If you are reading this post then either you have already started your blog or you at least have some curiosity of getting one going.

Blogging can be an awesome and an equally addicting adventure.

At the same time it can be a very lonely place, especially if you don’t know anything about blogging.

That is exactly where I was five years ago when I started my blog. I knew nothing about hosts, themes, HTML…nada.

I was absolutely clueless.

But after A LOT of research and making some strong connections, blogging has become a passion, and also much more simple.

Another thing that blogging can become is expensive.

There are so many tools and courses and widgets that you can buy that will supposedly get you more traffic or make your blog operate more efficiently.

Some of the stuff is legit.  Some of it is pure crap.

Starting off, it is easy to go “blog broke” buying stuff you don’t really need.

Trust me, I was one of those that wanted to buy everything that I could if I thought it would get me more traffic.

Thankfully, I have a smart wife {thanks baba!} to keep me grounded and to make sure I was being frugal with my blog starting off.

The following is a list of the blogging tools that we have paid for or are currently paying for to help us run our blogging empire.

If you are a newbie blogger starting off, do not think that you have to have all of these tools to have a successful blog. Many of these were purchased after I started making money.

Please Note: Many of the links below are affiliate links. That means if you click on the link and buy it, we are compensated a small commission for the sale. Which we greatly appreciate!

1. A custom theme

Personally, I think it is essential to have some type of custom theme; not only will it make your blog more presentable, but it can also help with search engines and rankings.

Currently, all of our blogs are hosted on Thesis, which has been a theme that I have loved working with. We bought the developer’s license, so that we could upload the theme on various sites.

At the time I’m writing this, Thesis has just recently introduced their 2.0 theme which has received enormous backlash from the blogging community. It is not as simple as the previous themes and after spending a few hours looking it over, I was overwhelmed.  I’m not a guy that likes to be overwhelmed.

I say this as a disclaimer if you are considering buying Thesis.

Currently the 1.85 Thesis theme is what we are using and I love it. Other bloggers have talked about Genesis as being super easy to use. I have personally not had a chance to work with Genesis, but some of my closest blogging allies have.

We are in the process of trying to switch most of our sites over to Genesis. (Mandy is moving her site now)

Ready to rock one of the best themes on the planet.  Check out the Genesis Theme.

2. Hosting

To get started blogging, you have to have a host; that is plain and simple. What is not plain and simple is who your host should be.

If you are a newer blogger having a shared hosting plan with someone like BlueHost, Lunar Pages or Liquid Web is a great way to start. It is super cheap and their customer service is decent enough for a service that costs you less than $10 a month.

Keep in mind though that these are shared hosting plans, so it basically means that your domain is shared with hundreds of others. In the five years that I have been blogging, I think my sites have gone down approximately a dozen times using these type of hosting plans.

If you don’t get a lot of traffic then it’s no big deal. The frustrating part is when it is down for an extended period of time during a high traffic time period {like during the day}. Again, for the price, and if you are just starting off then using a shared hosting plan like Bluehost or Lunar Pages is well worth it.

Looking to start a blog and want a cheap host?  We recommend Bluehost.

Stepping Up Your Plan

The next step up is using something called a dedicated server. However, this gets much more expensive.

Currently we have a few sites hosted with Liquid Web. The difference between Liquid Web and Bluehost is that instead of being shared with other domains, you would have your own dedicated server. That should mean that you have a much faster site and won’t be taken down if one of the other sites is hogging your resources. This type of plan can cost you anywhere from $25 to $50 a month, so it is definitely more expensive, but if you have more traffic and are more concerned about the speed of your site, than that is the way to go.

Since I am as non-techy as they come, trying to manage my own server is something that I had no interest in. I wanted a host that would take care of everything that goes on the backend to make sure that my site was running as efficiently as possible and also was able to back up my site on a daily basis.

Upon doing research, the host that I found was WP Engine. Initially starting with them, I was paying $100 a month for them to host my site. Immediately upon switching to them, my site speed increased dramatically; I loved it!

The only {good} problem was I started to get more traffic and based off WP Engine’s pricing, I went from the $100 a month package to the $250 a month package; ouch! Once again, my site was running the fastest it ever had with them, plus they were instrumental in taking care of all the security measures that I didn’t want to have to worry about.

Since it costs $250 a month, we decided to move my wife’s blog over to WP Engine as well. Her site is filled with tons of high resolution pictures and was running really slow on the shared hosting plan. By moving over to WP Engine, her site sped up dramatically, too.

I have since added a few other sites to WP Engine to fully maximize the $250 a month hosting package. As you can see, it was a natural progression going from the shared hosting plan all the way up to the $250 a month hosting package.

3. Design

This is one of the areas where you can spend a lot of money very easily. The design of your blog is something that you are never ever satisfied with; trust me. Just when you think you have it the way you want it, there is always going to be another tweak that you will want to make.

If you are good with coding and design work than that is great; you can do it yourself. If you are a coding challenged like myself, that can get rather pricey. Luckily, I found a good designer, Larry from Side Income Blogging that has been instrumental in developing GoodFinancialCents.com along the way.

Since Thesis was relatively easy to do some of the basic design stuff like colors, text, background, etc., I saved a lot of money by doing research on my own.  For some of the other custom things like the large subscribe box on the homepage, I had Larry do them.

If you are open minded to get design work done on your site, I would strongly encourage you to get a few quotes. Designers can vary extremely on cost. Make sure also to get some referrals and whatever you do, don’t pay 100% up front.

4. Article writers

When I first started my blog, I just saw it as that, a blog. I never really looked at it as an online publication. As you get more traffic, you start to realize that there are certain topic ideas that you’ll want to cover on your blog.  Some of these topics that might not be your specialty or you just don’t have time to research and write them.  At that point it might make sense to bring on a writer to cover those topics. This helps keep your readers engaged and it can also help generate even more traffic.

Miranda Marquit has been a writer for Good Financial Cents for a number of years. If there’s a topic that I think my readers would have interest in but I know I’ll never have the time to write it, that’s where Miranda comes in.

Even my wife has been able to get contributors to her blog. She’s done a better job than I since hers are free. 

5. Virtual assistant

Had it not been for Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Work Week, I would still be slaving over my blog, doing basic administrative tasks that I should not be doing. In his book, he talked about hiring a virtual assistant to take on some of the tasks that allow to focus on the tasks you should be doing.

In the early days of Good Financial Cents, I was spending a lot of time going through Flickr’s creative comments trying to find pictures to upload to my site.

Since I was routinely posting three or four times a week and each post would have one to two pictures, I figured I was spending anywhere from three to four hours a week trying to find the perfect picture. Yes, I’m anal – haha…..

Having stumbled upon a virtual assistant that randomly contacted me, I inquired to see if she had time to work on my blog inserting pictures. I gave her a step-by-step tutorial on how to do it.

It was so comforting to realize that I had just freed up that many hours a week that I could spend either writing more articles, networking or just doing whatever I wanted to do. The same virtual assistant now is basically a full-time employee doing anything from keyword research, SEO work and any other blog tasks I need her to do.

#gamechanger

6. AWeber

I’ve stated several times on this blog the importance of having an email list.  In fact, in a previous post I wrote about the biggest mistake I made blogging was not starting an email list.  I’ve been able to get a much more deeper connection with my readers through emails than I have with Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest combined.

AWeber has been my go-to email marketing service from the onset.  You can read an in depth post on how to setup an email newsletter with AWeber.

They start off at $19/month for the 1st 500 subscribers.  As my wife’s and my email lists have grown (over 11,000 email addresses) we are currently paying $130/month for their service.

AWeber offers a 30 trial period for $1.  Go here to sign up.

Keyword Research

If you are not doing keyword research before you hit publish on your next blog post, you are making a mistake. Do you have to do it on every single post?

Absolutely not.

But, I am confident there have been posts that you have published, had you done some keyword research, you would be getting more traffic than you currently are.  How do I know this?  Because I’m guilty of it, too!

Here’s how you do it.

6. Google AdWords Tool {free}

The best part about Google AdWords is that it is free. Using the Google AdWords Tool, you are able to see what advertisers are currently bidding for certain keywords and also what they are willing to pay.

The other key element is that it shows how competitive that keyword might be. Before trying to rank for something like “red wagons”, you might see that in Google AdWords it is extremely competitive. Instead, you should go after “tiny red wagons” or something similar. This is what is referred to as “long tail keywords”.

I found this video on YouTube that shows you the basics of using Google’s Adword Tool:

7. Market Samurai

Market Samurai was one of the first blogging tools that I ever paid for.  For the price, it is well worth it. I think it retails for about $100 but the cool thing it is a one-time payment.

Market Samurai is like Google AdWords on steroids. It gives you everything that you need, the ability to do keyword research in a much simpler fashion than what you get in Google AdWords.

My virtual assistant uses this tool on a monthly basis to track our positions on several hundred keywords.

Market Samurai offers a free trial with some great training videos.  Sign for your free trial here.

8. Raven Tools

A tool that helped me immensely in identifying keywords and also doing research on competitors was Raven Tools. When I first started Raven Tools, it was a bargain price of $20 a month. For all of the information that you got out of it, it was more than worth it.

After being with them a year, they restructured their payment plan and it went from $20 a month to $100 a month. I debated dropping it but it was a tool that I used literally almost every day.  It helped identify several keywords on my site that I could rank for.

The tool does a lot more than that.  For example,  you can check back links to your site, you can check to see how many back links a competitor site might have, you can track social media campaigns and much more. It is very robust and definitely offered more than I needed. It wasn’t until they changed some of their keyword research tools that I ended up dropping it.

Raven Tools offers a free 30 day trial period to see if it makes sense for you.

9. SEMRush

SEMRush is what I currently use that replaced Raven Tools. Unlike Market Samurai, it is a monthly payment of $69.95, not a one-time payment, so it is an ongoing expense.

Why I prefer it over Market Samurai is that it is not as clunky as Market Samurai. Market Samurai is a great tool, don’t get me wrong, but upon doing research, sometimes it takes a while for it to process all of the information. SEMRush, being completely web-based, I am able to get similar information super fast.

SEMRush offers a 7 day money back guarantee. Try SEMRush here.

Social Media

I don’t think anyone would argue that social media has a major impact on how much traffic you can drive to your blog, but for many that have full-time jobs, families, soccer games, etc, it’s hard to keep up on all the different social media channels. There are some tools that you can pay for, that can help out.

10. TweetAdder

One of the easiest ways that I’ve been able to get more Twitter followers is to find an influential person in my niche.  I’ll then follow everyone they are following. Next, I’ll start going through all their followers to see if there’s anyone that might have some similar interests as me.  This strategy alone has helped me get a ton of new followers.

The only problem with this method is that it takes time. A service that I found that automates this process is TweetAdder.   This has been super easy to setup and I’m constantly adding new followers daily. 1 profile will cost you a one time payment of $55.  Since adding it, I’ve added a couple thousand new followers.

Go here to begin adding new Twitter followers automatically with TweetAdder.

11. Buffer

Buffer allows you to integrate multiple social media accounts and also allows you to schedule when certain tweets or messages may go out. This is something that I typically frowned upon, as I think social needs to be active. But I also realized that many times people are missing updates from the blog if I only Tweet it or share it on Facebook once.

I’m currently working with my virtual assistant to come up with a game plan where we can have scheduled tweets, highlighting certain blog posts throughout the day.  I’ve been testing this process for a few months and the results have been very promising.  I’ve been able to get more social media shares from older posts giving them new life and, in turn, more traffic to my blog.

The other cool thing with Buffer is that it offers analytics so you can see how well your strategy is going.  Right now I’m posting at 10am and 2pm to my Twitter feed and 7pm to my Facebook Fanpage. If those times don’t generate a ton of shares, I can always tweak it.

Buffer offers a free account, but I’m currently using their paid service that costs $10/month.

12. OnlyWire

One way to get easy backlinks to your site is by submitting them to bookmarking sites.  Boomarking sites are free, but you have to setup individual accounts with all of them.  When you have new posts to share, then you have to manually upload the post to all of them (if you want maximum value).  Yes, this is a real pain in the butt.  That’s if you’re not using Only Wire.

OnlyWire is a social media and bookmarking automation tool that allows you to send your content to 51 different networks. I primarily use OnlyWire on my niche sites to help get the content indexed with Google much faster.  The faster it gets indexed, the faster it will be found in the search engines.

OnlyWire also offers a free trial (7 days) and then goes to $12.99 per month.

Premium Plugins

Adding plug-ins to your blog can give it new life and new features that you and your readers will love. Most plug-ins are free, but there are some premium ones that I have opted to pay for that have done wonders.

13. OptInSkin

OptInSkin allows you to add awesome-looking opt-in forms and social share boxes to your blog in seconds. Since email marketing is something I’ve really focused on over the last couple of years, I was looking for something more engaging than the typical templates that AWeber offers. Introducing OptIn Skin.

OptIn Skin is super easy to use and only costs $67 to get going. They have tons of choices and, also, awesome tracking tools so you can see where people are actually signing up on your newsletter.

Get more email subscribers, by using OptInSkin today.

14. LeadPlayer

Lead Player is another cool plug-in that I’ve been testing out. The only downside of having You Tube videos on your blog is if you’re trying to get the individual to take action. For example, you want them to sign up for your newsletter, or click on an affiliate link to buy a product, you would have to include a link in the blog post underneath the video.

With Lead Player, it allows you to upload your YouTube video to its interface inside your blog.  You can then choose if you want want to add a subscribe box to the video or a call to action button that takes them to a specific affiliate link.  If you’re reviewing a product that you’re an affiliate for, this plugin is magic.

To use LeadPlayer on one site, it will cost you $107.  If you want the unlimited license to use it on multiple sites, it’s only $40 for a total of $147 (this is the one I bought.)

15. Hello Bar

Hello Bar is a tool that I’ve been using on and off for the last couple years. If I’m trying to drive specific attention either to a blog post, an affiliate program, or say, my book, I can put the Hello Bar at the top of my site to draw more attention.

Hello Bar also offers a free trial to see if you like it.  After that, it can cost as little as $5/month up to a certain number of clicks.

16. Pretty Link

If you’re using any type of affiliate marketing on your site, I can’t stress enough how important it is to have Pretty Link. Pretty Link allows you to shrink or mask your links using your domain name instead of the ugly looking long affiliate links.

For example, our affiliate link for Pretty Link looks like this: http://prettylinkpro.com/amember/go.php?r=5050&i=l0

By using pretty link we can make the link look like this: http://dollarsandroses.com/prettylink

See. Much prettier. 

The other cool thing is you can track what links are being clicked inside your blog. There is a more complicated way of doing redirects on the back end of your site, but if you’re a newbie blogger, I wouldn’t suggest this. That requires logging into your server which is a pain in the butt.

Pretty Link can all be done on the back end of your blog and it’s super easy.

Make all your affiliate links look like pros do it.  Get Pretty Link Pro Here.

Others

17. Copyscape

If you ever plan on accepting guest posts from contributors, you always want to make sure that the content is original and not published elsewhere. The easiest tool to do that is Copyscape. For as little as 5 cents a scan, you can copy someone’s guest post into their tool to see if it is published anywhere else on the web.

I also use this tool myself when I’m offering guest posts to other bloggers. When you write a lot about the same topics, you have a tendency to borrow similar ideas that you may have written elsewhere. To prevent “getting an egg on my face” I always double check myself before I send it out.

18. Elance.com

The one thing about the online space that is ironic is that even though it is huge, it can often feel like a lonely place.  Especially when you don’t know how to do something such as coding on your site. When you are needing to hire someone to help you out, it can be tough trying to find a good referral.

Elance.com is a marketplace for freelancers that can do anything from building websites, transcribing interviews, writing content, designing graphics, and on and on and on. I just started using Elance recently and thus far the primary freelancers I have hired have done video transcription for some of my video interviews, as well as writing content for one of my websites.

Before you hire someone on Elance.com, make sure you are very descriptive in what you are looking for. If you put out a very general ad looking to hire someone, you could have 100′s of applications.  The more specific you are the better.

You can (and should) also ask up front for a sample of their work and referrals to other clients they may have worked with.

You have to treat it like a real job interview making sure you ask up front everything that you need to know.

19. Mobile Assistant

This is something that I could not live without. I hesitated listing this as a blogging tool because I also use it for my financial planning practice. But I love it that much that I could not leave it out.

Mobile Assistant is a mobile transcription service that runs me $55 per month. It is a number that I have on speed dial on my cell phone and after placing a simple call, all I have to do is talk. Within a couple of hours, I will receive an email of the complete transcription nicely typed out and formatted to my specifications.

The reality is that I hate to write and Mobile Assistant has been a savior for me.  Where it would usually take me a couple hours to write a 500 word post, I could have 1000 words written using Mobile Assistant after a seven to eight minute phone call.

Now that is efficiency at its finest!

Mobile Assistant uses real people that transcribe and their first language is English, which means less typos and much better transcriptions. If you want to give Mobile Assistant a try, they offer a 20-minute trial to see how much time it will really save you.

The monthly package usually runs $72 per month, but if you use the coupon “financialcents” you will be able to get the rates I pay, which is $55 a month.

P.S.  Much of this post (over 90%) was written using Mobile Assistant.  That’s why I love it!

21. Survey Monkey

One of the best things that you can do to continually engage your readers is to take surveys and find out what they want. Google docs offers a way to do this free, but if you have a lot of people responding, the information can get very jumbled.

Survey Monkey is a tool that I use when I’m looking for feedback from my readers about what content that they want from me. It is super easy to set up and offers charts and graphs that make deciphering the information so much easier than any other counterparts.

Recently, when I was trying to find the perfect book cover, I sent out a survey to all of my readers. If it were not for survey monkey, trying to figure out which book cover my readers like the most would have been very difficult. Thankfully, Survey Monkey saved me hours and I was able to get concrete feedback immediately.

Survey Monkey offers a free version that you can test out.  Although, I’m currently paying $25/month for the Gold Package that offers a few more customizable features.

22. Dropbox

This is another tool that I have used both for my financial planning practice and also for blogging. If you work on different computers it could be very frustrating when you are trying to find the documents that let’s say is on your home computer, but you are now at work. Dropbox is your solution.

By having a folder “in the cloud,” you can upload any file type to it and then access it anywhere. This is also really good if you are trying to share documents or video files with other bloggers or virtual assistants.

Mandy recently did a video collaboration with the people from Blissdom prior to her attendance. Since the video camera we use is a DSLR, the video file is very heavy, so trying to email that to anyone would be very difficult. The solution is Dropbox.

By uploading the video file to a drop box folder and then sharing it with the person from Blissdom. She could then share that folder with that person and then they could download it to their own computer; it’s that simple.

Building Niche Sites

We’ll be talking more about niches on this site in the coming months.   Besides OnlyWire (listed above) the following tools have been instrumental in growing one of my main niches site from 0 to 15,000 unique visitors per month.   I’ve also tested these tools on my main blog targeting keywords that were outside the top 10 of Google’s 1st page results.  After a little work, I was able to move many of them to the front page.

23. The Best Spinner

This is a tool that I primarily use for building our niche sites. By using this tool, you can take this one written article and upload it to the tool and then “spin it” so that one article can become five to ten new and unique articles. Those articles can then be uploaded to other web properties to build a back link to your main site. The Best Spinner runs you $77 a year to use if you are ever considering developing some sort of niche site.

The Best Spinner for 7 days for $7.  (then $77/year after that).

24. Unique Article Wizard

After you spin all your articles using The Best Spinner, you now need to get them published on the web.  There’s the manual way which would take hours a day to do.  Or there’s the smart way using Unique Article Wizard.

My VA uses Unique Article Wizard to submit all the new posts that we are writing for article directories and other sites.  This is a tool that they use daily which is why I’m okay spending $67/month to have it.

No free trials for Unique Article Wizard.  $67/month gets you going.

Bottom Line

Don’t feel you need all of any of these tools to get you going.  As your blog grows, you can start incorporating some of these tools to make blogging that much easier for you.

<<pin me>>

It’s time for the monthly income report.

Each month “The Wife” crunches the numbers on our earnings while I, “The Husband”, puts together a recap of what happened in our online business. A dangerous combo!

As a reminder, this is why we do the income reports:

1. Accountability. These will allow us to finally keep track of our total online revenue – something that I’ve been horrible at but seeing improvement. You can go here for all of our previous blog income reports.
2. Progress. Now that we have it documented, we’ll be be able to chart our progress as our income increases. (thankfully it has)
3. Truth. To show people that you really can make money online and in a non-scammy way.
4. Transparency: We want others to see how we do it so that others can do it, too.

Remember: We started blogging in July of 2008 so it’s taken us A LOT of time to figure this blogging thing out. And truthfully, we still have a lot to learn. Don’t get the impression that you can start a blog today and turn a profit tomorrow. I promise you, it ain’t going to happen.

What went down in March

When it comes to writing and publishing a book, the one thing that I continue to learn is that it never ends.

Never.

After writing the book and going through several rounds of edits, you have so many things that you have to address.  I knew writing a book was involved.  I just never imagined how involved.

I am so thankful that it’s nearly complete and soon it will be in bookstores {near you}.

The fact that I’ve been able to publish ANY posts across the web is something short of a miracle.  But, if you’re a blogger that’s what it takes to #hustle.   <<< One of my favorite hashtags. 

Husband Vs. Wife

If you haven’t noticed yet, there’s a bit of a rivalry between the wifey and I with our blogs.

At one time I had way more Facebook fans than her.  But in the past couple of months, she’s been able to do some big giveaways with other bloggers so now she’s killing me.  {At the time of writing this it’s 6,433 to 4,099. Yeah, no contest}.

For the longest time my traffic was always way more than hers.  Then this thing called Pinterest began to exist and, once again, I got lost in the dust.

Thankfully, my wife has been generous at lending some of her Pinterest traffic tips to my blog and now I’m seeing some decent traffic from it.

So now our traffic levels are much closer together.  Because of that, I thought it would be fun to show traffic numbers between the two of us each month so we can “duke it out” for you all to see.

March Traffic Numbers

First month goes to the wife.  You knew that was coming, didn’t you. 

In March she had 189,178 visitors (146,819 being unique).  You don’t see her page views in the screenshot below, but she’s also killing me there.  In March she averaged 1.85 pageviews per visitor for a grand total of 350,830.

For my site, I was able to get 155,679 visitors for the month.  I only average around 1.3 pageviews per visitor so my grand total is much lower.

P.S. If you have any suggestions on how to increase pageviews on my blog, I’m all ears.

Overall, I know we’re both pleased with our traffic numbers. We’ll see how next month looks. I know its early but I think the wifey is going down! Haha…

Here’s a look at the numbers for March….

Income Breakdown

Good Financial Cents

• Adsense: $2,157.90
• Adspeed: $1,801.45
• Commission Junction: $1,357.00
• Flex Offers:$2,150.81
• Direct Advertising: $0
• Media Net:  $473.13
• Consumer Track: $84.00
• You Need A Budget: $54.00

• Total: $8,078.29

Dollars and Roses

• GoDaddy: $22.72
• ShareASale (Thesis Theme and Genesis Theme): $179.85
• Blogging Your Passion: $55.50

• Total: $258.07

Other Niche Sites

• Adsense: $152.19
• Flex Offers: $308.00
• Direct Advertising: $282.57
• Media Net:  $84.69
• Main Niche Site Revenue: $7,715.03

• Total: $8,542.48

• BlogHer Ads: $802.19
• BlogHer Sponsored Posts: $0
• Direct Advertising: $310.00
• Adsense: $462.54
• Lijit Media: $54.94
• Content Ads: $325.50
• BlueHost: $1,170.00

• Total $3,125.17

• Equifax: $200.00

• Total: $200.00

Total Revenue for March: $20,204.01

Revenue Last Month: $16,424.84

• Difference: +3,779.17
• January 2012: $3,120.93
• Total for 2012: $115,289.16
  
• Running Total 2013: $54,391.64

Monthly Fixed Expenses

Many of you have asked what our expenses are each month running our online business.

• Hosting Companies

• WPEngine:    $250.00
• Liquid Web:   $25.00
• Lunar Pages:  $5.00
• Bluehost:         $5.00

• AWeber:                        $130.00
• Article Writers:            $250.00 (average)
• Unique Article Wizard:  $67.00
• Virtual Assistant:            $1,000.00
• Total:                              $1,732.00

This is just a rough estimate of our fixed monthly expenses.  I’ve been working on a comprehensive post that shows everything that we pay for but it’s turning into a monster post – over 3,000 words at this point.  I promise that it will be ready next month.

What Happened in March

Ba-da-bing! After getting very close a few times, we finally reached our monthly gross revenue goal of $20k.  Woop woop!  So many things came together in what turned out to be a solid month.  A couple things that really worked out:

• Good Financial Cents continues to put out solid numbers even with $0 in direct advertising last month.  I recently introduced Kevin Mulligan as my full-time blog editor to allow me to focus on creating more great content.  It’s hard to believe that my blog has grown to a point to needing someone to come on full-time, but that’s the reality of where my site is now. Crazy!
• Dollars and Roses is starting to add to the bottom line with conversions for hosting companies and other affiliates.  Although I never intended this site to be a revenue generator, the reality is that it has the potential to do so.  Exciting….
• Our niche sites continue to hum along recording a record month last month, too.
• House of Rose put up another record month surpassing $3k for the 1st time.  Yeah baba!  I’m sure you never imagined that she could replace her previous day job income from her blog, but she’s getting close.  Real close!

What’s next?

For me, it’s finally getting our podcast launched.  I’ve been saying that for a the past couple of income reports but no more excuses.  It’s time.  I’ve given myself the month of April as my deadline to finally get it going.  Hold me accountable!

For Mandy, I have bigger plans for her.    I thought it would be a really good idea for her to write her first eBook and publish it on Amazon.   Here was her announcement on her Facebook Fanpage:

She obviously knows her stuff for decorating on the cheap so I thought it was a perfect fit for her.  It’s just another way for her to stand out from the competition, monetize her site even more, and work on something she enjoys doing that will really help people.  Trifecta!

Until next month….

Thanks again for all your support!

Welcome to – Monthly Site Reviews by the Dollars and Roses Team!

Many of our readers have asked us to take at look at their sites to give them candid feedback.

Trust me when I say this:  We would love to review all of your sites!

Unfortunately, there is one small little factor interfering with this.   That little thing called “time”.  

If only there were 24 more hours in a day.

We thought the next best thing is to review one lucky site per month, do a video on it and share it with all of you.   That way you might pick up a few ideas from what we share with the site that we are reviewing.

We are not claiming to be experts by any means, but we have been blogging for over 5 years and have learned quite a bit along the way.

What’s good knowledge if you dont’ share it, right?

Site Review {April}

This month we had a ton of you submit your site to be a part of our series {thank you for that, by the way}. And please please please remember if we didn’t choose you this month, there is always still a chance we will get to you next time!

The site we will be reviewing for April? Fresh and Organized!

Is there anything I missed? Do you have any suggestions for her blog?

Do you want us to look at your site? Either leave a comment with a link to your site or use our contact form and tell us you’re interested. There’s no guarantee will get to your site, but we’ll do our best. *Pinky promise*

Have you ever heard other bloggers say, “It’s all in the email list!”

I spent over 3 years hearing my husband make claims that I needed to start an email list for House of Rose. THREE LONG YEARS I didn’t listen to the man.

Mainly because I didn’t view my blog as a business or as “worthy” of anything more than an online family journal.

Finally, one day, roughly 6 short months ago, I decided to take his advice and start my “list” {as they call it in the online space}.

So today I thought it would be a good opportunity to share with you the “WHY” behind starting my list, as well as showing you “HOW” easy it is to set up.

Here’s to hoping your skull isn’t as thick as mine and it doesn’t take you 3 long years to take good advice {picture me holding a glass of wine and toasting to your wonderful thick skull.} 

What is a E-mail Newsletter and Why Do You Need To Have One? 

First, let me specify that I am not talking about print newsletters {although I am sure those are fabulous too}…I am going to specifically be discussing email newsletters.

First let’s address, “What is an email newsletter?” 

An email newsletter is a way to offer your readers a way to subscribe to get emails from you. Those emails can contain a lot of different kinds of information and, most often, they contain additional things that you don’t include on your website. A way to give your readers a deeper insight into YOU and your brand/image/blog.

*An important thing to note is that this is completely different than someone signing up to your RSS feed. I want to make that clear. I hear this statement all of the time: “I already have an email subscription option through my RSS feed.”

Yes, that is true, if you are using Feedblitz through your FeedBurner account {or some other feed subscription service} then you do have the ability to offer your readers an email subscription. But THAT email subscription ONLY allows your readers to have your blog posts delivered directly to their inbox. ONLY your blog posts. Nothing more.

The email newsletter is completely separate from the content you provide on your blog. Let’s call it “additional content” per say.

Why is that good? Because it allows you to email your readers whatever you want to, whenever you want to! Score!

Confused yet? Pssst, this ain’t nothing compared to some other posts we have written.

Moving on…….

Are you wondering, why worry about trying to get readers to subscribe to your newsletter if they already signed up for your RSS feed?

Awesome. I wondered that same thing for three long years {insert thick skulled blogger<<<aka<<<<ME}.

The reason is simple…because you have the ability to COLLECT email addresses.

Yes, when someone signs up for your newsletter they are subscribing by entering their email address. RSS feed does not allow you to “collect” email addresses.

3 reasons why collecting email addresses is so important

I’m sure the most frequent answer you will hear to this question is: “Because the money is in the list!”

That is an expression that has been thrown around since the beginning of email-list-time.  I’m not going to disagree with it completely, although I’d like to address {later on in the post} why that should absolutely NOT be the focus or the “WHY” behind starting your email list.

1| Deeper Connection with Your Readers

First things first, it’s a great way connect with your readers on a more one-on-one or personal platform. Don’t you feel way more connected to someone through email rather than through reading a general blog post?

2| It Never Goes Away

Another great thing to keep in mind is that an email list will never die! I’m sure you’ve heard my husband complain about Google’s Panda or Penguin updates {the ones that made him lose over 70% of his traffic in 2011}. Well guess what? When you collect email addresses you will always have a way to communicate with your readers…even if Google comes out with some new animal update. Ahem. 

3| Money is in the List (with patience)

Let’s address the money issue. I whole-heartedly believe that the money CAN be in the list. But it has to be done right. Just like blogging, if your sole purpose it to make money? You will most likely fail.

Same goes with the list. If you are starting an email list with the sole purpose of profiting in some way? You will lose.

Your desire has to be more than blasting out affiliate links or trying to push your latest e-book. Although the email list CAN be a good marketing tool when selling things…you have to remember there has to be more to it.

In my opinion, an email list allows you to build relationships with your audience. You are able to gain their trust by offering helpful tips or tutorials. By sharing real life stories. By being transparent about your ups and downs.

Once you do that, and you gain the trust of your subscribers…then it’s not big deal if you ask them to buy through one of our affiliate links or promote one of your new books. They will WANT to help you since you have helped them for so long.

Alright, now that you see the importance of starting your email list…let me show you how easy it is to set up.

 How to Start Your Newsletter

1. Sign Up For AWeber

There are many options out there, but AWeber is, BY FAR, my favorite choice when it comes to newsletter subscription services. Head over to AWeber and sign up for an account.

Click “Order”

It even allows you to create a trial account for $1. How’s that for a test drive?

2.  Set Up Your Email List

After you register for an AWeber account and sign in you will be directed to your control panel. This is where you are going to set up your first email list. Woot woot!

You will need to click on “Create and Manage Lists” and then “Create a New List”.

Follow the prompts to enter in your personal information, including the name of your list and list description. For example, our list name would be dollarsandroses. You can name it anything you want since this is more for you to identify with then anyone else.

**Note: it will ask you to enter your address. The address you enter will show up on all emails that are sent out so it’s important that you know that. We use our business address so that our personal address does not get distributed. If you don’t have a business address – that’s fine, you can use your personal address. If that makes you uncomfortable you may want to consider using a different address.

You will need to personalize your list by adding a company name {which can be the name of your blog}, website url, and email signature. It also gives you the option of uploading your logo or header.

3. Set Up Your Confirmed Opt-In Email 

This is where I started getting glossy eyed. But I promise, it only sounds confusing. It’s not hard to understand. Stay with me.

The Confirmed Opt-In email is what will get sent out to the reader immediately after they subscribe to your newsletter. There is a link in the email that is used to confirm that the person is human {and not some alien – aka spammer} and that they are interested in joining your email list.

There is a template email that you can use to send out, but I prefer to customize it so it’s a little more personal.

Here’s an example of what our Dollars and Roses Confirmed Opt-In email says…

4. Set Up Your Success Page

Underneath your Confirmed Opt-In email message you will see a section called “Success Page”.

You will want to insert a URL back to your website in this space. The URL you insert here is where readers will be taken after they have clicked on the confirmation link in the email.

My suggestion is to create a “new page” on your own blog. The new page should welcome the reader to your newsletter and thank the person for their confirmation. You also may want to ask the subscriber to “white list” your email address so it will not be blocked by spam filters.

I also like to link to my most popular articles and to my social media pages.  You can see an example of my House of Rose success page here.

5. Create a Follow Up Message

Understanding a Follow Up message is easier than it sounds. Think of a Follow Up message as a pre-written email. You can create a series of Follow Up messages that are pre-written and can be sent out in different time intervals to your subscribers. The first Follow Up message is always a welcome message that the subscriber will receive immediately after they have clicked the confirmation link.

You have probably heard these Follow Up messages referred to as “autoresponders”. Essentially, that is what they are. They are automatic emails that are pre-written, by you, and sent out to the subscribers in a time interval set by you.

Jeff currently has 30 pre-written emails set up to be sent out every 15 days. It doesn’t matter when someone signs up, they will automatically be taken through the series of emails from the very beginning. I am still working on building my Follow Up messages so I currently only have 5 pre-written emails set up. This is something that takes time to create and I would suggest adding one new Follow Up message a week to your series.

To add a new Follow Up message simple click on “Messages” at the top toolbar and then click on “Follow Up”.

Click “Add New Follow Up Message” to create your first Welcome Email.

 6. Create a Welcome Email

The welcome message is essentially the very FIRST email that your new subscribers will receive so it’s important that you “welcome” them to your list.

It’s a good idea to include a thank you message in this first email as well.

You may also want to set your subscribers expectations. In other words, what can they expect to get out of your newsletter and how often will they receive it. Don’t forget to include links to your social media pages and a way for them to contact you. Remember this is all about becoming personal…so you want them to have easy access to you.

When you go to start writing your welcome message you will see that you have the choice of writing in plain text format or html format.

If you want to “spruce” up your newsletter then you will need to explore the html format. There are templates to choose from and you will also have the ability to change the font, make things bold, etc.

If you aren’t too concerned about being fancy then you can choose to write your emails in plain text. This is the preferred method suggested by Aweber.

7. Test, Test, Test…

It’s very important to send yourself a test message after you finish writing your first email. This will allow you to see EXACTLY what your subscribers will be receiving.

No surprises. Plus, this is a great way to re-read and edit your messages before they are sent to thousands. When you are under Follow Up Messages you will see the list of messages. Next to each message you will see Spam, Test, Copy, Delete.

To test your message just choose “Test” and you can send it to any email address you want. 

If you test it and decide that you want to change something, no fear. You can go back in and edit the message at any time. Just make sure you “Save” so that the changes will take effect.

8. Create Your Web Form

The web form or email opt-in is what you will place on your site to collect email addresses. Here is the web form we currently use for our sidebar…

…and here is one we use on our “Income Reports” page.

As you can see, they are both very different. That is the beauty of web forms, you can customize them however you want. Keep in mind that if you are using a web form for your sidebar then you will want it to be smaller than one you would use on a blog post or page.

Click on “Web Form” at the top of the page.

Then click “Create A New Web Form”.

You will have the ability to choose different colors, sizes, fonts, etc. to create your own form. There are plenty of templates you can customize. My suggestion is to play around with them until you find a design you like.

Follow the prompts to customize your web form.

Once you are satisfied with how it looks then you can customize your “Basic Settings”.

You can name your form anything you want. The purpose of the name is to help you keep track of the different forms you create. Under “Thank You Page” you can choose “Custom” and direct people to the URL of the thank you page you created earlier. Remember?

If you’ve been slacking {ahem} and haven’t set up your thank you page yet then you can choose “Basic Version” and Aweber will send them to a generic page that lets the subscriber know that an email will be sent their way that contains a confirmation link they must click in order to verify their subscription to the newsletter.

9.  Grab the Code

You have finished designing your web form, customized your basic settings and now you will need to grab the code that you insert into your site that will allow your form to be visible to your readers.

Please do not only read “code” here and X out of the screen. It’s SIMPLE. Pinky promise.

Even if your degree is not in html coding.

Under the “Publish” tab click on “I Will Install My Form”.

You will have the choice of grabbing the “Javascript Snippet” or the “Raw HTML Version”.

I would recommend choosing the “Javascript Snippet” because if you go back to Aweber and update/change your forms, it automatically updates on your site without you having to reinstall the code.

Copy the code that looks like this:

You will want to paste this code in to your site wherever you want your web form to show up.

Here is how to install it if you have a WordPress Blog. 

If you want the web form to appear on a certain page or blog post then paste the code into the Text tab for the post/page. The Text tab is right next to the Visual tab in the right hand corner of your post/page.

If you want the web form to show up in your sidebar than you will need to paste the code in to a “Text Widget”.

 *Tip: If you want the web form to be centered, just add <center> to the front of the code and </center> to the end. 

PHEW! Are you exhausted yet?! You can relax now because YOU ARE DONE!

Trust me, you will be so happy you set this up.

Start growing your list! 

Interested in trying out AWeber?  Sign up for a $1 trial account now.

It’s time for the monthly income report.

Each month “The Wife” crunches the numbers on our earnings while I, “The Husband”, puts together a recap of what happened in our online business. A dangerous combo!

As a reminder, this is why we do the income reports:

1. Accountability. These will allow us to finally keep track of our total online revenue – something that I’ve been horrible at but seeing improvement. You can go here for all of our previous blog income reports.
2. Progress. Now that we have it documented, we’ll be be able to chart our progress as our income increases. (thankfully it has)
3. Truth. To show people that you really can make money online and in a non-scammy way.
4. Transparency: We want others to see how we do it so that others can do it, too.

Remember: We started blogging in July of 2008 so it’s taken us A LOT of time to figure this blogging thing out. And truthfully, we still have a lot to learn. Don’t get the impression that you can start a blog today and turn a profit tomorrow. I promise you, it ain’t going to happen.

What went down in February

A blur.  That’s the only way I can wrap up what’s going on with all our online activities.  2013 continues to be a banner year and the skies the limit.

One common theme that I’m noticing with doing these income reports is that although this section is always  titled “What went down in <fill in previous month>”, I can never remember what happened that far back.    Going forward just know that I’ll be writing about what’s going on currently to keep it fresh.

The Podcast Is Coming Along

Starting a podcast is definitely a lot harder that it seems.  We have all the equipment setup correctly and we even did our first interview – yeah!   But we still need to create a podcast graphic, an intro/outro for the podcast, get approved through iTunes, and on, and on, and on……

Right now our plan is to get some good interviews in the queue so that when we do launch it, you’ll have plenty of selection to choose from.

Our first interview was with Emily Eddington (now Dihle) who is a YouTube Sensation. You can check her YouTube Channel Beauty Broadcast that has almost 400,000 subscribers.  (I’m sure by the time you read this she’ll have passed that mark).

Emily was able to quit her job as a morning news anchor to focus on her YouTube channel full-time.   How sweet is that?

We also recorded the interview, and we’ll be sharing that really soon.  Stay tuned!

Blissdom

We both recently returned from Dallas where Mandy was able to attend Blissdom for the second time.   This time, however, she was selected to be a community leader.

As a community leader, she was in charge of welcoming first time attendees and making them feel at home. It also allowed her to film this video where she does the robot.

Yes, the robot. See for yourself:

*****insert Mandy

Huge thanks to the hubby for sharing that amazing video of me doing the robot. Much appreciated. And I am glad that my terrible dance skills have at least given you all a decent laugh.

I just wanted to pop in to say that Blissdom was a great experience again this year. As most of you know I credit Blissdom with giving me the desire and inspiration I needed to see my blog as more than just an online journal. Last year when I left the conference I finally realized that my voice matters. That this lil ole blog I have is more than just a place to share pictures of my kids.

This year there was tons more inspiration as we heard from Jon Acuff again. He.Is.Amazing. Be sure to check out his latest book called “Punch Fear In The Face”! If you click on the link below it will help my husband and I possibly win a dinner with him and Dave Ramsey. I am determined to win! Ha!

I was honored to be chosen as a community leader this year and it gave me the chance to be pushed out of my comfort zone. I talk to more people this year than I can even count. I tried to go out of my way to introduce myself to others. It truly stretched me.

My biggest take away from this years conference was definitely the relationships that I created at the conference. It was beyond what any amazing session could have given me. To be surrounded by hundreds of women who “get you”. Who all speak the same weird-o blog language that you geek out over. And just the ability to be able to learn from other women who are all in a similar place as me. Well worth the money I paid to get there.

Here’s a look at the numbers for February….

Income Breakdown

Good Financial Cents

• Adsense: $2,043.32
• Adspeed: $636.40
• Commission Junction: $949.55
• Flex Offers:$2,179.05
• Direct Advertising: $810.30
• Media Net:  $513.79
• Click Bank: $92.29
• Consumer Track: $294.00

• Total: $7,518.70

Dollars and Roses

• GoDaddy: $16.17
• ShareASale (Thesis Theme): $114.84
• Blogging Your Passion: $92.50
• Lunar Pages: $415.00

• Total: $638.51

Other Niche Sites

• Adsense: $77.17
• Flex Offers: $865.55
• Direct Advertising: $800.00
• Media Net:  $42.41
• Main Niche Site Revenue:$4,308.61

• Total: $6,093.74

• BlogHer Ads: $514.08
• BlogHer Sponsored Posts: $0
• Direct Advertising: $140.00
• Adsense: $373.41
• Lijit Media: $45.47
• Content Ads: $91.93
• BlueHost: $810.00

• Total $1,974.89

• Equifax: $200.00

• Total: $200.00

Total Revenue for February: $16,424.84

Revenue Last Month: $17,762.79

• Difference: -1,336.95
• January 2012: $3,551.65
• Total for 2012: $115,289.16
  
• Running Total 2013: 34,187.63

What Happened in February

Two months in a of row of being down.  On no!   Haha…..  Just kidding.  No stressing here.

For my main blog, I saw a decrease of 20,000 visits from last month.  Some due to Google being Google.  Other to the fact that February was a short month.

The biggest hit for the month was for my CPM ad network (Adspeed).  They ran out of inventory February 7th – boo! – so I was left with Google Adsense and Media.net to fill the void.

It’s another testament to why it’s important to have multiple ad networks in the event this ever happens to you.

Even though we had a down month, we’re still almost $13,000 more that where we were last year this month.   That makes the down month not feel so down. 

Good Ad Networks

Another disappointing event in February was that one of our main affiliates pulled from Flex Offers and decided to go direct.   My ad rep never bothered to inform me of this.   After a few weeks we emailed him to inquire why we hadn’t any conversions in a while.

4 days went by with no response.   Second email….

3 days goes by with no response.  Now I’m fed up.

I asked a few of my blogging buddies (which I should have done in the beginning) what the deal was and learned they had gone private.  I immediately asked for introduction to their internal rep (and got it) and I’m now back and running.

I’m in the process of finding another network that I can run my affiliates through because of that experience.    I still haven’t received an explanation as to why – it’s been over a month!

If you get into an affiliate network, get on good terms with your ad rep.  They can be your biggest ally or your biggest foe.

What’s Next?

Another podcast is underway and our next monthly site review will be coming up soon.  Did you get chosen?  Only time will tell.

One BIG change is that after being with the premium theme Thesis for almost 5 years now (basically since I started blogging) we’re moving all our sites over to Genesis.  It’s bittersweet because I loved Thesis for so long, but their recent upgrade to Thesis 2.0 was a major letdown.

When I first bought Thesis I was able to do a lot of the customizations myself.  Remember, I am not a coder so that really impressed me.

Almost 5 years later, I’ve become decent with HTML to hack my way through the basics.  When I first took a look at the new Thesis 2.0, I was lost.  I have no desire to become a designer and that’s what I feel the latest upgrade forces you to be.  #notcool

There are a few other reasons why we’re switching, too; but that’s the gist of it. If you haven’t checked out Genesis yet, you should.

See you all soon…..

Thanks again for all your support!

A few weeks ago I bought an already existing site for the first time. Another blogger was wanting to unload on the site and I thought it would be a good pick up to help out with some of my other online projects.

Transferring the funds via PayPal, buying the site was very simple. The one thing that didn’t cross my mind until the transaction was nearly complete was,

“How in the heck do I get the site on my website host?”

Having never bought an already exsisting site, I was clueless on how to proceed. The site owner suggested that I contact Jesse Michelsen from AntiNecktie to help me get it transferred over. Done!

Jesse made the process seem uber simple. Because of that, I solicited him to write up this post that shows you step by step how to do it.

In the event your lazy like me, feel free to contact Jesse and I’m sure he’ll be happy to help you out.

Enter Jesse…

*******

For every blogger, there comes a time when he or she has to change web hosts. This task sometimes comes from selling your blog, or outgrowing your current host which are both great problems to have. Whatever the case may be, this tutorial should come in handy to all you bloggers out there.

First, let’s talk about what a WordPress Install consists of:

In a WordPress blog, you’ve got the WordPress PHP files – These files are downloaded from WordPress.org manually or by using one of your hosts SimpleScript or similar installers, are installed on your server in your web directory and get served up by your web server. They are the core of your WordPress site.

Then there is the WordPress MySQL database – Without your database, the WordPress core files can’t serve any information. This database houses everything about your blog, all your posts, your usernames and almost all your settings.

Next up is your domain name – Your domain name points to the IP address of your server. This is controlled by the Domain Name System better know as DNS records. You will need to redirect your DNS record to your new host, so your domain name is pointing to the right server out there in Internet land.

There are some minor details in the mix, but changing these three things; your WordPress PHP files, MySQL Database and DNS records are necessary to move your WordPress site from one host to another.

Let’s get down to the details.

We need to collect all the information you’ll need for the move. Here’s a quick list:

1. Old host cPanel (or alternative control panel) credentials: You need to be able to access your files on the old host.
2. Domain registrar credentials: if your domain is registered through a third party such as Godaddy, you’ll need these to change the DNS records.
3. New host cPanel credentials: as with your old host, you’ll need to be able to log in and upload the WordPress PHP files and MySQL database backup to the new host.

Important: I almost always do this kind of job in the middle of the night so there aren’t any noticeable interruptions in service. Things can and sometimes do go wrong when moving hosts.

Okay, let’s get started.

Log into your current host via cPanel. Typically you can reach your cPanel login area by going to yourdomainname.com/cpanel.

Once you log in, you should see a “Find” box near the top on the sidebar. Start typing in that box and you’ll notice your cPanel options start to get narrowed down to only those that contain the text you typed in. Type “file’ to get your File Manager options and click on the File Manager.

After clicking File Manager, you’ll get a pop-up that asks where to launch the file manager. Select Home Directory and click Go.

In the File Manager, you have two panels. One on the left is the directory structure tree where you can select locations to view. On the right side is the view panel that shows you the folders and files in the directory you’ve selected on the left. Since we elected to open the File Manager to your home directory, you should already have your home directory highlighted in the left side panel (eg “/home/yourusername”) and the contents of your home directory including your web directory (public_html), in the right side panel.

Highlight your public_html directory in the view panel by clicking on it and then click the Compress button in the menu bar of the File Manager. What this will do is make a compressed copy of your web directory that you can download much easier than downloading individual files and directories. Choose your compression format (default .zip is fine), the file location and name (again the default location and name work just fine here), and click Compress Files.

Once the compression is finished and you hit Close on the compression results window, you’ll have a new file called public_html.zip in your home directory. Click on this new .zip file in your view pane and click the Download button in the File Manager.

Tip: Before leaving the File Manager, there is one more thing to do now that will save us time later. Locate your wp-config.php file in the view pane, located within your public_html directory and click Edit in your File Manager menu. Inside the wp-config.php you’ll find all the information for your MySQL database including the Database Name which we’ll need very soon. Note that down somewhere.

Time to Backup

That takes care of your WordPress core files but we still need to back up and download your WordPress MySQL database. Since we are already logged into cPanel, the easiest way to do this is by using the cPanel Backup feature. Go back to your cPanel window (the File Manager should have opened in a new tab/window. If you don’t have the cPanel window open anymore, navigate back to yourdomainname.com/cpanel), type “backup” into the Find field and click on Backups.

Note: You’ll probably notice you can back up your home directory and full account here too, but the way we did it via File Manager is generally quicker when moving hosts. However, if you are cancelling your old hosting account, I recommend doing a Full Backup from the Backups section for historical purposes in addition to the partial backups we’re using to move to a new host.

Scroll down under Partial Backups and you’ll see “Download a MySQL Database Backup” as well as a list of the current MySQL databases. Clicking on any of these database names will download the database backup to your computer. Download the database for the website you’re moving. Remember, we noted the database name from the wp-config.php file earlier.

Tip: As soon as you download your MySQL database, it’s a good idea to change your old wp-config.php file via the File Manager so that your website isn’t adding/updating information in the database anymore. Merging database backups is not fun.

You now have your WordPress core files and your MySQL database backup that can be moved to your new host and restored. Let’s continue.

Note: At this point, you have not pointed your domain name to the new host so to access cPanel, you’ll need to locate the direct server URL sent to you by your hosting company in your “Welcome” email. Alternatively, if you assigned a second domain name to your new host account, you can use that domain name to access cPanel.

Time to Upload

Log in to your new host via cPanel. Type ‘file’ into the Find field and click on File Manager. Once the File Manager is open to your home directory as we did before, click Upload in the File Manager menu bar.

That will bring you to the Upload screen. Click Browse here and select your public_html.zip file that you downloaded from your old host. The upload will begin automatically and an “Upload complete” message will appear in the bottom right corner when the upload has been processed.

Caution: Before going any further, take a look at the directory structure in your File Manager. Is there already a public_html folder in the home directory? There should be. Verify that it is empty (or only contains a cgi-bin directory) and that it is where you intend to place your WordPress core files from you old host!

Once the upload is finished, you should see the public_html.zip file in File Manager, in the home directory of the new host user. Select public_html.zip and click Extract from the File Manager menu bar. This will bring up a dialogue box that allows you to choose where to unzip the file contents. We zipped up the entire public_html directory on the old host, so you’ll want to extract the zip into the home directory and it will put your WordPress core files into the existing public_html directory on the new host. Please reread the caution above to insure you don’t overwrite important files.

Verify that your public_html directory is full of your old WordPress core files now. This can easily be done by checking the wp-config.php file under your public_html directory on the new host. If the database name in the wp-config.php file matches what you noted down from the old host, the old public_html.zip has been extracted into the right place.

Restore Database

Now you need to restore your MySQL database onto the new host. Go back to the cPanel home on the new host and type ‘mysql’ into the Find field. We have to create a new database before we can restore the old database backup. Click on MySQL Database Wizard.

Enter a new database in the provided field and click Next Step

Now you need to create a new user for this database. Enter a username and password into the boxes and click next. Tip: For better security, use the password generator provided on the Create User screen.

On the next screen, note down the database name, username and the password you created. You’ll need these very soon. Select the All Privileges check box on the screen and click next to finish the database creation.

Now go back to the cPanel home page and type ‘mysql’ into the find box again. This time, click on phpMyAdmin in the results. We’ll use phpMyAdmin to import our old data into the new database.

When phpMyAdmin open (you may have to log in here. Use your cPanel credentials at the login prompt if it appears) you’ll notice the interface is similar to the File Manager with a list of databases on the left and your view panel to the right, with actions you can perform on the databases. Select your new database from the list on the left, and click Import from the view panel on the right.

Leave the options on this page as the default. Click Choose File on the Import page, browse your computer for the database file you downloaded from your old host and click Go down at the bottom.

The upload may take a minute but you’ll get a success message at the top of the import page when it is finished. Close phpMyAdmin.

Now you need to connect your WordPress core files to your new MySQL database via the wp-config.php file. Open up the File Manager again on the new host, select the public_html directory in the left side directory tree, and locate the wp-config.php file in the view pane. Click Edit in the File Manager menu bar.

Here you’ll need to change the database name, username and password to match that of your new host. Remember, you noted these down earlier when we created the new database and user.

That just about does it for the move. Your WordPress core files have been moved to the new host, your MySQL database restored and everything is in it’s proper place. Oh but wait, we can’t forget to point your domain name to the new host!

Test, Test, Test….

First, it’s always best to test your new install to make sure it works. Since there isn’t a domain name assigned to the new server you have a couple options. First, if you got a ‘Welcome’ email from your host with a temporary URL to access your web files, use that to see if your site appears on the temporary URL. If you added your side as an addon domain, you’ll also have a temporary URL you can use (only available on some hosting platforms). If so, you can skip the next part of this guide.

The easiest way to test things is to assign a temporary A Record to your new host server through your DNS provider, also called a Host record or Address record. To do that, log into your DNS provider, most commonly your domain registrar, and navigate to your DNS Management interface, sometimes called your Zone File or Zone Editor.

You’re going to add an A (Host) Record and there are two fields required. First, the host name of the A record. This is assigning a subdomain to your domain. A subdomain comes before your domain name. For example, I like to use ‘dev’ as a subdomain for testing. You would type this into your browser as ‘dev.yourdomainname.com’. The second required field in the A record is the address or the Points to… field. In this field you’ll need to put the IP address of your new host web server.

To get that IP address, log into cPanel on the new host server again and look at the status bar or Stats bar running along the side of your control panel. In it is all sorts of info about your server including the shared IP address.

A (Host) Record propagation may take up to 2 hours but I can usually access a subdomain within minutes of it being created. If you get a 404 error when going to your new subdomain, give it a little more time.

If you navigate to your new subdomain now, you should see your website.

Note: Clicking anything on the page will usually redirect you back to your live site without the subdomain as WordPress hardcodes your domain name throughout your web pages. Don’t be alarmed, you just need to finish the final step of the process.

Now you can change your domain name to point to your new server. The proper way to do this is to change the nameservers for your domain to your new host’s nameservers. Your nameservers can usually be found in your ‘Welcome’ email from your new host or in your control panel.

You can also change your main A (Host) Record with the name ‘@’ to point to your new server’s IP address just like you did with your subdomain instead of changing the nameservers but I consider this a temporary solution. Some hosts required your nameservers to point to them, not just A (Host) Records.

And that’s all there is to it! Details will vary between hosts and domain registrars but most of these steps should translate without much fuss between most of the hosts and registrars out there. cPanel is one of the most widely used control panels and the other control panel solutions available are very similar.

If at any time during this process you get lost or overwhelmed, (there’s a reason I suggested doing this during the middle of the night) you should search in your host Knowledge Base or contact a professional to help you with the process.

Jesse Michelsen is a freelance writer, developer and system administrator. He can be found on twitter, writing for one of the Jestem sites or at his new entrepreneurship blog, AntiNecktie, where he shares small business and freelancer tips.

Welcome to a new feature that will be doing here on the blog – Monthly Site Reviews!

Many of our readers have asked to take at look at their sites to give them candid feedback.

Trust me when I say this:  We would love to review all of your sites!

Unfortunately, there is one small little factor interfering with this.   That little thing called “time”.  

I thought the next best thing is to review one lucky site per month, do a video on it and share it with all of you.   That way you might pick up a few ideas from what we share with the site that we are reviewing.

Do you want us to look at your site? Either leave a comment with a link to your site or use our contact form and tell us you’re interested. There’s no guarantee will get to your site, but we’ll do our best. *Pinky promise*

Blog Mentoring

I can’t take sole credit for this idea.   I was contacted by the peeps at BlogMentoring.com in helping mentor a new blogger.  The Bloggers Helping Bloggers Online Mentoring Program was founded in August 2012 by Jana, owner and blogger at Daily Money Shot. J. Money from Budgets are Sexy and Blog Sexier came on board in November 2012 and hit me up to see if I was interested.

And since I love J. Money so much, I couldn’t say no.  

My mentee that I was partnered with was Mindy from the blog TheInsurist.com.   I chuckled when I learned this since I, too, offer life insurance so this would be a really easy one for me.

Below are the same suggestions that I shared with Mindy on a phone call that I had with her.

Is there anything I missed? Do you have any suggestions for her blog?

Be sure to leave a comment below if you’re interested in us reviewing your site!

It’s time for our first income report of the year!

Each month “The Wife” crunches the numbers on our earnings while I, “The Husband”, puts together a recap of what happened in our online business. A dangerous combo!

As a reminder, this is why we do the income reports:

1. Accountability. These will allow us to finally keep track of our total online revenue – something that I’ve been horrible at but seeing improvement. You can go here for all of our previous blog income reports.
2. Progress. Now that we have it documented, we’ll be be able to chart our progress as our income increases. (thankfully it has)
3. Truth. To show people that you really can make money online and in a non-scammy way.
4. Transparency: We want others to see how we do it so that others can do it, too.

Remember: We started blogging in July of 2008 so it’s taken us A LOT of time to figure this blogging thing out. And truthfully, we still have a lot to learn. Don’t get the impression that you can start a blog today and turn a profit tomorrow. I promise you, it ain’t going to happen.

What went down in January

The theme of this income report will be “growth” and we’ve seen plenty of it across all fronts.   This blog is just over a year-old now and it’s so exciting to be able to reflect back and see how much we’ve grown.

How much exactly?  Last January 2012 this blog had 1,604 visitors.   January of 2013 we had almost 10,000 people visit this blog (9,983 to be exact).

That’s a 522% gain.  How’s that for growth?!

On Good Financial Cents I didn’t have nearly the % gain, but I did have a nice increase.  If you recall, my blog was still feeling the effects of Google’s Panda/Penguin update and I only had 60,000 visits last January.   (I say “only” because I once was over 100k visits per month).

This January I had my highest traffic month ever with over 160,00 visitors coming to the blog.  Bada-bing!

I wish I could take all the credit, but a lot of the traffic was a direct result of Mandy doing her Pinterest magic to some of my blog posts.

You can read more that on our post “How my husband failed at Pinterest“

Either way it’s nice to feel like I’m finally in good graces with the Big G and my traffic is back.

House of Rose is a Power House

Time for a honest confession.   Since my blog has always (now used to) had the most traffic and made the most money, I always felt like the blogging powerhouse in my household.

Well, that is starting to change and perhaps already has.

Mandy has seen some crazy growth with House of Rose over the past year and with some of her current projects she’s working on, I don’t see that letting up anytime soon.

We’re still trying to figure out ways to monetize her blog, but; as you’ll soon see, she’s not doing too bad.

Curious to see how much her blog has grown, I looked at her traffic last January and compared it to present day.  (Click on picture below to see larger view)

In January last year she had 15k visits to her site.   This year she had 232,000.

I normally don’t use the term OMG, but I think it applies here.  OMG!

 I knew her traffic had grown, I just hadn’t realized how much.

So yes, the teacher has now become the student.

FYI, we initially shared the pictures above on our Facebook fanpage.   You are a fan of us, right? 

On to how we did…..

Here’s a look at the numbers for January

Income Breakdown

Good Financial Cents

• Adsense: $1,635.84
• Adspeed: $1,423,25
• Commission Junction: $1,009.29
• Flex Offers:$3,686.86
• Direct Advertising: $839.33
• Media Net:  $752.17
• Consumer Track: $462.00
  • Total: $9,808.74

Dollars and Roses

• GoDaddy: $43.46
• ShareASale (Thesis Theme): $57.42
  • Total: $100.88

Other Niche Sites

• Adsense: $124.87
• Flex Offers: $638.18
• Direct Advertising: $535.00
• Media Net:  $65.14
• Main Niche Site Revenue:$3,489.37
  • Total: $4,852.56

• BlogHer Ads: $292.42
• BlogHer Sponsored Posts: $75.00
• Direct Advertising: $290.00
• Adsense: $578.79
• Lijit Media: $27.87
• Content Ads: $266.53
• BlueHost: $1,170.00
  • Total $2,700.61

• Equifax: $300.00
  • Total: $300.00

Total Revenue for January: $17,762.79

Revenue Last Month: $18,572.57

• Difference: -809.78
• January 2012: $6,878.52
• Total for 2012: $115,289.16
  

What Happened in January

What a way to start off 2013.   While our income went down from December, it was only off $800.   Plus, last month I included part of my book advance which makes this months income level that much more impressive.

Continuing with the “growth” theme for this report, I though it would be neat to show our income report numbers from a year ago to compare how much we’ve grown.  In our January 2012 Income Report, we made $6,878.52.   Almost half of that was some direct advertising deals that paid up front for the entire year.

House of Rose contributed  a whopping $47.76 to that number.   The last time I checked that wouldn’t take care of the bill of the Rose family heading to Chili’s on a Friday night.

Compare that to her total this time of $2,700.   Go baba! 

What’s Next?

Our next post will showcase a new feature that will be doing here on the blog to give back to our readers. Stay tuned for that.

The next BIG thing we’re looking forward to getting off the ground is our podcast. Luckily, Pat Flynn has this awesome post that talks about How To Start a Podcast that I’ve relied heavily on. He and Jaime Tardy from Eventual Millionaire have been helpful in getting me off the ground.

I will say that even with their help, there’s a still a ton of work involved just getting everything setup. I feel like I’m learning how to blog or film a video for the first time again.

I had been talking about starting a podcast since the middle of January, but I hadn’t even bought the equipment yet. Remember the video where I talked about Paralysis by Analysis?

Yeah, I was stuck in the exact place.

Two things helped me:

1. Accountability:  I told Pat and Jaime that I was going to buy the equipment by the end of the week.  They held me to it.
2. I Bought the Stupid Equipment:  I could keep telling people that “I’m going to start a podcast” for months, but nothing was ever going to get done until I went to Amazon, added the stuff to my cart, and hit the “Place My Order” button.

Now the equipment is setup (still need to do a test run) and we have our first interview scheduled for March 19th.   Progress baby! 

Side note:  If you have any bloggers that you want us to interview, just let us know and we’ll do our best to do so.

Thanks again for all your support!

Oh, yea. I’m taking every chance I have to pay back my husband for knocking my SEO skills last month.

He should have known I would not let him off the hook without getting even. Things in a marriage should always be even, can I get an AMEN? Bahaha!

He may have fooled you in to thinking that his new found Pinterest traffic is all because he’s the master at blogging. But, let me fill you in on the real story behind his nice jump in traffic. Shall I?

The conversation went something like this:

Husband: Please, oh please….teach me how to get Pinterest traffic!

Wife: *eye-roll* People on Pinterest don’t care about finance.

Husband: Dang it!

He has begged and begged and begged me to make him “Pinterest Cool“.  Almost to the point of annoyance.

No, definitely to the point of annoyance.

Actually, I got so annoyed that I decided to show him that my non-seo-skills-and-lack-of-search-engine-jargon ain’t got nothing on his pinterest-stupidness-and-inability-to-understand-pictures. Who’s ready for a husband-wife throw down?

Ok, not really. But I bet that would attract more readers.

The truth is…I started looking at what was being pinned {if anything – haha} from his site.

Sidenote: If you are trying to see what people are pinning from your site all you have to do is go to: http://pinterest.com/source/nameofyourblog.com/

Funny enough, I noticed that people were actually TRYING to pin his articles. But there was one problem. One major Pinterest problem. The articles had no pictures to PIN!

Nothing like finding a really fantastic and informative article that you want to bookmark…and then BAM…no way to pin it because it lacks an image. That’s a blogging mistake that any DIY/Home Decor blogger would laugh upon. Ahem. 

I came across this when I started digging in to what was being pinned from Good Financial Cents.

A huge thanks to Kelly S. {no idea who she is} for giving me the motivation I needed to show my husband up.

It was a light bulb moment for me! There was this fantastic article by my husband on “23 Ways to Build Your Dream Home“ and all he had pictured was an ebay vanity I bought three years ago. People {and I do mean only a few} were actually pinning this article and using the only picture that was inserted in the post…the bathroom vanity. It was getting ZERO repins. I am sure that is no shocker to most of you Pinterest viewers out there.

Who is going to repin a random bathroom vanity {unless you are doing a bathroom remodel}? It has no intent.

No description.

No viral quality.

So, being the nice little wife I am {thank you very much}, I created a “pin worthy” image and added it to the top of his post. I also added a pin-it button underneath the photo to make it easy for people to take action.

Keep in mind, this post was from 2010 and it had NO image at the top originally. The bathroom vanity image was listed by step 13.

You know what started happening after I added this nice little “pin-worthy” image and a pin-it button underneath it? Yep, you guessed it…it started to get pinned.

And repinned.

And repinned ever more!

And all of the sudden my once un-cool Pinterest husband started to taste the coolness.

All because his wife is awesome. Just sayin’. LOL!

Some Pinterest Stats

Here’s a quick look at his post that has done the best on Pinterest thus far.

As you can see adding that pic brought this post back to life to the tune of 76,335 page views!

Here’s the total referrals from Pinterest.

I have now gone in to SEVERAL of his posts and done nothing more than add an image that has the ability to be pinned. Here are a few examples of images I have added:

It’s brought life back to posts that had lost their fizzle. See…only a cool wife would use the word fizzle.

What I realized with his posts is that the content is good. Phenomenal really. But the images were lacking. Once you add the images…people will “Pin”!

And when people pin…more people will find you. Your traffic will go up. And you will think your wife knows everything.

Maybe not the last one, but still.

One of the biggest pieces of advice I got when I started blogging was that I needed to utilize link parties. I remember thinking three things…

-  What the heck is a link party?

-  How in the world do I link up?

-  Why on earth would this help my blog grow?

After doing a little research I realized that a link party is a way to connect with other bloggers, highlight some of your best content, and possibly get featured on bigger blogs.

A way of SHOWING OFF your stuff per say!

This year when I attended the New Media Expo I had the chance to hear the Six Sisters Stuff talk about how link parties helped their blog get big.

Here are FIVE things you must know about link parties:

1.  The bigger the blog? The more traffic you will get.

You also have to remember that the bigger the blog, the more competitive the link parties are. It’s extremely important to find out what time link parties go live and be there RIGHT when they open. Sometimes if you are not in the top 20 links your post can get lost in the crowd. Many bigger bloggers have hundreds of people link up each week. However, if you are diligent about getting there right when the party starts and linking up as one of the first then you will see a ton of traffic.

That being said…don’t overlook the little guys. Yes, there are many link parties that are not as huge {when I say not as huge I mean that they have less people linking up and less traffic to their blog}. This is still a great way to get exposure because you are able to build relationships with other bloggers quickly!

2.  Your thumbnail image can make or break you.

When you are competing with hundreds of other thumbnails you really need to think about how you can stand out. What image will catch the readers attention and make them want to click on your post? If you have a crappy image the chances are you will see very little traffic. But, if you have a good thumbnail image that clearly describes what your post is about? You will see MUCH more traffic.

As one of the sisters said, “A picture really is worth 1,000 words…or 100 pageviews.”

So true!

3.  Getting featured will score you double the traffic.

Most link party hosts will feature projects from each week. If you have a post or project that you are proud of then trying to get featured is a great way to grow your blog. Again, this goes back to having great images. But you also want to be creative and unique. There is a much higher chance you will be featured if your project is unique rather than something that you see on every other blog.

Comment on the link party page. Tell the host “thank you for hosting”. Compliment them. Engage them. Make yourself known.

4.  Include a link back to the blogger hosting the party.

This is probably the one that drives me the most crazy because I see tons and tons of people NOT doing this. It is common courtesy if the person linking up links BACK to the person hosting the link up. Many bloggers have buttons you can grab and insert in your post, but if not, always always always include a text link back to the link party blog.

It will also increase your chances of being featured because most hosts will ONLY feature bloggers who have properly linked back.

5. Visit other people who have linked up and introduce yourself.

One of the main reasons of a link party is traffic, right? So visit some of the other bloggers who have linked up and let them know you stopped by. It will not only give you a chance to support others who are trying to grow their blog, but it will also give them a chance to visit your blog {if they haven’t yet}.

A good rule of thumb is to include in your comment…”Visiting from (name of link party here).”

Here’s how easy it is to link up to a link party.

For this example we are using the inlinkz tool. There are several programs out there that bloggers use to host link parties. This may not look EXACTLY what you see when you go to link up {depending on what site you are on}, but it should be VERY similar.

•  Look for the button at the end of the post that says “Add your link”.

Click on “Add your link”

• A box will appear asking you to enter the URL of your post, the name of your post or project, and your email address.

Remember that you are not linking to your home page. Link directly to the blog post that contains the content you are linking up.

For example: I would not use http://houseofroseblog.com, but instead I would use http://houseofroseblog.com/master-bedroom-wall-makeover.>

Another good tip when entering in the name…use something catchy. It doesn’t have to be the title of your blog post. In fact, most of the time there is a character limit on the name field so you have to get creative and make it something that will fit and that will catch the readers attention.

One thing you do not want to do…Enter in your actual name. I have done that a time or two. Haha! It’s suppose to describe what your post is about and make people want to click to see more.

Once you have entered in your URL, name of post, and email then  click “Next Step”

• Choose your photo for the thumbnail

Not all link parties offer the ability to post a photo, but most do. It will prompt you to choose the photo you want to display in the thumbnail gallery. You can select an image from your blog, a direct url of the image, or upload a photo from the computer.

I always choose “select from blog”. It will let you select a photo from the post you are linking up. You can either click “Select” or “Crop”. If you select “Crop” it will allow you to crop your image.

That’s it!

Your thumbnail should show up in the link gallery. It may take a few minutes before it is showing up so don’t fret if you don’t see it immediately. Most of the time it takes some time to load.

Here is an example of a link gallery below.

I have a list of link parties that I link up to over at House of Rose. Get busy and start linking!