It’s official.  The first annual WordCamp LA was a success. Ben Huh, founder of FAIL Blog and I Can Has Cheezburger, had a large hand in making that a reality.

I, along with everybody else it seemed, didn’t know what to expect from his lecture.  In all honesty, I was torn:  Do I go “glitz” and attend Ben’s or do I go “uber value” by attending Darren Rush’s session on search and improved performance.

I chose “glitz” and listend to Ben Huh work the crowd like a pro.  I’m so thrilled that I did.

One of the most important elements of his lecture was his insistence that tricks, bells & whistles and sweet plugins aren’t necessarily the key ingredients that comprise the coveted, secret internet guru sauce.  Rather, removing oneself from the bottleneck within one’s brand or blog  combined with keeping things as simple and as free as possible will ramp-up success more quickly and with more desireable results.

Let’s cut the bs.  You ARE the bottleneck.

The overarching message was “you have a major opportunity to run your brand or blog better than you are currently.  Wake up, simplify, be yourself and have fun.”  Sounds like it was puked straight ouf of the mouth of some “dot slob” person that made it big in the late 1990s choking down a Double Gulp of Mountain Dew, right?  Wrong.  By applying Huh’s attitude towards business and growth, one’s ability to be transparent, honest and trustworthy is enhanced 1o-fold.  If  trust can be built, people will be more apt to spend cash on your service or product, surf your blog, retweet your content, etc.

Regardless of what you think about his business philosophy, you can’t deny that all 26 of their websites (including FAIL blog and Icanhascheezburger) account for 12% of all of Wordpress’ traffic, they receive 1 BILLION page views per month and that they pay $Zero for advertising.

Here are the highlights from his session.

• Learn how to cache properly
• Create a brand or blog that is scalable
• You are the bottleneck
• Keep your lazy attitude (I’m doing that right now by simply posting my notes)
• Users care about what THEY want, not what you think
• Who are you trying to impress?!
• Don’t make people register, unless they want to vote
• User generated content is the future
• Before hiring another person, make sure you have a consistent 500,000 page views / month
• When possible, pay your moderators

At the end of the day, knowing and understanding what to do is much different than real world, first-hand application.  Make mistakes.  Screw up.  All of that knowledge will eventually evolve into wisdom that will help guide you to success(s).

What are your thoughts on Ben Huh’s opinions on business?  Have you already applied some of what he’s saying?

#benhuh? #wordcampla

If you are looking to create a blog and want to use your newly purchased domain name (web address) and want to learn how to connect the two, you are reading the correct article.  Before we give you the step by step, there are a few things to consider.  First, there are two “different” Wordpress locations where you can create an account:  wordpress.org and wordpress.com.

Wordpress.com

You’ll want to go here and create an account if you are an average person that has no desire to change the coding to the blogging template, pay for 3rd party hosting or actively manage and organize all of the files associated with making your blog look good to the public.

Wordpress.org

You’ll want to go here and create an account if you are interested in affiliate marketing, blog customization (via coding), have already had an active, simple blog template and want to be able to do more.  Also, you’ll want to go here to be able to feature banner ads on your blog.

It’s important to get some terminology understood at the beginning:

Content Management Software (CMS): These are the platforms that enable you to blog.  i.e., Worpress, Technorati, etc

Hosting: This is an integral service for all websites.  Hosting services “lease” you space on their computer servers so that people can see all of your files, images and videos.  It’s where the guts of your blog or website live.

Domain: This is what computer people call a “web address”.  So that your blog can have a cool name you like, you may want to purchase your own domain.

Name Server: This is the function that translates your unique domain (i.e., www.thesaiko.com) to a complex numeric address that makes sense to the computers.

Getting started is much easier than most people think.  It’s just a matter of doing things in the correct order.  Below we’re going to show you how to set up a basic blog with  your own unique domain.

1. Go to www.wordpress.com and create a free account (btw, this is where you’ll go to login each time you want to add photos later, etc)
2. You’ll have to name that blog account.  Don’t worry about how lame or cool the name is that you give to the blog.  It will be overridden by your purchased domain name once you connect them.
3. Find a template you like on Wordpress
4. To connect your new account to your purchased domain, go here to learn the links for the name servers http://support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/map-existing-domain/
5. You’ll then go login to GoDaddy (or wherever you purchased your domain) and search for your name servers.  Swap the name servers by following the directions above in #4
6. Give it a few hours or a day and then you should be able to see the blog by typing your domain into your Internet address bar (sometimes it takes affect immediately)

It’s as simple as that.  Be sure to keep your content updated to prevent it from becoming stale.  Generally speaking, the more traffic to your site, the better.  However, that may not apply to your situation.  Maybe you just need a place to post information that will make sense only to a few people.  Regardless of your situation, have fun blogging.