I often get emails from people who have contacted me from fiverr.com or the Warrior Forum and also from other lesser known forums asking me how I manage to work for myself and pay my bills!

This isn’t another of those “get rich quick” hyped up posts that just really annoy me to be honest.

There are a lot of people in the current financial climate who are really struggling to make ends meet. The last thing they need is to be sold yet another magic formula for making money online.

I am not saying that these methods don’t work…some of them do…it’s just that people new to working online do not have the focus needed to work on just one thing and make it work for them before trying anything else.

So what I am trying to say is – I have a method for making money online….but I stick to it and make it work which is the real difference.

When I first started working online a few years ago I flitted from idea to idea trying everything at once and just getting nowhere fast. I ended up frustrated, annoyed, short of cash and generally struggling to build an online business.

However, I have had 4 offline businesses which all worked so just applied the same methodology to my online business.

I now have a six figure SEO business which I love, have great clients (I have sacked any clients that were too high maintenance) and am enjoying life again!

If you want to know how to do the same and would like a no nonsense guide without all of the BS and hype then sign up for my free newsletter updates in the box on the right.

You may not hear from me every day, or be bombarded by WSO of the day emails…but I am sure you hate that anyway right?

OK that’s it for now… clients to talk too and work to get on with…if you want to know how to build a real online business just sign up to my free newsletter.

Speak soon

WP-Malwatch Plugin

As my blog was hacked recently I decided to install the WP-Malwatch plugin.

This is the result of the first scan with this plugin in place and activated:

Very pleased with the initial scan and this will run in the background for me to hopefully ensure that my blog remains safe!

Akismet Plugin

The Akismet plugin is fairly straightforward – it stops spam comments. Lots of people now try and post spurious comments with links back to their own websites and this plugin identifies the worst of them and keeps them off the blog. It’s a little like the spam filter in gmail – you don’t need to go and look you just feel safe.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog. This is essential when you first submit your blog to Google using the webmaster tools.

Ultimate Google Analytics

This simply provides you with the Google Analytics of your website visits. GA is very in depth and you can check all sorts of things such as keywords used, serach engines, operating systems and much more.

Easy Privacy Policy

If you are going to put Adsense on your blog then the compliance statement from Google requires that you have a privacy policy. This plugin generates the required information. You just activate the plugin then go to Settings – Easy Privacy Policy and click “Create Privacy Page”. I have just done this so look on my navigation bar and click on the Privacy Policy tab to see what it generates – pretty nifty eh?

Quick Tip: If you look at the bottom of your Privacy Policy page you will see a link to an affiliate of the plugin. To remove this simply deselect the option right at the bottom of the options page – Include a credit link for the Easy Privacy Plugin.

WordPress Database Backup

This is one of the crucial plugins you need just in case anything goes wrong. Install the plugin and activate it. You can then choose how to receive your backup. I do a backup straight away when I set up a blog and then set it to create one weekly. The easiest option for me is to have it sent to my email address which I can access if it is ever needed.

I will add more later today as it is 1.30am here and I am tired out now!

This is the start of the process of setting up my blog…

So the first thing I did was remove WordPress using Fantastico and also removed any other files that were left over using file manager so I had a clean install. I then went back into the control panel in Hostgator and performed a clean install of WordPress.

The reason for doing this is the original hack of my blog left some nasty code in the wordpress install so rather than spend hours trying to “clean” the code I started from fresh.

This presented me with the Twenty Ten theme which is the default theme from wordpress.

I need a more flexible and powerful theme that I can use to present information in my own way. The theme I have chosen is a premium theme called Headway.

The next step for me is to delete the Hello World post and comment and remove the Links as I will set up my own later.

The next post will show you the plugins that I use to make my blog super efficient.

I just wanted to let people know that I am setting up my blog again from scratch. The reasons behind this are many but the main ones are that the first one was hacked and upset me for a few days! I then trashed it completely and have now installed some security measures so hopefully all will be OK now.

The other reason for a fresh new look is that the old blog became cluttered and messy and lacked focus.

This new version is to work more in line with the way I think. I like to help people whenever I can and also love humour so will post jokes and funny stories in the page titled “Jokes and Funny Stories”…hehe.

I thought it would be great to help people who maybe are looking at starting a blog for the first time so will document how I install mine and get it up and running and working properly for me here.

So the next post will be just that, a real time user guide on how I set up a blog myself. I understand that other people may have different methods and that’s fair enough – but my way works for me and I hope it will help you too.

Don’t be shy and leave comments and join in as this is going to be fun!

Have a fantastic xmas and all the best in whatever you choose to do with your life in 2011.