 Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Friday. Welcome to the last day of 2021. You know, it's it's funny At the end of 2020, I thought to myself, wow, that was some years. It's gonna be great to get back to normal And now it's the end of 2021. I'm like, wow, that was some year It'd be nice to get back to normal And I have I have more doubts about getting back to normal now than I did then What the heck? That's crazy, right? Let me get my volume off here. My iPad. I got it off to the side But it was it was really a an insane year so much happened so much went down I mean gosh, you could go through the news alone and just looked at who died Who got convicted of crimes and was it that justine Maxwell lady just got convicted the other day and now and I'm gonna get to The subject don't worry. I just got I got to get some of this off my chest But now they're gonna there's civil suits against prince Andrew because I guess he was involved and oh my gosh, it's just Why don't people just live normal lives? I mean, why do they want all the hassle? Why do they want all this stuff going on? Let's see. Here's to next year being better than the last Five for all of us brother. That's very nice ball. I appreciate that and hey today I'm gonna tell you about some blogs, you know, if it if you wanted to make some money online And you didn't want to sell products and you didn't want to make courses You don't want to do any of that stuff today's video is for you because basically if you if you like to write and tell your story And I don't I don't type What I do is I use talk to text And I do that like most of the time even if I'm writing a book I'll use talk to text and I go back through and re-edit it because I can't type you know, I'm not a typist And yes, that's something I should fix but I haven't so since I haven't I still got to move on to do stuff I guess I guess this sounds okay. Let me know guys if sounds okay videos. Okay, and all that stuff I know I bumped the desk every now and then and I don't mean to but it makes the computer Jump all over the place and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't done so hit that red button down there turn it from red to gray Don't forget turn on bell notification So that you're notified every time I go live or if I upload a video and I've been working a lot On my recipe channel guys See paul. I did do it And yesterday I did black eyed peas and collard greens And I'm gonna do my best to get that out tomorrow for new year's day I did smoke turkey leg with it. Oh my gosh. It was so good. You're gonna love that And I also have one I just did on pesto. I have one I did on Alfredo sauce and both of those are better than olive garden or carabas. I can tell you that right now They're amazing. They really came out good. It's not because I'm a great cook Okay, because I'm not I'm just a cook. I'm just a home cook, but I put together a recipe that was kind of a conglomerate of all the stuff I found out there And the stuff I like And it was just delicious. It really was so, uh, you know, if you're into that thing Check out those recipes. It's called, uh Restaurant quality recipes. That's my other channel. So you can check that out pull the mic closer for more clarity Okay, we'll do that. How about that? I just I feel like it's in the way here, but uh, whatever we'll do that All right guys, let's get on to this blog stuff. It's really pretty cool stuff Um, it's not that hard to really start a blog and you know, there's so many people that have made millions of dollars off blogs And I know that sounds silly, but there's so many ways that you can make money off a blog You know, if you're ready to take that leap and start something new start a blog It can grow into a source of real online income that can pay you for years to come. Let me get something real quick And you don't have to write constantly. Okay, you don't have to do that Um, you've got to contribute on a regular basis, but you don't have to write constantly So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you six things that you need to do Um, and we're just going to go through each one of these if you have questions during this put it in that chat section there Paul says he can't wait to make the stuffed mushrooms. Boy, those were good And you know the key to those stuffed mushrooms ball not to get off track is having really good crab meat I buy the fill-up spray and uh, and it's expensive. It's crap. It's like 40 dollars now for a container of it At uh costco, but man, it makes for a good meal. So anyhow, first thing you got to do is pick your blog's name and niche Really super important Don't just do a blog and say well, I just want to talk about what I'm doing. I want to talk about my life Nobody really cares unless you're already a celebrity. So that's not going to work out for you Um, you got to pick a really intriguing name and niche For your blog is super important that you do that. Um, the name of your blog is what readers will see at first my wife has one Hers is a podcast not a blog, but it's called the pet parent reset and it's entirely different on how to train pets From what you would normally think So it should be something that's really ideally Represent either, you know, general topics that you'll be writing about or it could be your own name That of your business if you want to put your business name in there Some clever combination of words otherwise Any of those things will work out The blog's niche If it's, you know, a general topic that you'll be discussing in your content You know, you want to try to get a little bit more niched down if you can examples would include like, you know Maybe you're into travel. Maybe you're into fashion. Maybe you're into food or lifestyle or technology or something like that Um, any of those things work really really well Incorporating a word or two that clearly signals what your content is about Within the name of your blog like, I don't know fashion jr or cooking cooking fishery or something like that Would be really cool and it's really helpful because when people are looking for a lot of times They'll search for your name, you know, even on youtube I have my name is one of the keywords because I know that some people will search YouTube for my actual name. So I want to have that there. Um, next thing I'm going to tell you and this is the technical part That's not really always fun But um, you got to get your blog online. You need to get some web hosting. Um, I like wordpress I think wordpress is probably one of the best things for a blog Um, I don't know the better one out there You know, I would recommend others if I thought they were better But I think wordpress is the best way to go because you can grow it into so much more You can have a store on there later on you can sell products digital products physical products Just a great way to really set up your blog Uh, listen, philips crab cakes are awesome. If in baltimore, they are the place to go Yeah, I've never had their crab cakes. I actually, um Just by the crab meat. I don't like what other people put in their crab cakes. So I like my own All right, so get your blog online guys The second steps in starting a blog is actually getting your blog online. This is a technical thing Because this is this is probably the toughest part of your blog. Um, that's what a web hosting company will do for you So you got to have web hosting Um, I have blue host on some of mine and if you look down in the description You can go to blue host. I have a link there and if you use my link, you can get a free url So, um, you'll get really cheap web hosting and a free url. So check that out In this step, what you're going to be doing is really selecting the blogging platform and web hosting plan That you need to get the blog online and like I say, there really is not much better than wordpress for a blog I just I can't imagine a better one. Um, and blue host is the preferred hosting company for wordpress. So Check that out. Look at blue host. Uh, you know and click that link. I've got down there. Um, the combination of blogging platform and web hosting Personally that I use is blue host Wordpress is a free publishing platform It's been around since what 2003 I think uh, and it now powers get this guy's over 60 percent of all blogs on the internet 60 percent that's got to tell you something and blue host is one of the most established reliable companies in the blog hosting industry Um, so, you know, really, I mean just go with what works This combination is what we'll be using Really to start your blog and I I think I think it would be the best one. All right, so let's go to set up You're going to be choosing a hosting plan you want to put your blog name That's going to come next personally. I recommend You know the choice plan they've got at blue host because it comes with domain privacy Which you don't want people knowing your home address and all that stuff Which will protect your personal information your full name your email address phone number all that stuff That way it's not published anywhere online Choosing your plan is really just as simple as you know, selecting one. Okay But that that is really the best one I think and I think you'd be most happy with it And it's like five dollars and some change a month something like that But it's called the choice plan. Okay choice plus plan. Excuse me choice plus plan That's the one you're going to want to pick. Um, you're going to get the domain privacy, which I mentioned You'll have your private information, you know Secure you don't have to worry about any of that stuff And then what you do is as soon as you log in and select that you're going to post or excuse me pick your blog's name You can do that in blue host too Once you get to that step in a checkout process, you know, just type in the name of your domain Whatever it is And then you're going to you're going to have it all set up If you want to run a quick search to see if your domain is available You can do it actually on blue host. You just type in whatever it is. You can run a quick search to see if it's available If your domain choice isn't available, you can either try another option that comes to mind Or you could choose your own domain later if you want after getting, you know The rest of your accounts squared away and get it all signed up Taking a little bit more time to think through it, right? Plus later on down there In this training, okay I'm going to explain some more things that will help you out to do some of this stuff Um So you want to create your blue host account get that all set up You're going to have to put in all your name and address and all that, you know, accounting type information Uh, you want to select the right hosting plan, which I told you which one I You know would suggest for you, uh, and then you you know pick the plan, you know, that's the best You know for you, maybe you can't afford five dollars a month. You got to do the two dollar a month one Any of that is fine. It's all going to work out for you. Just fine. Okay So next up what's our next thing? Um There are a couple. You know, I guess I should recommend a couple. There's also host gator, which I've used before I think they're a little bit slower and there's also dream host. Um, you're welcome to check out any one of those Uh, let's see. I see a lot of people um Contribute to other places like huffington post and others to try to drive people to the blog I think it's a good idea. I think it's a real good idea And you can have links back to your particular blog When you're blogging, can you push it out to multiple platforms? Most certainly I use what the heck's the name of it? Slip my mind right now. I have a hosting platform or excuse me one that It's like a social media one and it pushes out to twitter and all these different things. I'll think of it in just a second I'll say it So definitely I would definitely recommend doing that actually And then go ahead and get it all registered get it all set up. Uh, and you should be good to go Next thing you want to do is design your blog with a free WordPress theme Do not buy a theme in the beginning You don't know if you're going to want to change it or not and some of the basic ones they have for blogs are just fine You don't have to buy anything. You know, everybody's always trying to sell you something Once you've got it set up. You've got to have a theme. Okay designing your WordPress blog Is really you want to do this with as little friction as possible Okay, you don't want to make it difficult for yourself You want to make it easy to get started because if you get all wrapped up and all these different themes and colors And all this stuff you're not going to move forward. I want you to move forward So you could do that Let's see here. What else I want to tell you When you first start blogging, I know, you know, I've got some blogs. I've done it, you know for years now You can start writing in a WordPress and you're going to have that flexibility if you start it someplace else You're not going to have the flexibility guys. I'm telling you WordPress is where you want to go And you also when you get your Name for your blog make sure you get a dot com. Make sure you get a dot com I mean if you're an organization, you can get a dot org, but don't get anything other than dot com don't get dot net Don't don't get, you know, dot business don't don't get any of that crap. All you want is dot com If it's not available find something that is WordPress also is free to use it does have some restrictions in there Um, but you know, you can certainly use that if you want. I like to have my own As opposed to, you know, using somebody else's You would have to also if you use WordPress freeway and you would have to get rid of the branding and all that Yeah, just go ahead and pay for one. I think it's the easiest thing to do Then you're gonna have to install WordPress on your blog Okay, and there's plenty of videos online about how to do that. It's not that difficult to do Let me get a sip here real quick Let me take a look at some of your comments there. Paul's got some good ones Let's see what we got going on here thoughts on lead magnet or use of contest to draw people into your site uh, I pioneer women cook She did giveaways, but also use great pitchers. She was known for her pitchers when cooking. Yeah pioneer woman's got really good She has a really good youtube Videos, I think she's I don't know where all she's at But she's she does some good cooking videos. I really like her stuff I would highly recommend some lead magnets and what Paul's referring to is, you know, maybe you could say, hey Do you want this recipe click here to download the complete recipe? Do you want, you know 10 barbecue recipes since you watch my barbecue rib recipe? I click here to get my free download matter of fact. I just did that one I did one for survival cave food and it's um breath the 10 top recipes Using survival cave food can meet. Uh, so I have that coming out and that's going to be on a page But that what that one is is like if you buy a case of meat You can get the 27 or 29 dollar recipe book to go along with it. So I do have that and that's coming out And when you're in wordpress, it's really pretty easy. You just click appearance themes Add new theme and then popular and you'll you're going to see all these different ones in there that are free free free I love free. I love free stuff. Um, I went to the doctor yesterday And um, I wanted this particular doctor my insurance He's not on their plan, but I'm going to him anyhow And I have to pay the visit every time I go there and I went there yesterday and he's a specialist and um, The lady says $195 Wow, he said he was going to give you a discount since I was paying cash He says, well, you can talk to him, but he's already discounted it It was $275 and he's going to charge you $195. I'm like, ah, whatever So anyway, I paid it and I went in there and I was talking to him and I said, I thought you said you were giving me a discount He goes, well, I did I said, well, she charged me $195. He says, oh, no, no, no, no I got I got a second tier discount that I can give you Uh, get you down to like 80 or 90 dollars. I'm like, yeah, that's better I mean that saved me a hundred bucks and as I'm leaving he goes, you know what he says Why don't we just call today free? We'll give it to you for free and I was like, yes It saved me $195. So I love free and you guys should love free just because you get some money Doesn't mean you need to spend it. Okay. I try not to spend money as much as I possibly can I try to get all the deals I possibly can The next thing you're going to want to look at guys once you've got this set up is maybe some different plugins you could use There's so many different good ones. I would tell you for seo. I like Yoast Yoast seo. I think that's really good If you want people to be able to get in touch with you, I would say wp forums is real good And maybe I should type or I can't type it up here. I'll put it on youtube. So I'm gonna say Yoast Seo I think that's a really really good one and I want to put wp forms in here also I think those are really good. I want you guys to have this Google analytics, of course, I'm gonna put in here google analytics google And Analytics, whoops You definitely want to have that in there 100% because you want to know what's going on Um, let's see. What's another one that would be good. Excuse me. Um, I guess to really stay in control. I would say updraft plus It's like a backup thing. Let's see updraft Plus I would recommend that Uh, there we go updraft plus whoops didn't go through There it is. Uh, that's good. Uh Wp rocket is a really good one. I would say that These these are all free by the way guys so Oh, that shouldn't be wp. Wp rocket Wp rocket or c k e t See how fast I tie it. It's amazing, right? Just You want to insert headers and footers? I think that's super important because you're going to want those So, yeah, that that should get you started on that part of it. Where are we doing on time here? Man last day of the year. I'm running out of time Running out of time on the last day of the year. That's terrible And I could I could go on and on about this blog post thing seriously guys for hours But the first next thing you want to do is write your first blog post Get it right get something written man. Um, you know action matters so much. It's like There's so many good ideas out there. I was talking about wife last night and we were sitting on the couch I'm like, hey, we ought to do this. We ought to do this. We ought to do this But none of that really matters. What matters is the action you take. Do you do something? You know, I can sit here and think about doing a blog Tutorial, but until I get on here and go live or I do a video on it. I've done nothing I'll have done this think about it So you you read a blog basically because you care about what it says So think about that are these people people really going to care about what you've got to say Creating strong content that will bring in readers is what you want to do Um, and you can talk about things like, you know, why do you care about this topic? Why are you blogging on it? Why should people listen to what you're saying, you know, when I started my survival food company I was on the rescue squad in city of Virginia beach and I saw how unprepared people were So I talked about that What is the topic? What kind of value will people get out of it? Is there a good niche for it? Okay You know, all those things are super important and some other questions to Ask yourself when you're thinking about your niche is what's an interest or a dream from your childhood that you find exciting You can think you can ask yourself that question. What's the absolute best part of your day? What do you like? Do you have any hobbies or hobbies that you want to learn? What is a deeply held value of yours? What is an achievement that you're incredibly proud of? You know, I just started my cooking channel and I just like doing it and I thought, you know When I started that channel, I thought what is it? What is I'm trying to do with these recipes and what I did was I said Well, I'm trying to create recipes that are as good as or better than the restaurant to save you money So you can eat at home and we eat out a lot Well, I won't say we don't but the point is I thought that the average person would love to be able to eat at home and save some money Another way you can come up with Post ideas. So when you're doing posts, look at what other bloggers in your niche are doing. What did they do a blog? Take a look at the successful posts to see what readers like the most You could look at the ones that have the most comments and all that on some of your competitors You can also talk to other bloggers in your space and brainstorm some fresh ideas Talk about specific lessons that you've learned Reflecting on blogging mistakes, you know, that's good. It's always good to look at your mistakes. That's not bad And then you know, when you're when you're on your dashboard WordPress All you got to do is, you know, go to the dashboard and add new and that's all there is to it You're off and running and you can start writing You want to write a post headline that encourages readers to click through so make sure you got a really good headline I think that's super important Thoughts on header design and what should be above the fold any CTA should be above the fold and when I say CTA's I'm talking about call to action 85% of the people will not scroll. Okay, get it 85% of the people will not scroll So if you have a button for a download if you have a buy button if you have a you know Sign up button whatever it is. It's got to be above the fold above the fold means you don't have to scroll to get to it I think that's a good point you made I personally think the links to other platforms like linkedin and youtube should be above the fold. Yes, I did say that Uh, a lot of people use wix. Yeah, I don't like wix. I think wix sucks I mean, it'd be okay. I guess to get started But at some point if you ever grew you're gonna have to move your whole website So I would not suggest doing that You want to optimize the design and lay out of your blog post don't get too fancy Don't have a whole bunch of flashing stuff and videos and all that kind of stuff when they're coming to a blog They want to see a blog And then hit publish man get your thing published get it out there get it in front of people That's the important part. You got to get it in front of people You could use some free photos resources One of the easiest ways to add some really visual flair to your blog post is with really nice images and designs Thankfully in recent years. There's now a number of these high quality sites One of my favorites is up splash or excuse me unsplash. Let me put up here unsplash ash for free photos Okay, so check that out. I think up unsplash is a really really good one go in there get some photos and have to pay for anything Um wikipedia commons Has 21 million. Let me put this in here too. I'll just say it wikipedia commons That's the way to type isn't it? Life of pics is another one life of pics And it changed it to patch Which which is uh Probably because that was a movie. I think the secret life of pets or something along those lines. All right So and in publish on a regular basis guys And and how do you make money? Okay, that's the part that really matters, right? How do you make money? Well, you got to promote your blog first and get readers Okay, so, you know through social media posts. Maybe you want to do videos and talk about your blog Um, you know, maybe you want to send out an email if you already have an email list and then you want to monetize it Okay, and you want to think about this monetization and this is really uh step six at this point As something you want to start in the beginning like a lot of people say well, I don't have any traffic yet So i'm not going to worry about monetizing now. You want to start it now. Um, you can use google ad words and you can um Put ads on your blog if you want to do that if you don't want to do that You can have downloads Um that you charge for you can have downloads that are free so that you can get email addresses and think about building your list right now I mean, that's that's a big thing think about building your list now because I didn't in the beginning This is a mistake. I made uh, but you know, you want to do that You could also sell your services. So, you know, maybe you're blogging about cooking and you want to do online cooking classes I don't know Whatever it is. Uh, but you could you know, maybe you're writing, you know, your blogging skills You want to sell that photography marketing, uh, you know public public relations social media, whatever it is that you do Um, you can think about affiliate programs. So, you know, maybe you have affiliate links in your blog Maybe there's products that you like and you wouldn't put the links in there make money off that You can certainly do that Um, you know, I just told you about bluehost. I would recommend using bluehost And I can tell you I'm an affiliate for bluehost. Okay, so I make money off of bluehost But you get a beneficial thing because you get a discounted price and you get a free domain if you use my link So I talk about that Uh, you can do sponsored blog content If you already have a decent size audience for your blog and social accounts You can take time and grow it. Uh, and you know to the point where you can do sponsored stuff You can write blogs about other companies inside your blog You can do online courses online courses are phenomenal Um, and like I said, you can also do your ads and stuff in there if you want to do that you can put ads on there Um, you can also do podcast sponsorships. That's a great way of monetizing your blog by launching a simple podcast for your readers Um, and you can use your traffic and early listener numbers to book sponsorships from brands that want to reach your type of readers and listeners There's always a brand out there. Maybe they'll pay you 50 bucks or 100 or a thousand. It doesn't matter And then of course you may want to incorporate Physical products you can do drop shipping for this if you want if you don't want to handle the product But you can sell physical products, you know like at mine My cooking channel. I have links to amazon products there. So I use that affiliate link And you can of course do business partnerships with other people But guys 2022 is coming. Okay 2022 is coming It's coming like tomorrow And if you've been saying you're gonna do this stuff and you haven't done it Why don't you make it this year? Why don't you make it this year to do it? Why wait any longer? Uh, by the way, it was cool to see you film from the car Yeah, I was kind of pushed on time there. Um, nice change that starbucks looks incredible Yeah, I went to one. Uh, what are you talking about? I went to a starbucks reserve the other day And if you go to facebook, uh, and you look me up on facebook, you'll see a facebook or excuse me a starbucks reserve Which starbucks reserve is where they try out all their new products So you can go in there, uh, and you can try all kinds of weird different things now I'm really boring. Uh, this and this is this is the boring stuff. I I have a cup of tea in the morning That's it one cup of tea in the morning not even that sometimes sometimes I just have water But that's all I have. I don't have any coffee. I don't have any frappa. What whatever they are Is I don't I can't see spending five or six dollars for a drink. It doesn't make sense to me Uh, but a lot of people enjoy it and they go to that starbucks reserve It was a really cool place. They had this big long bar in there Uh, and if you go to my facebook, uh profile my personal one, you can see it there You can see a bunch of pictures of it. We got a cool place. We're going today too, paul Um, I see people charging for extended content on youtube channels. Have you seen bloggers doing that? I noticed Pat Flynn and he does a great job by the way paul. I like pat Uh, has paid membership besides free on his site and not sure what you get though. Yeah, um, my wife has that She has a patreon. Uh, and when you buy into her patreon, you get added content And what what that what he's talking about is, you know, like let's say somebody Read your blog or let's say somebody watches your youtube channel and they want to get more insight They want to get you know behind the scenes stuff or they want to get More detailed stuff. They can pay a monthly fee and patreon can be anywhere from a hundred dollars or five hundred dollars a month Depending on what you're going to give them. Okay, maybe you give them some personal time. Maybe they have a call with you Um, but if you offer that service, um, then of course you can make more money and it's it's continuity money It comes in every single month, which is really nice. I've always liked starbucks oatmeal. Yeah, I've had it It's not bad. Is it I think it's I think it's what they call steel cut Whatever the heck that means, you know, they use a lot of these terms. I have no clue what it really means Um, so, uh, that's what I got for you today guys. I mean, I really enjoyed spending the past year with you If you've been on my channel If you've commented paul's always around of noting for years I really appreciate you being around paul appreciate you and all all the contributions you make to this group And it you know, I'm not the group. I'm just a guy and I just talk And you know, I've sold millions of dollars of both digital and physical products However, it's you guys that make it a nice group. It's you guys that makes the community So your participation, you know, you you asking questions you putting comments in there all this stuff That's what really makes the group and that I really appreciate you guys doing that This channel couldn't be what it is without you guys, you know, I looked at my stats today And my income is up on this channel My views are up on this channel My subscribers are up and it's still not enough. I need more I'm like, I don't know I think I'm like 30 or 40 people away from 6,000 now and I remember hitting the 5,000 mark and I'm looking forward to 10,000 So if you guys would subscribe, I would really appreciate it hit that subscribe button down there Turn off that notification so you're notified each and every time I go live and share the channel If there's somebody that you think would be interested in this type of content share it with them and say, hey, check out this channel I also share my other one, which is restaurant quality recipes on youtube So check out that channel too I've had only charged two dollars per month, but he also has one million subscribers. Not sure how many joined Yeah, I mean it doesn't take much paul I've got I've got some uh continuity that's like 27 dollars a month But funny thing is if you get a thousand or 2,000 people that kind of adds up and I don't spend much So, you know, I just keep my money people say, what's your hobbies? What do you collect? I'm like memories, you know That's what I collect is memories. I don't need, you know a coin collection And I don't need, you know fancy cars and I don't need any of that stuff I really don't but memories stay with me. So I like to travel. I like to go places and see things I actually I want to take that back. I hate to travel. I like to be in different places Is that but between here at the other place? I don't enjoy that part at all I don't like getting on and off airplanes and being crowded and all that crap. I just don't like it But I thought I would share that with you today If you want to get into blogging and you have more questions Please put something in the comments section chat section If you're watching this and it is not live, okay, and it's just been recorded on here I will still talk to you guys, okay Put something in that comment section ask me any questions you want. Tell me who you are I've made a lot of friendships online over the years just helping people out And I love love love doing and I really do guys You guys are great. It's a great community. It's so cool to be able to talk to people from around the world I've got friends in india and england and in dubai and I mean I could go on and on and on just around the world Columbia have a friend from columbia that I was talking to the other day. I'm trying to say it correctly Columbia that's how he says it Happy new years to everyone Gang see you next year. Yes. I will not be here tomorrow, but I will be here monday I said earlier in the week that I was going to do a live tomorrow But you know, it's new year's day and I'm just going to chill with the family and enjoy myself And I love each and every one of you guys. I really appreciate you guys I appreciate you support my channel do me a favor give me a thumbs up every time you watch one of my videos Please give me a thumbs up Unless you've already done it on that video, but I mean those thumbs up matter a lot It's it really helps the algorithm tremendously. So please please please if you would do that I would really appreciate it guys. Thank you so much. I want you guys to have a wonderful day I'm going to go enjoy one of the last probably days where it's going to be 78 degrees here in texas, which is pretty nice Sunday it drops down to 48. So it's going to drop 30 degrees of one day What does this say when are the next lives? That'll be monday paul. I'll be live on monday So I'll see you guys on monday. Thank you so much for being here guys I really appreciate each and every one of you. Love you all. I'll talk to you real soon See you in the next video. That's right. I always say that don't I?