Blogging for donuts or dollars / Need a good host?

So you’ve got a great idea / topic for a blog but you’d like to see if you could make a little money off of it, well then you are going to need to get WordPress hosted because they don’t allow advertising on the free WordPress.com site.

I got lucky and found what I think to be is the ISP offering the greatest services and control I’ve ever seen…Their implementation is actually far superior to anything I imagined would be out there. Also, their support has been extremely friendly and fast! Once I dialed in the number and hit 3 for tech support, I’ve gotten someone on the 2nd or 3rd ring so far…and the longest it took for a change to be implemented was like 3 hours.

ANHosting is their name and making website hosting is their game (and boy am I lame).

They have an EXTENSIVE list of software that you can literally install by clicking a couple of buttons: want to have a blog, a forum / discussion board, a content management system, ecommerce package, guestbook, mailing lists, polls, project management tools, photo galleries, wikis, ad server, auctions, webcalendars, and much more? Then, just click away…you generally have at least 4 options for each those things listed. Your software requires a database connection? No problem, the install scripts set the software up for you: it will automatically create a mysql database for you, install the software where you specify, and set up the admin passwords for you. SO EASY!!!! I literally installed my ad server and blog software in 20 seconds a piece.

The have this cool “cPanel” app that allows you to do just about everything you want: configure mail (web or pop3) accounts and passwords, add extra domain names, set up FTP accounts, password protect directories, configure sub domains and MySQL databases (so you can access them from home like I do), set cron jobs, mime types, look at stats, Deny by IP, etc…you don’t really need to use tech support to control your web site (which is very foreign concept to me). However, if you don’t live and breath Internet technology, then tech support could walk you through anything you needed to do as they are up 24×7. I made a couple of calls all bleary eyed at 2am and they totally helped me out.

The level of control, the easy to use admin interfaces, the fact that they give you SSH access as root (for your chained directory), the number of software packages that auto install, and the support system all makes me give ANHosting 5 aardvarks (the highest aardvark rating I can legally make). I was honestly surprised how fast and easy it was…especially when I had as much control as I did or when I was counting on ANHosting to make some change. Because of this Carlin and I were able to turn this site out in just a few days (but worked our asses off doing so).

They give you all that with 3.5 GBs of space, 750,000 MB of transfers, unlimited email accounts (with Spam Assassin) and sub domains, 10 domain names, have PHP, Perl, MySQL, CGI scripts available to do all sorts of form processing, Python, shopping carts, backups, etc…all for the princely sum of $6.95 a month…and the first month is free with no set up. I saw all that and thought it was too good to be true…god, I sound like an infomercial…anyway, they rule! Check them out…you really don’t have anything to lose (no setup fee…first month free).

OK…once you get them set up: log into the CPANEL, go to the Fantastico link at the bottom, click that, select WordPress from the list on the right, and follow the installation steps…I think there are two and the only thing to decide is if you want your blog at the root of your website or in a subdirectory…If it is at the root, it means it is the first thing folks will see when they go to your domain. It’s what we did for this site and you don’t have to type anything if you want that.

Once you have got your WordPress blog set up and running (SUPER SIMPLE, btw), you can go to Google and open an adsense account. Google will give you javascript that you can then embed in your theme (using WP theme editor) to place your ads where you want on the page. The Adsense code is pretty cool as it looks at your content and then puts context sensitive ads on your pages…for example, if I was writing about boats, you’d see google ads about boats…Now that I’ve said boats…are there ads for boats. Damn, I should have said diamond rings…HEY LOOK DIAMOND RING ADS…Who can tell I am writing this late at night? Raise your arm! Oh, crap I just got a deodarant ad to show up…DONE!

Google pays your x amount for each ad clicked…where x amount is pretty small. I’m pretty sure you won’t get rich off them but if you do, will you let me know what you did? I promise not to tell!

If you want to embed your ads in the middle of your content, then you should probably get the Adsense-Deluxe plugin that makes it possible to do so:
http://www.acmetech.com/blog/adsense-deluxe/

If you want to get even more advanced, you can sign up for an affiliate program, log in to their site, choose your ads, and the schedule them into your site. If you want to go that route, use the phpAdsNew piece of software available at ANHosting. It is listed under the Fantastico link again. It is an easy thing to install but get everything configured and running right will take a few hours probably…it did for us at least. But once you have it set up, you can control how often ads are being served out (using either simple or very complex rules), see which ads are getting clicked, which ads are top performers, etc…it is very cool piece of free software. Big thanks to my buddy, Jeremy Fisher, for turning me onto it…saved me a ton of time (I was going to write my own ad randomizer cuz I am a geek and it wouldn’t have done 1/20th of what phpAdsNew does.

Best of luck to you, entrepreneurial blogger!