The most prominent company offering  free WordPress hosting right now is DreamHost.  They are a established, well known hosting company.  You can sign up for their free app hosting at: https://panel.dreamhostapps.com/signup/ .

Too keep it free (remember we’re just testing and learning here) pick a name to use with their free DreamHosters.com domain name.  FOr my example I picked  “mycooltestsite”:

I then made some changes to the default settings in step 3 – I clicked the “X” next to Drupal to deselect that program and changed the address in WordPress from “blog” to “www” – this is how I normally set up my websites.  You can certainly feel to leave the settings how they are or make any changes you want to.

Leave step 4 unchecked – we’ll talk more about hosting options in a future post. We’ll keep trying this for free for now.

Enter your information in step 5, and once you’re all done you should come to the payment page – which should show a grand total of $0 due.

DreamHost will email you instructions on how to get into the WebPanel of your new free hosting account, but for now click on the “Continue to our web panel” button.

The next step is to wait 15-20 minutes or so.  Go grab yourself a bowl of ice cream or a slice of pie to celebrate!

In a little while, you should find a gazillion emails from DreamHost in your email notifying you that your apps are installed and ready to use:

Open the one titled “Success installing wordpress…” and you’ll get the ID and password for your WordPress software:

There may be more information below this about making changes to DNS, but unless you used a custom domain name (not *.dreamhosters.com) you can ignore all of that.

Click on the management link in the email and you’re ready to make your first blog post or web page!

For help on getting up to speed on using WordPress, I recommend First Steps With WordPress for a quick tour of it’s features and functions.

If you look at my latest earning reports, you can see that I’ve been making slow but steady progress at increasing my websites’ revenue through Google Adsense and eBook sales. I seem to be coming up short in affiliate programs, though. I’ve been running a variety of Commission Junction ads on a couple of our sites for just under a year now. In this time, there have been 222,059 impressions but only 276 clicks – for a CTR of 0.12% which is pathetic in itself. Even worse is that not one of those 276 clicks converted into a referral or sale so I’ve made a grand total of $0 for the entire year on CJ. I’m not sure if the advertisers I’ve been choosing aren’t a good fit for the websites they are on, or if I’m missing even more basic than that. I’m completely at a loss why my site visitors will click on AdSense ads for a topic on my sites, but completely ignore very similar affiliate ads in the same location.

Now you may be thinking – “there’s more affiliate programs than CJ, T.J.”…. Sure there are. Google has an affiliate advertising add-on to Adsense. Can you guess how much I’ve made off of them? If you guessed $0, you’re right! Last month I made I applied for several others: and they all told me the same thing: denied. Even WalMart!

I will admit that I’ve done a little better with WidgetBucks and Amazon averaging about $2.00 and $1.25 a month respectively. With WidgetBucks‘ $25 sign-up bonus, and a $50 minimum payout, I’m only 10 months away from my first payout, and two years after that until my 2nd payout. I think I’d be doing much better if I had a site that meshed better with one of the categories. I’ve got some sites in the works that may bring the monthly total up significantly. Amazon makes it a little easier to get payouts if you’re willing to take it in Amazon credit. The threshold there is a measly $10, meaning I’ll get paid in another 7 months.

Don’t get me wrong – I know there is money to be made in the affiliate business. John Chow made $6,579.67 from it last month, and it was his #2 moneymaker after private ad sales. I just think that the site needs to align better with an in demand big-ticket affiliate product. Web hosting, advertising networks, and expensive hardware and software all seem to lend themselves to the affiliate game than cute babies or gluten free recipes. I would imagine a site about AutoCAD or PhotoShop could make a pretty penny with an Amazon affiliate link to those high-priced products. John Chow obviously gets affiliate bonuses for people who sign up for advertising networks using his affiliate links. I’d love to have a site about Plasma TVs, but that market is a little saturated. I need a great product that is in demand, high-priced, under-represented online and has an affiliate program with high% payouts. I wonder if anyone has an affiliate program for dentures?

Adsense climbed nicely, from an average of $1.10/day last month to $1.32/day this month. I’d obviously like to see a sharper increase, but at least I’m moving in the right direction! I’m a bit mixed about including the eBay sales in the stats, but my partner (the beautiful and intelligent Mrs. Schmitz) thinks they belong there and she’s always right, so who am I to argue?

Like I said last month, I’ve been working on some additional sites, and if I can keep to my posting schedule, I ought to have a good amount of content on them by the 1st of the year and be able to start to monetize them. We’ll see if I can keep my nose to the grindstone during the busy Christmas season.

Preventing accidental clicks on your own ads is a lot  easier.  I use a script (originally written by Michael Hampton) that works with Greasemonkey (and Firefox, as there is no IE version) that prevents any clicks on ads with your unique publisher ID.

Here are some step by step instructions:

1. Install Firefox if you already haven’t done so. You can download it from getfirefox.com
2. InstallGreasemonkey by going here. Click on the “Install Now” button.  You’ll need to restart Firefox to complete the installation.
3. Get your AdSense Publisher ID – it will look like PUB-1234567. It will be in the code Google has you post into your blog or website.
4. Install the script by clicking here. Enter your Publisher ID when it asks for it.
5. You can test your setup by clicking on the “Ads by Google” link above your AdSense ads. If everything is set up right, those clicks won’t work (won’t take you to the AdSense website).  Clicking on that link on someone else’s site still should.
6. Profit! Enjoy raking in those six-figure checks.

Adsense: $34.21
eBook Sales: $44.87
Amazon Affiliate: $0.
CJ Affiliates: $0.
WidgetBucks: $1.05

All time highs for both Adsense and eBooks. I think Jenny McCarthy’s media blitz really helped the eBook sales and traffic to the Autism/gluten-free cooking site considerably. I’m happy to say I finally have a month where I made over $1/day with AdSense, a goal I set for the 2nd month of CuteBabyFix.com being online – it’s six months late, but at least I finally made it.

WidgetBucks is a new advertiser that I started with about 1/2 way through October. I already have $1.52 for Nov, and hope to see steady increases as the months go on. If so, it will be my 1st decent profit on an affiliate program so far. I have made NOTHING through Commission Junction despite averaging over 30K ad impressions per month. I thought I had some great product placement in October, however I only had a click through rate of 0.22% and no conversions… pathetic! Hopefully WidgetBucks’ run-in with Google won’t come back to bite me in the butt!

Other October highlights include PageRank promotions of both CuteBabyFix.com and Woggle-Bug.com to 3 (from 1 and 2 respectively). I’m pretty jazzed about that, especially since many blogs took a huge PR hit this update. We continued to see a slow steady trickle of traffic from being posting on National Review’s Corner Blog, although nothing like the 3K hits we got in 2 days at the end of September. I think it helped bring our average RSS reader count up to 18. Finally, we hit the magic $100 number in our adsense account, so we’ll be getting a nice Christmas bonus from Google in December.

The most interesting observation is that I’ve had my best financial month ever, yet my traffic either stayed flat or dropped (depending on the site). I think there were two main things that brought that about. First, the Jenny McCarthy thing really drove more targeted traffic to Woggle-Bug. People were really looking for what we had and the cookbook eBook sales reflect it. Second, I dropped about 1/3 of my competitive ad filter from my AdSense settings. I got a lot more $0.01 clicks, but also a lot more clicks overall, boosting my total revenue for AdSense. This month I’ll weed through the rest of the list and see if the trend continues. I’m definitely skeptical of blocking the low-paying clicks after October’s income improvement.

Future plans: With my next major goal being $300/month, I’m hoping to make math work in my favor . With two active sites (I really haven’t monetized this one much) making an average of $1.36 a day, I’ll need 18 sites to hit the $300/month goal. Assuming we can keep performance like October’s going, I could do it with 7 sites. My goal for November is to get two more sites up and running, and post more regularly to this one (so I can monetize it as well). The new sites will be a Mormon Clip Art site (which I’m seeing fairly low CPM ads for so far, but I’m hopeful to find other revenue streams) and the re-birth of our Removing Cat Pee site (which I lost in a bad server crash). I may also try my hand at another couple of eBooks, as we’re having some great success with the Gluten Free Cookbooks. I know it will take a while to get the sites fully populated with content and making decent money, but getting the structure in place will be the first step!

The above assumes a $2.80 media mail shipping charge with $0.30 for padded envelope packaging. eBay sales include “Buy it now” fees. Albris sale assumes affiliate fee through Barnes & Noble or Walden Books.

Half.com turns out to be the most cost-effective up to $55, where eBay takes over. It’s worth considering that statistically speaking, most books that sell for over $200 take over a year to sell. That’s not going to be possible in a 7-10 day eBay auction – take a peek for yourself and see how many books go unsold there!

So if Amazon, ABE and Alibris cost so much more, why would you want to use them? Eyeballs. They get a lot more searches through them daily than half.com – because people know they are more likely to find the book they want on Amazon (70 million listings) or Alibris (35 million listings) than Half.com (2 million listings), they just have more books. It probably depends on what you’re selling and how many books you’ll sell in a month. If you sold a single $5 paperback at ABE this month, you’d lose $24.77 because of the $25/month fee.

My recommendation? If it’s a few ratty paperbacks or old Tom Clancy novels, use Half.com or eBay. A couple dozen out of print wonders? – Amazon. Clearing out unwanted inventory from your bookstore or a serious collection: Amazon, Alibris or ABE. Me? I decided my books (mostly cover less and mangled) would do the most good in the recycling dumpster at our local school, where the proceeds go to benefit the Special Needs classrooms. Hopefully they are enjoying a better life reincarnated as something truly exciting like stock certificates for Web 2.0 companies.

1. Figure out who to send the DMCA letter(s) to. Ideally, you’ll send one to the site owner, one to their web hosting company, and one to Google (cause Google rules the world, right?). You can get the site’s owner and technical contact info by running a ‘whois’ search on the URL. Sam Spade is my favorite, but any of the thousands of sites out there will work. Your results will look something like this (fearaid.org runs a splog that scrapes my sister-in-law’s blog – this tutorial is dedicated to her):
   

   (Asked whois.pir.org:43 about fearaid.org)

   Domain ID: D134551157-LROR
   Domain Name: FEARAID.ORG
   Created On: 07-Dec-2006 21: 09: 48 UTC
   Last Updated On: 13-Sep-2007 22: 49: 07 UTC
   Expiration Date: 07-Dec-2007 21: 09: 48 UTC
   Sponsoring Registrar: Directi Internet Solutions d/b/a PublicDomainRegistry.Com (R27-LROR)
   Status: OK
   Registrant ID: DI_4999251
   Registrant Name: Catherine Martinez
   Registrant Organization: N/A
   Registrant Street1: Providencia 2113
   Registrant Street2:
   Registrant Street3:
   Registrant City: Santiago
   Registrant State/Province: Atacama
   Registrant Postal Code: 234213
   Registrant Country: CL Registrant Phone: 562.315631
   Registrant Phone Ext.:
   Registrant FAX:
   Registrant FAX Ext.:
   Registrant Email: catherinemartine@gmail.com
   
   

   Especially if the site owner is not in the US, you’ll want to send a DMCA letter to their hosting company as well, which has a better chance of being US based. You can do a reverse DNS lookup on the IP address of the site – in Sam Spade, just click on the ip address in the listing and it will take you to the information on the company that ‘owns’ the ip address their server is running. You’ll end up with something like this:

   (Asked whois.arin.net:43 about +209.163.229.240)

   OrgName:    Time Warner Telecom  Inc.
   OrgID:      TWTC
   Address:    10475 Park Meadows Drive
   City:       Littleton
   StateProv:  CO
   PostalCode: 80124
   Country:    US
   ReferralServer: rwhois: //rwhois.twtelecom.net: 4321
   NetRange:   209.163.128.0 - 209.163.255.255
   CIDR:       209.163.128.0/17
   NetName:    TWTC-NETBLK-12
   NetHandle:   NET-209-163-128-0-1
   Parent:     NET-209-0-0-0-0
   NetType:    Direct Allocation
   NameServer: NS1.IPLT.TWTELECOM.NET
   NameServer: NS1.MILW.TWTELECOM.NET
   NameServer: NS1.ORNG.TWTELECOM.NET
   Comment:    ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE
   RegDate:    1997-11-12
   Updated:    2004-02-18
   OrgAbuseHandle: TWTAD-ARIN
   OrgAbuseName:   Time Warner Telecom Abuse Desk
   OrgAbusePhone:  1-800-898-6473
   OrgAbuseEmail:  abuse@twtelecom.net OrgNOCHandle: TDN1-ARIN
   OrgNOCName:   TWTC Data NOC
   OrgNOCPhone:  1-800-898-6473
   OrgNOCEmail:  support@twtelecom.net
   OrgTechHandle: NST12-ARIN
   OrgTechName:   NOC SWIP Team
   OrgTechPhone:  1-800-898-6473
   OrgTechEmail:  swip@twtelecom.com
   OrgName:    Virtual Internet Systems
   OrgID:      VIS-66
   Address:    1307 Robincreek CV
   City:       Lewisville
   StateProv:  TX
   PostalCode: 75067
   Country:    US
   NetRange:   209.163.228.0 - 209.163.229.255
   CIDR:       209.163.228.0/23
   NetName:    TWTC-VISY-3
   NetHandle:   NET-209-163-228-0-1
   Parent:     NET-209-163-128-0-1
   NetType:    Reallocated
   Comment:
   RegDate:    2006-05-15
   Updated:    2006-05-15
   OrgTechHandle: VIS4-ARIN
   OrgTechName:   Virtual Internet Systems
   OrgTechPhone:  1-972-221-8416
   OrgTechEmail:  chris@visy.com
   
   

   If you end up with multiple companies, it’s best to contact all of them. In this category, most of the email and fax listings will be accurate, so it’s not a major expense.

   You’ll also want to keep Google in the loop, as they can carry a lot of clout. Their DMCA information page has their address and fax number as well. They do requite notification in writing, so you’ll need to warm up the fax machine or scrape up a stamp. You can also contact the Adsense Team, cutting off the revenue stream of the splog.

2. Compose your letter(s) – the simplest could be something like this:
   

   Subject: DMCA Notice of Copyright Infringement

   To whom it may concern,

   I am writing to inform you that the site spamblog.com contains copyrighted content from my site(s). Specifically, the text and images appearing at www.mysite.com/index.html and www.mysite.com/content.html

   The offending copyrighted material is located at www.spamblog.com/index.html and www.spamblog.com/clicktheads.com

   If you need more information, I can be reached at myemail@mysite.com or via phone 216-555-5555 and my mailing address is John Doe, 123 Main St., Schenectady, NY 12345.

   I have sent email requests to the owner of the offending site at spammer@spamblog.com requesting the offending material be removed, but have not received any reply.

   I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

   I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

   My signature below serves as my legal electronic signature.

   John Doe
   October 16, 2007

   If you would like more formal letters to be sent via fax or snail-mail, some excellent templates are available at www.mcanerin.com:
   Google DMCA – MS Word Document (32k)
   ISP DMCA – MS Word Document (38k)

3. Follow up. You should give the recipients an appropriate delivery time plus 5-7 days to respond. If you don’t hear back from them re-send your letters. If you are mailing them, you might want to send them certified mail – it costs $2.65, but will definitely get the attention of the recipient. Those little green tags can put the fear of legislation into companies who assume that you are starting to gather official documentation for a case against them. Also move up the food chain as much as you can. Often cheap, inexpensive, spammy blogs are run on the cheapest possible hosting available. Cheap hosting is often provided through a reseller, who buys bulk hosting from a big hosting company and re-sells it. Many resellers are shoestring operations who don’t respond to any email from anyone for months. As you move up the digital food chain you’ll eventually reach a company with enough lawyers hanging around that they are appropriately respectful of a DMCA notice. They’ll let their reseller know that unless they want their entire operation frozen that they need to take care of the problem in a timely manner.

I’ve seen this process work in as short as a few minutes (email sent, and content removed by the webmaster almost immediately). I have also heard of cases where both the registrant and hosting company were internationally located and thumbed their noses at the DMCA takedown requests. Of course, if someone is stealing your english-language content, they are probably targeting US readers, with US based advertisers. Keep hitting the advertisers and they’ll have no reason to run the blog.

If this helps, leave me a comment and let me know how it works for you.