Small Business Ideas

Creating Your First Video Blog (Vlog)
By Rod Farrell

Blogs are huge – but pretty soon video blogs or vlogs will overtake them in popularity if they haven’t already. I could write a whole article on why this is the case but I won’t. I’ll just ask you the question – do you spend more time READING books or WATCHING TV/movies. Case made.

If you already have a blog it is time to consider adding video. If not, it is definitely time you had a blog. Its not difficult. In fact it is so easy you could have a blog up and running within minutes. Tempted to jump in and do that right now? Don’t. If you want to create a blog that will stand the test of time and maybe even make you a whole lot of money, you should take a chill pill, make yourself a cup of coffee and read on. Even a blog needs some forethought and planning.

There are a number of steps required to create a successful blog. Successful meaning, a blog that produces the results you want. So lets get started.

Step 1. Decide what it is you want from your blog

Is your blog

• a social blog for Family and Friends
• a business blog
• a special purpose blog (say for a particular profession or special interest group)
• Is it designed to sell a product or just provide information?
• Will the blog have video and text, or just video?

Step 2. Find a Web Host

You need to have answered step 1 before you decide on your web host. There are three key choices here. And if you make the wrong choice now it will be harder to fix later when you already have a lot of followers.

1. If this is a video only blog the choice is relatively simple. For video only you can go to a video sharing site such as YouTube – the 800 lb gorilla of web hosting sites. There you can create your own “video channel”. All you need to do then is upload your videos. To create a YouTube account got to www.youtube.com and click on SIGN UP in the top menu and follow the prompts. NOTE: If you are going to use the options at 2 and 3 below, you will still want a YouTube account to host your videos so you may as well do it now.
2. Most likely you will want text and video. If this is to be a blog for family and friends then the best choice will be to use Blogger or WordPress. My choice here would be WordPress because it is more customizable and has more options. Blogger is simpler but you will outgrow the functionality much faster. Simply go to www.wordpress.com and click on SIGN UP in the top menu. Follow the instructions and you will have your blog up and running before your coffee goes cold.
3. For a Business site you will probably want your own url ( myblog .com) rather than a subdomain like myblog .wordpress .com. This is a little more involved but gives you much greater flexibility in the future. You need to register your own domain name and find a company to host it. bluehost.com is a good place to start as they offer hosting for just $6.95 per month and when you sign up you get a domain name for free. Furthermore they have WordPress software available to be installed simply by selecting the menu item and following the prompts.

There is one disadvantage with option number three. Using your own domain name means that Google will take longer to find your site than it would with options 1 and 2. But this is a short term disadvantage which is far outweighed for a business by the advantages of greater control over your business environment.

Now that your blog is set up and you have uploaded your videos to YouTube, you will want to copy the YouTube link into your wordpress blog. Go to YouTube and look at your video. To the right is an EMBED code. Copy this code in its entirety.

Open a new entry in your blog and paste the embed code including the HTML tags into the entry. You can add text before or after. Hit the preview button and if you like what you see, hit the PUBLISH button. There you have it. You are now a vblog hero.

This is all you need to start your blog. There are lots of options to customize your blog, promote your blog to search engines etc but they all belong in a more advanced article than this one.

Get The Guide ‘Video Blogging Cash’ Here: www.small-biz-ideas.net/videobloggingcash/

Preview ‘Video Blogging Cash’ Here: www.small-biz-ideas.net/videobloggingcash/preview-video-blogging-cash.html

At Websites With Purpose we help companies improve their profitability by building websites that actually increase sales, even for businesses that have never had an internet presence. For more information visit http://www.xvdg.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rod_Farrell
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Tags: blog for money, make money online, online business, Video Blogging, video blogging cash, Vlog, Youtube

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 8:21 am and is filed under Video Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.