Last week one of my WordPress sites got infected with malware. This is the second time within a 30 day period. Previously, I somehow survived almost 3 years with only one defaced site and no malware attack. No wonder, I was not prepared for what awaited me after that first attack.

The first experience was much worse, mainly because I didn’t know what to do in such a situation. Panicked, I was trying to fix my site but I really didn’t know what I was doing.

Signs that Your Site May be Affected with Malware

- When you visit the page, you get redirected to a different location.
- If you have anti-virus software on your computer – a highly recommended practice – you may notice that upon accessing the site (or any other site for that matter) that the Virus Alert displays.

Had I paid attention to these, I could have reacted faster the first time. However, I ignored those signs initially, because I wasn’t really sure what was going on – and I delayed taking action for too long.

Malware Attack #1

The first time I learned that I got infected is because I saw a warning message from Google next to my site in the Google search results “This site is infected with malware” or something similar.

This immediately set me off in the panic mode. I tried to find the infected files, but wasn’t sure what to look for so I searched for advice on what to do next. I thought about restoring the site from backup, but I had to leave to take my son to tennis practice.

Upon returning, I continued to search for information and help; and found a Sitesecuri.net website, a company that offers malware monitoring and cleaning service. I checked my other sites using the free scanning tool that they have on their page. I learned that almost all sites residing on this hosting account were infected, which only increased my panic.

I called the hosting company, Bluehost, to see if they could offer any help – perhaps they could help me find the infected files – but the service person wasn’t very helpful – he just referred me to a different provider of malware removal services.

Unfortunately, it was already Friday evening, too late to sign up for Securi service (the site guarantees the cleanup within 4 hours Mon-Fri, 8PM-8PM) or call anyone else. My husband, a network engineer, wasn’t helpful either. I realized I’d have to wait till Monday or try to find someone help me clean up the mess over the weekend.

The next morning I went to check up my sites: three of them were blocked by Google, including two of my biggest sites, with lots of traffic. I didn’t want to wait, – I wanted to do SOMETHING – so I started restoring some of the sites, deleting old sites, and updating old WordPress installation. This was not a good idea. In the process, I deleted a site by mistake and I learned that one of my backup files did not work as it should, so I lost at least two weeks of work on that site.

Then I learned that my hosting account had been suspended. At this point, all my websites, including the ones that were not infected were not accessible.

But there was also a positive site to the suspension. My host also sent me a list of files to clean up – including the malicious lines of code that needed to be removed from the wp-config.php file that kept redirecting visitors to spammy sites. What I couldn’t understand was why they couldn’t have done the scan and sent me the files the night before – when I called them, but I was happy to have the list of infected files.

Now at least I knew what to do – so I wasn’t just waiting doing nothing while my sites were down. It took me somewhere about 6 hours to go through all the files, remove the malicious files and code, before I could ask Bluehost to reinstate my account. They did that promptly sending me another few files to clean up.

After that, I went to Google Webmaster tools and filled up the form to have my sites checked by Google Bots and have the malware alerts removed. That took a few hours, but I was happy to see that the traffic returned to my sites immediately – so the sites did not get penalized.

Overall, it took me probably over ten hours to clean up the damage, plus one of my sites lost some data that still needs to be added back.

I set up a commitment to clean up all the files on the other hosting accounts that I have, and I’ve been doing that slowly, and then it happened a second time.

Just four weeks later – another attack.

Malware Attack #2

Last Friday, right before leaving for the Friday tennis practice with my son I noticed an anti-virus software alert after visiting one of my sites (this time on another hosting account), my heart sank, but I knew what to do next.

I went straight to Securi.net and started scanning my sites. Fortunately, only this one site had been infected, and it hadn’t been even blacklisted yet.

I didn’t want to spend another weekend trying to clean up the site and worrying about other sites on this account, so I signed up for the cleanup service right away. When I returned from my son’s tennis practice – the site was squeaky clean! No more malware! Hurray!

If your WordPress site is hacked – what do you do?

The usual suspects are weak, easily guessed passwords and compromised plugins. It’s possible the backdoor was installed on your website a while ago which means that just removing the infection you see or restoring to a recent backup isn’t enough.

If you are willing to take a shot at it, here’s what you may need to do:

** Change ALL your passwords. Change the passwords for every WordPress user. Also, make sure that you have no “admin” users. You can do this in the “Users” menu via WordPress. You can also update the database table directly (wp_users) changing the “admin” name to something else. Change both your hosting account password AND your phpadmin password.

** Backup your account. Ideally you would like a backup that preserves the timestamps on the files. But at least download a copy through ftp.

** Look for modified files by checking the timestamps. Generally most of your wordpress files will have the same timestamp reflecting when wordpress (or a plugin) was installed, so a different timestamp should be easy to identify. These are likely the infected files.

** Identify the malicious code. This may not be easy to do for you – I wouldn’t be able to identify it myself. A suspicious line of code could be enclosed with script tags that invoked a .js (javascript) file located at a strange looking IP address. Once you have identified the type of infection, you will need to search through all your files for the malicious code.

Cleaning Up Your Site

Let me ask you first, are you up for the challenge? Security is a specialized field that can require a different perspective and skill set. If you are not comfortable with browsing through code and don’t know your way around .htaccess, other configuration files and phpadmin, consider using a service that will clean up your site for you (see my recommendations below).

Getting off Google’s black list

Malware Attack Site

If Google has identified you as an attack site, visitors will see a scary red image warning them away. You want that to go away as soon as possible so you will need to ask Google for reconsideration.

I did this as soon as I had cleaned up my website. If your website is already set up in Google Webmasters Tools just log in and request a malware review. My website had already been flagged by Google so it was pretty obvious how to request a review. The review took a couple of hours at which point the red attack page stopped appearing.

Moral of the Story

1. Always run a full scan immediately after your virus scanner detects a problem.

2. Always keep your software up to date. Often times when you let your software get a few updates behind it becomes vulnerable to hackers. This was the cause of my problem, I skipped on some updates on some of my old sites. Don’t do this!

3. Consider hiring someone smarter than you. In the first case I was able to remove the malicious code myself, based on the file I got from Bluehost, but it took many hours and that was already AFTER my site has been blacklisted by Google and my hosting account suspended by Blue – not a desirable scenario.

Using a site like Securi.net Web site malware removal is great because they automatically scan your sites for hacking – and will fix the issues if they arise.

However, even though I have been very happy with Securi.net responsiveness and quickness in cleaning up my infected site, I decided to sign up with CodeGarage.

Using a site like CodeGarage is even better because not only monitor it for hacking – and will fix the issues if they arise, they also automatically backup your WordPress sites, making sure the backup is done correctly. And backups can be tricky – trickier than they ought to be. Servers are finicky. Databases go down when backups are running. Scheduled tasks mysteriously stop working. If your sites are worth backing up, it’s worth making sure they’re getting backed up properly.

CodeGarage: WordPress Site Backup and Security Scanning Service

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?

What are your thoughts? Do you have a website? Are you making money online? Enter your feedback into comment section. I’m looking to hear from you!

I know I should back up my WordPress website regularly. What’s the best way to backup my WordPress website?

Everyone should backup their sites regularly! It’s quick and easy and will give you peace of mind and save you lots of time in case something BAD happens to your website.

However, backing up a WordPress website can be tricky.

That’s because there are TWO important components that must be backed up: Database and Files.

You need to back up the entire site, and you need to back up your WordPress database.

You can find detailed instructions on how to do it on the WordPress.org site (http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups), however, just reading though this will likely give you an instant headache. Even if you are not completely techno-phobic, it will likely be too much for you to handle.

Besides, I promised you, that it’s going to be easy, so I don’t want you to mess with your phpMyAdmin panel and your database.

I’m not a techie person myself. I don’t want to bother learning all that technical nonsense.

Another way to do it, would be to use one of the free database backup plugins that are available, install it, and set it up to back up your WordPress database automatically. As for the files, you can just copy of all the files to a safe location using your FTP program. I used this solution once to move a site to a new location, and honestly, although it was not complicated, it certainly was not easy. I spent several hours trying to figure out how to do it right.

Fortunately, there are much easier solutions out there.

Unfortunately, it costs some money – but – in my honest opinion it’s totally worth it! This is one of the areas it’s not worth to save money on!

This little investment will provide you with the peace of mind for the most unexpected situations, for example, when you neglect to update your WordPress for a while and your website gets defaced. It happened to one of my client’s sites once – and here it what it looked like:

Why you need to back up your website - defaced website

Let me tell you – it was NOT fun.

You don’t want this on any site, but this was a daycare website, so it made it even worse, in my opinion.

And this was BEFORE I had this miracle tool.

The wonder-tool is called WP Twin and I’ve been using it myself for several months to backup my sites, move sites from one host to another, clone sites, etc.

My Best Tool To Backup WordPress Websites

WP Twin is in my opinion the simplest way ever to copy, clone, BACKUP up and RESTORE any WordPress blog, with ANY plugins and any themes installed in mere minutes … and … sometimes even seconds.

It works perfectly every time, and the one and only time that it did not work as expected, I contacted their customer support, and they were very responsive, helping me to fix the problem (that’s the great benefit of a paid tool, that you usually don’t get with free tools. You pay for the peace of mind.).

Here is the link again:

WP Twin for WordPress site backup

(Disclaimer: this is an affiliate link. This is a product that I personally use and recommend.)

Using this tool you can create a complete website backup – or “clone” – in a just few simple steps. Even for the most technologically challenged, it should not take more than 1 hour figuring this all out. Once you have it figured out, doing it again will take less than 5 minutes.

(Jayson, the guy who created the tool, provides really helpful step-by-step instructions to the whole process, and excellent customer support.)

Of course, don’t forget that you need to keep your files in a safe place. You should keep your files in several places just in case. (Home, Work and somewhere offsite)

How often should you back up your site?

That depends on how often you update your site, how often you want to do this, and how you would feel if your database were lost along with a few posts. It is your decision. If you want peace of mind with automatic backup, Jayson provides a tool for that too, for additional $47 dollars. Personally, I haven’t used it yet, but probably will invest in it in the near future.

How many backups should I keep?

Excellent question. Most people make a backup and then just replace it every time. This certainly saves space on your computer hard drive. But what if that backup file is corrupted or lost? Then what? The general rule of thumb is to keep at least three backups and keep them in three different places or mediums, like CD/DVDs, different hard drives, a thumbdrive, web disk, your e-mail account, etc.

Remember, back up your WordPress database regularly, and always before an upgrade or move to a new location!

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?

What are your thoughts? Do you have a website? Are you making money online? Enter your feedback into comment section. I’m looking to hear from you!

Why Create Your Own Custom Twitter Background?

If you are serious about getting traffic and targeted leads from Twitter, then you should seriously consider creating your own, customized background. And, needless to say, you do need a custom profile picture – and I do recommend a personal picture (meaning the picture of a person), even if you are tweeting for a company or a website.

The free backgrounds provided on the Twitter site may not look bad, but a unique Twitter background will help your branding, help you stand out from all the other Twitter users, and definitely raise your credibility – something we all aspire to. Custom background will increase your chances that your profile will capture reader’s attention and make a memorable first impression. This dramatically increases the probability that you’ll get more targeted Twitter followers.

Using a customized Twitter background has many advantages, but above all it provides an opportunity to show off much more information about yourself, your website and your products/services than you are normally allowed to enter in your bio box, such as information yourself, company, products, and brands; a larger profile picture of yourself, a company and or brand logo; tag lines (slogans), adddresses of other websites that you may have; detailed contact info (address, phone, fax), as well as addresses to other social media profiles – Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, MySpace, Skype, YouTube, Flickr, and Blogs.

Of course don’t go overboard. Don’t crowd the space with too much information.

Think about what  is important for your followers to know about you, and then choose the elements that will convey more about you, interest potential followers, and create a good first impression.

If nothing else, make a statement and memorable impression – it will help you stand out from the crowd.

How to Create A Custom Background: Image Dimensions

When creating the background image, it is important to consider the image dimensions. An image that is not properly sized can be covered up  by your Twitter profile or can start to tile, which often leads to an undesired effect.

To prevent tiling of the background image image, the image dimensions should be at least 1600px wide by 1200px tall. This will work with almost all screen resolutions. (Resolutions to design for: 1024 x 764 (#1 used right now), 1280 x 800 (2nd place)).

If you want to add a left-hand column, it should be narrow enough not to be covered up by the central Twitter content – under 200px. For more information on dimensions, you may want to check out Croncast and their numbers.

Creating your custom background image requires some patience and trial-and-error. If you’re not a designer, here are some tools that can help.

7 helpful Twitter Background Resources

Not only do many of these tools provide pre-designed backgrounds, but many can also automatically update your background, provide detailed information and FAQs, and even fully-functional image editors. Here are a few of the best:

1. MyTweetSpace: MyTweetSpace is one of the simplest ways to create a Twitter background with minimal effort. It allows users to create badges, add graphics, play with text, and more to create elegant backgrounds and left-hand text columns. You can even log in with Twitter and MyTweetSpace will automatically update your background.

2. TwitterBacks: This website provides a set of templates perfect for creating your ideal Twitter background. The templates come in PSD (Photoshop) form. In fact, my Twitter account utilizes a TwitterBack template as the basis for my design. Can you guess which one?

3. TweetStyle: TweetStyle offers free background templates, custom Twitter backgrounds, and a few useful blog posts on the subject of the backdrop.

4. Free Twitter Designer: This handy little app provides an easy-to-use image editor to help you create a professional-looking theme.

5. TwitBacks(): This is another tool for creating backgrounds. This one specializes in left-hand column-based backgrounds.

6. TwitterGallery: TwitterGallery is a directory of themes based on color and category. You can even click the “install” button under any theme, log into Twitter, and poof!…your background is ready.

7. Peekr(): If you stumble across a great Twitter background and want to take a quick look at it in its pure form, the Peekr bookmarklet is the way to go. Click on the bookmarklet once to show only the background, and press it again to bring everything back to normal.

http://mashable.com/2009/05/23/twitter-backgrounds/

How to Change The Background Image

This one is easy.

Go to Settings, then Design, and click on “Change background image.”

You’ll be able browse your computer and add any image you’d like, so long as it’s under 800k in size, GIF, JPG, or PNG.

You may also need to change the background colors and font colors.

From Create Custom Twitter Backgrounds For Memorable First Impression

If you want to start to earn money online, a good way to do it is by building niche sites and earning money from advertising revenue.

I know this works, because I do it myself. If you have no idea where to begin, I strongly recommend that you sign up for the keyword crash course at the Keyword academy and start building websites.

You may be wondering how long it will take to start earning money.

According to Mark at the Keyword Academy the answer to this question is Longer than 99% of people are willing to sustain focus…and…Not nearly as long as discouraged newbies think it will take.

Yes, those are vague answers. But Mark puts it in perspective with a couple of specific examples:

“In the last few weeks I’ve had some great conversations with former one-on-one students of ours. Both of them started effectively at zero online income. One of them is now plugging away at about $1500 per month (we started working with him about five months ago), and the other made over $10,000 last month (he enrolled in late January).”

You need to work hard and keep the right perspective about time frames.”We greatly overestimate what we can accomplish in a month. But we greatly underestimate what we can accomplish in a year.”

If you’re serious about making money on the internet, be prepared for a very boring first few months. It will be quite a bit of work with not much obvious payoff. The key – the absolute KEY – to success is persisting in the right activities day in and day out for the first few months. But if you can persist for 9 to 12 months, you’ll have something. Hang in there.

If you’re wondering whether it’s worth it, just trust me – it’s worth it. Your leanest months as an internet marketer will be much happier than your richest months working for someone else.

And you can try it for yourself for FREE by signing up to receive their “The Keyword Crash Course” eBook.

How to Earn Money Online: The Keyword Academy Course

Google Adsense is considered to be one of the most powerful tools in a website publisher’s arsenal. It allows anyone with a web page to monetize their sites easily. If used properly, it can generate a healthy – passive – income.

It all begins with doing keyword research. In order to make money from a keyword, it will need to have these three characteristics:

1. People need to be searching for it. The more searches it gets, the better.
2. It needs to be rank-able. You need to be able to get a site or page ranked for it.
3. It needs to have value. The people that find you with it need to be willing to buy from you, or other people have to be willing to buy your traffic.

So you will first need to find some popular subjects, keywords or phrase. Select the ones which you think has more people clicking through. This is actually a keyword selector and suggestion tool that some sites are offering to those who are just their Adsense business. You will also need to analyze the competition and revenue potential.

Next, you will need to register a domain and create a website, or better yet, a number of websites, one for every keyword that shows promise. You will be writing content with keywords from the topics that you have achieved in your search. Building sites is really easy when you use WordPress (it’s FREE, go to wordpress.org), even for the complete beginners.

Finally you need to promote the site by building links. Link building is mundane, but it is the key to success with niche keyword marketing, because link building is the key to getting rankings on Google. Most of your time should be spent finding ways of pointing links back to your site with variations of your ideal anchor text.

If you are a beginner (like I was a couple of months ago) it may all sound overwhelming. My advice is to just join the course and take one step at a time.

Take Action NOW!

I have been reading ebooks and blogs, doing research and trying to figure out how to earn money online for far too long. Finally reading Keyword Crash Course made me take serious action. I’m on a earning real money online. It may look like a hard sell to you, but I’m so excited and I really cannot recommend the course enough Keyword academy and start building niche sites TODAY!

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?

What are your thoughts? Do you have a website? Are you making money online? Enter your feedback into comment section. I’m looking to hear from you!

If you are looking for an easy guide to how to build a website step-by-step, this is a very basic website building tutorial to get you started.

You can spend as much time and money on creating a website as you like, however, it is not necessary, at least not initially.

In this tutorial I will teach you how to create a website without any programming skills or having to learn graphic design. We will be building a website on your own hosting account, using a free content management system, WordPress.

Granted, you do need to have access to a computer and need to possess some basic computer skills, but if you know how to write and send an email, or post pictures on Facebook, you have all the skills that are required.

Now, I’m NOT talking about creating a website for free. There is going to be some money investment involved, but the cost of building a website is really not significant if you are willing to get your hands dirty a little .

How to Build a Website Step By Step

The important thing is TAKE ACTION, so let’s get started NOW!

Building a Website Step 1: Register a Domain Name

First, you’ll need to find and register a domain name.

Your domain name represents the URL (or permanent web address) of your website. Therefore, when anyone types in “yourdomain.com” or “www.yourdomain.com”, they will see your website.

You register your domain name through a domain name registrar or hosting provider.

You simply check that your preferred domain name is available, then register it (online).

Domain names are registered on an annual basis, and you can usually register it many years in advance (or set ‘auto-renew’). Prices usually range from between $8 to $15 for new domain registration.

Usually the hosting companies provide one free domain registration when you sign up for a new hosting account.  If you register the name with anyone else other than your hosting company, you will have to take several extra steps, including changing name servers. So, for your first domain I recommend that you go with your hosting company.

If you want to register more domains and want to save on domain name registration costs, you can use Godaddy.com or www.NameCheap.com.

If you don’t have a domain name yet, get your domain name now!

How to Choose A Domain Name for Your Website

You should choose a domain name that truly reflects what your website is all about.

It’s also worth trying to get a keyword or two that is relevant to the market you intend to target if possible. This will help for search engine rankings as well as for increasing click through rates from the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).

It’s unlikely to be able to get exactly the domain name you want, so be creative and look for good variations. Brainstorm a few ideas and using some generic words that you can add to your keywords and you should come up with a few possible domains to choose from.

As a general rule it’s best to grab the .com version if you can, as it is the extension  that most people will use automatically, as it’s the most popular.

If you really want a particular domain name and the .com isn’t available then you could go for the .net domain, a local country (or state) version like .co.uk or .ca, or if you are going to be building a primarily information based (non commercial) blog, then going for a .org is a good choice as people tend to recognize these sites as “non-profit” free information sites. Some people advise avoiding .info domain as they have been used heavily to build spam sites, because they are so cheap to register.

Having said that, for Search Engine Optimization purposes and how the search engines treat your site for ranking, it really doesn’t matter which you go for, there are some very popular sites and blogs that are on .net for instance.

Building a Website Step 2: Sign up for hosting

A web host (or hosting provider), is a company that makes your website available for the world to see. They have the equipment and technical skills to make sure your website is available to the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can opt for what most small to medium size online businesses use which will run you from $5 to $15 a month.

Choose your hosting provider carefully – a good host will have excellent support. A bad host can have almost no support at all! If you’re new to creating websites, good support can reduce the stress that comes from doing something for the first time.

Here’s what you need to look for in a good web hosting : a platform that allows you to install scripts for content management and forums. You should also look for one with SSL that provides security for online transactions. And most good web hosts will also provide email capability. One that has a free autoresponder system is good although I would look into investing in a good email marketing solution to manage your list when you can afford it.

Look for a plan that gives you hosting for an unlimited number of domains for a set monthly fee.  When choosing a host there are a few things that you want to make sure are included, specifically it should be a cPanel host with Fantastico and PHP installed.

Hosting Companies I recommend:

I personally use and recommend Blue Host and Hostgator (these links are affiliate links, by the way). I’ve been happy with both companies so far. Other hosts that I heard good things about are Super Green Hosting and Lunar Pages. I’m sure there are plenty of other good choices out there!

• Blue Host
• Hostgator

Let’s use the Hostgator as an example. Go Hostgator and click on the “Order now” button.

On the next screen you will want to choose “register your domain name” and enter the name you have chosen:

On the next step you will choose you hosting plan.

I suggest that you go with the Baby plan which allows unlimited space and unlimited domains (if you build more sites – you can host them all in one place), or you can start with “Hatching” plan, which provides unlimited space for single domain.

Next you will need to fill in your contact and billing information.

Once you have signed up you will receive a Welcome email from Hostgator hosting with your hosting login information to access the cpanel.  Your cpanel can be found at YourDomainName.com/cpanel.

Building a Website Step 3: Install WordPress

In this step we’ll be installing the entire, ready-to-rock WordPress site on your hosting domain.

Don’t worry, it will only take a few clicks.

Side Note: If you purchased a domain via the hosting company, you will not need to do anything else with your domain. If you purchased a domain via a different domain provider, you will need to do some domain redirection first (I’m going to write about it separately soon).

WordPress is open source software and is freely downloadable directly from their website www.wordpress.org. However, to install from the download directly requires some technical skills. DON’T BOTHER. It’s far easier to use a web host that has WordPress support integrated so that it can be set up with a few clicks of the mouse instead.

Follow the instructions to login to your Host Gator dashboard called Cpanel. Once you login you will see your Cpanel dashboard, which should look like this:

Scroll down and click on the “Fantastico” icon. Don’t worry about all the other options at this time.

Note:  If you have already have a hosting account that does not provide one-click WordPress setup, follow these instructions http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress to install your WordPress site.

You will now see the following screen. First click “WordPress” on the far left column, you will then see the right side of the screen will say “WordPress”; click the “New Installation” link.

On the next screen you will be able to enter your username & password. Use the something you will remember. Leave the space blank where it says “Install in Directory” (this will install your new blog into the root directory).

After you have filled in the info requested on this page, click the “Install WordPress” button.

1.  Type in a unique administrator username (1).

2.  Type in a unique password (2).

3.  Give yourself a nick name (3), this will be seen by people reading your blog.

5.  Add an email address (4). You could use a Gmail address because it’s good at cleaning spam.

6.  Give your blog a name (5). Keep in mind this is the same name/title that the search engines list in their directories. This can be changed later.

7.  Give your blog a description (6). This too can be changed later.

8.  Go ahead now and click “Install WordPress” (7).

Just click “Finish Installation” on the next window.

Congratulations! You have now completed your WordPress website installation.

Now you should be able to open a web browser and type in your domain address and see your new blog. You will see the boring basic WordPress blog at this point.

Now you are ready to install your new theme to make your site look pretty, so continue to next lesson!

Here are some videos you can watch on Youtube.com that walk you through the steps that I just described.

Using Fantastico to install a WP Blog (for people in a hurry: only 47 seconds)

Using Fantastico to install a WP Blog (5 min 53 seconds)

Building a Website Step 4: How to Install a WordPress Theme

There are many free themes available on the WordPress.org website, but if you expect quality design and support that will provide answers to your questions, I recommend you purchase your theme template from a respected source.

My suggestions for best theme templates are (these are affiliate links):

**  Elegant Themes

**  Thesis Theme from DIY Themes (this site uses Thesis theme)

** StudioPress themes.

When you change a theme, you are not changing the content of your website, just the way it looks. WordPress stores all your pages and blog entries in a database – so content is separated from design. So when you change themes all you are doing is changing the look and feel of the site – not the content.

There are two ways to install a theme in WordPress. One is really easy to do from the WordPress Administration Panel of your blog, and the other one is a little more involved, requiring you to use an FTP program, such as FileZilla to do it.

I will describe both methods, because the first one does not work with every theme (at least it hasn’t worked for some of my themes), so you can use the second method as a backup.

Method #1. Using the WordPress Administration Panel

1.  Log in to the WordPress Administration Panel of your blog – just open up your favorite browser and type in the URL like this: http://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin. Enter your username and password.

2.  Go to Appearance, Add New Theme, choose the theme (it needs to be a zipped file .zip) that you want and click Install and Activate.

It’s really that simple.

Watch this video: How To Install A Theme In WordPress 2.8 for more details.

Method #2. Using FTP Client to Upload a Theme

To add a new theme to your WordPress installation, follow these steps:

1.   Purchase the selected theme and follow the directions to download it to your computer.

2.  Extract the files it contains preserving the directory structure in the archive. If the theme that you are installing provides instructions, be sure to read through and follow those instructions for the successful installation of the theme.  Note: Themes are downloaded to your computer in ZIP format – condensed files that are smaller and quicker to download. You will need a program to “unzip” these files before you load them onto you hosting companies server. WinZip is the standard for this software.

3.  Using an FTP client (I use FileZilla) to access your host web server, connect to the host server.

4.  Upload the theme files to the to “public_html/wordpress/wp-content/themes” directory on your host server. All you do is drag and drop THE ENTIRE DIRECTORY from your computer to your host. Once the files copy you should see this folder on both sides. Make sure all the files are transferred by watching the bottom left corner of your screen. Once the transfer is complete you can close your FTP client.

5.  Log in to the WordPress Administration Panel of your blog – just open up your favorite browser and type in the URL like this: http://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin. Enter your username and password and continue to the next step.

6.  Select the Appearance panel, then Themes.

7.   From the Available Themes section, click on the theme title (or theme screenshot) for the theme you wish to activate.
A preview of the theme will be shown.

8. To activate the theme click the Activate “Theme Name” link in the top right. Your selection should immediately become active.

Clear as mud, right?

Watch this video that will show you what to do.

Adding Themes to WordPress

Note: Whenever you do something to your site, you can click the View site link to test it. I tend to just keep it open in a different tab and then refresh the resulting page.

Building a Website Step 5: How to Install WordPress Plugins

WordPress plugins are small applications, almost always free, that add to the functionality and usability of your site.

WordPress Plugins are available from several sources. The “official” source for WordPress plugins is Official WordPress Plugins Repository.

As with themes, there are two ways to install a theme in WordPress.

Method #1:

1.  From the Administrator’s Panel, go to Plugins, Add new.

2.  Watch the video and follow the instructions:

How To Install Plugins In WordPress 2.8

Method #2:

You can also use the FTP client to upload the plugin files. If you choose to do that, download them to the “public_html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins” directory on your host server.

Once you upload a plugin, you need to go to the Plugins page in your Administrator’s panel, and Activate the selected plugins.

Some of the most popular and recommended plugins include:

Google Analytics – Go to Google and login or sign up for an account.Under My Account choose Analytics to register your site. Copy and paste your ID # in the plugin page.

Akismet – you will need a key from WordPress to activate this spam stopper.

Contact form 7 – allows you to configure a contact form to use on your website.

WP database backup - configure to send you an with a copy of the database every day.

Feedburner Feedsmith – click on Feedburner and then select the link that says create a FeedBurner feed for “yoursite.com”

WordPress related posts – standard configuration should be ok.

Google XML sitemap –leave the basic configuration as it is. Automatically notifies Google, MSN, Ask. If you want to notify Yahoo (you should) click the link to apply for a free Yahoo ID key.

Let’s Get Social - no configuration required.

Some of the plugins will need configuring, so you may have to read the documentation. However, don’t feel too stressed about your plugins. You can always install a new one when you need it.

Building a Website Step 6: Configure Permalinks

One more thing I recommend you do right away is to set your permalink structure. Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual posts, as well as categories and other lists of your content. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to link to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message.

The default links will look quite ugly, for example, something like this:

http://example.com/?p=N

To change the links into more user-friendly and search engine-friendly structure, follow this video.

How to change Permalinks in WordPress

More Resources

For more information on WordPress, to download free themes and plugins, go to WordPress.org (do not confuse it with WordPress.com).

You can find detailed tutorias here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page.

Many people are posting really useful videos on Youtube.com about WordPress.

Building a website is usually the first step of some bigger project. Perhaps you want to build a website for your business, build a website for your resume, or create a portfolio website. You may want to sell a product, sell many products on e-commerce website, or to make money by providing information on your site and generate some passive income.

What You Need to Make Your Website A Success

Let’s look at the components of building a successful website.

There are many different ways that you can use to build a website and an online business, but generally, to set up a successful and profitable website you will need the following components:

1. A website itself. I talked about this in detail in this website building step-by-step tutorial. Your site can be a big site with hundreds of pages, or just a simple site with a few pages of content. Sometimes even a one page will be enough.
2. Product or service that fills a specific NEED. This can be a physical product, an affiliate offer, service, an electronic product (ebook, report, or software), etc. Your product can just be INFORMATION that you will be providing on your site. You can make money on the information that you provide on your site, by placing advertising, such as Google Adsense.
3. Mailing List. You may also want to add a sign-up form to capture email addresses and create a mailing list – your biggest asset.
4. Copywriting. You can write your content yourself or you can pay someone to write it for you.
5. Promotion and marketing. There are many ways you can promote your website for FREE on the Internet: by writing articles and posting them on free article websites, making videos and posting them on video sites, such as Youtube.com, commenting on popular blogs in related niches, participating in forums, and many others. There are also many ways to Pay per Click – and found out the only traffic you get is from your wallet to Google’s bank account!
6. Search engine optimization. This will help you attract traffic from the search engines.

Many people shy away from the thought of building their own website because they they feel that in order to get a website built professionally, they will have to pay a thousands of dollars to hire a web designer and programmer.

What many people do not realize is that with the new generation of web tools you can easily create professionally looking websites very inexpensively.  The cost to build a website is really negligible if you do it the way I teach you on this site, considering all the benefits that come with owning your own website(s).

How Much Does it Cost to Build a Website

Let’s look at the basic costs of setting up your own website:

1. Domain Name. This is essential. About $9 per year.
2. Hosting. About $50-$100 per year.
3. Building the Website. You can easily build a site yourself by following my Build A Website course and buy a professionally designed theme for under $100. Custom graphic design is not essential, but if you want something special, look at spending around $300 in design.
4. Mailing List/Autoresponder. The cost is around $20 per month or $200 per year (paid in advance).
   So up to this point you are looking at a startup cost of around $400, which doesn’t have to be paid all at once. You may want some extras, but that’s your initial costs for setting up a basic online business, for an ENTIRE YEAR.
5. Education. In addition to the expenses above, you also have to add an important expense, perhaps the most important of all, which is education. You need to have a step-by-step approach that you can use to build your online business. And then you need to continue your education on an ongoing basis.

Of course, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you may end up spending a whole lot more money. And worse, you may not make any money, so you’ll waste your time as well.

So right now, with less than $400 – or even less than that if you wanted - you can start your own online business. Compared to the cost of starting a business in the “real world,” starting an online business is actually the LEAST expensive way to start any kind of business, ever!

The two things that I want to stress that are CRITICAL are:

***START NOW.*** Don’t try to figure out everything BEFORE taking action – you will learn so much more from doing things – building websites, writing articles to promote them, etc., - than from reading other people’s stories and ebooks.

***WORK WITH PERSISTENCE.*** It takes a lot of work to build a successful business online. Do not ever believe anyone who tells you that it’s easy. NEVER believe in any Get Rich Quick  schemes. Period.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?

What are your thoughts? Do you have a website? Are you making money online? Enter your feedback into comment section. I’m looking to hear from you!

So, you installed your first WordPress site, and you are eager to add your first post. 

I have good news for you.

Crafting posts and pages in WordPress is super easy!

If you have ever used any text editor, or wrote an email message, then you should have no difficulty writing your first post in WordPress.

Writing a Post In WordPress

To add a new post, click on Posts, Add New (1).

Type the title of your post into the top field (2). You will see the “Permalink” appear right under the title, which you can edit this if you wish. For example:

Permalink: http://buildawebsiteacademy.com/writing-posts-in-wordpress/

Type your text (3) using the buttons to add formatting.

The WordPress editor offers a wide range of styling options, but my advice is to keep it simple. Click on the icon marked with number (4) to reveal more formatting options.  You may want to add:

Headings. Headings are a great way to organize a blog post. Before actually writing a post, you can write down a couple of subtitles for your post. Since Heading 1 is usually reserved for the page title, what you will ever need to structure a blog post is Heading 2 and in some cases Heading 3. You can use them to break down your main topic into subtopics, or maybe a list (yes, a list is more powerful when using headings).  Use subheads every few paragraphs, even in a 300-word post.

Hyperlinks. Link to resources that can be valuable to your readers. I select the Open link in new window option, as I don’t want you to leave my blog. 

Lists. Most readers love lists!  This doesn’t mean you have to make a list out of everything, but if you have “list material”, do use them! Don’t let your cool content fade away between your paragraphs – use bulleted points whenever you can.

Use bold text and italics for emphasis on words and phrases.

Pictures and videos. They make the pages colorful and viewers get to see a little of your part of the world (see description below).

When writing your post, you have the option of using the visual or HTML mode of the editor (5). The visual mode lets you see your post as is, while the HTML mode shows you the code and replaces the WYSIWYG editor buttons with quicktags.

Adding Categories

Categories are the general topics the post can be classified in. Most bloggers have 7-10 categories for their content, each post typically is assigned to one category. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To add a new category, click the Add New Category. You can manage your categories by going to Posts, Categories.

Adding Tags

Tags are to micro-categories for your blog, similar to including index entries for a page. Posts with similar tags are linked together when a user clicks one of the tags. Add new tags to the post by typing the tag into the box and clicking “Add”.

Adding Pictures, Video, and Audio Files

Click on the desired Upload/Insert icon to add a picture, video or audio file.

Indicate the location of the file (on your computer, or from URL)

Insert the file into the post.

Click Insert into Post, and that’s it!

Adding video to your posts can be very powerful, whether it is your own video, or someone else’s video from Youtube or Viddler.
Now, you can use the same method for adding video, but I prefer just to ‘embed’ the video to my posts. This is not as difficult as you may think. Go to Youtube.com, find the video you want to embed and copy the ‘Embed Code’.

Switch to HTML editor and paste the code into your post. It will look something like this:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="344"
codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param
name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src"
value="http://www.youtube.com/v/q9b0jzcq0C4&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;" /><param name="allowfullscreen"
value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"
src="http://www.youtube.com/v/q9b0jzcq0C4&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;" allowfullscreen="true"
allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object>

When you are ready with your new page, click Save Draft to save it without posting to your site, or Publish (6).

A Few Practical Tips:

• Spell Check and Proof Read.  While there are spell check Plugins available, but even those can’t check for everything. Some serious writers will write their posts in a text editor with spell check, check all the spelling and proof it thoroughly before copying and pasting into WordPress.
• Preview your posts as you edit. You can preview your post as you make your changes. I usually keep two windows open, one for editing, one for viewing the final layout.
• Toggle Full Screen Mode. To make your editing screen larger, you can use the Full Screen Mode (Alt +Shift +G). 
• Increase the size of the post box. What I always do, is when I start a new WordPress site, I change the size of the post box to make it larger. It makes writing and editing your posts easier. To do that, go to Settings, Writing. Enter the desired number of lines for your post box (I use “40″), and click on Save Changes.

There are many things that I did not cover in this post (like optimizing the post for the search engines), but I don’t want to overwhelm you.

Watch this video that will show you how to add a new post and gives some other useful tips, not discussed here.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?

What are your thoughts? Do you have a website? Are you making money online? Enter your feedback into comment section. I’m looking to hear from you!

I have some good news for you.

You can create a beautifully designed website with amazing features even if you don’t possess graphic design skills and don’t have any money on a designer fees.

How?

Your best bet is to look for an existing, professionally designed WordPress Theme and choose the one you like best. Once you install it and activate it, you will have a beautifully designed website that is ready go.

Just fill it with your content, and promote it in the search engines and social media.

Below are some tips on making that happen.

How to Design a Website Without Graphic Design or Programming Skills Whatsoever

If you are looking for a WordPress theme, the good news is that there are literally THOUSANDS of themes available for WordPress. The bad news is that you will have to choose just one for your website (which can be challenging, if you have problems with making choices when presented with too many options, like I often do).

Most of the themes are FREE, which is usually a good thing – believe me, I love free – however, in this case I believe it’s NOT the best way to go.

If you expect quality design and support that will provide answers to your questions, I recommend you purchase your theme template from a respected source. Also, most paid themes come with back-end functionality that free themes don’t provide. For example, some paid themes will allow you to change the colors specify the number and width of sidebars, change your header graphics, add your feedburner id, advertising, analytics code, right from the dashboard (without the need to tweak the code).

Plus, if you end up needing to customize the theme even further, the code of premium themes is usually very clean and easy to work with.

My suggestions for the best premium WordPress themes are:

** Thesis.  I have been using Thesis for a long time now, and I really love it. It works straight out-of-the-box, without any tweaking. The layout is very flexible, allowing you to choose the width of the columns, how many columns you want (1, 2, or 3) and where you want your sidebars to be located (left, or right-hand side). Once you buy it, you will get lifetime updates of the theme – with new features and more powerful features available with every new release. I have to admit, though, the out-of -the-box design is very plain, so you’ll need to spend time tweaking the colors, and designing custom header, if you want a blog design that stands out from the crowd. I also don’t like the fact that there are no footer design options from the admin panel. Plus, Thesis is rather pricey, compared to other themes.

** Elegant Themes.  This site runs on an Elegant Theme. I really love the clean design and rich textures that many of the Elegant Themes use. For $39 subscription price per YEAR for ALL themes, it’s hard to beat the price, too. You will get the Photoshop files too.

** StudioPress. I have used many Studio Press themes, and they are really great, especially for business websites or blogs. They easy to work with, even customizing the html code has been super easy. I love their magazine themes, and especially the Platinum, as well as their theme for realtors, Agent Press. (Read the case study.)

** WooThemes. They provide some free themes on their site, so you can download them and try them to get a sampling of Woo Themes and how they work.

** ThemeForest.  At ThemeForest you can buy HTML templates as well as themes for popular CMS products, with prices ranging from just $5 up to $40.  There are some great WordPress themes on their site, but there are so many of them, that it may give you a headache just trying to find what you need. They are contributed by different authors, so their quality may vary, but the good thing is that you can see how many purchases were made, the average rating that the theme has, and read user comments. In the comments area you may see if the users have any problems with the theme, and whether the author responds to the questions in a promptly.

When choosing a theme for your website, consider:

** What is the main objective of your site? Is it to display your portfolio? Sell a product? Build a list of subscribers? Build an authority blog? Display properties for sale (if you are a real estate agent)? There are themes that are designed with a specific objective in mind.

** Who is your audience?

** Who is your competition and what do their websites look like?

** Is it easy to customize? Keep in mind that you can usually change the header pretty easily. There are some things that may be  harder to change, such as the font, but background color and the header are usually pretty simple to change if you like the theme but hate the color.  Thesis will let you change all these attributes from the dashboard.

** Where will you put your opt-in box?

** Do you want advertising on your site?

** How many sidebars do you want? Are you going to have categories in the sidebar? Are your categories going to be at the top of the page? Do you want them nested? Are your pages going to show up at the top of the page.

** How much content will you have?

** How will your content be organized: where will the categories, pages appear; do you want top navigation menus, etc. For example, if you are planning on having 3 or 4 main categories, with many subcategories, you may want to consider. You can set up each of those categories as a column on the front page and your visitors will be able to navigate quite easily through the content.

** Will you be posting lots of video, audio, pictures? Some themes are specifically designed for video or pictures.

Still can’t decide? Check out your competitor’s sites. What do their websites look like? What features do they use? Where is their opt-in box? Do they use pop-ups?

Of course, you don’t need to obsess about which theme to choose, as with WordPress, changing the theme is super easy.

All you have to do is to upload the theme to the Themes folder of your website, go to the Themes page on your administrator’s dashboard, click Activate, and ta-da, there you have it – a completely new look for your site!

Note: OK, so in reality it’s going to be more work than just that. You will usually have to adjust some settings, because every theme is different. But it’s still super fast, when you consider that you are getting a completely redesigned website!

Before you even think about building your website, you should register a domain name. 

Your domain name represents the URL (or permanent web address) of your website. Therefore, when anyone types in “yourdomain.com” or “www.yourdomain.com”, they will see your website.

Definition: The domain name is an alphanumeric unique name that identifies individual web sites on the Internet. The domain can be of any length up to 67 characters, which includes the 26 letters of the English alphabet, numbers 0-9, and hyphens (-).The domain name cannot begin or end with a hyphen but, can contain one or more hyphens. The domain names have a suffix or extention, called also TLD (Top Level Domain), which is based on the type of organization it is associated with. Common suffixes include: .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us etc.

1. Choose a Memorable Domain Name

In order for people to easily spread the word about your website you need a domain name that is easy for people to remember. People often talk about what they read online when they are speaking to friends in the “real world”, so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL.

2. Choose a Domain Name That Reflects Your Website /Business

You should choose a domain name that truly reflects what your website is all about.

It’s also worth trying to get a keyword or two that is relevant to the market you intend to target if possible. This will help for search engine rankings as well as for increasing click through rates from the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).

It’s unlikely to be able to get exactly the domain name you want, so be creative and look for good variations. Brainstorm a few ideas and using some generic words that you can add to your keywords and you should come up with a few possible domains to choose from.

When brainstorming, try to come up with as many words as you can think of related to your preferred domain name. Also, list as many words as you can think of that are related to the content of your website.

Make different combinations with the listed words that are

As you brainstorm for domain names, you can at the same time start searching for the availability of these domains on the registrar website.

3. Long or Short Domain Name?

Domain names can be of any length up to 67 characters. You don’t have to settle for an obscure domain name like avab.com when what you mean is AcmeVideosAndBooks.com.

Having said that, there appears to be some disagreement about whether a long or short domain name is better.

Some argue that shorter domain names are easier to remember, easier to type and far less susceptible to mistakes: for example, “getit.com” is easier to remember and less prone to typos than “connecttomywebsiteandobtainit.com”.

Others argue that a longer domain name is usually easier on the human memory – for example, “gaepw.com” is a sequence of unrelated letters that is difficult to remember and type correctly, whereas if we expand it to its long form, “GetAnEconomicallyPricedWebsite.com”, we are more likely to remember the domain name.

Some of these arguments are actually academic. It’s increasingly difficult to get short meaningful domain names. I have not checked, but I’m fairly certain that names like “getit.com” and “good.com” have long been sold. If you manage to get a short domain name though, the key is to make sure it’s a meaningful combination of characters and not the obscure “gaepw.com” in my contrived example above.

Long domain names that have your site keywords in them also have an advantage in that they fare better in a number of search engines. The latter give preference to keywords that are also found in your domain names. So, for example, if you have a site on free C++ compilers with a domain name like freecpluspluscompilers.com, it might fare better in a search for “free C++ compilers” than my other site, thefreecountry.com.

Which would I go for? I’d go for the shorter name if I can get a meaningful one, but I’m not averse to longer names. However, I would probably avoid extremely long names verging on 67 characters. Aside from the obvious problem that people might not be able to remember such a long name, it would also be a chore typing it and trying to fit it as a title on your web page.

Tips on How to Choose a Good Domain Name for Your Website Or Business (thesitewizard.com)

4. .COM, .ORG, .NET, etc?

As a general rule it’s best to grab the .com version if you can, as it is the extension  that most people will use automatically, as it’s the most popular.

If you really want a particular domain name and the .com isn’t available then you could go for the .net domain, a local country (or state) version like .co.uk or .ca, or if you are going to be building a primarily information based (non commercial) blog, then going for a .org is a good choice as people tend to recognize these sites as “non-profit” free information sites. Some people advice avoiding .info domain as they have been used heavily to build spam sites, because they are so cheap to register.

Having said that, for Search Engine Optimization purposes and how the search engines treat your site for ranking, it really doesn’t matter which you go for, there are some very popular sites and blogs that are on .net for instance.

You register your domain name through a domain name registrar or hosting provider. You simply check that your preferred domain name is available, then register it (online). Domain names are registered on an annual basis, and you can usually register it many years in advance (or set ‘auto-renew’). Prices usually range from between $8 to $15 for new domain registration. 

5. Registering Your Domain

Usually the hosting companies provide one free domain registration when you sign up for a new hosting account.  If you register the name with anyone else other than your hosting company, you will have to take several extra steps, including changing name servers. So, for your first domain I recommend that you go with your hosting company.

If you want to register more domains and want to save on domain name registration costs, you can use www.1and1.com (I use them and I can recommend them).

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?

What are your thoughts? Do you have a website? Are you making money online? Enter your feedback into comment section. I’m looking to hear from you!

Many people enjoy reading stories of other people’s journey online – I know I do. They often provide words of wisdom, words of warning, and inspiration that help me keep going.

So here is my story for anyone who cares to read it…

I’m originally from Warsaw, Poland. I was born still in the communist era. I witnessed the rise of the Solidarity, the strikes, the marshal law, and the Round Table talks, and the first semi-free elections in 1989.

I arrived into the US in the summer of 1991 – just for a three-month vacation, but was offered a job, and decided to stay, for “just a little while.”

Almost twenty years later, I’m still here.

I lived in New York, Florida, and now live in New Jersey (but I’m still looking for “my place on earth“).

I had worked for small software companies (two of them were Polish-owned), doing everything from answering the phones, doing administrative work, writing step-by-step user guides and tutorials, testing the software, doing translations, creating PowerPoint presentations, and doing whatever else was necessary. (I have a degree in Linguistics from the Warsaw University, so when I came here, my knowledge of the English language was well above that of an average immigrant).

All these jobs were OK, definitely much better than what most immigrants start with when they arrive into a new country, but after a while I felt a strong desire for change...

Unfortunately, although I wanted – I could not look for something else, as I was on a worker’s (H1-b) visa, not having the green card that would give me real freedom to do what I wanted.

Alas, at that time I was not aware of all the possibilities that existed on the Internet…

I had been thinking the whole time about going back to Poland – at the time when I left it was a true “land of opportunities” for young people with my type of education and experience…but once I started the process of applying for the green card, I did not want to lose that…I wanted to wait just a year or two longer… Finally, I got the green card, but at that time I already had other things on my mind…

My son was born on November 23rd, 2004 and since that time I have been mostly a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom). After the birth of my son I worked on some projects at home, writing user guides for one of my previous employers, but it was only sporadic work and income was negligible.

I began thinking about what to do with the “rest of my life” … even before the birth of my son, I knew I wanted to MAKE A CHANGE… and yet for a long time my “destiny” eluded me …I could not see what was right in front of me….

I wanted a job where with the potential to make real money on my terms.

**Real money** means being able to support a family of three, in case my husband loses his job, or wishes to quit his job and take a year off sailing around the world (his dream). I have to admit I’m not there yet (especially, with our lifestyle – we both love to travel to exotic places, skiing, and doing other things that can be costly), but I keep working on it!

**My terms** means I could set my own hours and work wherever I wanted. I would not have to commute to work every day to stay in the office from 9-5. My son was still a baby, and leaving him for a full day at a daycare center just wasn’t something I even considered. I wanted to be able to work from home, or whatever place we travel to or choose to travel or relocate. I wanted a “portable” career, something that I could take with me wherever I went. If I happen to be on a beach , I could take my computer with me and just type away. I could set my own hours, working at night or during the day, without the 9-5 office routine.

In addition to that, the job of my dreams would be interesting, challenging, rewarding and really useful.

I have thought long and hard about what I could do with my life. Here are some things I considered:

• I thought about getting a job doing translations, documentation writing, or teaching – but in all these cases you sell your time, and there is only so much time in a day. When you stop, the money stops coming in… Besides, these are not the highest paying jobs, so if you do it part time (as I wanted to do it, at least initially), it might not be worth paying for the daycare, etc.
• I thought I would love to work for a web design company…but I did not feel I had sufficient qualifications (I’m not a designer or programmer), and it’s very competitive. Besides, I didn’t think anyone would hire me to work part time….
• I thought about real estate appraisal and even completed the certification course while I was still pregnant. Appraisal seemed attractive, because the money is good and work schedule can be flexible, but let’s be honest here – it’s not the most exciting subject, and it turned out it’s pretty hard to get into (you need to spend two years working as an apprentice).
• Then I thought about real estate sales (I completed the study course, too). It’s definitely easier to get into and income potential is there, but …I don’t really have the personality for this job, it often requires you to work evenings and weekends, plus you really have to work hard to establish yourself in a neighborhood, so I would be binding yourself to a place, and if we moved, I would be back to square one.

I felt stuck. I did not want to have a job where I would have to spend most of the time away from home (and send my son to daycare). I did not want to trade my time for hourly (or yearly) wage.

I wanted something where I could set the rules…where I could LEVERAGE my time…

When it finally occurred to me that I could CREATE MY OWN DREAM JOB ONLINE…it was like a revelation,… suddenly a light bulb finally went on in my head…

and more than that…I realized I could LEVERAGE my work to create a BUSINESS and a LIFESTYLE that I wanted…

I just wish I thought about it sooner – like ten years ago!

One day, I read a book (a real paper book, not an e-book) about making money online, and I was hooked.

Sure I knew many people were getting rich online, but it all seemed TOO COMPLICATED, TOO TECHNICAL and so OUT OF REACH.

I had built some websites before for my one of my previous employers, but it was years ago and at that time it was a laborious process (even though I used a wysiwyg editor, FrontPage)… I certainly did not believe the claims that you could make six figure income working three hours a week!

Besides there seemed to be so many ways to do it.

How do I know which one to choose?

Somehow, I stumbled upon information about how easy it is to build websites in WordPress, and decided to give it a try. I purchased a domain, setup hosting, and installed my first WordPress site. It took me a couple of days – I did not use one-click installation, but setup the database myself, copied and edited the config files. I read Yaro Starak’s ebook about how to make money blogging and started writing posts.

After a month or two, I felt I needed to learn more things. I started to create niche websites, writing articles, building hubpages, squidoo pages, and I don’t know what else… hundreds and hundreds of pages…and I can tell you this…

Whatever it is you want to achieve – IT CAN BE DONE ONLINE.

You can choose what you want to do – it may be your profession or business-related, it may be about passion, desire to change the world, making lots of money, or just creating some passive income on the side.

Anybody with simple computer skills, persistence, and guidance, can build a business online, leverage their expertise and make money.

Is it easy? I don’t want to lie to you. The honest truth is that in the beginning it’s NOT easy. It’s confusing. You need to learn a lot of things. You don’t know where to begin.

The possibilities are endless, but to weed through all the information – and misinformation – that is out there and figuring out HOW to make it work, takes time and effort. And then to actually IMPLEMENT it and start making real income – it’s really neither fast, nor easy.

There are many “gurus” that promise to reveal their best way to ‘fast and easy money’ – there are plenty of HOT and GUARANTEED schemes to make money online, such as “How To Earn A Six Figure Income Working Three Hours A Day” and such. But guess what? This stuff doesn’t work. There are NO shortcuts to success.

BUT…

…the good news is it’s really not that hard either …

…if you start taking action.

I’ve tried many Internet marketing and “make money online” products, read many blogs and ebooks, but – most importantly – I created hundreds and hundreds of pages, and learned from experience what works – for me – and what does NOT.

Even though initially I was not sure what my dream job would be exactly, with time it became more and more clear. Initially, I created a lot of affiliate-type of pages, and niche sites built for specific keywords. After a while, I began focusing on my passions and true expertise. I also started creating websites for small businesses in my area, and providing Internet marketing consulting services.

This website is my newest projects built on my passion for Internet marketing and making money online. I want to help people build their web presence, but, more importantly….I want to LEVERAGE YOUR TIME AND TALENT to create a business and lifestyle YOU want.

I want to show you how ANYONE – self-employed professional, stay-at-home-mom, small business owner, or simply an individual with a passion – can use the Internet, email, information products, free online and offline promotion – to LEVERAGE your expertise…earn extra money online…and create lifestyle YOU want!

Whatever your skills- real estate, finance,law, parenting, arts and crafts, or dog training – you can make money on the Internet by building relationships, creating value and helping others, who are looking for just the thing that you offer.

My advice for everyone who is still reading this long post,
but does not have a website or blog:

1. Don’t wait until you have it all figured out. While it’s important to have a plan, expect it you change as you learn more and do more.

2. Start taking action! Read a good WordPress site setup tutorial and set up your website or blog TODAY! You will learn much more by doing, than reading other people’s stories or how-to guides.

3. Don’t try to do it all. There are many ways to profit from online presence. Define your initial strategy, focus on it, and do the things that work best for you. Skip the rest for now, or outsource it if you can afford it.

4. Expect success, but don’t be discouraged by lack of quick results. Building a business online takes time. Just keep taking action and keep learn what works and what doesn’t.

Of course, now it’s easy for me to say: just make a plan and stick to it, but if you don’t know the basic things – how are you going to make it work???

When I was just starting out it I did not know where to start either. There were so many things I needed to learn: building websites, bringing visitors to my pages, article marketing, keyword research, search engine optimization, different ways to monetize your websites, using free web 2.0 properties, building email lists, setting up autoresponder sequence, and on and on…

At BuildAWebsiteAcademy.com, I want to make it easier for you by outlining the steps you need to take to be successful online.

Don’t wait another year, don’t wait another day.

Start building something online TODAY.

1. Find a market
2. Build a website
3. Offer value
4. Build a community
5. Ask and listen to what your audience wants
6. Find ways to profit from that

Remember, nothing will happen, until you take action!

So, what’s your story online?

I would love to hear from you. Some of the things I’m curious about are:

1. What are your goals online? Is it to make money, promote yourself, your services, your business, interaction with other people, etc?
2. Do you have a website? If yes, what describe it (is it an HTML site, a free blog on Blogger.com or WordPress.com, a self-hosted blog, etc.).
3. Does the website help you achieve your goals?
4. What information/tutorials are you looking for? What type of articles, e-books, or e-courses would you like to see on this website.
5. What do you feel your greatest obstacles are to succeeding online?
6. What do YOU need to become successful online?

…I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you!

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?

Enter your feedback into comment section or use the “Submit” button to type your question.