One great way to begin generating free traffic is with a WordPress blog, like this one you’re reading right now. WordPress is a free open-source blogging platform that has caught on strongly over the past few years, and enjoys a thriving developer community. With such an active dev community, WordPress system updates are rolled out quickly, and the system is extremely easy to use.

To get started, you’ll need to choose a web host where you’ll store your blog and its related files to share online with your visitors. I recommend my web hosting company Chase Hosting or another quality web host such as Fat Cow hosting, Get Hosted Cheap, or BlueHost. Each of these web hosts supports simple installs for WordPress, which allows you to setup your blog through an easy-to-use wizard installer.

Simple Scripts Install of WordPress on Chase Hosting:

1. Sign up for a web hosting plan, and login to the new web hosting account with the information you receive in the Welcome email.
2. Click the SimpleScripts section on the left side navigation. Choose to install WordPress
3. Enter your blog’s unique details into the install screen, choose your admin account’s information. Click install.

After the install progress bar completes, you’re done! You can login and begin using your new WordPress blog.

To manually install WordPress:

Here’s the quick version of the WordPress manual install for those that are already comfortable with performing web script installations.

1. Download and unzip the WordPress package.
2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
3. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.
4. Open wp-config.php in a text editor and fill in your database details as explained in Editing wp-config.php to generate and use your secret key password.
5. Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server:
   • If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.

   • If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the directory wordpress to the name you’d like the subdirectory to have and move or upload it to your web server. For example if you want the WordPress installation in a subdirectory called “blog”, you should rename the directory called “wordpress” to “blog” and upload it to the root directory of your web server.
6. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in a web browser.
   • If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php
   • If you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

That’s it! WordPress should now be installed. You can begin filling your blog with useful information related to your campaigns topic. Pack it full of quality content that you can link to and people will share with others. We’ll discuss how to

Getting started with affiliate marketing can be a bit challenging to a n00b. There are tons of “gurus” out there on the web who claim to have the secret recipe to making millions from internet marketing. Yet, most of these guys’ biggest source of income are their how-to courses, go figure.

Needless to say, you can get started without dropping a dime on knowledge that’s already freely available out there on the web. You just need to spend some time researching and reading up on the various topics, and form a good plan for your traffic methods.

Most beginners will want to start with free traffic methods, and build up the volume to reinvest in paid traffic sources for long-term scale.

Free Traffic Sources

• Blogging – A great method for building up followers and targeted mailing lists for a campaign.
• Websites – Similar to blogs, but with a bit more content and structure. Usually in the form of a service, directory, or resource for learning about a topic related to your campaigns. Good for contextual links, ad placements, and content gateways for mailing lists and incent offers.

Paid Traffic Sources

• PPC - Pay Per Click (Adsense, Facebook ads, Plenty of Fish, Chase Clicks, etc.)
• PPV - Pay Per View (TrafficVance, DirectCPV, etc.)
• Email Marketing (Aweber, Senderr, eInfer, Constant Contact, iContact, etc.)

This is an exciting week for a lot of us; this is generally regarded as the last pay period for the year in most of the internet marketing world. Affiliates around the world are scrambling to stack their biggest numbers of the month before that last cut-off before the New Year. Most of you reading this blog have made pretty surreal amounts of money this year on the internet, and this week will be no different.  Keep up the good work!

I’m going to be doing the same, and preparing for an amazingly different start to the new year. 2011 is my year. I’m going to be making some huge expansions with my companies, and I trust in the lord that it will all go well. This is something I’ve been working towards for the last 8 years, and now it’s all finally coming together. A year from now, I should be writing a similar blog post about, “wow, I can’t believe how well this year has gone” or something of the sort. I’m hoping to meet a lot of new friends in the industry, become better friends with the ones I’ve already met, and maybe even have some time to meet up with some of you guys at the various events.

So, with all of that said.. between setting up new campaigns, and working (mostly) non-stop on the current ones, I’ll be writing my next couple of posts on affiliate marketing. They’ll be mainly covering some basic technical topics and laying down the groundwork for the newbie affiliates out there. From there I’ll progress to some more advanced topics. I have several years in the Internet Service Provider industry, and extensive experience in a variety of methods and niches, so I’m looking forward to some of the more advanced topics from both a technical, and strategy standpoint. Have a great week everyone, and have fun stacking that CPA Dough!

If anyone is looking for me to cover a certain topic, please contact me.

I’ve been doing a lot of blogging lately on other sites in an effort to build traffic for the network of sites I’ve created. Well, I’ve decided, since cha2e.com has been my personal domain and homebase on the net for the past few years, I need to dedicate more time and effort to making it thrive. I am going to attempt to post a new entry every day, or at least every other day for the next… forever. I’m sure I’ll have some minor blips in my plans but the point is I want to start posting on here a LOT more. Look for lots of new content, tips, and other good schtuff soon! Until then, peace!

Update 2/17/09

Well, that didn’t last long! But I have continued my increase in blogging, just not solely on cha2e.com. I’m going to be doing some remodeling around here, it’s long overdue. Plus, I have a lot of updates with my two new ventures, Chase Ideas LLC and a new subdivision to ChaseHosting, F1FTY Web Hosting. Unlimited shared web hosting for only $50 a year. Order some.