AshBlogs.com

I stumbled upon Vijays blog today while looking through comments on another site and stopped to read his newest article entitled “Next 30 Days Goals“. It made me realize that first, this blog is officially 1 month old today and the fact that placing your short term goals out in the open would be a good motivator by keeping yourself accountable to your readers. So to help keep myself focused I have listed my Next Months goals below.

1. Increase RSS subscriptions to a steady flow of 15-20 people.
2. Increase traffic to 100 visitors per day
3. Write 2 articles per day.
4. Receive my first comment on this blog!
5. Launch one new site per Month.

Being a new blog with little traffic puts most advertising companies out of reach for myself and most beginners. A lot of companies used by established bloggers and website require a minimum amount of page views before you can place ads on your website. I found this to be the case with Text Link and Kontera. So in the meantime while I try to build up a following I’ve decided to use Adbrite to display ads in the Features section of this site and Google’s Adsense for the rest of the site. While I finish designing the look of the site I’ll be experimenting with other ad companies out there. So don’t be surprised if you see the format of this site change from time to time. If anyone has any suggestions please leave a comment.

Signing Up

I found signing up for Adbrite fairly easy and after creating my account I was ready to place my code. Adbrite allows you to customize the look of your ads (very similar to Google) and then copy and paste the code into your Blog or website. You create “Ad zones” and then setup what kinds of ads you would like to display. The options include Text, banner, Interstitials, and Inline ads. The first 2 are the norm while Interstitials are the full page ads you see from time to time on large websites such as CNet. Interstitial Ads take up the whole page usually and require you to click on a continue link to view the sites regular content. Inline ads are advertisements that highlight specific words through out your site and upon placing your mouse over it a small window will pop up displaying an Ad.

I bypassed the Interstitials ad since I believe it would annoy more people then have any real benefit and setup to allow only text and inline ads. You can then set the price of your Ad for 1, 7, or 30 days. You can also have Adbrite auto adjust the price depending on demand. If anyone is interested I’ll be running a “Get in Early” promotion and set a low price of $15 dollars for 30 days. Thats 50 cents a day! What a bargain!

The inline ads doesn’t seem to be working for the moment and a call placed to Adbrite last friday has proved to be fruitless. A promise by the first level tech to forward my ticket to the next level has resulted in NO calls back or emails offering assistance. Besides the less then spectacular customer service, the site was easy to use and I’ve already made a wopping 4 cents. Since Google allows a max of 3 ads per page, Adbrite might be a good addition to your advertising arsenal.

The word Prosumer has started to become more common place to describe the new age media crowd like bloggers, video bloggers, and podcasters. Check out this video and see what you think.

One of the best plugins I came across recently is the Sidebar Widget plugin. It allows you to customize your Wordpress sidebar without having to touch any of the PHP code! If I have discovered this plugin when I first started playing with Wordpress it would have saved me countless hours messing with the sidebar code. You can find the official site here. The Widget plugin allows you customize the sidebar easily via a drag-drop interface. Every item is broken down into a box that you can drag for added functionality.

Installation

Installation it pretty straight forward. My site is hosted on a Linux server that I access through Cpanel. I just upload the zip file into the wp-content/plugins directory and then unzip it. Afterwards I just go back into the Wordpress admin page, click on the “Plugins Menu” and then activate the new Widget Plugin. Once activated, click on the “Presentation Menu” and you should see a new item in the submenu called “Sidebar Widget”.

Usage

Click the “Sidebar Widget” and then you can go ahead and start dragging widgets in the “Available Widgets” section into the “Sidebar 1″ column for a customized look of your sidebar.

Some widgets also have an option button that allows further customization by adding text or titles depending on which widget you use.

Below the “Available Widget” Section you’ll find an area to add more generic Widgets. You’re choices include PHP Code, Text, or RSS. Just click the drop down arrow for the additional number of each widget you would like to add and click Save.

You’ll notice more widgets appear in the “Available Widget” Section. After making your changes be sure to click the “Save Changes” button to activate the changes you just made. A quick refresh of the browser and you should see your new updated site!

Note: Make sure that your theme supports the sidebar widget.

If you have any added instructions or suggestions please leave a comment.

Here is my to do list that I created for myself to make sure I had all the correct paperwork filed. Since my business is home based and I live in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles county, my business does not need a Business License since its Internet Based. This may not be the case for most so the best thing to do would be to check with your Local City hall and see if you will need a Business License for your type of Business.

1. Business License - Check with City Hall to see if need one. File first as a Sole Proprietor and then change to Corporation or LLC after you have incorporated. For my first business attempt, my partners and I had decided to get incorporated first before filing for a business license. BIG MISTAKE. By the time we were incorporated the City had enacted new laws that made giving out Business licenses in our industry much harder. We had to wait while notices were sent to residents within a 5 mile radius of our business location and see if anyone would object to our business. It would have taken 1-2 years to get our license IF nobody objected. Luckily we had a clause within our lease and were able to get out of it. We lost around $30,000 in renovating costs that we had already done to the building. That was a nightmare.

2. Get Incorporated - LLC’s cost only $70 to file with the California Secretary of State (SOS). Cost will differ from State to State. The one page form can be downloaded from the Secretary of State’s website and mailed back. Due to a backlog of LLC applications in California, if you mail out your application expect a 4-6 week wait before your application is finally file. You can call there Customer Service number to find out what dates have already been completed to get a good idea on how much longer it will take before they get to yours, or you can just wait till they mail back a copy of your application with there official stamp.

Now if you are in a hurry like most Entrepreneurs are then you can higher an agent that lives local to Sacramento and have them take care of the paperwork for you. The advantage to this is since they live local they can take the application in person to the Secretary of State and have it expedited. Besides the cost of paying for the local agents service, and the cost of expediting your app with the SOS, you should have your LLC application back within a week or two. You can find available agents on the SOS website, just make sure there address is located in Sacramento since agents in other parts of the State end up hiring another agent in Sacramento to take care of the application.

3. EIN (SSN for a business) - You may need to check with your accountant to see if you need this. If your a one man operation you may not need to file for an EIN and maybe able to use your SSN. Check with your accountant. I filed for an EIN thinking it would be easier to separate income streams between Business and personal. Hopefully this proves to be the case. Usually EIN is required if you plan on having employees.

4. Operating Agreement - Very essential if you have partners. Your operating agreement states what shares of the company are owned which partners, what is required by each partner, as well as how long the LLC will be in existence. Also should one partner have an untimely death, the Operating Agreement will specify how the LLC will continue. Very important. The Bank may require you to show an Operating Agreement if you open up a Business Checking Account. This was the case with Washington Mutual.

5. Create Business Bank account (need Operating agree and Article of Organization #) - You will want a business bank account to conduct your transaction. Its free at larger bank establishments which may require a small deposit. Mixing income from your Business into your personal bank account is asking for trouble if you get sued.

6. Fictitious name - If you want to go by a different name then your original corporation name then you’ll need to file a Fictitious name. LA county actually has a website that you do a search on for existing Fictitious names. Its $23 for the first name and $4 for any name there after.

7. Sellers Permit - You’ll need a sellers permit if you selling an tangible items or services. If your looking to buy items wholesale form suppliers usually they’ll ask you for a sellers permit. The benefit is you should be able to buy it tax free.

This was a quick list and if anyone has any suggestions or corrections please let me know. Some other items you might want to consider.

1. Trademarks
2. Business Plan
3. Copyrights - US Copyright office
4. Patents - US Patent Office - expensive
5. Business Insurance

The last 3 weeks have been frustrating. Mainly waiting for the backlogs of LLC applications in Sacramento to catch up to mine. Finally I called this Tuesday had got the good news that my application has been processed and was available to be searched on the Secretary of State’s Business Portal. This allowed me to finally be able to apply for a Business Checking Account from Washington Mutual which uses the Secretary of State’s website as a method of verifying authenticity of an LLC. Having a separate bank account to conduct all my official business transaction should allow me to better separate personal and business expenses thus protecting me in the corporate vale and prevent my personal property from being touched encase of litigation. So with my new LLC papers in hand and a copy of my Operating Agreement, I was issued a new account, check book and told to wait a couple of days for my shiny new Debit card. Now that I’m sitting pretty behind my LLC, Blogging will now be in full swing.

Using new technology always take some time to learn and become a guru at it. But being a sometimes rash person it just gets frustrating at times when you want to hurry up and get something setup and realize that you need to read pages upon pages of documentation to figure out what the hell you’re doing. Unfortunately this has been the case with Wordpress. The creators did a good job creating a product that works right out of the box, but should you want to customize it then you’ll have to do some digging on the wordpress.org website for there documentation. So far I found the following documentation on how to edit your sidebar (area on the right with Feeds, Links, Sponsors, etc) helpful which allowed me to get a good idea on the design methodology to wordpress. I also felt confident enough afterwards to edit the index.php template file and added a Google advertisement on top of the content area. To be fair most open source web applications need this kinda of research done in order to customize it for your own personal needs. There are I believe hosting companies that can setup a blog for you and help you customize it but that usually cost money. Since I’m trying to be frugal I have used the stand alone, free version of Wordpress and decided to try to setup it up myself.

So far by looking at other bloggers websites as examples and by looking at the source code (Firefox - Click View –> Page Source. IE - View –> Source) I kind of gotten a good idea of which plugins they also have installed for certain functions. For example, you’ll notice I have a few Google Adsense advertisements on the site. The ability to add Adsense doesn’t come standard but luckily by scanner another blog I found out they were using AdSense-Deluxe WordPress plugin to easily insert advertisement into your posts. More info on this plugin can be found here. For the Adsense on top of the content and on sidebar I hard coded the Google html code directly into the template files. I’ll go more into Adsense in the next post.

Due to working a full time job I haven’t had much time to finish customizing the site. Other mods coming down the pipe include finding a plugin for editing the sidebar unless anyone can recommend one, also setting up the Top Commenter plugin which seems to be very popular. I’ll also need to spend some more time trying to change the look of the site a little. This website uses the MistyLook theme and currently looks very generic. I’d like to change up the color scheme and tweak a couple of things to make it look cleaner. Stay Tuned.

Ashblogs is well named after my initials. This blog will discuss everyones favorite topic of how to Make Money on the Internet! I’ll also take everyone with me as I setup a corporation and learn the basics of online advertising. We’ll also explore other money making ideas on the internet as well as interesting Web 2.0 start ups. Technology that can benefit small or home based businesses will also be discussed. So come along with me as I try to reach my ultimate goal of getting out of the corporate rat race and become a full time Home Based worker!

My starting budget for the whole venture will be $500.