DazzlinDonna » make a living in your pajamas http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog Making A Living Online Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:46:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – The Entire Series http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-the-entire-series/ http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-the-entire-series/#comments Sun, 24 Jun 2007 19:10:21 +0000 Donna http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/2007/06/24/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-the-entire-series/ Now that the series How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas is complete, I thought I would do a final wrap-up post that gives you two things. One – you get a list of all ten parts of the series. And Two – you get the option of just downloading the entire series as a .pdf file. I figured some of you might want to have a .pdf with everything in it so you could read it offline or print it out.

Download the .pdf of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas.

or

See a complete online listing:

:)

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]]> http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-the-entire-series/feed/ 14 How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Ten http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-ten/ http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-ten/#comments Sun, 24 Jun 2007 11:01:12 +0000 Donna http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/2007/06/24/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-ten/ This series detailing how you can make money online is complete. Now when friends and family ask me “What do you do”? and “How do you make money”?, I’ll probably still give them the short answer … “I have web sites that make money via advertising.” However, if they proceed to ask the third all-important question, “How can I do that too”?, I’ll smile and tell them that I will email a link to this series that will answer their question in detail.

I hope that if you are considering trading in your work clothes for pajamas, that my little tutorial has helped you get started on that journey. One thing to note. Everything I’ve shared is common. This method of making a living online is one that thousands of other people do. I’m not special. I don’t have any particular talent that is unique to me that enables me to make a living in my pajamas. And that’s a good thing because that means you don’t have to be me to do the same thing. You can do this just by being you.

Do all of my money-making sites follow this exact format? No, in fact most of them aren’t blogs, but that’s because most of them were created long before blogging came into existence. If I had to create those sites all over again now, however, this is how I’d do it. All NEW sites I create do use this basic formula, and I believe it is the best way for most people to get started.

There is more to learn, no doubt, and I’ve listed many other places below that will help you continue that education. But there is nothing stopping you from getting started right now. You have the basic knowledge you need to make this work. The rest is up to you. Apply your talents, skills, and knowledge in a way that gives readers something of value and in time you should see a return on that effort in the form of increasing traffic and revenue.

Below is a recap of all of the references and resources that I’ve mentioned throughout the series. I wish you much luck, much money, and lots of pajamas!

Resources: *

Technical Aspects

Domain Name Registrar
www.GoDaddy.com

Host
HostGator

Setting up a blog video series
Video tutorial

Making money

Super affiliate handbook

Affiliate Business Blueprint

Free Blog Profits Blueprint

Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program that gives you direct access to your own blog mentor, plus all kinds of audios, vidoes
and e-lessons to help you make money from your own blog.

Adman WordPress Plugin to easily insert ad code into your blog.

Get a PayPal account so you can easily purchase things, and more importantly, easily receive money from others.

More Information

How bloggers make money from blogs
Choosing profitable blog topics
DoshDosh
Blogging for beginners
Headline tips

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

*


Disclosure: Affiliate links may be used within this post for products I recommend. They in no way affect my judgement of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.

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]]> http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-ten/feed/ 13 How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Nine http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-nine/ http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-nine/#comments Sat, 23 Jun 2007 12:34:55 +0000 Donna http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/2007/06/23/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-nine/ In the first 8 parts of the series, How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas, you learned quite a few things:

  • What you were going to focus on as a topic
  • How long to expect it to take to come to fruition
  • How to purchase a domain name
  • How to purchase a hosting plan
  • How to install WordPress
  • How to personalize WordPress with a new theme
  • How to begin blogging

You’ve put all of this together and now you are asking the burning question, “How do I actually make money doing this?”. As with so many things, the general answer is simple, and the details are a bit more complex.

Generally speaking, you will earn money in one of two ways:

  1. Advertising. Advertisers pay you to place their ads on your site.
  2. Affiliate Sales. You promote products you believe in to your readers, and in return, you get paid for any sales that result from your promotions.

Let’s begin with affiliate sales, because the details are pretty straight-forward. The concept here is that companies are willing to pay you a percentage of their sales if you send traffic to them and that traffic purchases a product. So, in our kite flying example, you may become an affiliate of a kite manufacturer. You tell your readers about a kite that the manufacturer makes, and you recommend that they purchase it. You link to the product with a special link code given to you by the manufacturer. Your readers click the link and some of them end up buying the kite. You receive a percentage of the sales price for each of the kites sold to your readers.

Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time, and the industry is stable. It works well for some and not so well for others, but that is typical. Much depends upon the products available in your niche, and the type of readers you have (whether or not they are actively seeking to purchase something). In any case, it is ALWAYS a good idea to at least try affiliate marketing. Sometimes, it can be very lucrative and you would hate to miss out on that.

The quickest way to start testing the affiliate marketing waters is to sign up with Commission Junction. It’s free and easy. Register an account and begin searching through their thousands of affiliate merchant listings for any products that match your topic. Sign up as an affiliate for those that you think would be a good fit, grab the special link code they offer, and place the code on your site. From then on, any clicks on that link that result in sales will earn you a commission. (Note: We’ll discuss the best way to add code into your site near the end of this post).

Now let’s turn our attention to advertising. The general concept of advertising is simple. Just as a magazine or newspaper makes the bulk of its money from the sale of advertising on its pages, you too can make money from the sale of advertising on your site’s pages. Advertising, however, can come in several different forms, so the details can get a little more complicated. Still, advertising can be very, very lucrative, and you should seriously consider using it as a form of monetization.

The various forms of advertising usually consist of:

  • Graphical banner ads
  • Text link ads
  • Contextual ads
  • CPM ads

Each of those may be a direct sale from you to an advertiser, or may be managed via a third party. Generally, if you sell an ad directly to an advertiser, with no middle-man in between, you earn more money for that ad. However, it can be difficult and time-consuming to manage direct ad sales to multiple advertisers on multiple pages. This is usually something you won’t want to even consider doing until your site is well-established and is receiving a lot of traffic.

The better bet for you at this stage is to let a 3rd party manage all ad sales for you. They do all the work in arranging the ad sales, and in return they get a cut of the profit. You get less money, but you are doing almost no work to get it.

Since this is all new to you, I recommend doing what everyone else does in the beginning. Start with Google Adsense.

Adsense is a contextual ad program that allows you to show ads on your pages that are directly related to that page’s content. Because they are related to the content of the page, the readers are more likely to be interested in those ads. You get paid any time a reader clicks on an ad. Unlike affiliate programs, the reader does not have to actually buy anything for you to get paid. Just clicking the ad results in payment to you, however, that payment is much smaller (perhaps just a nickel or a dime). However, lots of traffic generally results in lots of clicks, and those clicks can add up to thousands of dollars per month. Now, I’m going to say this in big bold words to make sure you clearly understand this. NEVER, EVER, CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADS! NOT EVEN ONCE! YOU WILL VERY LIKELY BE BANNED AND WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO MAKE MONEY FROM ADSENSE EVER AGAIN. DO NOT CLICK YOUR OWN ADS. DO NOT ASK YOUR FRIENDS TO CLICK YOUR ADS. DO NOT ENCOURAGE YOUR READERS TO CLICK YOUR ADS. READ THE ADSENSE TOS (TERMS OF SERVICE) CAREFULLY.. Ok, have I made all of that clear enough? It is extremely important that you heed the words or you will be forever upset when you get banned. If you are banned from Adsense, you’ve lost a potentially lucrative source of income. So…don’t do anything to get yourself banned.

The easiest way to place any of these ads on your site (affiliate or Adsense ads) is to use a free WordPress plugin that makes it a little easier to insert code without you having to understand how. I suggest using Adman. Download it, place it your plugins folder, activate it, and use it. You can find detailed instructions at the Adman site.

There you have it. By running a mixture of affiliate advertising and contextual advertising (Adsense), you have a fully monetized site that will begin to earn you some money. If you only have a handful of people coming to your site each month, you probably won’t earn much (maybe enough for a cup of coffee). But as your traffic increases, so will your income. Everything you do from here on out will be working towards creating good content that will attract more good traffic, so that more money can be made.

With time, you’ll want to learn how to become a super affiliate or a pro blogger. The more you know, the more money you can make. I’ve only given the basics here because you are just starting out. You can only handle so much information at one time. But at some point, when you are feeling more comfortable in your new career, you’re going to want to move on the next steps to earn more money. When that time arrives, I suggest the following resources: *

In addition, once you’ve mastered the basics that I’ve outlined in this series, I’d suggest spending some time with the following resources as well.

Problogger Make Money Advice
Choosing Profitable Blog Topics
DoshDosh
Blogging for beginners
Good Headlines

The next post will be the last in the series and will summarize the entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas.

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

*


Disclosure: Affiliate links may be used within this post for products I recommend. They in no way affect my judgement of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: , , , , , , , ,
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]]> http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-nine/feed/ 9 How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Eight http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-eight/ http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-eight/#comments Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:57:02 +0000 Donna http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/2007/06/22/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-eight/ You’ve made it through the first seven steps of the series, “How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas”, and now you finally have all of that setup stuff out of the way. You are ready to begin adding content to your site, in the form of blog posts. A blog post is simply an entry, a piece of content. Your goal is to post an entry at least several times a week, but my preference is once a day if at all possible. Each post will be dedicated to one narrow, concise topic. Let’s say your blog is all about flying kites. A post one day may focus on a broad overview of the different kinds of kites that are available. Another post may give fine details about one particular kite design. Yet another post may be a discussion of the ideal weather conditions for kite flying. And so on and so on…

Although WordPress installs one sample post, you can ignore it for now, and just delete it later. Right now, let’s create our very first real post. Log in to your blog admin (www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin). Click on Write.

WordPress Write a Post

As you can see, you have a form in which to begin entering your blog post. Type in a title in the Title field. The title is of utmost importance. Make the title interesting and descriptive. If your post is about perfect weather conditions for kite flying, a good title might be “The Best Weather for Flying a Kite”.

Now enter the actual content of your post in the Post field. You’ll notice that it is similar to writing in Microsoft Word, in that there are a series of buttons that allow you to Bold, Italicize, Center, etc. above the field. Use them as you would in a word processor. You’ll notice a chain button and a broken chain button. The chain button allows you to set up a link to another web page, and the broken chain button will undo the link. So to make some text link to a web page, just highlight the text, click the chain link button, type in the web page URL in the field that pops up, and you’ve got a linked bit of text.

If you want to include a picture in your post, click on the Browse button next to the File field, and choose a picture from your computer to upload. Type in a title (description is not necessary) and click on Upload. Then choose to insert it into your post.

You’ll also want to categorize your posts, so pick from a category to the right, or add a new one. When you are happy with the final result, just click the Publish button. You’ve just blogged!

This is where all the magic begins. What you blog about, and how informative and/or entertaining you are, is all up to you. People often use the phrase “find your voice” when referring to what you, as a blogger, will convey to the readers of your blog. You have to find your own style. Perhaps you are witty or outrageously funny. Perhaps you are an ace at technical writing. Maybe you can describe things or processes so that anyone, even a novice, can understand. Whatever your style is, use it. Your readers will come to know you via your blogging voice. They will appreciate you for who you are.

It does help to read a few great blogs to get a feel for the different kinds of blogging voices and styles that are out there. Don’t copy someone else’s style, but be aware of what people like and what people don’t like. It will be obvious, trust me.

Now go on, start blogging!

“But wait”, you say, “show me the money”! You’re right, I’ve taken you a long way, and yet I still haven’t shown you how you are actually going to make a living from this. Don’t worry, that’s coming next. I haven’t forgotten about the money. For now, just sit back and create some awesome content on your new site by blogging, and then move on to the next part of the series.

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

:)

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: , , , , ,
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

]]> http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-eight/feed/ 8 How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Seven http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-seven/ http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-seven/#comments Thu, 21 Jun 2007 15:08:30 +0000 Donna http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/2007/06/21/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-seven/ In Part 6 of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas, you installed WordPress, and were rewarded with a site that is ready to go. It, unfortunately, is an ugly site, and no one wants an ugly site. So today’s lesson is a fun one. Let’s beautify the site and give it some personality – hopefully a bit of yours. You are going to find and use a pre-made theme. There are thousands of them available. The process is straightforward.

  • Find a theme you like and download it.
  • Upload it to your blog’s theme directory.
  • Tell WordPress you wish to use that theme.
  • Done. Enjoy your new beautiful web site.

I recently made note of what I believe are the best free GPL WordPress themes available. However, there are thousands of choices, so spend the day browsing through them over at themes.wordpress.net. This is a fun chore. I will often take a few hours out of my day just to browse the newest themes. So go find one you like, download it (all are free), and then come back here for detailed instructions on how to upload it and use it for your own blog.

Once you’ve downloaded your new theme, unzip it. If you don’t have a program that can unzip the files, go download and install any of the free zip file programs that PC World recommends.

Now, that it is unzipped, you need to upload the theme folder and all of its contents to your blog’s themes directory. Once again, you’ll go to your site’s control panel (www.yourdomain.com/cpanel) as directed in the email you received from your hosting company, log in, and choose File Manager.

Cpanel File Manager

You’ll then choose the public_html folder, by clicking on the little folder picture next to public_html.

Cpanel public html folder

Now, you’ll click on the folder next to wp-content, and the folder next to themes, which will take you to the themes directory. This is where you’ll be uploading your new theme folder. Click on the Upload Files link.

Cpanel Upload Files

Browse your computer for the theme folder you just downloaded and unzipped. Click on Upload and wait until the entire folder and all of its contents have been uploaded to your blog’s theme directory.

Cpanel Browse Files

Now log into your WordPress admin, by going to www.yourdomain.com/blog/wp-admin. Click on Presentation. Look for the theme you just uploaded in the list of Available Themes, click on it, and you are done. Go to www.yourdomain.com to see your brand new, beautiful site.

Let’s do one final thing to our new WordPress blog before we begin writing content. Log in to your admin (www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin), and click on Options. Now click on Permalinks. Select name and date based, and click on the Update Permalink Structure button. Scroll down, and you’ll see a bunch of gobbledygook code listed. Grab all of that code by highlighting it and pressing Ctrl-C. Now open up Notepad on your computer and press Ctrl-V to paste that code into Notepad. Choose File / Save from Notepad’s menu, and type in “.htaccess” in the filename portion and save to your Desktop. DO NOT have .txt at the end. DO have the quotation marks in there. You want to type the quotes. “.htaccess”. Now upload this .htaccess file to the public_html directory in your Cpanel File Manager. Do so by logging into your cpanel (www.yourdomain.com/cpanel), choosing File Manager, clicking on the folder next to public_html, clicking the Upload Files link, browsing to the .htaccess file you just created on your desktop, and clicking the Upload button.

Whew! All done. Although there are a lot of things you can do with your WordPress blog to tweak it a little more, you don’t need to deal with any of that for now (or ever for that matter). If you want to learn more about WordPress, and everything you can do with your new blog, visit the official WordPress site. Otherwise, sit back, smile and get ready to begin your new career.

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

:)

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This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

]]> http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-seven/feed/ 7 How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Six http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-six/ http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-six/#comments Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:22:02 +0000 Donna http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/2007/06/20/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-six/ The last two lessons on How To Make A Living in Your Pajamas may have seemed a bit overwhelming and technical, and I’m sorry for that. But you’ll be pleased to know that today’s lesson is very different.

Today, you’re going to install WordPress on your brand new site. What is WordPress? Well, it’s the coolest thing since ice. It’s a blogging system, that lets you easily become a blogger and have your very own web site without having to know how to actually make a blog or a website. How cool is that?

Ok, here are the super-easy instructions for installing WordPress.

Remember that email that HostGator* sent you with all of the information you need to know about your new hosting plan? Somewhere in that email is an instruction for going to your new control panel. It’s probably something like www.yourdomainname.com/cpanel/ . And the email also tells you what your username and password are to log into your control panel (CPanel).

So…do that. Go to the web address listed in the email for your control panel, and log in.

There? Good.

Now, click on the picture (icon) that is above the word Fantastico. See it? great.

You’ll see a long list of things you can install if you wish. One of the items in that list is WordPress. Click on it.

Now click on New Installation. Answer the questions it asks you. Don’t worry, these are easy questions. Here’s a sample picture. If I left something blank, you should too. And below the picture are some extra instructions for answering these questions.

WordPress install

Admin access data. Choose a username and password you would like to use in order to access the WordPress admin panel after installation is completed.

Base configuration. Type a nickname you would like to use. The nickname is used whenever you leave comments or write an entry on the blog, so choose something you don’t mind the public seeing. The admin email address is where information about the administration of the blog will be sent. Make sure to use an email address that you check regularly. Put in the site url and a short description of your new blog.

Email account configuration. Leave this blank.

Click on the Install WordPress button at the bottom.

Verify that the information you provided is correct and click on Finish installation.

Stand up, twirl around 3 times, sit down, and find your new WordPress blog installed and ready to go!

Admittedly, your brand new blog isn’t pretty at this point. Go ahead, look at it. Go to www.yourdomain.com. But we’ll make it pretty in the next lesson, and it will be easy. Ok?

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

*


Disclosure: Affiliate links may be used within this post for products I recommend. They in no way affect my judgement of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

]]> http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-six/feed/ 7 How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Five http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-five/ http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-five/#comments Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:43:35 +0000 Donna http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/2007/06/19/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-five/ The next step in our series is to purchase a hosting plan with a web hosting company. Your web site has to “reside” somewhere, and that’s the function of a hosting company – to provide you with the space for your site on one of their web servers. There are tens of thousands of hosting companies out there, all vying for your business. In some ways, that’s a good thing as more competition means more choices and better prices for you. But trying to find a good hosting company in all of that is very difficult. I’ve been through dozens of really terrible hosting companies, and there’s almost nothing worse than a bad hosting company. Your site disappears and you also can’t get in touch with the host. Now what? You wait, and worry, and sweat, and swear. I have several hosting companies that I use now that I love, but some of them are for my high-end sites (that means they cost a lot of money). You may eventually need to upgrade to a high-priced host, but only when your site is so popular and bringing in enough revenue to justify the extra cost. For now, you need a low-priced host that is reliable, has good customer service, and gives you everything you need. For that kind of hosting plan, I recommend HostGator. *

HostGator hosting plans
HostGator, like most hosting companies, has several plans to choose from. The cheapest is $6.95/month (called the Hatchling plan), but you have to pay for a year in advance for that plan. If you’d prefer to pay monthly, or in 3 or 6 month chunks instead, the next best plan is $9.95/month for the Baby plan. With the Baby plan, you also get to host as many sites as you want for the same price, so in the future that may come in very handy for you. If it were me, I’d choose the Baby plan, but the Hatchling plan will work as well. (Don’t worry about what all those numbers mean right now. Basically, that’s just letting you know how much space is available for your site under each plan. Any of the plans have plenty of everything for you right now, so that’s not a big consideration at this point).

Just click on the Order Now link in the column of whichever plan you choose.

HostGator existing domain
You can see that the Order Wizard will ask you to choose a domain option. Since you already have your domain name, you’ll want to select I will use My Existing Domain and update My Nameservers only. Then, you need to type in the domain name you purchased (such as flykites.com) into the space that says Existing Domain:. Click Next and proceed to fill out the information requested to finish the purchase.

Once you’ve completed the transaction, you’ll receive an email from HostGator with information about your account. You definitely want to save this in a safe place. I usually save the email AND print it out. In any case, within this email will be the nameservers that have been assigned to your site. You’ll need to tell GoDaddy about these nameservers so you’ll want to look for them in the email that HostGator sends you. *

Ok, now let’s go tell GoDaddy about your new nameservers. Log in to your GoDaddy account and choose Domains / My Domain Names from the menu near the top of the page.

click nameservers
Select the domain name and click on the Nameservers button.

nameservers
Copy and paste (or manually type in) the two nameservers that you received in the HostGator email. Save.

That’s it. You now not only own a domain name, but you’ve given it a place to live. It can take up to 24-48 hours for the rest of the world to be told about about your new domain name, so typing www.whatever-your-domain-is.com may not do anything yet. Eventually it will. (This is called “propogating” throughout the net).

The only thing missing now is an actual web site. In the old days, that would have meant hiring a designer and spending lots of money and time developing a nice-looking site. Those days, luckily, are gone. You can have a site up and running very quickly. You’re going to do this by installing a free WordPress blog. We’ll discuss this in the next part of the series, but rest assured that this is very, very easy to do. Once you’ve done this and a few more little things, you’ll be ready to roll.

Just a reminder. I’ve tried to make this process easy enough for anyone to understand, but if I still wasn’t clear enough, you might want to purchase a set of instructional videos that really step you through it as though you were watching it happen live.

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

*


Disclosure: Affiliate links may be used within this post for products I recommend. They in no way affect my judgement of said products, nor do they affect the price of the product.

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]]> http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-five/feed/ 6 How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Four http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-four/ http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-four/#comments Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:14:56 +0000 Donna http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/2007/06/18/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-four/ In the first three parts of this series, I introduced the concept that any of you can make a living online, working from home in your pajamas. Part two of the series presented you with a task to come up with the WHAT – in other words, WHAT was going to be the topic of your online venture? Hopefully, by now you’ve decided upon your main topic, and you are ready to begin the process. (If you’re not ready, that’s ok, you can always come back later to refresh your memory on the steps you need to take).

Before you can earn your first nickel, you have some things to do behind the scenes. In order to put this plan together, you are going to need a domain name and a web site. Today’s lesson will focus just on finding and purchasing a domain name. (This is also known as “registering” a domain name).

A domain name, for those unfamiliar with the lingo, is the basic address of your web site. For example, dazzlindonna.com is the domain name of this blog.

If you’ve never purchased a domain name, ordered a hosting plan, or set up a website before, you may want to consider buying a set of tutorial videos that will walk you through the process step-by-step. This set is relatively cheap at $15, and may be useful for people who are visually-oriented. Otherwise, just skip this step and move on.

I recommend purchasing your domain name at www.GoDaddy.com . I’ve used GoDaddy for years and use it for a lot of domains. You can certainly begin your search for the perfect domain name right there at GoDaddy, but you may want to search using DomainsBot instead. It can be very useful for coming up with ideas for domain names, and once you’ve found the right one, you can then register it at GoDaddy. (If you want more details on DomainsBot, I’ve reviewed the site here).

The domain name you choose is completely up to you, but I would strongly suggest several things:

  1. Get a .com name, rather than a .net, .org, or any other variation.
  2. Get the shortest, most easily memorable domain you can find.
  3. Try to make the domain name keyword-rich. What does that mean? Well, let’s say you’ve decided to create a site all about flying kites, because that’s what you love to do, and you know everything there is to know about kite-flying. Do your best to get a domain name such as flykites.com, kite-flying.com, etc. Those domain names have the actual words (keywords) in them that people might search for if they were looking for such a site. Having a domain name with those words in it (keyword-rich) will make it more likely that visitors will find your site, and remember the name once they do.

Once you’ve found the perfect domain name, register it at GoDaddy. If you can afford to register it for an extended period of time, do so. Not only do you save a little money by registering for multiple years, but you also let the world know that you are serious about being in business long-term. (Search engines like Google like to see that). However, if you can only afford the $8.95 for a domain name for one year, that’s ok too.

Below are some screen shots of a typical GoDaddy domain name registration process. I’ve occasionally drawn a big red circle around certain areas of the screen shots so that you can easily see what I’m referring to.

Godaddy home page
This is a partial view of the GoDaddy home page. You can type in the domain name you’ve chosen in either of those search boxes. Assuming it is available for purchase (no one else already owns it), you can register for an account so that you can buy it.

Create new account
This is a a partial view of the new account creation screen.

Once you’ve successfully registered a new account, you are ready to purchase the domain name.

Quick checkout
Notice the red circle I drew around “Quick checkout”. You WANT to check this so that you aren’t bombarded with lots of “offers” from GoDaddy for things you don’t want or need at this point. If you miss this step, and you are presented with lots of additional options of things to buy, ignore them. All you want right now is the domain name.

I don’t recommend letting GoDaddy host your site. It is always better to have your domain registered with one company, and the site hosted with another. That way, no one company holds the fate of your entire business in their hands. We’ll discuss hosting options in the next lesson.

Checkout
Finally, you’re able to pay for the domain name and make it your own! You’ll notice that you have several possible methods of payment, with one of those being PayPal. I only mention this because you’ll find that owning a PayPal account will come in handy many times over the course of your business, both for paying for things, as well as for easily receiving money. If you don’t have one yet, get one. You don’t need to do this right now, but put it on your to-do list for sometime later.

Once you’ve paid GoDaddy, you’re the proud owner of a brand new domain name! Congratulations. Your new venture has truly begun, however there’s more to do. You can move on to the next step in the process.

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

:)

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

]]> http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-four/feed/ 7 How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Three http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-three/ http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-three/#comments Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:21:31 +0000 Donna http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/2007/06/15/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-three/ Now that I’ve really piqued your interest in making a living online, let me pull the reins back for just a moment. I want to make sure you are very clear about a few things before I delve into the details of HOW to accomplish your goals.

  1. Do NOT quit your day job yet. Just because you may be all excited about your new career path, doesn’t mean you will be able to immediately replace one income for another. You may only make enough in your first month to buy a cup of coffee. And that’s ok. That’s normal. Unless you are one of the ten luckiest people in the world, you most likely won’t make much more than that right away. I don’t say this to discourage you. Not at all. I say this to make sure you have your realism cap on. Think of your new venture as a part-time job that will eventually turn into a full-time gig.
  2. Be prepared to still be learning and growing two years from now. It took me a good two years to really “get” some things. The lightbulbs didn’t all go on in my head right away. However, you’d be surprised how quickly two years goes by when you are having fun. And if you do this right, you WILL be having fun.
  3. You WILL need to spend a little bit of money to get this going. It is only A TINY, LITTLE BIT, but it won’t be free. Yes, it could be done for free, but I don’t recommend it, and I won’t advise it. Plan on spending a little less than $100 per year. That cost may go up later as you start earning more, but you won’t care by then.
  4. Hopefully, you are comfortable with the Internet and you are capable of typing. Neither is an absolute must, but you’ll avoid a large amount of frustration if you have those two skills. Otherwise, you might have to pay your nephew or neighbor’s kid a few bucks per week to do some of this for you.

Ok, that’s as much realism as you need for now. Now you can move on to the next installment in the series, as you finally get started on learning HOW to make a living in your pajamas.

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

:)

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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]]> http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-three/feed/ 2 How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas – Part Two http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-two/ http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/making-money-online/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-two/#comments Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:08:51 +0000 Donna http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/2007/06/14/how-to-make-a-living-in-your-pajamas-part-two/ In Part One of the series, How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas, I said:

This is the start of a series of posts I will be doing that essentially shows you how to be me – no, that’s not quite right. How to do what I do – no, that’s not it either. How to do what YOU do, but how to do it in a way that is similar to what I do.

In Part Two, I’ll be explaining this concept in more detail.

How To Be Me By Being You

I also mentioned in Part One, that:

By the time you finish this series of posts, hopefully, you will have figured out both WHAT to do to make a living in your pajamas, as well as HOW to do it.

This is where we define the WHAT of your new career. What you choose to do online to make money is completely dependent upon you and your skills, interests, and talents. You probably can’t do EXACTLY what I do, because your skills, interests, and talents are very likely not the same as mine. So the first thing you need to do is determine what those skills, interests, and talents are.

If I were only speaking to one of you, and I knew you personally, I could probably throw out some ideas that might mesh very tightly with what would work specifically for you. But since that’s not the case, let me throw out a wide-ranging mix of ideas just to show you how to get started on thinking about this.

Many of you probably think to yourselves, “I don’t really have any skills, interests, or talents that would make me any money on the Internet”. I’m here to tell you that you are 99.9% likely to be wrong. (I do have to assume that there might be a very slight chance that there is at least one person out in the world who really doesn’t have any skills, interests, or talents that could make them money on the Internet, but I highly doubt it).

You would be amazed at the things that can be turned into a profit. Of course, some things are capable of making more money than other things, but we’re not concerned with that at the moment. First, think about the things that interest you.

  • What kind of magazine would you be most likely to pick up at a news stand? What’s that topic about? Do you know much about the topic?
  • What kind of products do you most enjoy buying at a department store? Clothing? Jewelry? Makeup? Shoes? Tools? Electronics? Toys?
  • What kind of music do you listen to?
  • What kind of activities do you participate in? Sports? Hiking? Swimming? Bowling? Board games at home? TV-watching couch potato? Gamer?
  • What do you know a lot about? Maybe you know a lot about TV reality shows. Or maybe you’ve watched every episode of a soap opera for the last 30 years. Or maybe you can name every type of fish that lives in the waters in your area. Maybe you’re good at juggling the bills each month because you always owe more than you can pay.
  • What do you chat about with your friends? Politics? News? Kids? Family life? Sports? TV?
  • What types of things do friends and family ask you for advice? How to fix something? How to cook something? How to….?
  • What business or social groups are you a member of? What is the primary interest of those groups?
  • What do you currently do for a living? What do you know about that job position?
  • Do you have any talents at all? Are you musically inclined? Are you good at a sport? Can you juggle? Can you balance a coin on your nose? Do you make people laugh? Are you a good listener? Are you a good writer?

I could probably write an entire book just about this one subject – just asking you questions such as these. The answers to any of the above questions could potentially be a skill, interest, or talent that could enable you to make a living in your pajamas.

While there are an infinite number of ways to make money from the Internet, I’m only going to be focusing on one that I believe would be of benefit to the most people. Not everyone can create the next Google or MySpace, nor can everyone create and sell the next high-tech invention online. If you can do anything like that, go for it. But this series is aimed at the average person (like me) wanting to make a living from home, in their pajamas (like me).

So your first assignment is to determine the WHAT. Don’t concern yourself with how you’ll make money from the WHAT just yet. For now, just decide what it is you know best, or what it is you do best, or what it is that you have the most interest in. What can you share with others? What can you teach others? Even if it seems silly, consider it.

If you come up with several possible WHATs, list them all. You may end up wanting to utilize each of them in some way. But for now, list them and order them several different ways.

  • List them in order by which ones you know the most about.
  • Now list them in order by how many people in the world probably have the same interest.
  • Now list them in order by how passionate you are about each one.

If any of the topics appear at the top of more than one of those lists, consider that to be your #1 WHAT. This is WHAT you’ll do to make a living in your pajamas.

Ready for Part Three?

The entire series of How To Make a Living in Your Pajamas:

:)

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: , , , , , , , ,
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

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