Setting Up A Blogspot Blog

Before you can start making money with Adsense, we need to set up a Blogspot blog for you first. Don't worry - it's free and should only take about 10 minutes of your time. (If you already have a Blogspot blog, go ahead and create a new one following these steps anyway - you'll need it later on so you might as well make it now. It's going to benefit you in the long run, so just trust me on this and do it.) I'm going to set up a new blog right along with you so I can take you through the process step-by-step. Ready? OK then, let's get started.

Alright, to sign up for a Blogspot blog, we need to go to Blogger.com (Blogger.com and Blogspot are the same thing - not sure why it has two names...). Click on the big orange "Create a blog" button and fill out all of the information necessary to create a Google Account (If you already have a Google Account, just go to your Blogger dashboard and click on the "Create a blog" button from there) - I'll be here when you get back.

Done already? OK, let's move on. Now we have to name our new blog. You might be tempted to come up with some incredibly clever title, but don't - choose something simple that people would actually search for. I.e., if your blog is going to be about "dog care" then name it "Dog Care" or "All About Dog Care" or "Dog Care Facts". After choosing your title, you have to pick your blog's address (or URL). Make sure you use your main keyword in this as well. It's a good idea for your URL to be the same as your title but this isn't always possible - "dogcare.blogspot.com" is probably already taken, but "dogcareforbeginners.blogspot.com" might be available. Either way we have our main keyword in our URL so it won't make any difference. Click continue to go to the next step...

Choosing a template - this is simple enough. I'm going to recommend you use the "Minima" template, but that's just a suggestion and you can pick whichever you like. I'm going to choose Minima. Click continue and presto - your blog has now been created! Now let's start blogging!

Clicking the "start blogging" button will take you straight to the posting form. We're going to skip this for now and click on the "Settings" tab. OK? Now we want to go to the "Formatting" section. Once we're there, let's change the first setting to display only 1 post on the main page. Now we want to skip down to the "Show Link Fields" and change it to "yes". Now click the "Save settings" button.

Now lets change the "Comments" settings. First of all, I want to let anyone post a comment to my new blog (you don't have to do this if you don't want to, but if you can get a lot of comments on your blog it can help you with the search engines) Now I'm going to scroll down to the "Backlinks" and change this to "Show" - you should do this too. Save these settings and that's it - we're done setting up our blogs! I told you it wouldn't take long!

By the way, let's not put Adsense on our new sites yet... Why? Well, what's the point of putting Adsense on a blog that doesn't currently have any traffic? You won't earn any money from slapping it on your blog right away, and not doing so can help your new site avoid the dreaded Google "sandbox" (what's that, you ask? Well, as best as I can figure it, the sandbox is where new sites go to prevent them from showing up in Google's search results - basically it means that your site won't be playing with the big kids in Googleland anytime soon...)

But we're not quite done yet - we've got a brand new Blogspot blog now, but we don't have anything on it! What I want you to do now is write a post about your topic. As our first post we just want to give a basic overview of the subject of our blog, using our main keyword as the title - for pointers look at what I did with my first post on this blog, Making Money With Adsense. It doesn't have to be as long as mine but aim for at least 450 words - if you can write more than that, great. The longer the better. And before I forget, put your blog's homepage URL in the "Link" box under your title (We want to do this on every post we make) When you're done writing, publish your post. And there you have it! We've just created our very own blog! Now let's take a break and pat ourselves on the back for taking this first step toward making money with Adsense!

Getting your site indexed with Google will take some time - usually about two weeks. However, we can expedite the process by adding an article with a backlink pointing back to our site - see the next post for more information. Doing this will get your site indexed much faster - it usually only takes two or three days using this method.

Oh yeah, here's the blog I just created: It's called Money Making Websites. If you feel like showing me yours, I'd love to see it. Either send me an e-mail with the link or post a comment here and I'll be sure to check it out and give you advice if you ask for it.

Well, that's it - I told you that setting up a Blogspot blog was easy. Next up: Getting backlinks.