Rank Higher, Make Money!

Hey everyone, Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and Eric Hamm of Motivate Thyself have just published their ‘The Essential Motivational Handbook’.  I really recommend picking up a copy as these guys are well known for their excellent blogs on motivational advice and every day practical wisdom. 

Get Motivated Now!

Order The Motivational Handbook

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Hey everyone, just a quick note that I think many of you will appreciate – Rank Higher, Make Money! is now a CommentLuv and DoFollow blog. For those who are not familiar with this, it means if you leave a comment here, I will automatically provide a link back to your website’s latest post. *And* on top of that, the link back will have the “rel=’nofollow’” attribute removed from the link! Both these things combined can be extremely effective methods of promoting your own site and improving page rankings with search engines.

The specific plugins I’m using are:

CommentLuv – this plugin adds a specific link back to your own blog posting, depending on the website URL you enter in the comment form.

and

NoFollow Free – this plugin removes the nofollow attribute from your link.

So come on and get your CommentLuv with DoFollow linkage back!
- Eric

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As promised, I would like to write about how I got this website up and running in under an hour. But let me preface this first by saying that I’m not writing this to show off and talk about how wonderful I am just because I started a website quickly. It really isn’t a big deal. However, those who may not be familiar with the process could benefit greatly from learning how it’s done. So the point to the post is to let you know just how truly simple and easy it is to get started. So if you have a good idea for a site, but are in unfamiliar waters when it comes to taking the first steps, let this be your mini-guide to getting a website started – the right way.

Domain Name

I got the domain name www.rankhighermakemoney.com from GoDaddy. It was actually only my second domain purchase with them – previously I used Yahoo but I don’t anymore due to an exorbitant increase in renewal fees. I found the process with GoDaddy to be very efficient and easy to use — and I won’t have to donate an organ just to renew the domain next year.

One thing that was awesome about GoDaddy was, you could set the name servers during the registration process itself — something that Yahoo was not able to do. What are name servers? Name servers are a special configuration you need to give your domain name. What they do is point the domain name in the direction of your web hosting company. So, while I can purchase my domain name with GoDaddy, I do not have to have web hosting with GoDaddy. The name servers set the domain to any host I want to use (In my case, I host with Total Choice Hosting).

But getting back to the subject of the registration process, with Yahoo I had to buy the domain first, then wait a bit for the domain to be ‘active’. Then, I had to login to their control panel, ‘unlock’ the domain, wait, then change the name servers, then lock the domain again (”Locking” a domain is basically a way to prevent unauthorized transfer of your domain name to someone else). With Yahoo, from the moment of purchasing a domain name, to the point I had the name servers set to my hosting account could take a matter of 30 minutes to an hour. That’s not so bad if you aren’t impatient like me. But I like immediate results, and that is what I got from GoDaddy.

Another great thing about GoDaddy is that you don’t have to ‘unlock’ your domain before changing name servers. You just update using their control panel and you’re done. I’d be willing to bet that GoDaddy isn’t the only domain registrar that provides the service. That being said, they do, and I appreciate it.

Web Hosting

Moving on, let’s talk about hosting. As I said, I host with Total Choice Hosting. I’ve been using them for about 5 years now, and I’ve been very happy with the service. Finding a good web host can be very difficult however. I worked for a web hosting company for a couple of years, and I know there is a big difference out there in terms of reliability, the quality of service you’re getting, ease of use, technical support, etc. Do your homework on this one! I do recommend Total Choice however, for a number of reasons.

Why I recommend Total Choice Hosting

1) I rarely experience any downtime with them. By downtime I mean -the site is not available on the internet, or it doesn’t connect due to a technical issue with Total Choice. In fact, in the 5 years I’ve been with them, I can only remember once that it happened, and it wasn’t for very long. Maybe 5-10 minutes. Now if you think that once is too many times, well ok – fine, you may have a point. But consider, it happens to the best of sites and hosting companies occasionally. Once maybe 6 months back or so, Amazon.com was down. So, not to excuse it or anything, just saying. It happens. With most web hosting companies, however, it happens a lot, and it happens much more frequently than once every 5 years.

2) Support is quick and efficient, and they always seem willing to go above and beyond the standard obligations. For example, they’ll give suggestions and pointers regarding matters that don’t actually have anything to do with Total Choice’s services. The thing is, every web developer that host sites somewhere will need some level of support here and there, and it can be important that you get help quickly.

3) Total Choice offers Cpanel and Fantastico. If you are not familiar with Cpanel and Fantastico – these are backend tools available to use with your websites that make life easier on you as a website developer. Cpanel has everything from file-management tools to statistics to email and database management. Fantastico offers an extremely simple interface for setting up and installing software such as Wordpress, Joomla, E-commerce shopping carts, image galleries, polling software and more. With other web hosts, very often, you will have to install these types of things yourself, by FTP, running installation files, configuring permissions etc. Fantastico makes all this easy so that you just enter some basic information and you’re done in a couple of clicks.

So that’s enough of the sales pitch I think (I’m not making any referral money from posting this, by the way). I do want to make the point, however, on why finding a good web host is important, and why I personally recommend Total Choice. If you decide against them, fine with me, just be sure to do your homework.

Next steps

With this website, Rank Higher, Make Money!, GoDaddy had the name servers pointing to my web hosting account rather quickly. In about 10 minutes, the domain name itself was viewable online from a browser. That is pretty fast. During that time, I set things up on the hosting end. I have a reseller account with Total Choice, which gives me an administrative tool for configuring a new domain name on the account. Once that configuration is done (2 minutes at most), it’s just a matter of waiting for the name servers to be pointed. As I said, with GoDaddy, it took about 10 minutes.

Once that was done, I could move on to actually set up content for my site. I did this using Cpanel, and in just a few more minutes, I had run through the Fantastico process and installed Wordpress as blogging software. So technically speaking here, I had a full website, up and running, in under 30 minutes. And that’s starting from the time I first purchased the domain name itself! Not bad at all. This doesn’t include installing various plugins to wordpress and other steps that I feel make it a complete site.

For Part 2 of this series, I’ll go over the steps that occur next. Installing wordpress plugins, fine tuning things, tweaking the design, setting up a feedburner feed, and more. Stay tuned! – Eric

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Hello and welcome.  

Who

I’m Eric and I’m a professional web developer working for a large company in downtown Norfolk, Virginia. I’m also a blogger, an SEO expert, a social media fan, and I’m here to help you get started ranking your websites higher in search engines like Google, and along with that, make money online.
I would like to kick off this first post to this website with a very simple question for you.

Do you want to make money with your website, or not?

What

If you don’t want to make money online, you’re in the wrong place.  I would hope by the site name you might have picked up on that by now.  If you do want to rank your site higher and make money, you’re definitely in the right place.

Why

I decided to create this site to teach readers how to rank their websites higher in search engines such as Google, and how to make money along the way.  I want to make things as simple and straightforward as possible for you, the reader.

This site is for people who want to get serious and get professional with their websites.  There *is* money to be made in the online world, and anyone can do it if they start taking their website(s) seriously.

How

See, the thing is, you can get serious and you can also have fun along the way.  It’s hard work some times, but look at me.  As I write this first post to this blog, it’s 9PM at night, I’ve been up since 6AM, worked 8 hours and since then have been putting this site together.  Why?  Because I realize there may be a need for a site like this that is utterly straightforward, as basic and plain-talking as possible, just a bare-bones, stripped-down, no-frills advice website on how YOU can put together a site and make money doing it.  With a little bit of guidance you can rank your site higher in Google, start making money, and like I said, have a little fun along the way!

When

The time to make things happen is now. I want readers who understand that. Tomorrow truly never comes. There is no more waiting! You can think and think about it all you want – nothing is going to happen until you get started, right here, right now.

My goal for you readers is so simple.  So simple, I’m giddy thinking about it.  I’m excited for you – really.  I want you to come here often and get inspired and start taking action with your own sites.  Or you’ll have a great idea for a brand-new site and just start making it happen.  So we’re back to my original question – do you want to make money with your website or not?

Start subscribing by RSS or by Email.   It’s completely free to do so.  The only requirement is a bit of time.   In return, my promise to you is to provide tons of useful, relevant, no-frills information on how to rank your site(s) higher, and start making money online.

Final Words

I created this site roughly 2 short hours ago.  Not just wrote the first post 2 hours ago.  Not just installed the blog software (Wordpress) 2 hours ago.  I bought the domain rankhighermakemoney.com 2 hours ago.  In 15 minutes I had it set up on my reseller hosting account with Total Choice Hosting.  10 minutes after that I had Wordpress installed.  20 minutes later I’ve uploaded a few plugins and tools to get started.  I took a 10 minute break and ate a bowl of ice cream.  The majority of the last 2 hours has been spent writing this first post.

I say this not to brag or to show off and talk about how wonderful and cool I am for making a site so quickly.  Nope. The reason I say this is to communicate just how ridiculously easy it is to make it happen.

In my next post (or two), I’ll specifically go through some of the lightning-fast steps it takes to get a brand new website up and running quickly.  See you then!

- Eric

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