Welcome back! Let's take a look at the settings basic tab for your new blog. You can arrive there easily by clicking on the settings link on your blog dashboard that is associated with your new one (you can have more than one!).

One inside settings, make sure that you are in Basics (the link can be selected by the sub-menu on the top of your screen). Here you can:

1. Change the name of your blog and it's description (Important keywords are used in these two places - use the best key words to describe your content!)


2. Add to Blogger's listings (Yes, do it)
The other options don't mean a heck of a lot as far as monetizing your blog, so you can feel free to experiment with them.




Now click on the Publishing tab at the top.

Here you can change the URL (the address of your blog on the net) of your website or switch to a custom domain (if you have rented your own, like www.monthly-check.biz). No need to do either right now. But there is something very important to do here for your blog's awareness to the world:
Ensure that 'yes' has been selected for pings. This feature will 'ping' or notify weblogs.com whenever you have updated your blog with a new post. Many services use weblogs for awareness. Essential stuff!

Ok - the way I will be laying this how to series out is in a simple format. Each post will be a different step toward the end goal of having a monetized blog, i.e. a MonthlyCheck ! I am going to keep it straight forward enough for beginners and interesting enough for existing blog owners to get some handy tips. Another factor that I use is that everything must be FREE. If you want to move all of this to your own web server, thats a whole other conversation. Lastly, we aim for high traffic to your blog - lots 'o clicks and visits. Let's get started!

STEP 1: Think of your niche idea. To be successful you must have a unique idea or area of focus that narrows the number of choices a surfer has to read. You can't compete with the big players, but you can when you focus on something like ONLY Xbox 360 First Person Shooter video games or ONLY Chevrolet Corvettes from 1970-1975. Focus, focus, focus. This is probably one of the hardest items for this post: What will I blog about? Be passionate about it as you need to update your blog at least 3 times a week. Everyday is best.

STEP 2: Find a blog host site. I recommend Blogger for a number of reasons: It's free, easy to use, Google Adsense integration, automatic 'pinging' to alert search engines of new entries, and single login with Gmail (can be a nuisance with multiple logins - so keep your blog profile ID the same as your Adsense, Google Analytics and blog email address). You could also select WordPress or any other wide range of free blog hosts. For the sake of simplicity, this whole blog will focus on Blogger. You use www.blogger.com to log in, create and manage your blogs and your actual blog site will be on the blogspot domain (for instance this blog is http://monthlycheck.blogspot.com), but I post and manage through blogger.com.

Here's what you do in order:
a. Decide on what the blog's name will be. Keep it as concise and on topic as possible and be prepared to have to change it if the name is already gone.
b. Go to www.gmail.com and create a new user (best to copy what you think you will name the blog, like onlyxboxfps @ gmail . com, or log in with an existing account.
c. Go to www.blogger.com
d. Take the tour if you like, or simply click on the 'Create your blog now' link.
e. Use your existing Gmail log in, or current one. Fill out the form.
f. Find a URL that Blogger has available FIRST, then name your blog to match. Name your blog something that is exactly what you are talking about. For instance: 360 Degrees of FPS ! It is important to name your blog on topic as it helps a great deal for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
g. Next select your template for the blog - this is what your blog will look like (font, colors, layout etc.) - I recommend selecting a simple white background with black font and blue highlights so that placing ads is easy. I am using the Tekka template for this blog; simple and very readable - the links are blue like everyone is used to. You can change this later, but you will probably have to change your ads to match too which is a pain. Once you get better with the HTML color pallette you can try other color themes; I used mainly green with MarketSaw.
h. You are ready for your first blog posting! We will get into the settings tab with my next post; we want to set up the blog for monetization as well as readership! Remember just because you post something doesn't mean that anyone will drop by to read it. We will get into how to build traffic to your site later.

Go ahead and create your blog! You can always delete and start again if needed - remember all of this is FREE. I will be including screen shots of upcoming steps when needed so stay tuned...

Hey! I am excited about this blog. Its going to be all about making money (monetize) from blogging and having fun doing it.

Monthly Check ! will take you step by step using this same blog as the template to a very nice recurring income. Complete with links and screenshots to make it as easy as possible - I have done the groundwork for you.

There are a smörgåsbord of different ways / angles to accomplish blog monthly checks and we will look at the ones that make sense and have been proven successful, especially for the beginner.

And if you are all caught up reading the current post, why not take a look at my other passion: MarketSaw. Its a blog about upcoming movies that are being planned (like Avatar, Interstellar or Star Trek XI) or in production (Outlander - I am actually in this movie!).

For those who have not seen it yet, go to your Google Gmail login screen and they are touting a new service called Gmail Paper which promises to print out and deliver FREE to your door hard copies of your email. This is paid by the ad graphics on the reverse of the paperwork. Attachments are included!

I admit they had me for about 10 seconds. :-) Thought it was cool enough for my blog, but kinda off topic!