It’s fair to say that making money on the internet is really, really, really, incredibly easy. And using Wordpress to boost your online money making can make it even easier.

However, this is a very general statement since making a few cents a day can be achieved in a few hours simply by setting up a blog somewhere like Blogspot and sticking some AdSense on it and then getting some visitors.

But, making a sustainable living from the internet is not so easy - but achievable if a suitable system is put in place, goals set and fulfilled, and a bit of hard work and persistence is exercised.

Here is a simple list of things to do to set up a Wordpress Blog to get a money making system off the ground.

  1. Domain Setup - Fundamental to setting up a website - you’ve got to have a domain. See Domain Registrars for more info on this.
  2. Configure DNS - See this article.
  3. Get Website Hosting - Another fundamental necessity as you need some space on a webserver to put host your pages. See Wordpress Website Hosting for more info.
  4. Get Wordpress up and running - Here’s another list:
    • Install Wordpress - This is easy if your web hosting provider has one click install scripts for Wordpress, otherwise see this documentation to get it done.
    • Set Weblog Title and Tagline in Options -> General
    • Change the permalink structure to /%postname%/ in Options -> Writing - this is good for SEO purposes.
    • Delete the default comment, default post and default page.
    • Change the default category from ‘Uncategorized’ to something relevant to your blog. For instance, if your blog is about cars, then maybe change it to ‘Cars’.
  5. Wordpress Plugins - Upload your favourite Wordpress Plugins. My standard issue plugins are - Better Feed (nice looking RSS); Related Posts (increased stickiness); Google Sitemaps (trying to make it as easy as possible for Google); wp-notable (social bookmarking); WP-ContactForm (easy contact form). Go here for more favourite WP plugins from different people.
  6. Set up the Wordpress Theme - Here’s another list for this:
    • Upload the Wordpress theme that you will use.
    • Make sure the Title tab is configured for SEO in the Header. See this article that contains a paragraph of the importance of doing this.
    • Make sure there is a search facility for the Blog. Consider using the Googles Adsense for Search as a way of making more income.
    • Ensure that navigation around your blog is easy for the user. Think about using horizontal navigation bars for things like Home, About Us, Contact Us, News, etc… Also, utilize the footer for links to categories and other pages. Decide how much vertical space you would like to proportion between advertising and navigation.
  7. Set up an email address for the website (if you are not using your own). Something like info@mysite.com.
  8. Create the contact page for using with this email address.
  9. Set up a newsletter email address. Something like newsletter@mysite.com.
  10. Configure some mailing list software. Zookoda is free for this and pretty good.

So now all you have to do is start writing some quality content and work on getting some links.

And of course, you have to decide on how to monetize your website. More on this later.

Have fun :)