…….. Whatever the heck you want to use it for.

If you want to bring your business online, set up a blog.

If you want to write funny stories, build a blog.

If you want to start a fight with a politician, get your blog set up.

If you want to make money from home blogging, well why don’t you set up a blog.

If your getting married and want your gift registry online, do it on a blog.

If you want to make money from home, start building a blog right now.

Want to do some affiliate marketing, how about doing it on a blog.

If you want to capture names and email address of your visitors, use your blog as a squeeze page.

If you want to have a store online selling your Ebay stuff, set up a blog with your store on it. You get the point, I hope.

What a blog is used for exactly is whatever the individual behind that blog wants to do. You, in essence can set up an Internet journal wherein you are able to digitally write down your opinions, thoughts, feelings and/or just about  anything that you want people to read.

Occasionally, you’ll even come across bloggers who, instead of writing texts, make their blogs more audio friendly, by using audio entries or ipod casts. This is called audio blogging.

Here’s some places I found where you can get free stuff and a thing or two:

• How Getting An F On Your School Paper Makes You A Better Blogger (problogger.net)
• Affiliate Marketing For Beginners-Online Home Based Business (affiliatestartingline.com)
• How To Make Squeeze Pages 101 (johnchow.com)
• Submitting Quality Article Content Equals Good Search Engine Traffic (ronmedlin.com)

In layman’s terms, what is a blog used for depends totally on you and what you want to accomplish. You still here? You should be setting your blog up

Below are my two favorite cheap blog hosting services. So if you’re looking to save a few dollars to get yourself started, you can’t beat these offers. I’ll, also, explain the difference in both hosting services.

Number *1

If you haven’t heard of Hostgator, then you must be living under a rock. Here’s a list of some of what they offer:

. Unlimited Domains
. Unlimited Subdomains
. Unlimited Bandwidth
. Unlimited Disk Space, and
. Unlimited Databases

Hostgator has been my favorite for 3 years. They offer top-notch and reliable service that can’t be matched.  Okay, let me inform you that you can get started for just 1 cent. That’s right. I don’t know how long this special is going to last.  You can get the hosting you need from the most reliable hosting site for only 1 cent! Here’s how:

1-Click here to visit Hostgator.com

2-Look for the “Web Hosting” Link  (just to the right of “Home”, at the top of the page)

3-Select the “Baby” Package for $7.95 + $2.00  for dedicated IP (the package comes this way)

4- Go through the order steps, (adding your domain etc.) and when they ask  for a Coupon code, enter: 1cent

Number #2

The runner up, IMHO, is IX Web hosting. This service is yet another reliable inexpensive web host service. Here’s what sets them apart from Hostgator:

You get 15 different IP address’s with your Unlimited Pro package that still comes under 8 bucks a month! This an excellent deal if you blog because search engines love when your backlinks and the sort come from different domains. WHOA!

If you plan on having multiple different blogs or doing any type of niche marketing, then I’d suggest you go with IX. You can’t beat that with a damn baseball bat.

Now if you are just creating a bunch of sites and need unlimited bandwidth and domains, then HostGator will serve your needs well. I use the Baby Croc edition,  I have multiple sites and have never had an issue. Choose the best cheap blog hosting service for your needs and let me know how it works for you.

Ordinary people, like you and me, sit at their computers until their fingers get sore and develop these worpress plugins for us in their own spare time with the hope of a donation or two. I consider them php-tech-heads. They are priceless and really do a great job of creating tools for us bloggers to keep our business in order. So don’t be afraid to go to give a contribution, if you think the

photo by iwannt’s

plugin makes your life easier. And trust me, some of them REALLY make like easier.

There are worpress plugins that can be used to get traffic, organize, update, ping, advertise, track statistics and a whole host of other things. I’m sure you will find at least 30 that you can use to make your blogging life simpler.

Here’s a list of my favorite plugins for worpress:

• Subcribe to comments by Mark Jaquith
• Lucy’s Link Love by Lucia Liljegren
• adsense manager by Martin Fitzpatrick
• dd-formmailer **I really like Matt.
• digitalfingerprint by Kirk Montgomery
• Askimet by Matt Mullenwg
• Do follow by Denis D. Bernady
• Snazzy Archives by Vladimir Prelovac
• All In One by Michel Torbert
• Digg This by Aviran Mordo
• Ping Optimizer by MaxBlogPress
• Simple Captcha by Zorex
• Postteaser by Weyhan Ng
• Simple Link Cloaker by Steve Johnson
• Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachold

Okay. I think that should be enough worpress plugins to get you started and on the road to a rich and static blog. Just remember what I told you about these php-tech-heads; most of them do this in their spare time for you and me to become money making bloggers.

It’s very simple to download these plugins with the latest version of wordpress. If you want to start a blog and have it optimized for success, go down the list and download each and every plugin worpress for your blog.

Questions? Don’t be afraid to ask.

• Click here for your FREE create A Blog Brainstorming Cheat Sheet  Click here!!
• Read and apply the cheat sheet to come up with your niche idea or topic.
• Head over to Namecheap.com and grab yourself a good domain name for about $10 and some hosting for $3 a mo.

• Follow the instructions in your cpanel on getting wordpress on your site. It’s just a matter of clicking a few buttons.
• Go grab a free theme template from just about anywhere and upload it.
• Do your keyword research and start posting.

Now these directions are written with the consideration that you want to know how to build a blog site with . I am just assuming that part because wordpress is my absolute favorite and IMHO the easiest, most flexible way to get your blogging business online fast.

We want to get you up and going with making some cash with your blog. So, go learn how to build a blog site and let’s make some money. If you get stuck somewhere post a question below and I’ll help you out.  You can’t get started with the money making part, if you don’t know how to build blog site.

A blogger account is easy to set up and you can be up and running with your own blog in less than 6 minutes. Blogger is owned by Google so they love to index them provided you are dishing out some good content. How to blogger very simply put.

1. Set up an account. Go to www.blogger.com and set up an account.
2. You will have to chose a user name a password and a display name.You can use your real name, if you want. Name your blog. Don’t try to be fancy. Just name it. You may not even get the name you want so be open to a few different choices.
3. Chose your template. I believe blogger has some pretty neat templates you can chose from. Just pick one. Don’t think fancy yet. If you must, there’s loads of blogger templates available for free. You can discover them by doing a search in Google.

Congratulations! You have just completed the how to blogger test and you now have a live blog. You will be taken to a page where you can start writing and posting. You can change your settings, play with your template format and/or add some Adsense blocks. YEAH! YOU ROCK!

{RANT}Avoid making the mistakes I made in the past by using the information given to you. You see for four years I bought all kinds of stuff. You name it, I probably bought it. I spent countless hours and only God knows how many thousands of dollars trying to make money online. The only thing I made sure to do is allow the materials I purchased to sit on my hard drive collecting cyber dust and continuosly fall into the sales copy pitch and buy the next best thing. I didn’t make one damn penny. It wasn’t until I lost my job that I decided to take some action and get it done.  That’s when I started scouring through my hard drive and found the two books that changed my life. I know it’s not easy, but learn from my mistakes and take action. {END RANT}

Okay, this E-book is a must-read and was written  by a gentleman named Ken Evoy. Again, if you don’t know who that is, don’t worry. I’ll fill you in later. It’s also FREE and I consider it my make money online encyclopedia. It’s a long E-book. It’s very thorough and will help you to get your mind right. You need to have a certain mindset in order to be successful and this will help you get where you need to be mentally.  Netwriting Masters Course.

This e-book was written to help you understand making money online and how to go about developing multiple income streams from your knowledge, ideas, and passions, affiliate programs, advertising, Google Adsense, and much more, all in the shortest time and without spending all your hard earned cash. However, you have to do one thing to get the most from this online money making manual.    You have to read it.

You still reading my text? WHY? Go download the book and read it.

When you finished reading both e-books, come back here to comment on what you thing about them. Let me know if they have changed your perspective on making money with a blog or if you still want to know how to start a blog.

Hence, it is my mission to eliminate the clutter and give you the necessary information required to help get your blog up and running as quickly and painlessly as possible, for FREE.

I know some folks are just not technically skilled. You don’t have to be skilled in order to start a blog. All you need is desire (Well, and you should know how to read If you are reading this post, then you have what it takes.There’s a few steps involved. Baby Steps. I promise.

The very first thing you should do is download two of my favorites E-books on the how to start a blog subject. The very first is written by Jack Humphrey himself, “The Authority Black Book.” If you don’t know who he is, don’t worry. I’ll fill you in later.

This book is FREE and it is filled with a plethora of information on becoming the authority in your niche so you can make money blogging – a whole lot of it.

Don’t just download it and let it sit on your hard drive. READ IT! Print it out and get a highlighter and mark it up. Take notes and memorize it. Sorry for the ranting and screaming but I get a bit excited when people do the ole download-and-read-it-later-never-ever-to-get-back-to-it thing. It drives me nuts because I did it for so long and that was the #1 reason it took me four years to make my first nickle online.  It was when I decided to read this book that I began to see the fruits of my labor. Don’t make the mistakes I made.  You still reading? Click on the book and download it for goodness sake. Then come back here to get my next secret blog profit weapon.

How to start a blog – Part 2