1. Buy a domain name ($9.00/yr)
a) search on aplus.net
b) buy at 1and1.com

2. Buy website hosting from hostgator.com ($8.00/mo)

3. Login to your cpanel (cpanel.yourdomain.com) and find your “Name Servers” located on the bottom left corner of the page (e.g. ns1145.hostgator.com and ns1146.hostgator.com)

4. Change the “DNS settings” at your 1and1 account to “point to” your hostgator servers.

5. Install WordPress on your domain name.
Go to cpanel.yourdomain.com and scroll down almost all the way and click on Fantastico DeLuxe. Click WordPress on the left menu -> New Installation

Congrats your blog is now up and running!!  You can post anything you want, but we’re going to help you make it super easy and efficient to create lots of attractive posts as well as get you some traffic with steps 6-15.

6. Download a theme – courtneytuttle.com has SEO themes

7. Download Filezilla FTP or Cyberduck (Mac)

8. Upload the unzipped theme folder to your domain using FTP.

9. Complete Basic configurations of your blog. (i.e. change permalink structure, delete the hello world post and wordpress blogroll links, etc.)

10. Sign up for and configure each of the following Social Media:
Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious, Diigo, Flickr, PicasaWeb, Blogspot, WordPress.com, Tumblr, Plaxo, Posterous, YouTube, Vimeo, Scribd, StumbleUpon, Mixx, and Reddit.

11. Download Software:
My Firefox blogger addons collection: InfoMogul Blogger Addons 1.1,
Picasa,  SnagIt, Camtasia, and Mindjet.

12. Download and install my InfoMogul Plugins Pack 1.1

13. Study some basic HTML.  Not too much, but it’s helpful to know how to make a link and embed video.

14. Study some basic SEO.  (Evaluate keyword competition, choose titles and anchor text, and add tags.)

15. Post away.