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Sunday Roundup

My girls have been riding in horse shows lately. Sometimes, it seems like that’s all we’ve been doing on the weekends, but they love it. My wife’s favorite hobby now matches my daughters’ favorite pastime. As a bonus, we’ll never have to paint their room again, with the way they are accumulating ribbons.

Best Posts

It is possible to be entirely too connected.

My life is now complete. It’s possible to buy 95 pounds of cereal marshmallows for just $399. Breakfast at my house just got perfect.

I wholeheartedly agree with Tam, “You don’t need to make any excuses for crashing things into each other at the speed of light in an underground tunnel longer than Manhattan that’s had the air pumped out and been chilled to a couple degrees above absolute zero. That doesn’t need a reason. “

Carnivals I’ve Rocked

Credit Cards: My Failed Experiment was included in the Best of Money Carnival, the Carnival of Wealth, and the Totally Money Blog Carnival.

My niche site article on how to Make Extra Money with Keyword Research was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Make Extra Money, Part 5: Domains and Hosting

Business, Finance

In this installment of the Make Extra Money series, I’m going to show you how to pick a domain and a host.

If you remember from the last installment, I’ve decided to promote The Master Wedding Planning Guide. Since then, I have bought the product and read enough to decide that’s it worth promoting. That is the secret to ethical internet product. Never promote a crap product. Now, when I bought the Guide, I used my own affiliate link, so the $37 product will have cost me about $13, once the commission check comes through. You can’t do that just to get a discount because Clickbank has measures in place to ensure that you are actually selling products.

Domain Name

The first thing we need is a domain name.

You can skip this if you want to host on blogger, but I wouldn’t do that, unless $10 is a major financial hardship. I dislike the idea of leaving everything in Google’s hands. Even if you use blogger for hosting(discussed later), pop for the domain name. That way, if you change your mind about hosting, you can move without losing everything.

Where should you go for your domain name? I use NameCheap and GoDaddy. I try to divide my domain names across each of the providers so all of my sites don’t look identical to Google. I may be paranoid, but it works for me.

Before you order, hit Google for a coupon code. Search for “namecheap coupon” or “godaddy coupon” and save some money. GoDaddy is offering $7.49 domains.

How do you pick a domain name?

I try to pick something that matches the product name, or the product’s site. In this case, the product’s site is http://www.masterweddingplanning.com and http://www.masterweddingplanning.net was available, so I grabbed it. I would have been happy with .com, .net, or .org. I won’t touch a .info domain. They are generally cheap, but they cost more to renew and people assume they are spam sites.

If the exact match domain isn’t available, I look for exact matches for the product. If that’s not available, I stick other words at the end that would be attractive to people looking to buy a product.

Acceptable domains would include:

http://www.masterweddingplanning.org
http://www.masterweddingplanningreview.com
http://www.masterweddingplanningguide.net
http://www.masterweddingplanningreviewed.org

Or nearly anything along those lines. Other good words to attach would be “revealed”, “exposed”, or something similar. Just put yourself in the shoes of a buyer. Would the domain name look like something that could help you decide whether or not to buy a product?

Hosting

Your host is where your website lives. Without a host, you can’t have a website.

When it comes to picking a host, you have some choices to make.

First, do you want to go free or paid? Free sounds great, and if money is tight, it’s not a bad choice, but it does limit your options.

If you’re going free, you’re going with Google’s Blogger. WordPress.com’s hosting eliminates your advertising options, as does almost every other free host. I do know of a couple of free WordPress hosts that will let you run ads and advertising campaigns, but the performance is horrible.

Another problem with using Google is that they can decide your site violates their Terms of Service and shut it down. It shouldn’t happen, but it’s not unheard of with affiliate marketing sites. If you go this route, plan to move to paid hosting when you start making money.

That leaves us with paid hosting.

There are a ton of hosts out there, but only three I have personal experience with.

I won’t use GoDaddy for hosting. I’ve never been happy with their technical support.

I have most of my domains on HostGator (c0upon code: HOSTINGBUDDY). I’m happy with them. Performance is good and the customer service is excellent. Their hosting packages start at $3.96 per month.

I also have a hosting account at HostTheName. I got that because, using coupon code “STARTUPWARRIOR”, hosting prices get down to $1 per month. At $36 for 3 years, I couldn’t turn it down. Initially performance was rocky, but they’ve upgraded and it’s good, now.

Once you’ve created your hosting account, you’ll need to go back to your domain name registrar and set the name servers. At NameCheap, after you log in, you’ll go to Domains > Manage Domains and click on the domain name. From there, click on “Domain Name Server Setup” on the left of the screen and enter the custom name server information listed on your hosting account.

When that’s done, go to your hosting account and add the domain. If you’re creating a new hosting account, this will be your main domain and the hosting company will ask you for the information during setup. If you’re adding this to an existing hosting account, log in, look for “Addon Domains” and follow the prompts.

At this point, you’ve chosen a product to promote and keywords/search terms to go with it. You’ve chosen and registered a domain name and you’ve set up a hosting account to hold your website. Next time, I’ll walk through setting up a WordPress site to make some money.

Any questions?

Make Extra Money: A Niche Site Walkthrough

Make Extra Money Part 1: Introduction

Right now, I have 7 sites promoting specific products, or “niche” sites. When those products are bought through my sites, I get a commission, ranging from 40-75%. Of those sites, 5 make money, 1 is newly finished, and 1 is not quite complete. I’m not going to pretend I’m making retirement-level money on these sites, but I am making enough money to make it worthwhile.

Make Extra Money Part 2: Niche Selection

These three topics have been making people rich since the invention of rich. Knowing that isn’t enough. If you want to make some money in the health niche, are you going to help people lose weight, add muscle, relieve stress, or reduce the symptoms of some unpleasant medical condition? Those are called “sub-niches”.

Making Extra Money Part 3: Product Selection

My niches site are all product-promotion sites. I pick a product–generally an e-book or video course–and set up a site dedicated to it. Naturally, picking a good product is an important part of the equation.

Make Extra Money Part 4: Keyword Research

If you aren’t targeting search terms that people use, you are wasting your time. If you are targeting terms that everybody else is targeting, it will take forever to get to the top of the search results. Spend the extra time now to do proper keyword research. It will save you a ton of time and hassle later. This is time well-spent.

Make Extra Money, Part 5: Domains and Hosting

In this installment, I show you how to pick a domain name and a website host.

Make Extra Money, Part 6: Setting Up a Site

A niche site doesn’t amount to much without, well, a site. In this installment, I show you how I configure a site, from start to finish.

Make Extra Money, Part 6.5: Why I Do It The Way I Do It

Several people have asked me to explain why I use the plugins and settings I use. This explains the “Why” behind Part 6.

More to come….

The Unfrugal Meal

Finance, Parenting

I spend a lot of time talking about how to save money here. It’s kind of what I do.

Not today.

Today, I’m going to talk about the best way I’ve wasted money during my vacation this week.

First, so my feelings are completely understood: A vacation is about experiences and memories. I could spend all day at the park with my kids, or I could spend a memorable meal with them. Which will they remember longer?

It ain’t the park. They are there almost every day.

Of course, if the restaurant is McDonald’s they wouldn’t remember for long, either.

Tuesday, after a long day of hands-on, interactive museum-going, we took the kids to a Japanese steakhouse. Teppanyaki, where they cook the food at the table, complete with fire, spatula spinning, and airborne food.

I’m the only one in my family who has seen that before. Honestly, watching the art, the skill, the banter, and the giant fireball leaves me as wide-eyed as my kids.

They loved it.

Watching the chef throw a bowl full of rice across the table made my son’s jaw drop.

Seeing the chef carry fire from one side of the grill to the other on his fingers made my youngest squeal and beg for more fire tricks.

Getting squirted by the chef when he was putting out a flare-up made the middle brat giggle, possibly because the squirt gun was a little kid, dressed up as a fireman, with his pants down. She got “peed” on and loved it.

Aside from cooking-as-a-show, the service was fantastic. There was always a waiter nearby to keep our water glasses full or to provide “little kid” chopsticks, which are modified with rubber band to remove the need for skill to eat. They had the courses perfectly timed. The minute the salad was cleared, the soup was delivered. When that was done, the chef rolled up to start on the rice. My two-year-old was eating white rice without complaint for the first time.

Giggles and squeals. Three days later, they are still talking about it. My 11-year-old, who’s trying so hard to be an unimpressible teenager, says it was the coolest restaurant he’s ever seen.

Frugal, it wasn’t, but the memories were worth the money.

The Virtues of Preparation

Life, Parenting

Rainbow striped toe socks worn with thong sandals — Image via Wikipedia

The first day of school caught me by surprise yesterday.

I knew it was coming, and we had almost all of the stuff we need in the brat’s backpack, but we weren’t ready for it.

Yesterday morning, we woke up. Brat #3 was uncooperative, to say the least, so I wasn’t playing my ‘A’ game. I woke up Brat #1 and sent him on his way to get changed and eat breakfast. Ten minutes later, I chased him off of the couch to go get changed and eat breakfast. He had forgotten that his school day starts at 7:30, now.

He ate and grabbed his backpack to leave. I sent him to his room to change.

He changed and grabbed his backpack to leave. I sent him to his room for socks.

He put on socks and grabbed his backpack to leave. Then he realized his shoes weren’t by the door.

Shoe hunt!

I got him out of the door, only to see his face again a minute later when he realized he had forgotten something else.

Please remember that Brat #3 was acting up the entire time.

During the course of this, I was trying to make my lunch, which spent the day sitting on my kitchen counter. I was dressing myself; I don’t know how many times I made it to the front door, only to realize I hadn’t put on socks, yet. Or pants, for that matter.

What could have gone better?

Preparation.

On Monday, the day we all had off, with no plans, we should have set our alarms and done a dry run, right up to the point of walking out of the door. Here’s how Monday should have gone:

All the school and daycare stuff should have been ready to go the night before.
I get up, have breakfast, then wake Brat #1.
He gets up and has breakfast, while I dress Brats #2 & 3.
Brat #1 gets dressed while I help the girls with their shoes and jackets.
Brat #1 throws on shoes and heads out the door while I strap the girls into the car.
Everybody’s happy.

That’s the well-oiled machine I would like to see in the morning. Am I dreaming? How do you handle your morning routine efficiently?

Financial Blogger Conference

Finance, Misc

Three days, 800 miles, and 18 sessions later, I am back from the Financial Blogger Conference.

Here’s the breakdown of my spending:

The conference itself: $67

Breakfast on Friday: $8

Lunch on Friday: $19

Lunch on Sunday: $10

Gas: About $160

Hotel: $182

Tips to the bartender: About $10

That brings the total to $456. The hotel cost is really an opportunity cost, because my rewards card will be reimbursing from my accrued miles. Actual out-of-pocket cost: $274.

What did that money get me?

First, I got to meet a lot of the bloggers I read every day, including a lot of my fellow Yakezie members. That’s invaluable.

I got to spend three days meeting other bloggers, and learning how they operate. I got to hear how they manage Twitter, how often they post, what they do, and how they do it. Phenomenally valuable.

I got to spend 2 days learning better ways to do this whole blogging thing, by listening to some of the biggest names in the personal finance blogging world. That’s a value that you’ll have to judge for yourselves over the next few months as Live Real, Now evolves.

From a purely financial perspective, was this a good spend? Probably not. I spent $274 to get intangibles that won’t pay my bills or put food on the table. There is certainly an argument to be made that this was a waste of money. However, I strongly believe that those intangibles will prove far more valuable than any other way I could have spent that money. Using simple math, I may have wasted that money. Looking at the long-term value, it was definitely worth the time and money.

I will be going back next year.

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Domain Name

Hosting