If you have any intension at all of working online then the first essential you WILL need is a blog.

Why?

Well the blog is the hub of your online activities a focal point for your customers and readers to catch up with you and your activities, special offers. And most importantly free advice (such as this).

The blog also acts as capture machine for subscribers e-mail addresses so that you can inform them when new content has been added. Did you notice the optin box and the newsletter list when this blog loaded?

There are a number of different blogging platforms which have there own advantages and disadvantages.

Free from Google is Blogger, I have used Blogger for product review sites such as John Thornhill’s One Month Mentor Training.  Blogger blogs are very easy to setup and easy to use and can be customised and monetised. They are mostly used for personal blogs and many of the Blogger blogs are exactly that.

The great advantage is that Blogger is free. The big disadvantage is that you do not own the blog so Google could remove it at any point with absolutely no comeback. You will loose at the content you have posted and all the hard work will be to no avail.

The real biggy is WordPress there are literally thousands of themes, plugins apps and widgets that you can use to customise WordPress, so no two sites will be exactly the same. At WordPress.com you can claim a free blog and take advantage the problem is that the blog will always have .wordpress.com as part of the URL.

There are some excellent examples of free blogs you can check out on the home page of WordPress.com, again this blog can be pulled at any time and you will have to start again.

The best all round solution to building your own brand or business is to have your own hosting and install your own WordPress blog on it. This has massive advantages over the free solutions.

• You can choose your unique URL to reflect your business or brand, this website uses WordPress and although it is starting to look dated I can change this very easily by updating the theme, adding plugins and widgets to make the visitor experience a good one.
• I own the blog.
• It has my name in the URL not blogspot or WordPress which of the two looks the most professional?

WordPress is very easy to setup and customise, there are lots of guides and tutorials available on the internet. But this can be very confusing if it is the first time you have installed and used WordPress. You could pay some one to do it all for you, or there are many excellent products on how to use WordPress most of which come with a heavy price tag.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a product that could show you how to do all of this for just a few bucks. Well there is, so here’s the skinny of it I just came across something that you will want to check out quick before the price goes up drastically.

It is WordPress blog building at its finest by a guy Lane Bowers who’s been in the trenches learning what it’s like to build blogs for perfect results every time. More informaion HERE.

Take a look at just one of Lane’s blog video training reviews; Lane takes on more of the role of what you would expect a good friend to be like if you asked him to help you get started on creating your own WordPress blog.

It is as if he asked you to pull up a chair at his desk and he was walking you through what he does daily to continue growing his Blog.

He keeps it very basic and assumes that you have had no prior knowledge before he begins teaching you. If you are new to Internet Marketing then this would be an excellent starting point for you, as his Course continues teaching he includes items such as how to add a Gravatars to your Posts, changing the Header and the Site’s Background, setting up email accounts, etc. etc.

All in all, a very good WordPress Course! Highly recommended Rob…