Simplest Way to Make Money Online Almost Guaranteed – Part 2

I was inspired to work on the RCHeliSimulator.com site some more today.  So I’ll document what I’m doing as I go along again.

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this series, please do so now before proceeding otherwise this post probably won’t make much sense to you.

2:04 PM – Changing the Theme

I don’t like the default WordPress Theme.  I think anyone who visits a site with the default theme instantly thinks it’s a fake Blog or a “made for Adsense” Blog, so my first order to things is to change the theme.

Sometimes I just search on Google for WordPress themes, but lately I’ve been using a software called Artisteer 2 to quickly create WordPress Themes.

I whipped up a quick header in Photoshop, and added it to a quick theme I came up with in Artisteer.  Time to upload it and activate it.

2:18 PM – Theme Uploaded

Ok, so the theme is uploaded.  Now, I need to remove the “Disclaimer” and “Privacy Policy” menu items up top.  This theme, like many others, displays all the pages you create in the menu up top.

To do this with Artisteer generated themes, there is a line you need to modify in the Theme Functions (functions.php) file in the theme directory.

Near the very bottom of the functions.php file there is a line that says:

wp_list_pages(‘title_li=’);

I need to change this line to:

wp_list_pages(‘exclude=5,7&title_li=’);

By adding in that little “exclude=5,7″ it tells the function to exclude those two pages.  To get the ID of the pages I just clicked on “Pages” in WordPress admin and hovered over the title of the page and looked at the URL it points to.  For example, for the Disclaimer page I created, the URL points to:

http://rchelisimulator.com/wp-admin/page.php?action=edit&post=5

So that tells me that the ID of that page is 5.

Now, since I removed the links to the Disclaimer and Privacy Policy pages in the menu up top, I need to add links to these page in the footer.

I simply edit the Footer page like so:

I just changed the links to point to the pages.  Now my code looks like this:

<a href=”/contact-us/”>Contact Us</a> | <a href=”/disclaimer/”>Disclaimer</a> | <a href=”/privacy-policy/”>Privacy Policy</a><br />

I don’t have a “Contact Us” page yet, but I added in a link to it there anyways since I know I’ll be creating one eventually.  Now the footer contains links to my Disclaimer and my Privacy Policy which should keep Google happy.

2:34 PM – Matching AdSense Colors to Theme

Ok, now the next thing I need to do is to match the AdSense ad colors to my theme.  Right now the AdSense ad is using the default Google colors which are different from my new theme colors so the ad totally sticks out like a sore thumb.  The idea is to make your ads blend in with your content.

You can change the colors in the All in One AdSense and YPN! plugin in WordPress.  It’s under Settings > AdSense.  I went back to Artisteer to find out what colors I had selected for my sheet background, and for the links and then pasted the hex codes into the fields in the AdSense plugin.  If you don’t know how to find your hex codes, you can always use the Google Ad Color Picker link to choose colors that are similar to your theme colors.

This is what it looks like now.  See how the AdSense Ad Block just blends in with the content?  The link colors also match the regular links in my content as well.

Ok, that’s good enough for making the site look prettier for now.

2:47 PM – Installing Analytics

Now it’s time to install Google Analytics so that I can monitor the traffic coming to the site.  The reason I’m installing Analytics now and not before is that I needed to get my Theme setup first so that I could put the Analytics code in the footer of the theme.

Actually, before I install Analytics I want to make one change to my site structure first.  I prefer to have my sites use the “www.” prefix to the domain.  So instead of the site being “http://rchelisimulator.com” I prefer for it to be set to “http://www.rchelisimulator.com”.

I need to make that change first before setting up Analytics.  To make that change, you just go to WordPress Admin and click on Settings > General and then change the WordPress Address (URL) and Blog Address (URL) accordingly.

It may have been smarter to change this setting right in the beginning, before submitting a Sitemap to Google but I forgot.  That’s OK, Google will pull the new Sitemap and see the changed links anyways.  You may need to go to Settings > XML Sitemap and click on “rebuild the sitemap manually” to re-generate a new Sitemap with the “www.” prefix before the domain name.

Ok, now I login to my Google Analytics account and add a new website profile like so:

I then take the code Analytics gives me (as shown above) and paste it into my Theme footer file (footer.php) by going to Appearance > Editor > Footer in WordPress Admin.

Once I add the code into my footer (just above the “</body>” tag), I save the footer and then go back to Analytics and click the “Save and Finish” button to activate tracking.

3:07 PM – Summary

Ok, so let’s recap what I’ve done on for this site so far:

Part 1

1. Identified a niche we’d like to create a site for.
2. Using the Google Keyword Tool I did some research on a keyword related to the niche.
3. After my quick research found that there is search volume for the keyword, I looked on Google search listings to see if people are buying ads for that keyword.
4. Once we verified that the niche / keyword is worth testing, I went to GoDaddy to register a domain.
5. Using the main keyword (rc helicopter simulator) as a domain didn’t work as someone already registered it, but “rchelisimulator.com” was available so I registered that instead.
6. Added the domain to my Hostgator account.
7. Using Fantastico I installed WordPress.
8. I created one page of content for now.
9. Next I installed my favorite WordPress Plugins.
10. Activated the “Traffic Getting SEO Plugin” and used it to Tweak my WordPress setup.
11. Next, I created an AdSense Channel for the Blog, and created a 300×250 Ad Block to put up on the site.
12. I added my AdSense ID and Channel ID into my All in One Adsense and YPN WordPress Plugin and activated the 300×250 Ad Block to appear in the top left corner of all my posts.
13. Next, using the XML Sitemap WordPress Plugin I created a Sitemap for my site and then submitted it to Google Webmaster Tools.

Part 2

1. Using a software called Artisteer 2, I created a simple Blog Theme for my site as well as a header.
2. After uploading the Theme, I removed the Disclaimer and Privacy Policy pages from the menu bar up top and placed links to those pages in the footer.
3. Modified my AdSense Ad Block colors to match the theme of my site so that the ads blend into the site instead of sticking out.
4. Changed my URL structure from “rchelisimulator.com” to “www.rchelisimulator.com” in WordPress General Settings.
5. Installed Analytics tracking on the site.

That’s pretty much it so far.

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