Setting Up Your Blog

Even if you already have an active blog, I recommend reading this section, as I'll talk about specific options to setup for the best results. If you've never setup a blog, or Wordpress, this will give you a good idea what's involved.

First of all, if you don't have a website already, you're going to need to buy a domain and hosting. I don't recommend using a free host, as the amount of traffic we are going to drive to your site will get your account suspended. I run all of my blogs on one account at Hostgator, and pay $9.99 a month. You can sign up for a free month of hosting, with no obligation with the coupon code ICEISHOT.

You'll need a domain as well. I use GoDaddy as my registrar, since they're ICANN certified, and have great prices. Plus they've got a great interface to sell your domain in an auction format. This is a good strategy if you don't have the energy to keep posting and growing your blog, since once we get monster traffic for a short period of time, the domain will be much more desirable to buy, and you should be able to make a good profit (in addition to all the affiliate commissions you're going to make).

If you do sign up for Hostgator, the have a service called Fantastico that will automatically install a variety of different programs on your site. It has an auto install set up for Wordpress, which is what we'll be using for our blog. All you have to do is click install, fill out a few fields of info about your blog, and it sets it all up for you.

Once you've got your site set up, there are a few things to do to make sure you're ready for tons of traffic:
• Install a good looking theme (you can find one at http://www.wpthemesfree.com/ )
• Delete the default blogroll links, post, and comments
• Install the following plugins
• wp-cache
• Sociable
• Setup your permalink structure as custom and enter this in the field: /%postname%

WP-cache is very important, because it will allow your site to get a ridiculous amount of traffic without falling over dead.

Now your blog is ready, lets get the other pieces of the puzzle into place