In addition to working on my affiliate websites, I have also been keeping up with my ghostwriting business. I always think it’s thrilling to work with people from all over the world, and it gives me a challenge to work for other people with their requirements and deadlines. With that being said, I have also opened up a ghostwriting coaching program! This is where you can benefit in a HUGE way. Personal access to me for 2 months where I take you by the hand to get your business up and running fast.

My goal is to make this the most comprehensive tutorial on how to have your own ghostwriting business on the web. I have many students so far, and all of the feedback has been great! People tell me it’s the BEST course on ANYTHING they’ve ever bought online. I’m literally taking people by the hand and helping them learn how to work from home and get a great ghostwriting business up and running. (It’s called Power Ghostwriting, check it out now!)

I plan on being back blogging regularly now, and I definitely have some new tricks up my sleeve. I’ve been taking a course on using video for blogging, product creation, and other things in Internet marketing. That means we’ll see some videos posted here that can show you exactly how to do things to help you build your business, in real time. I’m very excited about this, because people don’t always want to read things online, and some people just prefer to watch videos. For those who enjoy reading text, I plan on keeping the articles coming. There will only be a good mixture here!

If you’re interested in becoming a ghostwriter, I am running a special on my course. You can get more information here, at a special low introductory price that is literally insanely low. I’m starting it this low because I want early feedback and success stories so I can turn this into the high-end coaching course it already is. Leave any feedback, comments, or questions you have in the comments section, and I look forward to working with you and having you visit the blog regularly.

Do you have some friends or family members who would like to work from home too? Perhaps a mom to be, or dad to be. Send them a link to this website — they’ll thank you for it!

Looking through this list of domains is nothing short of amazing.  The person who scouted these out is Gene Pimentel who is a master domainer. Take a look and see if there is anything you like there!

What’s really great is that the list of domain names includes prices of what similar domain names have sold for in the past. That does NOT mean that is what you’ll pay.  It could be quite a bit lower depending on what the broker (me) will allow you to pay.

Going through the domains is great even if you want to find one on your own, to be honest with you. These premium domains are sure to spark some great ideas for you.

I’m also blogging about finding great domains here

Checking out the domain names list will be fun! I’m excited about my new broker status since there is nothing better than a great domain name

My computer crashed and I lost EVERYTHING!

I was away on vacation surfing the web when my beloved MacBook froze up (which it never did). I turned the computer off, waited the obligitory 10 seconds and turned it back on again. All that came up was a flashing question mark. There was nothing I could do on vacation, but when I got home research showed me that the computer was a goner.

I was lucky in a way because all of my client work for ghostwriting was turned in and all of my products I sell were uploaded into my beloved e-junkie shopping cart (thank goodness!) Pictures of my son were also on my husband’s computer, or loaded into Shutterfly. All in all, I really did luck out. But that doesn’t make it any less shocking to lose products you’ve bought, software, and things I’m sure I’ll never rememeber.

Enter Mozy, the online backup solution.

I now have a new MacBook Pro (it’s glorious!) and the first thing I did was sign up for Mozy. Mozy is an online backup software that sort of catalogs the contents of your computer onto their very secure server. It takes a while for it to backup your entire computer the first time (like a day), and then you can set it to backup from then on whenever you want. I have mine set to backup whenever my computer is idle for a certain length of time.

So, what do I think of Mozy? I absolutely LOVE it. There is no complicated hardware to try and figure out, or weird settings.

Here are the steps to backing up with Mozy,

1. Pay your incredibly low fee of $4.95 (holy moly that’s a low price per month!)

2. Download the Mozy software – for PC OR Mac

3. Start backing up your computer (this will take a day or two)

4. Set it to back up automatically (you won’t even notice it in the background!)

What don’t I like about the service? To be honest with you, it’s worked perfectly. For under 5 bucks a month I have the security of knowing that my files are safe on a secure Mozy server. I don’t have to do anything, or even remember to backup.

Since you’re starting your Internet marketing career I’d say Mozy is an absolute must. As you work on your websites, write articles, and purchase products you’ll want to make sure they are safe and secure. Don’t make the mistake I did! Back up your files, I know that I can finally sleep soundly at night. This Mozy review is positive for sure!

You need to do these things before moving on:

Choose your Niche

Choose the platform you’re going to use

Now then, you need to start thinking about the content you’re going to have on your website. There is no magic formula to doing this, but there are some general guidelines. First, it’s important to know what the people reading your website are going to be interested in.

That means you need to do some research to get some general ideas. You should:

• Visit authority sites in your niche to get an idea of how they are using content
• Look at niche books on Amazon.com to see what kind of content published authors are putting out (browsing the table of contents can give you excellent ideas)
• Check out magazines in your niche to see what the tantalizing headlines are
• Visit forums in your niche via Big Boards to see what kinds of questions commonly pop up

Do you have some good ideas yet?  great!  Write thoughts down as they come to you for content you want to cover.  The Next step is going to be organizing those ideas and doing some keyword research. That post is soon to follow (or might already be around if you are reading this later!)

For now, be sure to sign up for your free eBooks on making fast money online here

In fact, you can’t very well choose a domain name if you don’t have your niche picked out. Also, the kind of website you want to build might be dependent on the niche you choose as well. You might find that a certain topic warrants a certain look or feel to your website.

There are many different factors that go into choosing a niche. Some people do quite well choosing something they are intimately familiar with or passionate about. In fact, that is what this website is for me. I’m very familiar with being a work at home mom, and I am passionate about sharing this kind of lifestyle with other moms.

Another person might be very passionate about everything to do with scrapbooking. I don’t know a single thing about scrapbooking, but you can do quite well with that niche! The point is that you really can earn a good income using the things you’re good at, really enjoy, or have a talent for.

You do need to be careful to make sure the niche will be a viable one for you. Just because you like underwater basket weaving does not mean other people do. Or, other people might like it, but they are not willing to spend any money on it.

Since you want to make money online, you need to choose a niche that people are spending money in. there is no need to create your own niche, all you have to do is get in front of the traffic/people who are spending money anyway, and get them into your own funnel.

This can all sound incredibly complicated, so here is a simple step by step you can use to find a great niche:

• Make a list of the things you enjoy and spend money on
• Make a list of the problems you spend money on (ex. acne, parenting problems, pet ownership problems
• Browse Magazines: If there is a magazine about it, people are spending money and are interested in it!
• Do some keyword research using Wordtracker’s free tool or sign up for Nichebot (my favorite because it gives you the best data that you can make money from). Make sure your niche has keywords that get a lot of traffic, and hopefully get low competition (that means you can easily target them)
• Make sure your possible niche has affiliate programs so you can make money
• Decide on a niche that you are interested in (because you’re going to invest a lot of time one it) and that can generate money for you.

That’s almost it! Way too many people make the mistake of choosing a niche that no one is spending any money in. For that reason, I want to reiterate that you need to be sure people are spending money before you start spending time on this.

Go to Clickbank.com and find your niche

Go to Amazon.com and find your niche

Go to eBay.com and find your niche

Are there products people are paying money for in any or all three of those places? Are there Google ads that pop up when you do a search in Google for your niche? If so, there is a good chance that people are actually spending money in your chosen niche, and that it’s a good one to go after for you work at home moms.

If you’re stuck, and don’t know where to get started, be sure to join my newsletter, and get two free eBooks I’ve written on how to succeed as a work at home mom!

There are many different choices these days.  One choice you have is to use a standard HTML template, like what you can find at OSWD.org.  Many different people submit these templates for your use, and there are some really great ones to choose from.  Of course, it helps to have at least a basic understanding of HTML design.  It’s not as hard as it sounds, though there is a learning curve.  I suggest downloading a free HTML editor that has “What You See is What You Get” functionality, such as Kompozer .  You can learn HTML at W3Schools.

Another great option is to use WordPress.  This blog is created using WordPress, but you can also set it up so that it looks like any other website.  You can see my Early Childhood Career site to see what it looks like when setting it up to lose its “bloggy” features.  It’s very functional.

If you’re new to WordPress, there is also a learning curve.  The plus is that you can do things a lot faster, and make changes more easily than with HTML.  It can also be more SEO (search engine optimization) friendly than HTML sites, largely because of the plugins you can install.

I highly recommend and use Firepow to help you get your WordPress sites up and running (and profitable).  Just to give you a hint, I can set a WP site up using Firepow in about 5 minutes (not including original content, but including article directory content ), whereas without the software it can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour.  Definitely check out my Firepow Review for more information (it only took me days to make back my investment in the software.)

Don’t forget to join the Work at Home for Moms newsletter.  You’ll get two free eBooks (Instant Cash for WAHMS and and the WAHM Mindset), and great tips via e-mail

The more I heard about setting up your own Virtual Real Estate empire online, the more interested I became in setting up niche websites. I saw that domain names where only around $8 or so, but for some reason I thought it was a brilliant idea to set up subdomains. “I’m saving so much money!” I thought.

(If you’re unclear, a subdomain is set up on a main domain. For example, if your domain was puppies.com you could set up a subdomain so that you would type in fruit.puppies.com. It would be a separate website, but you’d be much better off with fruit.com being its own domain )

Well…this was definitely not the thing to do. For one, it looks unprofessional when you have one main domain with a lot of subdomains in between. For another, Google tends to treat subdomains as being lesser than a targeted “real” domain.

Yes, it could be very tempting to just stick with one domain and set up free subdomains. There also is a time and a place to do that. However, if you’re planning on building a real business and having assets that will rank high in the search engines, you need to have separate domains for your niche websites.

Again, this is not a blanket rule, but for the most part you should invest in your business. Also, if you plan on having sites that you can sell in times of money trouble or when you get bored with a certain niche, it’s almost certain you’ll want them on a separate domain name.

It takes time to build enough traffic to get money coming to your site. If you spend a lot of time building links (submitting articles, setting up Squidoo lenses, HubPages, etc) they will all be going to your subdomain and not to a real domain that you could later sell.

So, don’t make the same mistake I did (thankfully I wised up fast. This would definitely be work at home mom mistake if you want to have your own network of profitable websites.

Don’t forget to sign up for your free Work at Home Mom eBooks to get started building your profitable online business today (you’ll find many more great tips just like this one!)

I have recommended Bluehost to host your websites, and you can always get a domain name at Namecheap.com or GoDaddy.com (I prefer Namecheap because it comes with privacy protection…that’s important when you have kids).

While it’s important to have all that in place, it’s just as important to know what you’re going to do with it. You have to have a plan of action for your website. What are your online goals? In a future post we’ll go over business planning, but here is some food for thought for you:

You can:

• Choose a niche topic and blog about it
• Create niche websites covering a variety of topics
• Create an authority site about your topic of choice
• Set up a website for your existing business
• Sell crafts
• Offer services (such as site creation or ghostwriting)

As you can see, there are a large number of different reasons you need a website. The good news is that web hosting is incredibly inexpensive these days (we’re talking under $10 per month). All you need is a domain name (included with Bluehost hosting at the time of writing), and a plan for what you’re going to do and you will be good to go.

The best part is that no matter what you decide to do, there will always be room on your host should you expand your plans or change your mind. I have many different websites out there and there is no problem at all with this since there is so much room on web hosts these days.

What is your website going to be about?

(Psssst…don’t forget to pick up your two free Work at Home Mom eBooks…they’ll help you get started.)

Thankfully, Bluehost really does have one of the easiest set ups I’ve seen.  Everything is nicely organized by category (unlike with Hostgator, where I also have an account).  You should be able to find everything you need.

Let’s say you want to set up a WordPress blog like this one.  What you need to do is find the little blue smiley face man called “Fantastico.”  After you have found him and clicked you’ll see a list of options on the left.  Find the blog section and select WordPress.  You can follow the directions and quickly and easily have WordPress set up on your site!  Viola!

If you’re more interested in having a standard HTML site you can choose to download a free template from http://www.oswd.org.  You’ll need an HTML editor like http://kompozer.com.

After you’ve added your content and made the right changes in your HTML editor you can upload it to your host with an FTP client like Filezilla.

This is obviously a quick and dirty explanation, but you really need to dive right in to really understand all of this.  It might seem incredibly frustrating, but the fog will soon clear and you’ll be on your way to creating profitable websites

Get hosting today if you haven’t already.

Don’t forget to sign up for the Money Mommies Newsletter

and receive two free ebooks as a thank you.

The important thing is that you make sure you will have a little room to grow with the package you choose at first.  For instance, right now you might be thinking of creating just one website.  After you get your feet wet you might want to create dozens of them.

It’s for that reason that you want to get hosting that offers you unlimited (or many) domains.  This makes life easy for you.  Another requirement you should have for choosing a good web host is that they offer cPanel.  cPanel is the easiest way to manage your sites.  If you’re new to working online I’d say this is an absolute must.  Bluehost offers a well organized cPanel.

It might all seem daunting now, and there is a learning curve to having your own websites, but it’s definitely worth it when you see those checks start to roll in!