Admins have high-stress jobs, right? We multi-task holes into our brains, rush like cheetahs on speed, smile until we have cheek cramps, and if no one is yelling at us, we’re yelling at ourselves . So what do you do for fun? If you’re lucky, you have a passion. I know it’s sick that I entertain myself helping people figure things out about work. I hope you’re better balanced. And I know you can write…so I’ll bet you’re thinking about blogging. And I know some little critter is whispering, “you could make money…do it!”
But can you? The truth is, most attempts to make money via blogging fail. You can’t just stick ads on your blog or website and expect it to make money – you have to do it right – you know, like you do everything at work. It’s referred to as “monetizing” your blog, by the way. Want to try it?
The first thing you need is a domain name. Tribeofadmins.com is the domain name of this site, for example. To do that, you must make sacrifices to the domain gods. The most powerful domain god is Network Solutions. They’ll let you choose a package and sacrifice anywhere from $9.99 to $32.99 in the form of Visa or Mastercard – no blood involved. I like them because they were here first and they’re The One and that’s that.
The next thing you need is a place to plop your site down. This is a web host. You can spend anywhere from nothing to the$ky’sthelimit on this…I recommend next to nothing. “Next to,” because it buys you a bit more service than “nothing.” Some of the popular services are HostGator, GoDaddy and BlueHost. This site is hosted by MacHighway. In spite of the name, they aren’t only for Macs, they’re all wind-powered, economical, and have great service.
Make sure that the host you choose supports your operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux), look at their “uptime” statistics (the higher the better – what’s the point in having a site if it’s down?), and good customer service reviews. A good place to look is the FAQ. If you see something like “We support Mac, but…” and you have a Mac, go elsewhere.
Once you’ve done all that, you can decide what software you want to use to create your blog, but that’s for another post. We’ve done quite enough for one day.
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