As we move along in phase 2 of our series about setting up the blog platform, we need to focus on getting the blog design set up well for conversions. In this episode, David talks about the 5 most common design mistakes he sees bloggers making - and these mistakes all serve to clutter up the site and hence lowers conversions. Are you making these mistakes?

Many people use the phrase "personal brand" without any real idea of what a brand actually is.

In this installment of Coffee Break Blogging, let's talk about what a BRAND actually is - and the 4 essential elements you must build into your blog in order to create your brand. Once those 4 elements are in place, they should also follow over into Twitter, Facebook - and essentially everywhere you appear.

Today, we are going to talk about a very important component to creating that profitable business online and that is your "brand". Now this is something that we want to think about at the beginning. Like the domain name that we spoke about in the last session; the brand is something that you can adjust over time. But it is something that you want to think about especially when you are choosing your domain name because it goes hand in hand.

Many people use the phrase "personal brand" without any real idea of what a brand actually is. In this installment, David talks about what a BRAND actually is - and the 4 essential elements you must build into your blog in order to create your brand. Once those 4 elements are in place, they should also follow over into Twitter, Facebook - and essentially everywhere you appear.

The domain name for your blog is obviously a pretty important decision that has to be made at the beginning.

In this episode, we talk about several important factors to keep in mind as you shop for a new domain name for your blog.

So... welcome back to another episode of Coffee Break Blogging! ;-)

The domain name for your blog is obviously a pretty important decision that has to be made at the beginning. In this episode, David talks about several important factors to keep in mind as you shop for a new domain name for your blog.

Selecting a Wordpress theme can be a pretty frustrating experience because there are SO many options out there.

In this episode , I give my take on what to consider - as well as my specific recommendation for the best option which will give you a professional design now and a great foundation to build from, later. ;-)

The thing I want to first start off with is the idea that I actually just want to acknowledge the fact that WordPress themes are a huge, huge business. And for that reason, you are going to find a lot of them out there. And as a consumer of WordPress theme, just somebody who is somebody trying to pick a WordPress theme for your site; you are going to be inundated with options. You are going to be wondering which way is the best way to go.

There is just a colossal amount of choices out there. So I want to preface all of these by saying that you are not stuck with the decision, you can change to a different theme later and not only that, I recommend highly that you keep your eye on the ball, here and not get stuck in the decision of what theme to get. I want to recommend my personal recommendation here on this episode, but there are just so many options out there they are going to be very paralyzing and you need to have the discipline not to become paralyzed by the decision. Nothing that we do here is set in stone; you can change your mind later, so pick something and let's move on to more important endeavors in the development of our business here and not get stuck on the idea of what WordPress theme to get. It is not the most important decision that you have to make here.

Selecting a Wordpress theme can be a pretty frustrating experience because there are SO many options out there. In this episode of CBB, David gives his take on what to consider - as well as his specific recommendation for the best option which will give a professional design now, and a great foundation to build from later.

The first decision that has to be made when setting up the ideal platform to build your business with... is web hosting.

In this episode of Coffee Break Blogging, we talk about how to select the best web hosting for your blog. What's the problem with free web hosting? Should you use shared, VPS, dedicated, or managed Wordpress hosting? You'll find out my specific recommendations. ;-)

Now, today we are going to move on to phase 2; Stage 2 of the 7 Stages of Building an Online Business. Now if you are wondering what I'm talking about when I say that; then back up to Episode no. 45 where we took a little bit of a pit stop and kind of reviewed where we are and where we are heading and I talked about the 7 stages there. So we are moving into Stage 2 today and we are going to be moving in to talking about the platform; building up the platform which is our blog... building it up in the right way. And we are going to be talking about various aspects of that for the next many episodes here of the show.

Now what we are going to be talking about today is How to Choose Hosting for Your Site. It is a very important topic; something you do want to get right at the beginning. It is not something where it is set in stone. You can change your mind later when it comes to hosting but it is something that you want to get right because you probably hear horror stories out there who have had problems with their web host. I've got people in the VIP Program over at the Academy who told me about their experiences about web hosts. One where the web host from all practical sides literally went out of business and the person can't get their site off because nobody will pick up the phones are answer their emails. I mean, it is a heck of a thing, I've never heard of that one before. So this is something that you want to get right.

The first decision that has to be made when setting up the ideal platform to build your business with... is web hosting. In this episode of CBB, David talks about how to select the best web hosting for your blog. What's the problem with free web hosting? Should you use shared, VPS, dedicated, or managed Wordpress hosting? And what are David's specific recommendations? Listen and find out.

We take a minute to pause and look at the big picture of where we are with the Coffee Break Blogging series. In this episode I share with you the big vision of the show, review the full 7 stages we will be going through, and take stock of where we are now.

Hello and welcome back to Coffee Break Blogging where we are going to continue on our series to creating and growing a profitable blog-based business online.

Now actually, what we are going to do today is we are going to take a quick pit stop in our series and we are going to review where we are at. And also; it occurred to me that I have probably not done a super-fantastic job of explaining exactly how this podcast is going to be working, so let me try and do that now.