eVentureBiz Blog

The eVentureBiz Blog Has Moved - Here’s Where It Is . . .

2009-04-08T19:20:38Z

In an effort to do as we bloggers and business owners typically (and usually should) do, I have moved my blog to our new sister web hosting site, WpBlogHost.

The new site focuses more on web hosting and domain products for bloggers, though the hosting can be tailored for just about anyone. This is where my blog’s new home is. All the eVentureBiz Blog articles have been transferred and I even have a few new articles already up.

So if you haven’t done so yet - and you enjoy reading my blog - please visit my new blog’s home at http://wpbloghost.com/blog and sign up for my blog’s feed and discontinue following the eVentureBiz feed.

The new blog focuses on bloggers and things I think bloggers ought to know about.

Thanks for reading and being a part of our community.

See ya on the other side

John

Announcing WpBlogHost & Our Grand Opening Specials!

2009-03-06T17:49:56Z

Promo Code	Description	Start Date	End Date
100CN15	15% discount off any order $100 or more	3/5/2009	3/8/2009
50CN10	10% discount off any order $50 or more	3/5/2009	3/8/2009
5NC25	5% discounts on orders $25 and over	3/5/2009	3/8/2009
Visit our Product Catalog to view all our hosting and domain products.

Hello everyone. Thank you for visiting and reading my blog over the past year and a half. As you know, I haven’t been blogging for awhile due to the fact I’ve been concentrating all my energy on developing our new
web hosting site geared for bloggers specifically.

A couple months ago I asked everyone, What Would Make For A Great WordPress Hosting Company?

Here were some of the responses I received:

Easy installations of WordPress
A site with good WordPress tutorials
Ability to provide blog security enhancements for their customers
A place they can come and ask questions about blogging or WordPress whenever they feel stuck
Hosting that could handle a half decent amount of traffic and provide room to grow if need be
Low price
Value important, regardless of price
Monthly payment options with no long term contracts required
Get a little hand holding and tons of help
Having access to you or one of your experts via email
Phone support for hosting and domain products
Video tutorials provided
Ease of moving your site

I’ve spent a lot of time going through these and making sure each one was addressed with our new product. I am pleased to say the answer is yes to all of the above - we provide each service.

If you are subscribed to my blog, I transferred my feed over to my new blog’s home (along with all my posts), however, since this is my first time transferring a feed, just to be safe you may want to delete the eVentureBiz feed and subscribe to my new one:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/wpbloghost.

Also, if you’d like to connect with me on StumbleUpon, here’s my new profile. My typical stumbles will include articles on seo, hosting, web design and development, WordPress (of course), and blogging.

http://wpbloghost.stumbleupon.com

WpBlogHost

Our new site is slick, clean, and provides every tool a blogger needs to grow their blog online and
expand down the road. We provide shared, virtual, and dedicated web hosting along with an array of domain products. To learn more about our new site, please visit our About Us page.

Our
new product not only is a the place to host a blog, but it’s also a fun place to
learn and find lots of help. The WpBlogHost WordPress School
contains a ton of help tutorials and videos to get any blogger get started and feel
comfortable using WordPress.

Once again, I’d like to thank all my readers for taking time out of their day for stopping by and taking part in our community.

If you are a current eVentureBiz web hosting customer, no worries. We are still here providing all the same services you have been enjoying. However, if you would like to move your site over to our sister company, WpBlogHost, and enjoy low monthly payments, please contact us and we’ll work with you on moving your site over and getting you set up when your account is up for renewal.

Again, thank you everyone and please feel free to browse our new site and provide us with some feedback. We’re all here to grow - including us!

Understanding The Psychology Of Your Website Visitors

2008-12-01T09:19:55Z

If only we could read minds.
Courtesy Paramount Pictures

The other day my wife emailed me a link to a “What’s Your Personality Type?” quiz (PersonalityType.com).

At first I wasn’t too interested but after hearing the results from her test I was intrigued and headed over to the site to take the quiz. It asked me a few questions about what type of person I am, such as do I often say whatever comes to my mind or do I hold things back? It also asked me questions about how organized I am and orderly I like my universe; I prefer orderly, however, with 2 young children running around all day . . . you get the picture

So you’re probably curious as to what personality type I am, aren’t you?

I was awarded with the INTJ personality type. “Yes thank you, I accept this award and I’d like to thank my mother, father, beautiful wife . . .”

Ok seriously though, here’s what that means and how it all ties into understanding the psychology of your website visitors.

Where This Test Came From

After doing a little research, I found that the test PersonalityType.com puts you through is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

In short, it is a test to classify a person’s personality type which might aid in helping you figure out how you might act in a given situation as well as provide people of different types as a means to understand one another.

The box below shows the comparisons you are asked and classified into. For example, are you an Extraversion or Introversion? Do you gather information via Sensory or Intuition? etc.

4 Pairs Of Preferences
Extraversion	Introversion
Sensing	iNtuition
Thinking	Feeling
Judging	Perceiving

I don’t think the test on PersonalityType.com gives you an answer key as to what your combination classifies you as, however, here is what I’ve discovered:

INTJ = Mastermind / Entailing	ENFJ = Teacher / Education
INFJ = Counselor / Guilding	ENFP = Champion / Motivating
INFP = Healer / Conciliating	ENTJ = Fieldmarshal / Mobilizing
ENTP = Inventor / Devising	INTP = Architect / Designing
ESTJ = Supervisor / Enforcing	ISTJ = Inspector / Certifying
ESFJ = Provider / Supplying	ISFJ = Protector / Securing
ESTP = Promoter / Persuading	ISTP = Crafter / Instrumenting
ESFP = Performer / Demonstrating	ISFP = Composer / Synthesizing

How This Ties Into Web Design

After taking the test I made a connection between how I craft everything on my website for my target audience and how this tool helps me to better understand them.

As a webmaster, web designer, copywriter, entrepreneur, marketer, etc., part of being successful is getting into the heads of your target customers and understanding how they will respond to certain pieces of text, ads, banners, and so on that you create.

Inevitably, it is somewhat of a lost cause as you can never really get into the heads of your potential customers. However, with tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Keirsey Temperament Sorter, we can work off something.

As an example, let’s say you’ve discovered that your primary website visitors are ENFJs. You could then find out behavioral patterns they exhibit and tailor your offer to satisfy their needs - oh what’s that I’m saying again . . . you need to solve problems to succeed in business

So the question is, what type of people do you think your target audience is? In all honesty, unless you’ve put a lot of money into polling and personal interaction statistics, it’s probably not who you think they are.

On a side note, if you’re a regular reader of my blog you probably have noticed I’ve slowed down a little in blog posts and I’m sorry about that. I’ve been real busy over here helping a few customers with their needs, helping my wife get her new business off the ground, and am secretly working on a new product launch of my own. More details on that later.

As a result, I want to give you a heads up that I might skip a week or two in posting in an effort to get caught up on some work I’m doing. Please bare with us while eVentureBiz, LLC expands its horizons.

Thanks!

My Favorite Kind Of Website Statistic To Have Is . . .

2008-11-20T20:30:32Z

Direct traffic.

I was scanning through our company’s website stats the other day and noticed quite a few visits came from direct traffic.

This typically means either these visitors typed in our web address in their web browser’s address bar or they have our site bookmarked.

At first glance this may appear to be useless information regarding your website and how people find you, but realize this: This is what you want to see!

Yahoo! doesn’t want to see people are finding their website through your website, neither does Google. What they want is every time someone thinks “I need to search for this on the Web,” they need to go to our site.

No referrers, no links, no tweets.

What is it then they strive for (and the reason why I like seeing direct traffic in my stats)?

Brand recognition!

Do You Have A SEO Question?

2008-11-17T06:59:20Z

The other day Akemi, author of the blog Yes To Me, asked me a few questions in regards to my SEO tips article which I thought deserved a better answer than a quick reply in the comment section.

If you have a question regarding SEO, please feel free to ask below.

SEO Q&A’s

What is duplicate content and how is it created?

Duplicate content is when different URLs show the exact same content. Many times, as in the case with most blogs, duplicate content is generated automatically.

Let’s take for example my article, 20.4 Ways People Scan Your Website. When Googlebot comes to my blog and collects and records a list of URLs on my site, it will notice the following URLs all contain the content of my 20.4 Ways People Scan Your Website article (links open in a new tab):

http://eventurebiz.com/blog/204-ways-people-scan-your-website/
(the article’s actual page I want Google to index)
http://eventurebiz.com/blog/?s=20.4+Ways+People+Scan+Your+Website
(found through my search box)
http://eventurebiz.com/blog/2008/07/
(found through my Archives)

And when my article is new, you’ll also find it on my blog’s home page, http://eventurebiz.com/blog.

Okay, so ya got duplicate content, great. Your next question then is:

Why is duplicate content a bad thing?

The best way to think of Googlebot and Yahoo! Search is to think of them as if they were a real human who likes to read and organize everything in a logical order so they can remember it later. They may choose to come to your website today and crawl 500 URLs, but what if 200 of those pages crawled were duplicates?

That would suck, wouldn’t it?

Now imagine for a moment you purchased a 30 chapter novel you’ve been dying to read. On the first day you couldn’t put it down and read 6 chapters before retiring to bed. You have fuzzy warm thoughts all night dreaming you were the hero and when you wake up in the morning all you can think about is getting back to your book.

Everything’s great; the weather is gloomy and cold out, it’s your day off work, and the aroma of your favorite coffee brewing stimulates your senses.

You pick up your favorite book and continue reading from where you left off, however, something is terribly wrong. Chapter 7 is exactly the same as chapter 3 - word for word. Then chapter 8 is new . . . but chapter 9 is the exact same as chapter 1?

“Why would anyone write a book in such a way?” you ask yourself.

John Says:The takeaway here is this: don’t confuse our buddy Googlebot. Show him your content where you want him to see your content, otherwise, he might not like your site as much as he could. Make sense?

How does the Platinum SEO Pack plugin prevent it (duplicate content)?

To the right you can see a snapshot of the “noindex” settings you can set for this plugin. By checking these you’ll be telling search engines not to index anything found in areas such as your Categories and Archives URLs (because they contain duplicates of the actual articles you want indexed).

It also might be a good idea, SEO-wise, not to show entire posts on your blog’s home page because that too would show duplicate content. This can be avoided by using the  tag to split your post, or you could use a plugin like Post Teaser.

Is Duplicate Content Really That Bad?

This is a question I have asked myself repeatedly and to be honest with you, I don’t think it’s as bad as many SEO gurus lead us to believe. I realize that although I know quite a bit about SEO, I don’t dedicate as much time studying it as such people as Aaron Wall; therefore, I try to follow their lead.

However, in my 15 years experience online, I’ve owned websites with duplicate content and thus far I haven’t seen anything but success happen to those sites (i.e. promoted well in search engines).

John Says:To be safe, do as others suggest and try to avoid duplicate content. One of the best things you can do to succeed in business (and online) is to surround yourself with people smarter than you. It would be wise to follow the advice of people like Aaron Wall and Jennifer Laycock when it comes to SEO.

I know Barbara already asked this, but is it really safe to switch from the all-in-one SEO plugin to platinum SEO?

Yes it is, however, I recently checked the settings for the WordPress plugin All-In-One SEO Pack and you know what, it includes most of the options Platinum does. I’d say if you’re not too skilled in messing with plugins and you’re at all worried, don’t even bother. Platinum SEO does offer a few more options but not enough to sweat over it.

John Says:If you’re worried about switching plugins, wait instead for a more powerful SEO plugin to come out before you go through the hassle of switching.

I read your forum thread about subdomains. One of my frustration about Yes to Me is that the domain is not SEO. Does this mean I can have domain like spirituality.yes-to-me.com?

Absolutely. This would be set up in your control panel. If you’re using cPanel, there should be a “subdomains” icon you can click on and from there you can fill in the blank form with the subdomain name, like “spirituality”.

This would then give you a subdomain spirituality.yes-to-me.com. Then when you go to your File Manager you should see a spirituality.yes-to-me folder with nothing in it. From there, you can install a fresh version of WordPress or design any kind of site you’d like in there.

And since subdomains actually have their own dns (i.e. web address according to search engines), search engines index your keyword “spirituality” as part of the domain name.

This should give you a slight improvement SEO-wise over creating a directory like yes-to-me.com/spirituality, which is the way most people are familiar with.

I talk a little more on how search engines index your domain name in my article Start A Blog: Free or Paid? WordPress or Blogger? if you’re interested in reading more.

John Says:Note, however, I do not advise making your actual home page a subdomain of your domain name. Your domain name, even if not very SEO, should still do fine as long as you’re concentrating on other aspects of SEO. Subdomains are great for pages showing services or products you provide (like support.yes-to-me.com or coaching.yes-to-me.com).

Open Floor For Questions

If you have further questions regarding the topics I hit on today or if you have a SEO question you’re dying to get answered, fire away - I’m wearing my bullet-proof vest today!

Open Discussion: What Would Make For A Great WordPress Hosting Company?

2008-11-10T22:36:09Z

Like any good business should, we are always looking for ways to grow our business by doing nothing more than solving people’s problems.

By helping you, we help ourselves - hence my Avatar selection.

I’m curious about something today and would love to get some feedback from my blog readers. I know many of you read my blog but rarely comment, but if there’s one post you would consider commenting on I’d love for it to be this one.

This blog has been primarily me teaching things I know in business and on the Web, but one thing I do know - I don’t know everything and I need your help to make my business ventures successful as well. So here it goes . . .

My Goal

I want to create the best place on the Web for hosting a paid WordPress blog.

One might say, “Shouldn’t your goal be money or a destination you see yourself in 10 years?”

Like most people, I have many goals. One thing I do enjoy doing though is tinkering with my company’s website and being this invisible doorman hovering around our site who also happens to be the bartender (you know, the guy people sit down with and tell their stories to).

My Question

What would make you choose one web hosting company over another for the purposes of starting a WordPress blog?

Here’s what we already offer which doesn’t seem to be swaying people to host with our company (please note my intentions for listing these are for discussion purposes and not meant as an advertisement):

Automatic installation of WordPress upon web hosting sign up.
Easy 1-Click installations of WordPress at any time after sign up.
Free WordPress Theme uploads and installs.
Free WordPress Plugins installed by me which I recommend and use on my blog.
Free WordPress Security Customizations to fortify your blog and defend against hackers.
30-Day Money Back Guarantee

Most hosting companies out there offer easy installs of WordPress via your control panel and some offer free theme uploads and plugins, so in that case, we’re the same.

Your Opinion

If you have a moment to comment, I’d love to hear some thoughts and ideas you might have on what would make a great site to be the site to host your WordPress blog?

What kind of value would you be looking for?

Or do you shop solely on price?

Would you be willing to pay an annual price vs. monthly? If not annually, what might make you consider paying annually?

Some possible suggestions I’ve been tossing around lately include:

Some kind of package deal, just not sure what to package?
Picture and video tutorials on working with WordPress.
Some kind of member’s only area with access to SEO, marketing, and tutorials.
Host a Friday Night’s Chat Session for blogging chat.
Possibly creating a Twitter kind of service attached to a blog (thanks Cath for the suggestion).

What do you think? What would make you host with one company over another when it comes to starting a paid blog?

Thank you in advance for your feedback. I know a few of you have already emailed me your thoughts and don’t worry about retyping everything again here if you did, I know your time is precious.

30.1 Web Tools For Online Success And To Make Your Life Easier At The Same Time

2008-10-31T19:57:40Z

Are you: authoring a blog; designing a website; building a newsletter; trying to make money online; wanting to learn how people find your website; dying to find an answer to a business question you have; and/or figure out where people click on your website?

Most online entrepreneurs will relate to most, if not all, those things I listed above. There are many resources online that can help you in your online endeavors.

Today I want to share with you a list of my bookmarks which link to online tools that can help you succeed online or make your life a lot easier.

Can you add to the list? If so, feel free to link to tools and/or software online that you may have used which helped you grow your business online. Keep in mind if you leave a few links your comment may go to moderation.

Note: All links in this article will open in a new tab.

Links above are clickable

Tools For Your Website

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

Use the Keyword Tool to get new keyword ideas for your website.
Google Webmaster Central

Lot’s of tools provided by Google to help get your website seen online. Is your site currently indexed? Submition tool, optimize your content, add a site search to your website, etc.
Google Analytics

Learn how visitors come to your site, what keywords they used, where they clicked, how long they were on your site, and more.
Site Meter

Analyize how much traffic comes to your site, referring websites, what keywords people used to find your site, and more.
Woopra

An advanced real-time Web tracking and analysis application for your website.
SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

Another keyword suggestion tool.
Wordtracker

One of the more popular keyword suggestion tools.
Yahoo! Site Explorer

Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page.
Free Google Sitemap Generator

A free online program that will generate a Google xml sitemap for you. Do you need one?
CSS Formatter and Optimiser

A compression tool that will optimize your css code for quicker load time.
Whois.Net

Find out information about domain names (including yours). Good to know what information people can easily find out about you.
W3C Markup Validation Service

Is your website’s code written properly or does it have errors?
ClickHeat | Clicks heatmap

ClickHeat is a visual heatmap of clicks on a HTML page, showing hot and cold click zones.
Crazy Egg Analytics

View overlays, lists, and heat maps of traffic on your website.
FavIcon from Pics

Create your own icon on the browser address bar when visitors view or bookmark your web page (see our Yin and Yang image in our address bar).
Domain Tools

A few tools for domains, such as whois search and DNS tools.
Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test

Use this online tool to see how your website looks displayed in different web browsers.

Blogging Tools
WordPress Web Hosting

Starting a blog usually means you need blogging software. eVentureBiz provides WordPress web hosting for those looking to start a blogging career.
FeedBurner

Allow people to subscribe to your blog via RSS and email. FeedBurner also provides limited analytics tools.
FeedBlitz

Allow your blog readers to subscribe to your blog via email. Also provides some advertising tools.
Smashing Magazine

Lots of free graphics, WordPress Theme links, and How-To’s.
definr

My favorite online dictionary. It’s fast, too.
Dr. Grammar

Check your grammar.
AWeber

Create visually stunning, engaging email newsletters. Choose from over 75 HTML templates, paste in your own HTML or use the built-in message editor.
50+ Wordpress Plugins & Hacks Candy Store

A list article like this one I wrote listing out 50+ WordPress Plugins you might find useful.
Flickr Image Search

Find images on Flickr you can use on your blog. Hint: make sure you check the Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content box for images you can use on your blog.

General Internet Tools
RoboForm

RoboForm is my new buddy. He remembers all my passwords in an encrypted format for easy one click logins and form fillers.
UbiDog Productions

Provides programs you can use for automating online contests, surveys, polls, quizzes, and more.
Twitter Search

Search for conversations people are having about a product or service to gain some insight and potential customer feedback.
Microsoft adCenter Videos

Great video tutorials on PPC campaigns and developing ads people will click on. Lots of useful info here to learn from.

Bonus
S.C.O.R.E.

Got a business question no one knows the answer to? Want to know how to start a successful business (online or off)? Get advice direct from successful business advisors.

How Can A Blog Help Your Business?

2008-10-26T17:53:38Z

This is a guest post by Ann Smarty, a SEO consultant and online entrepreneur.

Blogging long ago stopped being just the way to share news and / or personal thoughts. Today it has become a common fashion already to create a blog supporting your main website. Several reasons for that include:

you can update it regularly with useful relevant information (and thus improve your chances to rank well in Google);
you can get closer to your customers or readers (by starting a real communication with them);
you can build business relationships with influential bloggers in your niche (by linking to them and referencing their posts).

Let’s look how these aims are achieved by reviewing just a few examples:

FreeShipping.org

FreeShipping.org, a valuable resource that helps shoppers save money by showing them what stores offer free shipping and provides the necessary coupon codes to get it, has a coupon codes blog where exclusive and time-limited offers are posted regularly. The blog also reviews other similar resources that might be useful for their readers. The blog is thus meant for several aims:

provide their readers with more useful information;
build friendly relationships with related resources.

Best Western

Best Western, a huge hotel chain, maintains a bright blog On the Go with Amy, providing funny and helpful travel tips and allowing their readers to share their experience. By this they:

create a friendly community around their service (by entertaining and educating their customers);
connect closer to their customers by encouraging them to share their thoughts and experiences.

BearingPoint

BearingPoint , a global management and technology consulting company, has launched an educating blog encouraging their readers to share “new thinking” concepts and ideas. The blog helps them:

establish their brand positive associations by “sharing ideas from some of our own best thinkers.”
get closer to their customers by “fostering a dialogue on the issues that matter most to today’s organizations.”

So how actually can a blog help a business; let’s summarize:

a blog is a great way to establish long-term relationships with your customers and visitors (by entertaining them and communicating with them);
a blog can help you find new customers (by improving your site search engine rankings and via social networking and bookmarking services);
a blog can be one of the methods to show your expertise;
a blog is the place to host viral marketing and advertising campaigns;
a blog can help you to build business relationships in the same or neighbouring niches.

Ann Smarty is a SEO consultant, online entrepreneur and social media power user. With more than 5 years of experience in SEO and affiliate marketing she started her own business only less than a year ago. You can also find her blogging regularly at Search Engine Journal and also follow her at Twitter.

Start A Blog: Free or Paid? WordPress or Blogger?

2008-10-21T01:04:09Z

This article is for those of you who want to start a blog but aren’t sure what the best way to start one might be. We’ll look at helping you answer the following questions and end with an open discussion for questions.

Should I go with a free blog OR spend a little money and purchase my own web hosting?
Which program should I use - WordPress or Blogger?
Where should I host my WordPress Blog?
Conclusion and open discussion.

When I first came to the conclusion that I wanted to start a blog, I treated my decision just like I would any other business venture I might enter into.

The first thing I did was examine what everyone else was using. I quickly noticed most bloggers were using WordPress and had their blog hosted on their own domain (which means they opted to pay for a web hosting account).

I. Starting A Blog: Free or Paid Web Hosting?

If you’re thinking of starting a blog I can almost guarantee this is what’s going through your head:

I want to start a blog but I’m not sure if I’ll like it or not. Maybe I’ll sign up for a free blog on either WordPress.com or Blogger and see how it goes. Then after about a year or so I’ll decide if I should purchase my own domain name and web hosting.

Sound familiar? If so, here’s what you need to consider.

Free hosting, whether it’s for a blog or a normal website is never a good idea unless maybe you’re a kid just fiddling around on the Internet.

Do Not try to build a business online using free web hosting, that just doesn’t make much sense. Don’t get me wrong, as an experienced entrepreneur I do like to get things for free, but not when the deal ultimately will hurt me.

So how can having a free blog hosted on WordPress.com or Blogger hurt you?

Drawbacks To Free Hosting In General

Awhile back I wrote an article entitled, 8+ Drawbacks to Free Web Hosting (link opens in a new tab) which you might find informative. The article shows how free web hosting is limited by such things as:

Bottlenecks - Your hosting/website is shared on 1 server with LOTS of other websites.
Low Bandwidth and Limited Disk Space.
No Personalized Domain Name.
Little Support and more . . .

You’ll Lose All Your Momentum & Lose Backlinks When You Upgrade

If you really feel the need to experience blogging before you purchase a hosting account and are dead set on testing first with a free account, give it no more than two or three weeks tops. If you blog for too long what you’ll find is people will start reading your blog, bookmarking your pages, subscribing to your articles, and linking to your website.

That’s great, right?

Of course! But what happens when you realize you’ve grown beyond a free account? What happens then?

I’ve been blogging for only a year now and have attracted tens of dozens of links and I’m indexed well on Google for a few searches which brings our company business. Could you imagine what would happen if my blog was hosted on a free account and today I decided to move over to a real hosting account with a new web address? I’d lose any search engine traffic I have achieved, dozens (if not hundreds) of websites linking to me would now have broken links, and people who have bookmarked my site may lose touch with me.

Ask any blogger who uses a free account and wants to switch to a paid hosting account what the #1 thing is which holds them back from making the move. I can almost guarantee the above scenario is it!

Free = Bad SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

To better index your website, search engines look at your domain name’s DNS hierarchy. Basically what this means is search engines like Google and Yahoo will look at the web address to your website and translate it into a binary code it can read (0s and 1s).

It then breaks down your web address and assigns an order of importance for the purpose of locating and addressing your website in the search engine. Let’s take a look at this hierarchy.

For this first example, let’s say you decided to pay for your own web hosting and domain name of www.your-blog.com. Here’s how your domain’s DNS hierarchy will be indexed by search engines:

Alternatively, if you choose to host your blog on WordPress or Blogger, your web address will look something like www.your-blog.wordpress.com and here’s how it will be indexed:

This means you’re doing a lot of work to help WordPress index their site better first and then work to help index your website in search engines.

II. Should You Use Blogger or WordPress?

Well if you just read the information above then by default you would go with WordPress as Blogger is only offered free and not bundled with any paid hosting (as far as I know).

But to give you a more adequate answer as to why you should use WordPress vs. Blogger as your blogging platform, I’d like to point out 4 good reasons.

The majority of bloggers use WordPress. It’s ok to be different (in business), but because so many people use WordPress it will be much easier to find help (and you can always email me and ask questions).
Simplicity of commenting on articles. Have you ever tried to comment on a blog using Blogger? It makes me want to pull my hair out! With WordPress your visitor will simply read your article and comment using the form at the bottom. Nice, easy, simple, and promotes comments and community.
You can do a lot of cool things with WordPress. Because of the popularity of WordPress and being that its source code is open, thousands of people constantly write programs called plugins which you can use to make your site truly unique and fun. With Blogger, you’re pretty much stuck with what they give you and a few customized themes.
Your blog can be converted into an actual professional-looking website for a business very easily, not so with Blogger.

III. Where To Find WordPress Web Hosting

This one is easy. If you’re reading this, you’ve arrived at a great place to have your WordPress blog hosted online - eVentureBiz WordPress Web Hosting (link opens in a new tab).

As CEO of eVentureBiz, I have gone to many lengths to make sure all your blogging needs will be taken care of in order to start blogging right away.

All our hosting plans include an option to easily install WordPress within your web hosting control panel and you can have it pre-installed at time of web hosting sign up. Plus if you contact me I will personally:

Install your WordPress blog free of charge.
Upload and install your choice of WordPress Theme free of charge.
Upload and install various customizations (plugins) I find useful - free of charge.
Fortify your WordPress installation to help hacker-proof your blog (see my article on WordPress security) - free of charge.
Provide a 30-Day money back guarantee.
Ask questions and get help anytime by emailing me, commenting on this blog, or posting in our community forums.

Check out our eVentureBiz WordPress Web Hosting page for more information.

IV. Conclusion & Discussion

I think I’ve made a pretty good case that the best choice for starting a blog in most cases will be to go with a paid web hosting account using WordPress as your blogging platform.

There are other blogging platforms out there which I did not mention in this article, like TypePad, Movable Type, b2evolution, etc. However, at this time the two most popular are WordPress and Blogger.

If you’re wanting to start a blog and have questions, please comment below. If you’re a current blogger, which blogging platform do you use and do you like it?

How I Obtained A $30,000 Credit Line With A Bad Credit Score

2008-10-12T00:32:23Z

Your bank can help you build your empire.
Image by DavidDMuir

Today in the United States the economy sucks.

The term “credit squeeze” has been floating around lately and refers to the fact that banks are in so much trouble themselves that they have tightened their lending policies almost to the point where credit scores don’t matter.

Cash is king, yes, but there is a “queen” out there that is almost as good as cash.

What is it?

Trust.

Being that I deal a little in real estate, people sometimes ask me questions about how to improve their credit scores or what’s the best way to obtain a line of credit.

My answer has always been you need to build trust with a bank, preferably one you can physically walk into and meet with someone face-to-face. If you already have great credit with an out of state bank that’s ok too, continue building that credit and trust, but nothing beats being able to walk into a bank and getting to know the staff.

I bring this up because it has always been something I’ve said you need to do as a business owner and real estate investor and a couple weeks ago, my belief was put to the test.

Because of this poor real estate market, my credit score has basically been ruined; I made one bad investment which has trashed my credit and there’s little chance a bank would easily loan me money based off my credit score alone. But over the years I’ve gotten to know a few bankers at my banks of choice (yes I have a few) and I rarely can walk in and head for the teller window without waving hello at least twice to friendly faces.

This is also great for networking. Bankers are often times the first people to know when someone is starting a business, needs a website, or might be going into foreclosure. So networking with a bank and getting to know a banker or two is a very powerful tool you can use to find business and make a little money by solving people’s problems.

What Happened When I Met With My Banker

Personally, I’ve networked with a few banks and have a decent relationship going. A couple weeks ago my wife and I decided to transfer one of our business accounts over to another bank in order to simplify how we move our money around.

We sat down with the banker we know at that bank and opened a new business account. When she asked me if I’d like to apply for a line of credit I thought to myself this would be the first time that my somewhat recent tarnished credit score is going to hurt me. I wasn’t thinking about the good relationship I had built with this bank in the past.

She popped my information into her computer and within about 10 seconds I was approved for a $30,000 line of credit, no questions asked!

I joked with her and said, “Only $30k?”

She laughed and said “Well I can run your credit and see if we can get you some more.”

I of course declined as I didn’t want her discovering that my credit score has recently been lowered.

I think of a bank as a silent partner in just about everything I do. In the beginning they don’t know me, therefore they don’t trust me. However, over time as I build a good relationship with them they will begin to trust me and even bend a few of their rules to help me succeed.

So if you’re a business owner or are thinking of starting a business, realize one of the best first steps you can make is to start building relationships with the right people and other businesses.

Quick Tip To Build Trust & Credit With A Bank

To quickly build a decent credit history with a bank you could do the following. Find something you could use to obtain a loan for through your primary bank, like refinancing your car or something. Pay on it for the next 4 to 6 months and then pay off that loan with another bank’s loan (i.e. refinance).

Yes it ends up costing you money to refinance but if you obtain 2 or 3 decent size loans through a bank, pay on them for a bit, and then pay them off, the bank will be willing to loan you money a bit easier as time goes on even though your credit score isn’t so great.

The bonus too is they will report your great credit history to the credit reporting agencies.

Question: Have you built up trust with a bank? If not, what are you waiting for?