So, getting a blog started is certainly a bit more work than signing up and just going for it.

Well, it CAN be that simple if you’re blogging just as a past time, but if you want your blog to return value for your time investment, you have to put a bit more into it. Since we’re all about the money-return on time, that’s where I have been.

First, the original blog was hosted on wordpress.com’s servers. While this greatly simplified the install and management tasks, the big downside is that the wordpress.com hosted servers don’t allow you to generate revenue from your blog. Since that’s one of the things I do want from my blog, I needed to move my site to a hosted provider.

After spending a short amount of time picking the right provider, I downloaded the WordPress software and installed it on the host. The I spent a day configuring it to behave like the site I had hosted on wordpress.com. Themes. Widgets. Pages. Importing. Exporting. You know the drill. I should have outsourced that. But glad I learned how to do it.

The money-making part

Next, the revenue part. Having been in the industry a while, I know that there are a few things you can do to generate blog-driven revenue. Google Ads is one (signed up, waiting for approval). Next, I have had some ideas for merchandise and gear related to this blog that I want to sell. The next post will detail all about that. After that, set up the FeedBurner configuration for the newsfeed, get Google Stats set up, and assorted to dos.

Yes, that took way too much time, but I’m now set to make this blog a success. I look forward to carrying you all with me on this journey!