Happy Monday to everyone! We’re you plugging away all weekend on your article and meta tags? Ya sure you were, it was Super Bowl weekend! But it’s ok, life is all about fun so let’s just get back on track today and make this blog work for us.

Today I’m going to be submitting my own website to the major search engines. There are several ways of getting your website submitted to search engines including using a 3rd party piece of software or manually submitting your URL to the search engines directly.  As for me, I don’t have a ton of time in my busy days so I am going to choose the first method and grab my search engine submission software TrafficSeeker to get my submissions done for me in just a couple of clicks. You don’t have to use TrafficSeeker, any software will work, but I’ve used TrafficSeeker for a number of years and I’m comfortable in how to use it so there ya go.

The first thing we do is start up the software and create a new project. You can call yours whatever you want, I usually just stick to the domain names for my project names. Once you’re in the software, the first thing you want to do is enter your full URL in the “site url” box. Once that is done click the “extract settings” button and the software will automatically fill in all the other stuff for you based on your website meta tags. You are also going to need to enter in your “email” and “junk email” values as well. I have 2 emails setup for each of these. The regular email is one I check to click on links for confirmations and other important things. The junk email is an account I made up that just sucks in all the junk email that these submissions can generate. I highly recommend not using an email account you use often in the junk email field.

There are lots of things you can go in this software including some really fantastic page ranking reports, link popularity and other information you might find useful, but for now just select “features” at the top of the software and click on “submit” in the list. You can then select the “Wizard” button and just follow the prompts to get your website submitted. The first time around, I would select to submit to everything in the list, if for no other reason that to build some backlinks. Once you are finished and click the “Finish” button just sit back and watch it submit to all those other places on the internet. My window currently shows that it is submitted to over 1 MILLION places on the internet. Not bad for such a cheap submission software.

That’s all there is to search engine submission! Easy day huh? Don’t get too relaxed though because this whole week is going to be all about modifying our website so that it starts making us money. Just what we want! This week will be some work, but I find it rather fun so hopefully you will too.

See you tomorrow!

I decided to post up an additional step today because it’s Friday and what better time do you have to do some research on this next step than the weekend! So after you get finished posting your first article today, take a stab at this next step. If you have any questions or need help, feel free to post a comment to this post and I’ll try to check it as much as I can over the weekend and get back to you.

Ok, let’s get started. You have finally posted your first article on your website so now what? In this next step we are going to concentrate on getting it ready for submission to the search engines. This is also a great time for me to reveal the subject of my niche content website to you because I have written an article on this very subject. Because of the experience I have in search engine optimization and web design I decided to create the Ultimate Website Traffic Secrets website.  I’m going to ask each of you to head over to my new niche content website and read the article “Optimize Your Website Meta Tags”. This article is exactly what today is about. You are going to be creating “meta” tags to put into the header page of your website.

What exactly are Meta tags? Meta tags are snippets of code filled with keywords and phrases that are found between the < HEAD> and < /HEAD> tags of your website and will help you get your search engine ranking up. Once you finish reading the article you should have a good understanding on how to create the Meta tags. Create your Meta tags in notepad so that you can tweak them based on keywords. Once you are satisfied with them then we can go ahead and move onto adding them to the website.

Just how do you get that code into your website anyway? The first thing you need to do is login to the admin center of your blog. I am using WordPress for all my examples so if you aren’t using WordPress, you will need to find other instructions. Once you are logged in, click on the tab “Appearance” tab and then select “Editor” from the submenu. Now comes the confusing part right? Well, not really. It’s actually pretty easy. On the right hand side you will see a bunch of files names. We are looking for one called “header”. If you click on that, the main page area will be filled with all of the code that makes up the header portion of your website.

The code that you wrote that make up your Meta tags needs to be placed inside of the <head> and </head> tags. I typically find it’s easiest to just look for the </head> line and put my Meta tag code directly on the line above it. Just make an empty line above and then copy and paste in all of your Meta tag code inside of it. Once it’s in there press the “Update File” button and your Meta tags are in place. Check your main website home page and be sure no funny code or characters are showing up to be sure you formatted them correctly.

That’s all there is to it. In my next post we are going to talk about how to actually submit your website to all of the major search engines, so get ready for it!

Now that we have our WordPress blog installed it’s time to start filling that baby up with some keyword rich content! If you have never written anything before, don’t be scared. Writing is fun when it’s something you enjoy talking about and know quite a bit about.

On the first day of this challenge we talked about a program called Market Samurai and how I use it to determine topics for my content niche blogs. This program shows me related keywords to the content subject so that I have a handy list I can refer back to at anytime when I am writing so that I can be sure that the articles I write are filled with my keywords so the search engines like them. In the end the goal is to create information rich content that our readers find interesting and that the search engines like enough to put us near the top of search results.

The articles you use on your content niche website can be written by you as an original piece, written by you as a sourced article, given by a guest blogger or one of several other ways of obtaining information for your website. However, to get started we are going to focus on writing the content ourselves. This way we know it’s unique, it’s written with keywords in mind and we have total control over it.

If you have Market Samurai you can use the “Find Content” module within it to find sourced content that you can use as an information base for your own unique articles. A quick note, I would like to mention regarding writing from sourced content: Do not ever copy and paste any article in whole or in part and claim it as your own and if you do use copy from a source, ensure to give credit to the author. This is just common sense guys and good practice. What I am talking about here is reading articles or websites written by other people and retaining the information to help you write your own articles. For example, if you need to write an article about “How to take care of a cactus plant” you may not know every detail on the matter, so you might go look up tips and ideas from other people. You don’t want to copy them word for word, but there is nothing wrong with rewording ideas from memory to include in your own article.

On the flip side, you may have a head full of information on the subject you are writing about and don’t need to research anything. If that is the case, write away like mad and just follow a few simple writing tips.

• Your first paragraph should be clear, concise and explain exactly what the rest of the article is about.
• Keep paragraphs short. It’s easier to retain smaller amounts of information and with more white space your eyes (and your readers’ eyes) will thank you.
• Ensure that your title, subject line or heading contains 1 or 2 of your keywords and also attracts the reader to actually want to find out more information about what you wrote.
• When you are outlining points, be sure to use bullets to separate out your ideas.
• Keep your topic focused on one specific topic. If you have more related ideas, write another article.
• Give lots of examples and tell stories if you have one that supports what you are writing. This will help backup your points but also may relate to your readers on a higher level.
• Give your readers lots of resources including books, website links and any other information that they can get themselves to support what you wrote.

End the day today by posting your very first keyword rich article on your blog. Be sure to define a category for every article you post so that they can be easily found at a later date if someone searches your website for something specific. Don’t forget to include an image with your blog posts if you can find one to go with it.

Ready for the next assignment on the February challenge?

We know what we are going to blog about right? Maybe you’re going to blog about cooking, being a single parent, weddings, relationships or starting your own business. Whatever you are going to write about you are going to need to take the first steps in setting up your website (blog).

Before you can do anything with setting up a blog you are going to need to purchase a domain name for yourself. The domain name should obviously be related to your content, easy to remember and keyword rich for search engine purposes. For example, on this blog I write about all the different ways to make a passive income, so I chose the domain name www.purelypassiveincome.com. You can purchase the domain yourself through a service like GoDaddy.com or you can let your hosting company purchase the domain for you. Once you have your domain chosen let’s start setting up our website.

I am a HUGE fan of WordPress. It is one of the most customizable and easy to use blog software available and it’s the only one I use. All of my niche content websites use WordPress. The only problem with WordPress is that if you plan on placing ads or making money off of it, you can’t have the free WordPress hosting to host it for you. You will need to obtain your own hosting to host the blog software. The good news is it’s totally easy to set it up and almost every hosting company out there supports WordPress now. Some even have a one click install option. The other good news is that it is relatively cheap to host your own. Check out BlueHost for one hosting option, but really any host will work.

Follow the setup instructions either from your hosting company or from WordPress directly on how to setup the blog software. It shouldn’t take but a few minutes (or seconds if your host has a one click install) and you are ready to go. You will start with a blank slate, a pretty basic look and feel to it and some dummy content for your first post already in it. The first thing I do is go into the admin panel and delete the dummy post and comments. I also purge out all of the links because they usually have nothing to do with what I’m posting about.

Next, you will want to give your blog a new design with a WordPress theme. There are many free WordPress theme websites that you can download hundreds of themes to install. One of my favorites is WordPress Themes Base. To install a theme, all you have to do is go into the “Appearance” tab in the admin panel and Add a New Theme via the upload feature. You’ll upload the entire .zip file that you downloaded from the website and activate it upon a successful upload. Your entire blog design will change right before your eyes. It’s pretty cool and very easy!

After your blog has taken on a new appearance you will want to go into the “settings” tab and start setting up other important details for your blog such as your blog title, tagline, permalinks, writing and reading options and any other area you might want to customize. Just start checking out each section and modify until everything looks the way you want it to.

Setting up your first blog will probably take a little trial and error if you don’t have a one click install available and have never done anything like this before. Your hosting company will probably be happy to help you or you can post questions you have to this post in the comment section and I will try to help you out if I can.

There you have it! Your domain name is working, your hosting account setup and your WordPress blog is ready for your information! In the next post I make we are going to start working on making this thing a little more than just an empty wasteland so stay tuned!

Good to see ya! So you decided to join me did you? Awesome! As the opening day challenge our first step is the obvious…decide on the topic for your information based content website. There are lots of things to consider when choosing your topic but let me tell you what I based my choice on.

My number one criteria…I WANT TO MAKE MONEY. If I can’t make money with it, I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I want to write about something I know REALLY well. I want to be passionate about it so that I don’t run out of things to say. I want to be knowledgeable about it so that I understand the competing industries and be able to recommend the right products that would go well with it for affiliate sales purposes. I also want to make sure that it is a subject that people wanted to know about. I want to be able to provide a solution that people would be willing to pay for. I want to be able to write some basic information on the subject so that I could give away a free report as a supporting product to entice them to come back for visits, click on affiliate products and buy my ebooks or other products. I also chose my specific subject matter based on an e-book I am already writing. It seemed like a perfect match!

The other thing I did was to use the Market Samurai software to determine if my market was viable based on keywords. If you haven’t checked out Market Samurai yet, I’ve mentioned it before and you should definitely try out their free offer to see what it can do for you. It is what I have used in the past to come up with ideas for niche content website ideas and it’s awesome. I won’t go into full details on how to use the software here because the Market Samurai website has some really great video tutorials on their website that explain it all.

Now, I’m not going to tell you my subject just yet. I’d like to hear from you on what you are going to choose as your information topic first. What are you passionate about? What do you know a lot about and just can’t shut up about?

I read several books in January about passive income including Multiple Streams of Internet Income and The Four Hour Workweek and I am definitely pumped for February. In fact I had planned on posting a February Challenge on Monday that I am hoping some of you might want to join me in, but life is busy this week and I didn’t get around to posting until this morning. So here we go for our challenge.

Creating information based websites is an obvious method for creating a passive income but in looking at my own I can definitely see a trend. I tend to ride high on it for a week or two and then I fizzle. I forget to put up banners or affiliate links, I don’t write new content and basically I just don’t use it the way I should. But this month I am motivated to do it right. I am starting from scratch with a new idea for an information website and I plan to make a blueprint of my activities for the entire month. My goal is create this new website and have it making money for me by the end of the month. Every weekday I will be doing something to make this new website work for me and I will try my best to keep up with updating it here so you can follow me on the project. After this first month and my blueprint for success is written in stone, I am going to go back into each of my current information based websites and revamp them to make them work and not just be a waste of space.

So will you join me?