Installing WordPress

Once your domain name is registered, you’ve signed up for webhosting and your domain name servers are set, it’s time to setup your website to run on WordPress software. 

WordPress is amazing, FREE, content management software that will be used to manage your website. WordPress is used by 15% of the top 1 million websites and powers over 20% of all new websites. It’s easy to install, infinitely customizable and makes publishing your website content simple.

So let’s start by installing this software onto your website.

Login to your web hosting account using the instructions supplied in your webhost’s welcome email. Upon logging in you should be in your cPanel window. This is the control panel where all sorts of administration tasks can take place – such as setting up WordPress.

The following steps are outlined based upon HostGator’s cPanel at the time of writing. Other webhosts setup may vary slightly which I’ll try to accomodate for.

Scroll down the cPanel to Software/Services, and select the Quick Install link. This brings you to the Quick Install software page.

(Other hosts may have a link to Simple Scripts or even a one-click WordPress install).

Select WordPress, then Continue.

You will now be prompted for installation preferences.

You’re domain name should appear in the dropdown box for where you would like WordPress installed. Leave the following box blank.

Admin Email – enter an email address that you use for business purposes.

Blog Title – Use your keywords to come up with a catchy, unique, relevant title for your blog.

First Name and Last Name – If you create posts using this login, then what you enter in the First and Last Name fields will appear as the author of those posts. So enter what you would want displayed as the author.

Hit Install Now – that should do it. It takes a few seconds to install and then you should see a Congratulations messages with credentials.

That’s it! Take note of your login information that will be presented. It will also come in an email. Put it in your Stash. Within minutes you will be able to see your website up with a default theme and Hello World message. Check it out.

You can now go to YourDomainName.com/wp-admin to login to your WordPress admin. This is where you create categories, pages and posts that make up your website.

Designing Your Website

Finding and Installing A WordPress Theme

A theme defines how your website looks and will greatly simplify creating an awesome looking website.

There are thousands of free WordPress themes available. The first place to start looking would be at WordPress.org or Google ‘Free WordPress Themes’. If you consider yourself web savvy and don’t mind looking under the hood then a free WordPress theme can work great for you and look great too.

This is one of those places, however, where a little money spent can save a lot of time and money in the future. My recommendation, if you’re creating a new website based on WordPress, is to buy a premium WordPress theme. I do. And my theme of choice is Thesis Theme by DIYThemes.

Here are some of the benefits you get with Thesis

• Professional results
• Incredible design flexibility without writing code
• Software that stays updated
• Easy to use
• Full tech support

Thesis is also built for easy Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Using the Thesis Theme can help your search engine performance resulting in more targeted traffic to your website. This website is designed using Thesis and as I will be showing examples of how to get things done with Thesis in the future, it is also my recommendation to you.

Click here to check out the Thesis Theme

Checking Out The Competition

When designing with a theme, check out your competition. What are the leaders in your target niche doing with their websites?

The reason they are the leaders is because they have tested ideas to find out what works and what doesn’t. Capitalize on that testing by doing similar to what they are doing but adding your own twist and ideas. Design your theme to have a similar layout.

Easy Theme Upload and Install

Uploading and installing a theme to your website is easy.

Your theme will be in a zip format, meaning that there are many files included which are archived into a single file for ease of moving around. Save it in an easy to access and remember place in your file system. You’ll need it in the next steps.

Simple WordPress Theme Install

1. Login to your website’s WordPress dashboard – probably YourDomainName.com/wp-admin. The login information should be in your Stash and in a welcome email from when you installed WordPress.
2. On the left menu, click ‘Appearance’ and then ‘Themes’. This will bring up the Themes page.
3. Select ‘Install Themes’ and then select ‘Upload’. You will then be able to Browse your file system for where you saved your theme zip file. If you chose to purchase the Thesis theme, then it will originally be named similar to thesis_182.zip
4. Select it and then click ‘Install Now‘. You can now ‘Preview’ the theme, ‘Install’ it if you like it, or ‘Return’ to Themes Page.

You can easily audition different themes by simply activating ones that you have installed. That’s it for finding and installing your WordPress theme. Just clicks of a button. Now, depending on your theme, you can access the custom settings supplied by your theme in your WordPress dashboard.

A Look at the WordPress Dashboard with Thesis Theme

Next up, we’ll create categories and first posts using our Keyword Research to get the website structure and layout right.

RECAP

1. WordPress Install - the steps vary a little depending on the webhost but can usually be accomplished in a few mouse clicks.
2. WordPress Themes – add professional design and functionality to your website and are easy to install. My recommendation for an excellent, infinitely customizable theme is Thesis Theme
3. Check out the competition - put tried and tested ideas to work on your site

TAKE ACTION

If you don’t yet have your own domain name and webhosting, which can cost less than $100 per year, then check out my previous posts Domain Name Registration and Webhosting.

Installing WordPress only takes a few clicks of the mouse.

Choose a Theme and Install It – If you’re debating on whether you should choose a free theme versus a paid theme, go with the paid solution. It will be professionally designed, kept up to date with WordPress changes, offer support and save time and money in the long run. Thesis Theme offers amazing design flexibility, built in SEO functionality and excellent support.

ADDITIONAL

1. WordPress codex – WordPress Lessons, Getting Started, as well as Advanced Topics and
   Troubleshooting all available here.
2. Blog Solutions Ltd – If you’re stuck, then Joel at BlogTechGuy, a department of Blog Solutions, offers excellent services ranging
   from complete blog setup, hourly custom work, training and maintenance.
3. BecomeABlogger – An excellent free series of videos that take you step by step through setting up
   a WordPress website or blog from scratch.
4. Thesis Theme – favored by top internet marketers for its built-in SEO functionality and design flexibility.

Final Word – Questions? Shoot me an email – george@ebusk.com.

Here’s to your Musical Success,

Cheers, George

What is Webhosting

Once you have your domain name, you need excellent, inexpensive webhosting for your website.
Website hosting is a service provided by a company that stores all of your files, images, settings, and more for your website on their servers and provides connectivity to the internet to allow your website to be displayed. A website host will usually provide other services such as a control panel or interface for managing web server settings as well as email.
There are lots of great webhosting options available but none of them are free.

Do Not Use FREE Webhosting

Free webhost companies will host your website for free. Sounds good, right? Wrong. This is no way to start your business. Here are a number of reasons why.

1. Unwanted Advertising on your site that you do not benefit from – In exchange for hosting your website, the free web host may place banner ads, very prominently, on your site. Often the ads don’t have anything in common with your site and detract from your business.
2. No Credibility - Webhosting costs less than $10/month. Would you trust a purchase from a business that won’t even invest that much for their web hosting.
3. Poor Customer Service - because you are not paying for the hosting, customer service can be hard to come by.
4. Long, hard-to-remember domain names - the full domain that you will end up with will not be short, to-the-point, easy to remember and tell people about like MyBand.com. It will be prepended with the free webhosting’s url such as accounts.myfreewebserver.com/mybandname. Hmmm, try fitting that on your business card. Good luck getting someone to type that into their web browser.
5. Lack of Features - some basic features are required to run a successful online business and often the free web hosts lack them such as a shopping cart. Web space, or the amount of stuff you can put on your site will be restricted as well.
6. Slow Website - Your website will be on a server with many other sites resulting in slower loading pages. The servers may not be the most up-to-date computers either.
7. No Resale Value - One of the huge benefits of creating a successful online business is the ability to one day sell that business and reap the rewards of your hard work and talent. Unfortunately, you don’t own your free domain name, so there isn’t anything to sell.
8. Losing It All - If your free domain host goes out of business, what happens to your site? If your free webhost finds your content objectionable for any reason, they can take it down.

The bottom line is that you cannot run a profitable website using free web hosting.

HostGator Webhosting

So what you do need to run a profitable website is dependable, inexpensive web hosting that supports WordPress. I have used a number of different web hosts in the past and can confidently recommend to you the best that I have personally found and which I use today -
HostGator Web Hosting


Less than $10 per month will get you unlimited domains, disk space, bandwidth, 99.9% uptime, around the clock support and tools you need to make your website do whatever you want, plus a 45 day money back guarantee.

An eco bonus – the company is powered by wind energy.
As an additional bonus, use the coupon code ‘ebuskdotcom‘ at checkout to get $9.94 off your order. That means your first month will be free!
I recommend the Baby Plan that is currently listed at $7.95/month. Click the link to get started: HostGator.

When going through the order process, be sure to choose to ‘use an existing domain name’ and enter your new domain name that you registered at GoDaddy. Also make sure to enter the Coupon Code, ‘ebuskdotcom‘ for the $9.94 discount.
Then entering account and billing information is straightforward.

Once completed signing up for webhosting, you will receive an email with all your particulars. Be sure to add your login url, username and password into your Stash.

A quick word about WordPress. Awesome.
Seriously.
WordPress is a free platform that can be used and utilized with other mostly free applications called plug-ins to create anything you want on the internet. There are also thousands of free templates especially designed for WordPress that can be uploaded to your website to instantly add color and style.
And all of this comes without having to write any code. I could if I wanted to, but I really don’t need to.

More on WordPress in the next post.

Connect Domain To Webhost – Setting Your Domain Name Servers

The next step is to set up your domain servers. Basically, you need to tell GoDaddy, your domaing registrar, where your website is going to be hosted.
In your welcome email from HostGator will be values for your new Name Servers and will be similar to NS1.HOSTGATOR.COM and NS2.HOSTGATOR.COM. The values supplied in your email will need to be entered into the domain name servers in your GoDaddy account.
Go to godaddy.com, login, select your domain, then select the Nameservers button/Set nameservers. The Set Nameservers form then opens. Here you want to choose the option ‘I have specific nameservers for my domains’ and then enter the values from your HostGator welcome email and then select OK.

RECAP

1.  Free Webhosting is not the way to start your business. The most important reason being that you are putting time, talent and work into something that you don’t own and can’t benefit from selling.
2. Excellent webhosting with 99.9% uptime is really cheap. At the time of writing, you can get hosting for less than $4/month from HostGator.
3. WordPress, which will be used to manage your website, is a FREE platform that utilizes free plug-ins and templates to allow you to create anything you want on the internet.
4. Connecting your domain name to your webhost by setting your domain name servers is necessary but quick and easy.

TAKE ACTION

Go to HostGator to sign up for inexpensive, excellent webhosting, set up your name servers and get ready to start designing and setting up your own website. Remember, use the coupon code ‘ebuskdotcom‘ at checkout to get $9.94 off your order.

ADDITIONAL

1. WordPress codex - WordPress Lessons, Getting Started, as well as Advanced Topics and
   Troubleshooting all available here.
2. Blog Solutions Ltd - If you’re stuck, then Joel at BlogTechGuy, a department of Blog Solutions, offers excellent services ranging
   from complete blog setup, hourly custom work, training and maintenance.
3. BecomeABlogger - An excellent free series of videos that take you step by step through setting up
   a WordPress website or blog from scratch.

Final Word - Have a question?
Shoot me an email – george@ebusk.com.

What is a Domain Name?

A domain name is the name you commonly know websites by. Examples – Youtube.com, eBusk.com, YourNewWebsiteDomain.com.
The ‘.com’ part is called a top level domain or TLD. There are a bunch of them but ‘.com’ is far and away the most common.

Your domain name is not something that you can buy outright. Rather, it’s more like you rent or lease the domain and will need to renew on occasion depending on how long a registration period you set up. I go into this more in just a minute.

My Top 7 Tips For Choosing a Domain Name

When choosing a domain name for your website, there are a number of things to keep in mind.

1. I recommend making it ‘.com’. This is the most recognizable top level domain and is what most people would automatically type into an address bar.  This will greatly reduce your branding efforts. If you don’t have a ‘.com’ domain then you will need to ensure that all of your marketing displays exactly what your site name is because people expect it to be a ‘.com’.
2. If possible make your domain name and business name the same. Again, this allows you to maximize your branding efforts.
3. Use keywords if possible. Keywords are those words that your potential visitors are entering into search engines. Example keywords for the music or musician niche may be ‘Music Lessons’, ‘Guitar Licks’, ‘Blues’, ‘Jazz’,…
4. Try to keep it short, easy to remember and easy to spell.
5. Make it catchy, creative, unique. Try adding the benefit of your site to your domain name. Examples might be ‘Learn’ such as LearnHotLicks.com.
6. I avoid the use of hyphens in domain names. I think that falls into the hard to spell category especially when you are spelling out the domain name to another person.
7. If your band name is taken, you may try adding a prefix or suffix word like BandNameMusic.com or ReachBandName.com.

For my first domain name, GeorgeGoodman.com, I benefitted from being in the IT industry for a long time and picked this up years ago, not sure what I would do with it but understanding that it might get picked up by some other George Goodman in the world and then I’d be looking at something else like including a middle initial or something like that.

One problem with using your own name for your website is that it makes it difficult to sell in the future when you are successful. If you have an exit strategy with plans to sell your website once it’s reached a certain level of success, don’t name the site after you.

When I thought of eBusk.com, and saw that it was available, I got real excited. It’s short, easy to spell, unique, brandable, and though it isn’t a real word, it has a meaning never the less: To Make Money With Your Music Online or to Busk Online.

 Registering Your Domain Name

So let’s get started finding and registering your new domain name.

The best place that I have found for finding and registering/buying a domain name is GoDaddy.com . I have used them for years and haven’t had any problems at all with them. Domain registration was what they originally hung their hat on and it’s what they do best and from what I’ve found, they do it the cheapest.

Select the link to get started looking for your own website domain name: GoDaddy – Domain Name Registration.

Their page changes frequently, but you should see a ‘Start Your Domain Search Here’ headline. Start by entering some ideas using the guidelines above. Note that the TLD defaults to ‘.com’. Click the Search button.

If you’re lucky, then you will see a big check mark saying that your selected domain is available. Excellent. If not, there will be other possible suggestions and I’m sure you have other ideas to try. There is also a ‘Smart Search’ tool that GoDaddy provides that will suggest alternatives. Look for the link halfway down the page of your search results in the ‘Search For Another Domain’ section.

A note on when you’ve found your perfect domain name – There will also be a list of other TLDs (.info, .co, .org, …) that you can register as well. I think it’s wise to buy up other common domain name endings because they’re cheap and if/when you become successful you’ll wish you had kept them away from poachers. This also helps your main domain name stay unique. Now, if this is too pricey starting out, you can come back later and get the other domain name endings when you are making some money. Also, remember, that all of these expenses are tax deductible.

Once you’ve found your perfect domain name, ensure it is selected, as well as any other domain name endings you’re purchasing, and select ‘Add’, then ‘Registration’. This is basically a 4 step process.

GoDaddy Domain Registration Instructions

Create a GoDaddy Account – follow the steps and fill in the required fields. This should be straight-forward.

Setting Your Domain Settings – Registration Length
Another recommendation that I have is to set your registration length for as long a period as possible. I usually register my domains for 10 years. There are a number of reasons why I do this.

1. Search engines (meaning Google) will take the domain registration length as one of the factors when determining your page rank (their indication of the importance of your page or site). Longer domain registration can help to improve your page rank.
2. The cost of domain registration continues to increase. To register a domain name for 10 years now will be much cheaper than re-registering every year.
3. Avoid the extra task of having to re-register every year. One less task to do is more time for something you enjoy. Put as much of this on auto pilot as possible.

Your Privacy And Domain Protection  – I suggest to just keep it simple, keep it Standard and hit Next.

Activate Your Domain –  Just select Next. Review your Shopping Cart and then Continue To Checkout and enter account and billing information as needed.

Once you checkout, you will receive a confirmation email receipt including important information such as your loginID and password. That information needs to go in your Stash.

RECAP

1. Your Domain Name – Follow my tips above and your own ideas to create a great name for your website.
2. You can register a new .com domain at GoDaddy.com for currently for less than $10/year. The longer you register it for, the less it will cost per year.
3. Don’t sweat the costs. They’re minimal – especially when compared to a brick and mortar store. Plus they are tax deductible.
4. If you are running a business intended to generate income, all related purchases are tax deductible – I write off guitar strings, saxophone reeds, music books, software,…

TAKE ACTION

Go to GoDaddy and get your domain already!

Now, with your domain name  in hand, you are ready to take the next step – get excellent, cheap webhosting.

 Cheers, George

Work Faster, Work Smarter

As you build your online music business, you are going to accumulate a bunch of information that you will need to keep handy for every day activities. Included in this information is new login and passwords for sites related to your business plus the web address of the site itself. There will be affiliate links for products that you will promote. And the more of the techniques I show you that you implement, the more such data you will accumulate.

With that said, you need to have a central place where you keep this information. This may range from a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel to a notebook and pen. The point being, that you need to keep the information available so that you can quickly get to it to get business done quickly so you can concentrate on more important things – like your music.

Keep it simple and whatever works best for you.

Let’s call this central place, your Stash.

KEYWORD RESEARCH

In order to attract the greatest number of visitors to your site, you need to target your content – your videos, posts, website categories and even domain name – to the search terms and phrases that those visitors are entering into search engines. These phrases are your Keywords and properly implementing them into your online media is a large part of what Search Engine Optimization or SEO is.
You can use keyword research to help determine what exactly your web business will be about and who and what it will target.
With your keywords in hand and proper implementation of these keywords you will reap the greatest reward.

Google Keyword Selector Tool

Let’s start our keyword research with the Google Keyword Selector Tool. This is a free tool provided by Google to aid their adword advertisers but it also works extremely well for keyword research for web businesses in general.

Click the link to go to the page: Google Keyword Tool

First you will get prompted with a security check. Type in the characters displayed and submit.

Under ‘Find Keywords’ enter a starting word or phrase. For example, are you a guitarist? As an example, let’s start with the phrase ‘electric guitar’. Leave the ‘Website’ text box empty and select ‘Search’

The results will display a list of 100 relevant keywords including metrics such as

1. Competition which measures advertisers bidding for the keyword in adword campaigns
2. Global Monthly Searches which shows how many times the search term has been searched for in Google worldwide in the past month
3. Local Monthly Searches which gives the monthly statistics for the location
4. Local Search Trends which graphically displays whether interest in the search term is large or small and whether it is increasing or decreasing.

This is all really powerful information .You can also change how the results are sorted by using the ‘Sorted By’ button at the top right hand corner of the results page.

Now let’s look at the list. The first thing I see is that there is a tremendous and growing interest in ‘electric guitar’ and related keywords. ‘Electric guitar’ has at the time of writing, over 1,000,000 Global Monthly Searches. That’s a lot of interest. There are related keywords that include specific manufacturers such as Gibson, Epiphone, etc. Electric guitar lessons is another related keyword that may be useful.

Does our example guitarist happen to work in a music store and have access to try out and review different guitars. There are related keywords such as Martin Guitars. A website category could be dedicated to the review of Martin guitars. It looks like a lot of people would be interested.

Is our example g