The Central Nervous System of Your Home Business: Your Blog

You do not necessarily need a website to make money online. This article will explain why you should have a website, and the best kind of website to get.
There are several types of websites that you can use in your home business, but the first type that you should set up is a blog.
There are several reasons that you want to do this, but here are 3 main reasons.
1. Build your Brand- Some people talk about making money online, yet they are scared to put up a profile picture!

Even if you want to hide your personal identity online, you still need a blog to brand your company.

Why do you want to brand yourself?

Well think of it as the Oprah Winfrey principle. Oprah can recommend just about anything to her followers and it will be an overnight success, because they will all run out and by 2 or 3 copies.

The reason Oprah commands so much influence in her niche (several niches!) is because she is viewed as an expert.

The way she developed her expert status is by consistently over- delivering a ton of FREE value throughout the years with her talk show.

Oprah understands the principle of sowing and reaping. She also understands that the more you give, the more you will receive. This is why Oprah is super successful and mega rich.

The average home business owner, or network marketer just can’t get past their selfish intention of making a sale or signing someone up into their business opportunity.

If you want to make more money in your home business, you need to change your focus, and start consistently over -delivering valuable content to your niche market.

Then when you recommend affiliate products, and eventually your own products, they will buy, because you have credibility within your niche market, and your followers view you as an expert. The perfect way to accomplish this is with a blog.

2. Build Your List- If you do not start off by building a list from day one, then you are leaving piles of money on a table.
The reason is because 99.9% of the people that visit your website will never revisit. However, if they opt-in to your newsletter, you can continue to provide value to them, and market to them over time.

Now stop right there, and do not become overwhelmed with greedy, delusional visions of building a massive email list so you can sell and pitch to your heart’s desire.

If your list views you as a selfish, greedy person who is only trying to make a dollar off of them, they will unsubscribe.

Remember, value, value, value! (Oprah Principle)

The service I recommend to begin managing your list with is Aweber.

3. Get traffic- A blog is much easier to get ranked on the first page of the search engines than a static website.

If you are a network marketer, and you are marketing on social media sites, linking to your blog, that is branding you, is a much better alternative than linking to one of your company websites. The latter will make you look like a spammer.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of getting your websites ranked in the search engines. As a subscriber to my newsletter, you will learn SEO strategies, and you will learn how to get traffic to your blogs/websites using Social Media.

Self-hosted WordPress Blog
Self-hosted means you own it and you are paying for it. Sure you can get a free blog, but there are several reasons you want to get a self-hosted WordPress Blog, but here are three.

1. Your blog is an asset- Like real estate, gold, and silver, your website can appreciate in value. Flippa.com is an auction website. All they sell is websites.

If you click on the most active websites, you will see that people are bidding on websites that sell for hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of dollars!

The great thing about investing in websites, as part of your investment portfolio, is that all you need to purchase a website is a domain name and a web hosting account.

Your domain names are assets by themselves. Estibot.com is a domain name appraisal website. You can appraise the value of your current domain names, or you can appraise the value of a domain name before you even purchase it!

2. Plug-ins!- You can install plug-ins on your blog to optimize your blog for SEO, Social Media, making money, and much more!

You can install plug-ins on your self-hosted WordPress Blog, but not on the free WordPress blogs.

If you are a little more advanced and know how to install plug-ins, here is my personal list of favorite WordPress plug-ins.

Akismet
All in One SEO Pack
cbnet Ping Optimizer
CommentLuv
Digg Digg
Do Follow
Google XML Sitemap for Videos
Google XML Sitemaps with qTranslate Support
No Self Pings
Social Media Widget
Top Commentators Widget
WP Super Cache
WP Greet Box
Disqus Comment System
Position Yourself
Riffly Video/Audio Comments
SEO Booster Lite
SEO Friendly Images
SEO SearchTerms Tagging 2
SEO Super Comments
SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam
Tweet old post
WP Minify
WP Super Cache
Onlywire Multi Autosubmitter

3. Avoid self-sabotaging your financial goals- If you are a home business owner and you are trying to get everything for free, and you are talking about how you want to eventually
become financial free…

…then your actions are not congruent with your goals.

Yes, I am the biggest advocate of cash flow, and of keep your business expenses at a minimum, but you can not realistically expect to have home business success with a something for nothing attitude.