While I thought it would be easy to do just as everybody says, “Start a blog and make money using adsense”. Easy no, make money not yet. I thought I could start a blog about auto repair information (see it here at Good Auto Info) because I’ve been working on cars for 30 years. There are free blogs but more people say don’t use free ones for adsense and because you get a more professional looking domain name and better serch engine placement.

First find some web hosting, I used ZZHosting, cost $3.90 monthly. Then a domain name $9.00 a year. Set up a few email accounts. Now install Wordpress 2.9.2. That was about the only easy part so far because installation is done through the cPanel control panel. Now you need to learn how to use Wordpress. There is a lot of information out there to the point of information overload. What do you do first? Themes, widgets, plugins wow, I just want to blog. This took me a few hours just to do the basic stuff.

You should install at least these plugins “Akismet” and “Google XML Sitemaps” Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. Google XML Sitemaps This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog.

Now with the blog started what next Search Engine submission. That should be easy I’ll just tell Google WRONG. You need to submit to hundreds of sites. I used a program called Brad Callen’s Directory Submitter. This takes hours to do and you need to trade links so you need to make a links page on your site to put everybodys link on. If you choose the free link option this takes 3 or 4 weeks to approve or not approve your site. Meanwhile your links page has about a hundred links on it and if you don’t get approved then you have to go and delete those links. Check here to find out how to do it. I thought I would start my own Link Directory. If you want one get php Link Directory. I also submitted my site to blogcatalog, bloghub , bloggernity and topblogarea .

Adsense the money making part. This is another very time consuming experience. First you must sign up and get approved. Be sure to read the TOS (terms of service) carefully and never click on your own ad links or tell anyone to click on your ad links, a big no no. Trying to get someone to click on the ads is another time consuming experience. First you need to get the colors for the ad right. I used a free program called ColorPic. Another pay per click ad is BidVertiser.

I found some useful information on youtube, search for Joel Comm. Below is the first video.

He also has a few good books like Adsense Secrets v4 a 222 page pdf

Another good free book is at Make Money Online by John Chow Ebook
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