You can attract an audience that you would never dream you could reach. I have posted videos of mostly my dogs playing and music concerts I have been too. My top video has around 1,000 views and is of the Grateful Dead cover band, Dark Star Orchestra.

I edited this video to have an opening and then I put a watermark for one of our blogs in the corner. In the description of the video I mentioned info about the song played and concert and also about my blog. This is a great way to attract readers or buyers to your blog.

ecopreneurist.com had this to say about the power of Youtube:

A study by Google found that YouTube ads generated the “same amount of engagement and intent to purchase” as those on TV and that online ads are better at “communicating the brand” than those on TV.  Of course, not all videos are created equal. According to one study, not surprisingly, the higher the “interactivity” of the program and content of the video the higher the brand involvement, recall and recognition of the video and the ads surrounding it. So, for maximum impact, make sure your content is entertaining, enigmatic and engaging.

So, be creative. Use YouTube for ads, prototyping, presentations, testing, news, documentaries, interviews, art and humor. Make them fun and interesting. Then put the links on your website. Spread the word, or rather the images, and see what happens.

Sometimes people are going to post on Youtube for fun or just for their personal reasons. If you are looking to attract an audience you will want to edit your videos, have proper lighting, audio and a HD camera. These things will improve the quality of your video and add a professional touch.

Also, make sure you are interesting. Why would anyone want to watch a video of you that looks like an old high school speech? The fact is they won’t.

Fast editing, bright colors, music, extra noises, backgrounds and makeup/costumes will help you get to the next level with your videos. Even if you are selling t-shirts you can have fun and be entertaining. Maybe people won’t want to see a lecture on t-shirt production.  But, a properly edited and informative video on t-shirt creation or design would be very helpful to many people.

The key is to be creative and original.

One of the best ways to get a following for your blog or website is to search out similar sites. Read the sites, find a few that you like and start commenting. The more thoughtful and heartfelt the comments the better.

Sometimes you will be reading an article, take this one for example:

This is a blog about music from Jambands.com. This specific article was about Robert Plant and his touring dates for June, 2011. You see a bunch of real comments about him and the tour and then you see this one.

Dear customers, thank you for your support of our company. Here, there’s good news to tell you: The company recently launched a number of new fashion items! ! Fashionable and welcome everyone to come buy. If necessary, please plut: http://www.findsoso.com

This comment has absolutely nothing to do with the article, website or other comments. It is obvious that it is spam. Posting like this will not get you the followers you want.

Sometimes I see generic spam comments like, “Great post, I was searching for this information.” Comments like this are not very constructive and are usually deleted.

5 Tips for gaining followers by commenting on other websites:

1. Comment frequently and have something worthwhile to say.

2. Visit blogs, forums, engage facebook, twitter, etc. These are great ways to expand your base. A lot of people will click on your link if they find your comment appealing. If you are a Republican and have a Political blog then comment on a bunch of Democrat and GOP blogs and news postings. This is a great way to get your followers to engage each other on your website.

3. Don’t always post links. Post your opinion or a compliment about a previous poster.

4. Stay active in the forum, the more active you are the more the other members will start to trust you and will want to check out a website or blog you recommend.

5. Don’t troll. A troll is someone who just goes into forums or comments in order to incite others. They are negative and just hate on everything.

To sum it up, just be nice and genuine. The more interested you are in someone else’s blog the more likely they are to return the favor.

Purchase Traffic
Many websites only need a limited amount of traffic to make a profit. This is especially true for services and contractors that serve a particular geographic area. We offer solutions like SmartClicks™, which provides a guaranteed amount of monthly web traffic for a fixed price. An alternative offering involves selling contractor leads (like kitchen renovation inquiries) directly to contractors who can bid on projects defined by actual customers. The value in this type of marketing is even higher considering that you can get leads without having to build a website!

Pay-per-Click
One of the most popular methods of buying traffic is known as pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, where advertisements are shown alongside search results on search engines like Google™, or near news articles about related topics. For instance, if you sell “rechargeable batteries” you can buy advertising through Google that will link to your website when anyone searches for that term, or when articles about batteries show up on certain websites. People who come in through these sources are much more likely to turn into customers, because they are already thinking about the product. Overall, PPC marketing tends to have a much higher conversion rate than radio, television, newspapers, or billboards because a well-orchestrated ad campaign will only show advertisements to interested customers. Because most pay-per-click dollars are spent directly at the search engine level, it is also called search engine marketing (SEM).

Pursue Local Online Advertising
Did you know that you can place ads online that only show up in your city, state, or region? One newly developed feature of SEM is known as geotargeting. This involves defining specific geographic areas where you want your ads to show, or not show. Aside from buying keywords that include town names where you do business, you can go for general search terms like “landscape contractor” or “airport limo” and have results show up for people in your vicinity. In Google, local advertising also extends to maps that appear near search results, and online “Yellow Page” directories that show results for nearby businesses.  We can ensure that you get added to local directories and search results, which can have a significant impact on whether people in your community can find your business.

SEO
A cousin of PPC or SEM, search engine optimization (SEO) involves making changes to your website in order to get found in search engines. Primarily, people want to get their site found on Google, followed by Yahoo and MSN. The “natural” search engine rankings are the ones that do not require payment for position, and they are very valuable because they are more trusted by search engine users. The first challenge in SEO is to get a new site found by the search engines, and the second challenge is to get the site on the first page. In general, search engine users will find what they are looking for on the first page of results, so all of the companies that want to be found will use (or buy) SEO techniques. Web.com offers several different levels of SEO, and even builds websites with search engine friendly features so they can be found more quickly.

Banner Ads
One of the main sources of revenue on the Internet in the 1990s was banner advertising, which involved buying square and rectangular ads on websites. Unfortunately, most of this advertising was not very effective because it was not targeted, and one of the reasons for the “Internet bubble” bursting was that people stopped buying these ads. Now, banner ads are usually shown in specific areas to specific groups of people and can even be targeted to show only when a web page has certain keywords showing. These ads can also be more interactive, with animated and video elements designed to grab a customer’s attention.

Email Campaigns
Email marketing is a great way to reach a target audience, if done correctly. Often, the best target email recipients are your existing customers or people who “opt in” to get emails from your website. Regular online newsletters and holiday greetings also can be retooled to include special promotions, coupon codes, product upgrade notices, and sales events. Web.com also offers information about testing various email campaigns to find out what approaches are successful for your core group of customers, and has tracking tools with scorecards that show which campaigns brought in the most revenue.

To further its efforts, Google has started taking aim at sites that look as if they’re “designed to look relevant,” and this kind of change may inadvertently affect your own search engine rankings if you don’t stay on top of your website.

What makes your site look less relevant?

• Lack of originality. When your website was originally created, did the webmaster copy or paraphrase content from another site? Search engines have gotten much better at detecting those practices.
• Lack of freshness. Generally, search engines visit Web pages at least once every 2 weeks. When they come back, they perform any number of tests to see if anything on a page has changed. If the content always stays the same, it may not be considered sufficiently “fresh,” and the search engines will demote the Web page. Although you’ll find some pages on the Web that haven’t changed in years, it’s important that you curate your pages more frequently.
• Lack of quantity. How big is your website? If it has five pages and you don’t have a lot of content on your site, it could be mistaken for just a parking page or a placeholder site. For any given page, how much text is on it? If you have a big site with just a few words on each page, it can look suspicious.
• Lack of quality. In the past, many people added machine-generated content to pages to attract more keyword searches. Alternatively, they may have had content written that was highly repetitive. Normally, if you read content out loud and it doesn’t sound natural, it probably needs to be refreshed. This may also be the case if you had content written for your site several years ago, when search engines rewarded the practice known as “keyword stuffing.”

[left-quote author="Dave" website="DaveSchoofs.com" link="http://www.daveschoofs.com"]Just try and be different.  Unique content and quirky remarks go a long way[/left-quote]A solution to many of these problems is to devote some extra time each week adding bits of content to your website. For example, if you have a website that sells several products, you can write a paragraph each week on one particular item and then add that paragraph to the product page. You can then include a link on your home page that “features” that item. Sprucing up pages that haven’t been touched in a while is always a good idea, especially when you have new products or services to add or discontinued items to remove.

Because Google uses a set of “secret formulas” to understand site quality and relevance, it isn’t that difficult for the average site owner to get caught up in traps that are meant to ensnare some of the Internet’s shadier operators. Sites that ranked highly on Google for years may find that their fortunes have changed if they haven’t updated or upgraded their content.

Web pages that are too similar to other pages on the Internet can also find themselves marginalized. For example, real estate websites often use similar content when describing local communities, and search engines may conclude that those pages aren’t sufficiently compelling to warrant higher rankings.

In any case, keeping your website up-to-date and making it more of a resource for its topic matter are two ways to stay out of the “spam traps.” Best of all, if you’ve been competing against a batch of spammy pages, Google’s new approach can push your site higher simply by removing the low-quality competitors who have held spots above your own.

You know something is up when you see, “Your results may vary.”

Well, I am going to share a few tips that have helped me, and I am sure that they can help you as well.

First thing you need to do is setup ads for your new website. I suggest using Amazon ads or Google Adwords and Adsense.

Here are the two sites you will want to visit and register for

https://www.google.com/adsense/

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

Both of these sites have great FAQ sections and you will be able to get this working with their helpful step by step instructions.

After you have your ad accounts or affiliate accounts setup, you will need to bring people to your website.

Using social media really helps in these situations, unless you have thousands of dollars to spend on marketing.

Using and interacting on Twitter, posting on Facebook, starting a Facebook group and utilizing sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Allvoices, and Yahoo Buzz will bring traffic to your site.

When you create a post, make sure to add it to your favorites on Stumbleupon. Digg and the other sites do not work as well, but Stumble works very well.

We have multiple articles, postings and pages that have gotten up to 10,000 views only from Stumbleupon.com

In order to get great traffic from search engines you will want to use proper Tags for your articles. If you are writing about President Obama, you would want to use tags like, USA, Politics, President, Obama, United States, Government, World, etc…

When you have the tags in place, and the links out there on various sites, the search engines will give you a higher ranking. This works very well, but it will take time.

For instance, I wrote on article, called “The Failure of Absolutism.” After a few months, I started seeing a lot of traffic on that post from Google. (I can view specifics on traffic by using Google Analytics www.google.com/analytics)

People would search the terms, “Absolutism and Fascism” and my article was the 5^th highest on the Google search. We got this result because we spread links, got traffic and made sure the spiders would crawl through all of our articles.

Learn more about Web Crawlers here –> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler

Most people who buy a domain never start their website. Most of the people who start up a website give up during the first 6 months because they do not see revenue. The people who spend time marketing their sites, updating their sites and who try various ideas, they succeed.

So, you are thinking of starting a website. I was you a few years ago. But, I did not limit myself to one website, my partners and I made tons of sites. Today, a handful of them are successful, but many more were not.

Remember, wordpress and your website will only give you what you have put into it. You will not make money from nothing; that does not exist. But, by working smart, you too can succeed.

First, by going to wordpress.org you will be able to find the answers to many of your questions.

The forums at WordPress will have an answer to almost any question you may encounter. Many of the users of these forums are more than willing to assist you as well.

http://wordpress.org/support/

REMEMBER, WORDPRESS IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT.

There are a number of people who register a domain and sign-up for our services that never even have one post. Our goal is to have you manage, operate and control your own website. WordPress is by far the best tool to accomplish this goal.

For this little piece I will be going over some of the basics of WordPress.

How to Create a post:

All of the following Information was retrieved from: http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts

To write a post:

1. Log in to your WordPress Administration Panel (Dashboard).
2. Click the Posts tab.
3. Click the Add New Sub Tab
4. Start filling in the blanks.
5. As needed, select a category, add tags, and make other selections from the sections below the post. Each of these sections is explained below.
6. When you are ready, click Publish.

Title

The title of your post. You can use any words or phrases. Avoid using the same title twice as that will cause problems. You can use commas, apostrophes, quotes, hypens/dashes, and other typical symbols in the post like “My Site – Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid.” WordPress will clean it up for the link to the post, called the post-slug.

Post Editing Area

The blank box where you enter your writing, links, links to images, and any information you want to display on your site. You can use either the Visual or the HTML view to compose your posts. For more on the HTML view, see the section below, Visual Versus HTML View.

Preview button

Allows you to view the post before officially publishing it.

Publish box

Contains buttons that control the state of your post. The main states are Published, Pending Review, and Draft. A Published status means the post has been published on your blog for all to see. Pending Review means the draft is waiting for review by an editor prior to publication. Draft means the post has not been published and remains a draft for you. If you select a specific publish status and click the update post or Publish button, that status is applied to the post. For example, to save a post in the Pending Review status, select Pending Review from the Publish Status drop-down box, and click Save As Pending. (You will see all posts organized by status by going to Posts > Edit). To schedule a post for publication on a future time or date, click “Edit” in the Publish area next to the words “Publish immediately”. You can also change the publish date to a date in the past to back-date posts. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the “Publish” button when you have completed the post to publish at the desired time and date.

Publish box

Visibility – This determines how your post appears to the world. Public posts will be visible by all website visitors once published. Password Protected posts are published to all, but visitors must know the password to view the post content. Private posts are visible only to you (and to other editors or admins within your site)

Permalink

After you save your post, the Permalink below the title shows the potential URL for the post, as long as you have permalinks enabled. (To enable permalinks, go to Settings > Permalinks.) The URL is generated from your title. In previous versions of WordPress, this was referred to as the “page-slug.” The commas, quotes, apostrophes, and other non-HTML favorable characters are changed and a dash is put between each word. If your title is “My Site – Here’s Lookin’ at You, Kid”, it will be cleaned up to be “my-site-heres-lookin-at-you-kid” as the title. You can manually change this, maybe shortening it to “my-site-lookin-at-you-kid”.

Save

Allows you to save your post as a draft / pending review rather than immediately publishing it. To return to your drafts later, visit Posts – Edit in the menu bar, then select your post from the list.

Publish

Publishes your post on the site. You can edit the time when the post is published by clicking the Edit link above the Publish button and specifying the time you want the post to be published. By default, at the time the post is first auto-saved, that will be the date and time of the post within the database.

Post Tags

Refers to micro-categories for your blog, similar to including index entries for a page. Posts with similar tags are linked together when a user clicks one of the tags. Tags have to be enabled with the right code in your theme for them to appear in your post. Add new tags to the post by typing the tag into the box and clicking “Add”.

Categories

The general topic the post can be classified in. Generally, bloggers have 7-10 categories for their content. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To add a new category, click the +Add New Category link in this section. You can manage your categories by going to Posts > Categories.

Excerpt

A summary or brief teaser of your posts featured on the front page of your site as well as on the category, archives, and search non-single post pages. Note that the Excerpt does not usually appear by default. It only appears in your post if you have changed the index.php template file to display the Excerpt instead of the full Content of a post. If so, WordPress will automatically use the first 55 words of your post as the Excerpt or up until the use of the More Quicktag mark. If you use an Explicit Excerpt, this will be used no matter what. For more information, see Excerpt.

Send Trackbacks

A way to notify legacy blog systems that you’ve linked to them. If you link other WordPress blogs, they’ll be notified automatically using pingbacks. No other action is necessary. For those blogs that don’t recognize pingbacks, you can send a trackback to the blog by entering the website address(es) in this box, separating each one by a space. See Trackbacks and Pingbacks for more information.

Custom Fields

Custom_Fields offer a way to add information to your site. In conjunction with extra code in your template files or plugins, Custom Fields can modify the way a post is displayed. These are primarily used by plugins, but you can manually edit that information in this section.

Discussion

Options to enable interactivity and notification of your posts. This section hosts two check boxes: Allow Comments on this post and Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this post. If Allowing Comments is unchecked, no one can post comments to this particular post. If Allowing Pings is unchecked, no one can post pingbacks or trackbacks to this particular post.

Password Protect This Post

To password protect a post, click Edit next to Visibility in the Publish area to the top right, then click Password Protected, click Ok, and enter a password. Then click OK. Note – Editor and Admin users can see password protected or private posts in the edit view without knowing the password.

Post Author

A list of all blog authors you can select from to attribute as the post author. This section only shows if you have multiple users with authoring rights in your blog. To view your list of users, see Users tab on the far right. For more information, see Users and Authors.

WordPress Admin Writing Post Advanced Panel – Bottom of Page

Note: You can set basic options for writing, such as the size of the post box, how smiley tags are converted, and other details by going to Settings > Writing. See Writing Options SubPanel.

Best Practices For Posting

You can say or show the world anything you like on your WordPress site. Here are some tips you need to know to help you write your posts in WordPress.

Practice Accessibility

To be compliant with web standards for accessibility, be sure to include ALT and TITLE descriptions on links and images to help your users, such as <a title=”WordPress Codex” href=”http://codex.wordpress.org/”>WordPress Codex</a>.

Use Paragraphs

No one likes to read writing that never pauses for a line break. To break your writing up into paragraphs, use double spaces between your paragraphs. WordPress will automatically detect these and insert <p> HTML paragraph tags into your writing.

Using Headings

If you are writing long posts, break up the sections by using headings, small titles to highlight a change of subject. In HTML, headings are set by the use of h1, h2, h3, h4, and so on. By default, most WordPress Themes use the first, second, and sometimes third heading levels within the site. You can use h4 to set your own headings. Simply type in:

<h4>Subtitle of Section</h4>

with double lines before and after and WordPress will make that title a headline in your post. To style the heading, add it to your style.css style sheet file. For more information on styling headings, check out Designing Headings.

Use HTML

You don’t have to use HTML when writing your posts. WordPress will automatically add it to your site, but if you do want control over different elements like boxes, headings, and other additional containers or elements, use HTML.

Spell Check and Proof

There are spell check Plugins available, but even those can’t check for everything. Some serious writers will write their posts in a text editor
with spell check, check all the spelling and proof it thoroughly before copying and pasting into WordPress.
Think before you post

Ranting on blogs is commonplace today, but take a moment and think about what you are writing. Remember, once it is out there, it can be seen by many and crawled by search engines; and taking things back is harder once it is public. Take a moment to read what you’ve written before hitting the Publish button. When you are ready, share it with the world.

Write about what you like

You’ve heard this a thousand times before and it sounds too cliched, but it is true. If you force yourself to write something that you don’t really enjoy, it will show. Perhaps you might not have a specific theme for writing when you just start, but that’s ok. You’ll become more focused later. Just enjoy the experience and write what you like.

Write frequently

Write as frequently as you can, may be even more than twice a day, but don’t let quantity get in the way of quality. Your viewers come for content, don’t give them useless stuff.

Don’t use too much slang

Not all the readers will be from your part of the world so make sure people can understand easily.

Don’t hide your emotions

Tempting as it might be, don’t hide your real emotions. After all that is what a blog is about. If you want, you can stay anonymous and voice your feelings on whatever you are passionate about. You might have strong views on various subjects but let your readers know your passion. What is passion worth if you can’t even share it? You’ll actually love the discussions it can lead to. The discussions will broaden your own thinking and you might end up making some really good friends.

Consider your readers

Perhaps this sounds weird, but consider who needs to know about your blog before you tell them about your new blogging hobby. Will you be able to write freely if you tell them? How much should you let your readers know about you? Is it ok if your boss or girlfriend reads your posts? If you don’t want them to read, take anonymity measures accordingly.

Make use of comments

Comments let people share their ideas. Sometimes, they might not be good, but you can ask such people to shut up. Most of the times, they will and if they don’t you can delete their comments. Blogging like real life, can be both fun and not so fun at times. Be prepared. Also, give your people a place to contact you in private if they want to write to you.

Worry about blog design later

Blog design matters, but only to an extent. Don’t give up on blogging just because the design isn’t coming up as you’ll like it it to be. Sooner or later, you’ll get around the design problems with ease. But continue writing. Content is what attracts your readers, not just the look of your blog.

Don’t play too safe

Talk about the real you. Readers aren’t impressed by how big your house is, which cool club you belong to, or what the weather is in your hometown. Don’t be a bore and put a long post on how you fixed the leaking tap in minutes. Readers don’t care about braggers, they care about the real you–how you feel, what gets you excited, why you are the person you are. But if achievements are all that you can talk about, you will bore your readers.

Use pictures and videos

They make the pages colorful and viewers get to see a little of your part of the world. They feel connected.

Keep writing

Don’t stop blogging. If you don’t have anything to write about, chances are, you are still holding back. Let loose. Perhaps surf more blogs and maybe you’ll get an idea. You can write about your friends, complain about your boss, or simply rant about what’s gone wrong. Yet if nothing else works, just write a review on the latest movie, book, or product. Easy actually.

Save your posts

Save your posts before you press the publish button. Anything can happen with your computer or with an internet connection. You don’t need to lose your post.

Visual Versus HTML Editor

When writing your post, you have the option of using the visual or HTML mode of the editor. The visual mode lets you see your post as is, while the HTML mode shows you the code and replaces the WYSIWYG editor buttons with quicktags. These quicktags are explained as follows.

• b – <strong></strong> HTML tag for strong emphasis of text (i.e. bold).
• i – <em></em> HTML tag for emphasis of text (i.e. italicize).
• b-quote – <blockquote></blockquote> HTML tag to distinguish quoted or cited text.
• del – <del></del> HTML tag to label text considered deleted from a post. Most browsers display as striked through text. (Assigns datetime attribute with offset from GMT (UTC))
• link – <a href=”http://example.com”></a> HTML tag to create a hyperlink.
• ins – <ins></ins> HTML tag to label text considered inserted into a post. Most browsers display as underlined text. (Assigns datetime attribute with offset from GMT (UTC))
• ul – <ul></ul> HTML tag will insert an unordered list, or wrap the selected text in same. An unordered list will typically be a bulleted list of items.
• ol – <ol></ol> HTML tag will insert a numbered list, or wrap the selected text in same. Each item in an ordered list are typically numbered.
• li – <li></li> HTML tag will insert or make the selected text a list item. Used in conjunction with the ul or ol tag.
• code – <code></code> HTML tag for preformatted styling of text. Generally sets text in a monospaced font, such as Courier.
• more – <!–more–> WordPress tag that breaks a post into “teaser” and content sections. Type a few paragraphs, insert this tag, then compose the rest of your post. On your blog’s home page you’ll see only those first paragraphs with a hyperlink ((more…)), which when followed displays the rest of the post’s content.
• page – <!–nextpage–> WordPress tag similar to the more tag, except it can be used any number of times in a post, and each insert will “break” and paginate the post at that location. Hyperlinks to the paginated sections of the post are then generated in combination with the wp_link_pages or link_pages template tag.
• lookup – Opens a JavaScript dialogue box that prompts for a word to search for through the online dictionary at answers.com. You can use this to check spelling on individual words.
• Close Tags – Closes any open HTML tags left open–but pay attention to the closing tags. WordPress is not a mind reader (!), so make sure the tags enclose what you want, and in the proper way.

Workflow Note – With Quicktag buttons that insert HTML tags, you can for example click i to insert the opening <em> tag, type the text to be enclosed, and click /i or Close Tags to insert the closing tag. However, you can eliminate the need for this ‘close’ step by changing your workflow a bit: type your text, select the portion to be emphasized (that is, italicized), then click i and your highlighted text will be wrapped in the opening and closing tags.

The Quicktag buttons also have the accesskey JavaScript attribute set, so you may be able to use a keyboard equivalent (e.g., Alt-b for bold) to “press” the button, depending on your browser.

On Windows, IE and Firefox prior to 2.0b2 use Alt to activate accesskeys, while Firefox 2.0b2 uses Alt-Shift. On Mac OS X, Firefox uses Ctrl.

Advanced Use of WordPress

Now that you are familiar with the basic features and functions of how WordPress works, it might be time for you to plunge deeper into the power of WordPress. The links below will expand your familiarity with PHP, HTML, XHTML, and CSS:

• Lessons: WordPress Feature and Functions
• Lessons: WordPress Tech Techniques
• Using Permalinks
• Photoblogs and Galleries >
• WordPress Advanced Techniques
• Advanced Techniques for Plugins and Customization
• WordPress Server and Database Information
• Developer Documentation

Need More Help

As simple and easy as it is to use WordPress, if troubles arise, if something is confusing, if things aren’t working, don’t despair because help is available! Even though WordPress is free and open source, there are literally hundreds of volunteers eager to help you. Here are some helpful resources for WordPress:

• FAQ
• Getting More Help
• Using the Support Forums
• WordPress Forum
• IRC Freenode WordPress Support on channel #wordpress
• WordPress IRC Live Help

And Finally

Now that you’re a full fledged WordPress user, consider contributing to the WordPress Codex, Support Forum, Development, and other volunteer efforts that keep WordPress going. WordPress is free and totally supported by volunteers, and your help is needed.

Dave Schoofs and I started Northstar Dyanmic for a variety of reasons.  We have had success with creating many websites, including our own blogs, media sites and online stores. Through diligent work and by following our core values we have attracted large amounts of visitors to our sites and have had success.

I remember when I was 8 years old, 1993, and I was sending my first email. This was a completely foreign experience to me. I didn’t know if I was supposed to put in a home address. “What does compose mean?” I wondered to myself.  I had to learn this new method of communication. Without knowing what to do, I was lost.

Many people feel the desire to start-up their own website. They want their own blog to share their voice or maybe they want to make some extra money with an easy-to-manage online store. Nowadays, almost everyone could use that extra cash.

Then, they realize what they got themselves into. HTML, CSS, CMS, all these acronyms and so little time.  In order to even begin the design aspects of the site, you need to have the proper framework in place. This involves code. A whole different language.

This is where we got our brilliant idea for our Quickstart Package.

We can put in place this framework (code) and optimize the SEO for these sites and do it for free. Many people are wondering why we would want to do this.

What we do is put in place the framework for you to be able to customize the website to your needs.

You just need to sign up for a domain through one of our affiliate providers, such as Host Monster, Host Gator, Globat, Thinkhost, Bluehost or many others. Depending on your needs, the prices range from $10 year up to a few hundred. Depending on the domain name and your server needs.

Most sites will not cost you more than $20 to register.

Once you have signed up through our affiliate program we can put in place the WordPress platform and then optimize the SEO to get you started.

This is a great way to get started, but this will not give you a finished website. This is a way to get you started for free. If you are looking for a website we have a ton of great deals and can tailor a website to your needs.

I look forward to working with you in the future and make sure to check back to see are latest blog entries.

Many of us are not filthy rich. We do not have an extra $5,000 to drop on advertising for our new $100,000 blog. Even if you did have $100,000 to spend, it would not be worth it. Unless, you are advertising and able to make your money back.

But why play catch up?

Social media gives the average website owner the ability to spread their message, target a fan base and grow. Once you have the followers and the website content, you will start to see additional streams of revenue.

The first thing you want to do is figure out which social media websites are good for you and which are not.

Personally, I have found Stumble Upon, Facebook and Twitter to be the best. They are all good for various things and require discipline.

My Political Blog, www.politablog.com is a site that we have grown to over 2,000 unique visitors a month in a little over a year.

At first, our hits from Twitter were pretty good. We got a lot of re-tweets and we benefited. But, if we don’t re-tweet other people’s links then they will stop helping us. It is a reciprocal relationship.

We started up 2 twitter accounts. One for me personally @thedavidbrooks and one for the political blog @politablog

Just about every day we try to update. It is best to update at least once a day, but do not update too much. People will think you are spam. You would almost never want to do more than 10 updates in a 24 hour period.

To be clear, the keys for using Twitter are, re-tweeting other people, using the direct message feature, update often, but not too much and remember to be civil. People also want to communicate, not just get links shoved down their throats.

If you are looking for less social interaction and more focus of writing, video and media then Stumbleupon would be great for you.

During my Junior year of College I wrote a paper about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Nothing special about this paper, but it received over 5,000 hits from stumbleupon and it instantly became one of my most popular articles. All I did was setup the account and submit my link. Simple as that.

Facebook is my favorite social media tool because it allows for more communication with your fanbase. I can share my site with my friends or via a facebook group. Personally, I do not spam my facebook friends too often with website stuff. I prefer to leave that for a facebook group.

With Stumbleupon you can get lucky and your site can one day get 10,000 hits or more. Digg is another site where I have heard of people getting that amount of traffic.

With Twitter and Facebook you have to somehow attract people to you. One of the best ways to do this is by offering them an incentive. If you are selling something, give away coupons to your followers. If you have a blog, you can offer a free e-book. One of our most successful promotions was for Earth Day. We planted a tree for every follower we acquired over a 3 week span. We had over 1,500 total.

I will discuss these strategies and more in our upcoming blogs.

The new Twitter has been a great hit in terms of functionality. It seemingly takes Twitter to a whole other level of communication.

From the Twitter Blog:

On the site, you’ll see the familiar timeline, yet underneath each Tweet is a handful of information, deeper context and even embedded media. Simply click on an individual Tweet and a details pane slides out on the right and reveals this content.

You can find out more about the enhancements on this information page. Here are some highlights:

• New design. The site has a cleaner timeline and a rich details pane that instantly adds more impact to individual Tweets while still maintaining the simplicity of the timeline. And, experience infinite scroll — you no longer have to click “more” to view additional Tweets.
• Media. Now, it’s easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with DailyBooth, deviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube.
• Related content. When you click a Tweet, the details pane shows additional information related to the author or subject. Depending on the Tweet’s content, you may see: replies, other Tweets by that user, a map of where a geotagged Tweet was sent from, and more.
• Mini profiles. Click a username to see a mini profile without navigating from the page, which provides quick access to account information, including bio and recent Tweets.

Best wishes tweeting!

David.