The Online MLM Blueprint

This is going to be a quick post that I will add to in greater detail later.

Right now, I want to go over why I was dumb, and how you can avoid this dumbness. Here it is:

START A BLOG

The major mistake I made when I started was to set up a "regular" website rather than a blog. I use quotes around "regular" because many people think that a blog is something different than a traditional website, when really it doesn’t have to be. You can use blogging software to create a site that looks the same as any other website out there. But, there are MANY advantages under the surface:

1. You can change the look and feel at the click of a button. Now, I am definitely NOT a web designer or graphic artist or anything, but I’ve done all the work on this website personally, with no formal (or even informal) training. Everything was self-taught. When I started my non-blog software based site, I didn’t know how to use CSS (and still don’t) so when I needed to make a style or template change, I would have to make that change across ALL of my pages. HUGE pain. (If I knew CSS, I would have to go in and make some coding changes. This step is simpler than that with blogging software.)

2. You can quickly change and add powerful functionality changes. By uploading "plugins" or "widgets" you can make site design or functional enhancements quickly, without needing to know any coding at all. Everything becomes plug-n-play, point-n-click. AND it looks great. AND it is really functional.

3. Community support. There are alot of smart people out there that are making fancy plugins, or designing templates, with the blogging software platforms. You can many times get this work for free, or for a small fee, and add it to your site without needing to know the software coding behind it. You generally don’t get this quality of work for free outside of the blogging community. If you use wordpress (what I use for this site), you will have the largest support.

4. Built in SEO. Search engines LOVE blogs, because content is updated regularly. Also, with some plugins like "all in one seo", you can easily make your blog optimally search engine friendly. (You’ll still want to understand some basic seo, do proper research, and apply fundamental principles in your work, but blogs help you out in this arena.)

5. Make Friends! The whole point of blogs is to get user feedback, and have intelligent discussions right on your site. With a normal site, this type of feedback and conversation just isn’t possible.  On the flip side, there are alot of great blogs out there. Go find them (technorati.com is a great place to start, it is a blog search engine), contribute to conversations, learn from them, and make some friends!

So, those are the 5 reasons you want to start a blog vs not using blog software as the basis for your site. You can still create traditional "static" pages that don’t have a comment section, or a date of posting. These are more long term type pages, and can be intergrated in any way you like. That is what I do with my site here, in the "Pages" section and "Resources" section.

And, the blog software like wordpress is free too! You can even go to wordpress.com and start a blog for free. (Doing that is more limited to you though, as compared to having your own domain, which is what I recommend.)

Coming soon I will have video and written tutorials that cover:

1. How to set up your blog

2. How to change the look of your blog

3. All the major plugins you will want to add.

4. How to monetize your blog

5. Communities to join to get the word out about your blog.

6. How to get users to participate with your blog.

Within HOURS, you can have all of that up and running!

So, to end this post, I’ll ask you a question:

Do you have a blog yet? If so, what software do you use, how long have you had it, what topics do you cover, and how do you promote it? If you don’t have a blog, are you going to start one soon? And, why don’t you have one already? (for me, it was fear of a big learning curve on how to do it that kept me from doing it right from the beginning)

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