How to Create a Website Like PoorUncle.com With WordPress and Mystique Theme

Sep 182010


Here is a step-by-step guide to create a website (blog) like PoorUncle.com with all its functionalities and ad placements. It involved absolutely no programming! PoorUncle.com is powered by WordPress 3.0.1, Mystique Theme 2.4.2, and 11 Plugins.

1. Once you have registered a domain name and bought a hosting account, Install WordPress with One-click Hosting Applications. This step may take up to a couple of hours before it is installed.

2.  Sign in to WordPress Dashboard, ie. pooruncle.com/wp-admin.

3. Install Mystique Theme for FREE: Appearance-> Themes -> Install Themes-> by search for “Mystique”, then click install.


4. Install Plugins: Plugins-> Add New -> Search and install each of the following plugins:

a. Ad Squares Widget
b.  Akismet
c.  Contact Form 7
d.  All in One SEO Pack
e.  Google XML Sitemaps
f.  Really Simple CAPTCHA
g.  Tweet Blender
h.  Tweet This
i.  W3 Total Cache
j.  WordPress Related Posts
k.  WP-PostRatings

(I will keep updating this post with all the remaining steps, until it is complete.)

Powered by WordPress: My First Ever Web Site to Made Money – Part 2

Sep 172010

As you can see from my very first website, it was really ugly and not very functional. Not to mention, it was a real pain to maintain. I kid you not, it took me half an hour to post one deal. When I first started I’d just go to deals2buy (my favorite deal site) and look for deals that was appealing to me and belongs to a company that I have an affiliate relationship with. Then I’d log in to my affiliate network account (either Commission Junction or Linkshare) and try to find the affiliate link to the deal so that when someone click on the link it would take them to a web page where the deal was displayed. That wasn’t very easy to do.  A lot of time, I couldn’t find the deal link and the search on the affiliate network tend to be extremely slow. I will write another post regarding the difficulties I had with setting up and running a deal site.

I manually post deals on my site off and on for about a couple of months, while looking for an alternative. I knew there was something called Web CMS (content management system), but I wasn’t sure how much it would cost or how much effort is needed to install it. From my midrange I.T. background, every piece of software was custom install and it tend to cost a lot of money! So I wasn’t optimistic about finding an affordable solution and be able to install the software easily.

In general, when I don’t know about something, I have the tendencies to read up on all the different products and solutions out there. (I think most of us do it the same way). As I started researching, I found that there was tons of free software out there. The amount of free software I found on line was just incredible. My concern and experience was there always is a learning curve with any new software and the installation is always a real pain in the butt.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I read up on this free software call WordPress. It was a free blogging web software. It wasn’t a CMS, but a lot of people use it as a CMS. It was really popular from what I read. It sounded like a winner, until I read the installation instructions, which included: uploading the software to the host server, creating tables, setting up configuration, etc. Well, I barely learned how to register my domain name and only have some vague idea what a hosting server was. To install WordPress manually was not something I was ready to do. I downloaded the software to my pc and sat on the installation instructions for weeks.

One day, I was playing around with my hosting account on Godaddy and saw a tab called applications. When I click on it, I saw a whole bunch of FREE software I can install. And, the beautiful was, it does it automatically. No need to manually create tables, no file uploads, no configuration. Most web hosting companies offer this feature..and it is called: “One-click Hosting Applications”.

If you have GoDaddy hosting, goto Hosting Control Center, and click on “Your Applications”:

One-click Hosting Applications: As you can see WordPress is the first application on the list because it is the most popular! Just click on it, and tell it where to install. (For example for this blog: to install it at the root directory, would be /pooruncle.com or inside at a sub-directory, would be /pooruncle.com/blog. At first I tried to install it inside a sub-directory. But for some reasons I couldn’t get it to work. But at the root directory it works fine and that’s probably how you want to install it.)

Hope this is helpful for some of you. It’s really easy. Let me know if you have any problems. You can install a whole bunch of stuff. For example, you can install WordPress in your root directory, then install a Forum in a sub-directory. I didn’t install a forum on this blog. But I installed a forum on my deal site.

Here is how my deal site look like. Thank you WordPress, and thank goodness for One-click Hosting Applications.

SheIsCheap.com Is Launched

Sep 012010

About 10 days ago, I wrote that I ordered my first e-commerce Amazon Affiliate website from SiteDepot. As I said before and saying it again, their work on SheIsCheap.com exceeded my expectations.

Here were the sequence of events that happened leading up to the launch of SheISCheap.com.

1. Mike Cohen of SiteDepot wrote me an email to confirm that I wanted them to host the website for me. If so, have me goto my Domain registrar account that happen to be GoDaddy and set the name server to the names provided by SiteDepot. With Godaddy, it is simple. Just login to your account and select the domain name by placing a check mark next to the name and click on the Nameservers icon located on the top towards the center panel->Set Nameservers->Choose “I have specific nameservers for my domains”->key in the names provided into field 1 & 2. Click okay and you are done!

2. SiteDepot starts developing the website. A couple days later, I get an email notified me to check the website and let them know if I needed any changes. Here is the first iteration of SheIsCheap.com:

Well, lets just say I wanted a few changes. I wrote back to Mike requesting for the following changes:

Hi Mike,

Thanks for all your hard work. It’s looking good. But, I would like to request for a few changes if possible.

1. Can you get rid of the widget on the center page?

2. Can the page be re-size depending on the user’s computer screen size? Your other website, Mens-Razors.com, is able to fit on both standard & wide screen.

3. Can I have a BRIGHT RED (sales sign red) and blue color scheme?

4. Change Tab description – Instead of “For Her Husband”, can you can it to “For Him”,

b. Change “Games & Toys For Her Kids” to “Toys”

c. Change “Handbags & Purses for Her” to “Handbags”

5. The Top Right Widget – Can you change it to Best Selling Toys? I like the one in Mens-Razors.com. It doesn’t have the annoying “get widget” text..can you do it just like that?

On left column – In place of “Best Selling Toys” change it to “Best Selling Shoes”.

I don’t care for search box widgets.

6. Lastly, can you add 2 more Header Tabs – Electronics, and Computers? I would really like this.

I think that’s about it.

Thank you very much for your help.

Now that was quite a quite of changes. Don’t you agree?  A few days past while I was anxiously waiting and having doubts that whether SiteDepot can deliver. At this point, my expectations were pretty low. I was just hoping that they didn’t screw up what they delivery to me on the first iteration. Finally a simple email arrived from Mike.

We made the requested changes. Hope you are satisfied now :)

I took a look at the website…it fits my screen, the annoying center widget gone, the color changed to bright red, the incorporation of the right box with “Best Sellers” products tie to each top category tab. Man I couldn’t be happier. I was one happy camper!!

Please visit SheIsCheap.com and let me know what you think. Buy some stuff just in case you were planning on making a purchase with Amazon anyway. :)

Today, SiteDepot zip up the site for me into a folder which I downloaded and have it in my possession in case I choose to self-host in the future.  It’s all done now. Thank you, SiteDepot!!!

 

Getting Ready for Christmas – Wants More Deal Websites

Aug 302010

 

A few posts back, I announced that I placed an order with SiteDepot to help me develop an e-commerce-like Amazon affiliate website. It is nearly completed. SiteDepot did a great job. They have exceeded my expectations and I am very happy and grateful for their hard work. You can check out the website here. Please comment and let me know what you think.

Christmas is just right around the corner.  I am researching to see whether I can get another deal website created before Christmas  is here so that I have more products to market. I finally received a response from Epik tonight that they have reviewed the few domain names I submitted and would like to work with me to get them tested for possible website development for a price of $20/domain name. I am grateful for the response and is excited for the opportunity to work with them. More on this later.

Tonight, while I was researching for a few more “product” domain names to buy I came across a website that peak my interest. I did a search on the key words “New Purses” because I own the name HotNewPurses.com and wanted to see how it is rank. I saw a sponsored ad on the side panel by Best-Deal.com. I got creative and thought that I would solicit the owner to buy HotNewPurses.com. The website happen to be a full blown deal site. It looked really clean…exactly like something I’d love to own. Dig a little bit deeper, I found a sister site, Best-Price.com. These websites seem to be own by a Germany company who also own News.de and Cheap-Hit.com.

Although, I am a web newbie, I have done enough research to know that having multiple websites in the same niche category is a great way to built traffic, but what amazes me were the amount of traffic these websites have. I would love to know who these guys are, and whether I can buy a website just like it. Probably can’t afford it though. :)

Traffic based on Compete data:

Best-Deal.com - 327,000 Unique Visitors for the month of July. This site just came alive this year. Top referrers include: yahoo, seekquest.net, local, pronto, and google. A total of 266 referring websites.

Best-Price.com – Almost 9 millions!!! Unique Visitors for the month of July. Top referrers include: google, yahoo, ebay, ask, and shopzilla. A total of 3,700 referring websites.

Anyone know who they are? I think they are very talented. Would love to learn from them.

PoorUncle.com Site Enhanced or Something Like that

Aug 292010

With the wife and kids gone on vacation for a whole week, today is the first time in quite sometime that I get to have my nose against my laptop screen and tried to monkey around with my website. My blog is powered by WordPress as you can tell from its ubiquitous blog layout and features. I use a FREE theme call Mystique. I remember a couple of months ago, I spent hours trying to look for a simple FREE WordPress theme that I can use for my blog. I couldn’t find anything that I thought was simple and clean. I ended up going to WordPress.org and installed the first theme I saw listed. Luckily, it was sorted by the most popular. So I think this theme was suppose to be the most popular at the time I install it a couple months ago.

I never paid for a “premium” theme before so I don’t know whether Mystique has most of the features that a paid premium one would have. My guess is that you probably get a lot more features and flexibility if you pay for it. As for me, this theme is good enough. Though, I think Mystique is quite nice, the point of my post was to let you know that I spent the whole day (hmm..like 8 hours) just trying to make a few adjustments. Which would have taken a WordPress/PHP programmer a few minutes to do. So perhaps, it is worth paying someone to do the web development work for you (assuming he/she is good).

The things I tried to do with my blog today were:

1. Insert a logo to the blog header. I created the logo all by myself. I did a search on Google for “free logo design” and found LogoMaker.com. It has a simple web interface to let you create your own logos. It said that it is FREE to use for your website. But, they don’t make it easy for you to download. I think they really wanted you to pay. But the ad said it’s “FREE”. I actually try to pay, but they don’t tell you how much, until you fill in your personal information. Kind of a strange way to do business. Oh well.

2. Reduce the length of the header – this took me at least 3 hours to stumble onto a solution all by myself.

Solution: Goto Mystique settings -> User CSS -> and paste the followings:
#site-title{padding:0em 0 0.0em 0;}

3. Insert a banner Ad next to the logo. This took me another 3 hours to figure out with the help of digitalnature (Mystique creator) supporting notes. I still haven’t figure out how to move the banner next to the logo yet. Oh well…I guess this will do for now.

Solution: Goto Mystique setting -> Advance -> User funtions -> and paste the followings:
<?php
function my_header_ads(){
echo do_shortcode(“[ad_code=N]“);
}
add_action(‘mystique_header’, ’my_header_ads’);
?>

***Remove the under score in “ad_code” and replace “N” with a number. I have to do this, otherwise, it is thinking that I tried to insert an ad on this post.

Goto Mystique setting -> User CSS -> and past the followings to adjust the banner position. (I still can’t get the banner to display next to the logo).
#header .ad{
position: absolute;
right: 5px;
top: 10px;
}

Hope this help some of you. Share your favorite free or premium WordPress themes, techniques and tips on improving our WordPress blog looks and functionality.

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Steps to Building and Launching a Website – Version 1

Aug 172010


I have been following over at Elliot’s Blog on his latest project, Bahamas.co. This website has just been launched, (version 1.0). I thought it is worth while to summarize the steps he has taken to get to this point. This post will served as a reference and I will keep updating when he reach his next mile stone. Time frame: Acquired name on July 22nd – Launched on August 16th. Here are the steps so far:

1. Choose a name – Bahamas.co (He was awarded the name through the .CO Registry’s Founders Program) – Cost $300

2. Post a coming soon page on Bahamas.co and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools for indexing – Free. Web Hosting – Cost $???

3. Held a logo design contest on 99Designs. Invited designers that did quality work to participate. Winner is Theo Delevegas. – Cost $200

4. Buy a WordPress Template & start development. Theme chosen: Los Angeles template from ThemeForest.net – Cost $59

5. Template modification made by web designer Mike McAlister of Six One Five Design – Cost $???

6. Research to find what people are looking for when search for information about Bahamas. Wrote down a list of 40 article topics total.

7. Posted job listing on eLance to create a proposal for the above article topics. Spec: Deadline in 2 weeks, all articles need to be custom written and come from at least 2 sources with citation. Selected most cost effective proposal. – Cost $200 for 40 articles.

8. Loading the articles to website and pair up pictures from iStockphoto and Flickr to articles. – Cost $???

9. Build XML sitemap and submit it to Yahoo, Bing, (assumed Google too). – Free

10. Site launched.

Elliot has the following to say about the next few months:

For the next couple of months, I will monitor the website, work on SEO, add articles and photographs, and see how it performs in the search engines. With some extra work, the traffic will grow, and I will begin to work on phase two, integrating a hotel and activities booking engine. In a few months, I will update you on traffic stats and the all important search engine stats, which will be interesting to me (and probably you) because of the .CO domain name.

Domain Investing Article #2: WordPress and Domaining

Jul 232010

WordPress is oftentimes thought of as a blogging platform, dig a little deeper and you’ll find that WordPress is used for countless other applications online. As a highly customizable blogging option WordPress attracts the technically-inclined looking to get under the hood of their blog. With simple installation almost anyone can run a WordPress site from their own server bringing the cost of using WordPress down to $0/month. While absolutely anyone can use WordPress – a little HTML, CSS, and PHP knowledge will go a long way and give you much greater control over the look-and-feel of your WordPress site.

The purpose of this article is not to teach you HTML, CSS, or PHP – if you already know these then you’ll have the ability to put your skills to work. If you don’t know these – do not fear, there is plenty you can do in WordPress without writing (or editing) a single line of code. Themes and Plugins are an easy way to customize WordPress and anyone with a hosting account and an Internet connection can have WordPress up and running on their servers in a matter of minutes.

So how do you install WordPress? Follow the steps below to install WordPress:

1) Setup a new DB with your hosting provider

2) Download WordPress (www.wordpress.com)

3) Unzip the folder and open the file named “wp-config-sample.php”

4) Enter the database details for *your* database into the corresponding sections in the document – these are clearly labeled so there is no confusion.

5) Rename “wp-config-sample.php” to “wp-config.php”

6) Upload the contents of the “WordPress” folder to your web server. Make sure to upload it to the folder your domain is pointing towards.

7) Now all you have to do is go to www.youdomainname.com/wp-admin/install.php and WordPress will install.

As you can see there is no programming experience required here to install WordPress. Most hosting services like GoDaddy have control panels that make it easy to create a database without writing a single line of code. Armed with a text editor (notepad is fine) and an FTP client (try something free like FileZilla) you can install WordPress on your own server easily. Once installed you can use the WordPress GUI so you’ll never have to edit another file or use an FTP client again!

Now that I’ve shown you all this you can always hire someone to do this install for you and save the headache. You certainly don’t have to setup WordPress installations to be a good Domainer and many investors opt to pay someone to do this install for them. If the seven steps above look like Greek to you then not to fear – for $10-$20 someone should be able to take care of this for you.

Once you have WordPress up and running on your server the first thing most developers start with is a Theme. Themes are one of the keys to the success of WordPress. Made up of a variety of PHP files and one master stylesheet – a Theme defines the complete look and feel of your blog or website. Notice how I say blog or website here. This is because Themes can be customized to display exactly as you would like which means you can easily create a business website, online portfolio, magazine, the list goes on. There are plenty of free Themes available online and some great Themes for sale that are well worth the price.

If you had no problem installing WordPress yourself, and you have a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and PHP – then you can easily dig-in and edit every detail of your site. You won’t even need to use a text editor or FTP client – you can edit directly from the WordPress dashboard. This is a great way for developers to quickly design nice looking sites. Theme developers can provide a Domainer with a great shell to start with – adding content and branding is then up to the Domainer.

The great thing about having a website running on WordPress is that updates are easy to make, especially site-wide changes that might be a pain with a standard website. You can easily add new content and user-interaction is built-in which is essential to creating a website that gets repeat visitors.

What if you don’t know HTML, CSS, and PHP – are all the fun customization options out of the questions? No – there are still plenty of options for the less tech-savvy. Plugins offer a great way to add just about anything you could imagine to your site. Want a contact form? There’s a plug-in for that. Want to make sure your site is SEO optimized? There’s a plugin for that too. WordPress’s plugin architecture makes it easy for anyone to add advanced functionality to their site by simply downloading a ZIP file and then adding it through the Plugins section of the Dashboard.

Along with Plugins there are Widgets that can easily be added and modified without any coding experience. In fact – you can easily install a Theme, customize the heck out of it with plugins, and then use Widgets to add ads, recent posts, and archives to your sidebar. WordPress really can be used to design ANY website – not just blogs – and people use WordPress for these purposes all the time. WordPress allows anyone to create dynamic webpages that are easy to update and customize with the latest and greatest features available online.

When you are looking at developing domain names for monetization and traffic-building one of the key elements is content. By using WordPress to streamline your design process you can focus on creating unique content that visitors will appreciate and most importantly – will keep them coming-back. Domain development is a strong trend in 2009 and many Domainers will turn to expedite their development time. I hope this article inspires those of you who have not tinkered with WordPress yet to give it a shot. For those WordPress gurus out there I hope this inspires you to continue pushing the limits of what’s possible.

At the end of the day, web visitors are now hip to parking pages – and they don’t like them. People are looking for websites with relevant content – not just a page of links. WordPress is an incredible tool that can empower Domainers of any experience-level to create nice-looking, content-driven websites.

Article Credits:

The author of this article is Morgan Linton. Originally posted on his blog, MorganLinton.com, on 3-4-2009. Permission was granted to re-print. Thank you Morgan.

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Anatomy of a Flip: Flipping CheapMercury.com

Jul 232010

Only a few hours after finishing the Economic Stimulus flip we began work on taking one of our old mini-sites and bringing it into the 21st century. If you’ve ever watched a house flipping show this is when they find a house they know will sell, it just needs a updates and additions.

CheapMercury.com is the oldest domain in our portfolio, originally registered back in 1999. When we first acquired the domain we put a one-page mini-site up just to provide some way to monetize any traffic that might be there. We immediately found traffic, and on top of that revenue.

2008 was a very busy year so we didn’t have the chance to do anything else with Cheap Mercury so decided to let it be – it was generating revenue and had strong search engine placement within its niche.

One of our first goals in 2009 is to take some of our higher-potential flips from last year and update them adding a new look and feel, additional content, targeted video clips, etc. Remember, for me Domain Flipping isn’t about making quick money, it is about building a brand and a business with a domain – that is the flip. If you want to perform quick flips, buying and selling domains quickly you can do that but I’m more of an elephant hunter, always looking for the next big deal.

So what changes were made to CheapMercury.com?

We added four more pages of content including a page dedicated to buying Mercury online as well as information about the danger of Mercury. By adding an “About” page we are building in the structure to continue to build this site as a business.

The design was also changed to put less focus on advertising and more focus on content. We want our visitors to know that we are more than just a portal, there is quality information available from our site. By giving it a new look we also put more focus into branding – CheapMercury.com needs to be an online business with an appeal of its own.

The new site contains over four times the text content with detailed information about the dangers of Mercury and links to the top places online to buy Mercury. Adding YouTube videos gives visitors another way to interact with our site and for us to constantly serve visitors fresh video content.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for – the before and after:

Before

Cheap_mercury_before

After

Cheap_mercury_after

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Article Credit:

The author of this article is Morgan Linton. Originally posted on his blog, MorganLinton.com, on 1-24-2009. Permission was granted to re-print. Thank you Morgan.