makes Blogger stand out from the competition. With its promising drag-and-drop feature and recently released new Blogger application, creating a blog using Blogger is a breeze, it is one of the fastest ways to start blogging. It would be so much easier for newbies to learn and practise blogging on a simple and user-friendly platform like Blogger. Blogger provides hosting and you provide the content, without costing you a dime.

• WordPress. I came across a lot of clean, beautiful and successful blogs using WordPress platform, so I finally made the decision to move all my Blogger blogs to WordPress recently, and it’s worthwhile taking time to learn and understand WordPress. WiseBlogging.com is proudly using WordPress platform. I really enjoy the outstanding features and powerful tools of WordPress, its user interface is remarkably simple to use and undeniably it is one of the most versatile blogging platforms, which is why most top bloggers are using WordPress exclusively. However, if you are just starting out as a beginner, I’ll suggest you to start with Blogger. Why? Because WordPress requires perhaps the most sophisticated level of technical knowledge for implementation despite it is open source software. Therefore, it can be a little time consuming for a non-technical beginning blogger to figure out WordPress.

You can always switch over to WordPress when you see fit, it only requires a few clicks to switch and export your content to WordPress.

Free hosting or paid hosting
Before starting your blog, you will also need to decide on whether or not you want a free hosting blog or a paid hosting blog. Free hosting blog simply means that Blogger or WordPress hosts your blog, and your blog’s domain name will be a subdomain like “yourblogname.blogspot.com” or “yourblogname.wordpress.com”. However, if you are willing to fork out a little money for a paid hosting, you can host your blog using your own domain name, for example, “www.yourblogname.com” . So which one should you choose? Here is some advice to you:

• For those of you who don’t mind the subdomain concept, go get a free hosting blog account with Blogger, and host it with them. Get yourself familiarised with blogging and its techniques, then only switch to WordPress and a paid hosting account which give you full control over your blog.

• For those who insist on getting your own domain, but can’t afford the domain and hosting, I can show you how you get a FREE hosting blog account with Blogger while using your own domain costing you ONLY $0.74 a month!!! Yes, there’s a way, I’m not joking. This is going to be covered in later posts, meanwhile, you can start deciding on the other four factors while waiting for this one.

Last but not least, do go through this post over and over again if you haven’t gotten the answers to these 5 factors. If you have carefully considered all these 5 factors, Congratulations, it is already half of the battle.

Next post, “How to Create a Free Blog“.