NOTE: If you don’t have time to read this whole post, read this: I’m doing WordPress blog setups FOR FREE until the end of the month, for anyone that fits a few basic criteria and would like their own new blog on their own domain name. On May 1, I’m going to start charging for this service. So if you think you may want a new website anytime soon, check out that link and then email me or leave a comment on this post. Don’t wait. I doubt you’ll find someone doing this for free again.

P.S: If you’re waffling, just ask yourself if you want to be one of those people who would read a series like this and think, “Hey, Johnny started from scratch. I’ll bet I could do what he’s doing and learn how to build an online business,” but then never actually take any action. You don’t want to be that guy or gal. That guy or gal sucks.

P.P.S: If you don’t get off your ass and jump on this, Naomi is going to be soooooo pissed at you because she’s trying to help 1000 people quit their jobs this year and you’re not helping. I mean, skipping an offer to get your main business asset for just the cost of hosting? She’s going to kick your ass if you claim to want to start your own thing but then pass that up.

P.P.P.S: What are you, chicken? Bwok-bwok-bwok-bwok! Go here.

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So on the off chance that you believe those notes were actually afterthoughts and not written ahead of time, let me begin this post as if I hadn’t already sold the shit out of my free blog promo.

Let me go back a bit and explain.

Last week, I outlined a three-part traffic-generation strategy. Part one was a free blog promotion for folks currently on Blogger or another shared blogging platform, part two was article marketing, and part three was Google AdWords.

Let’s tackle their results in reverse order, because this will create a degree of suspense the likes of which is seldom seen in non-suspense-focused marketing blogs.

PART THREE. Google AdWords

If you get your hosting through GoDaddy as you’ll do if you get in on my free blog promo (that’s right; we’re pretending I haven’t told you about that yet), you’ll automatically get $25 in AdWords credits. You can use these to try some stuff out yourself like I did. It’s not real money, so you won’t care if you waste it.

What I did was this: I set up two campaigns, both of which run ads in Google searches or wherever people have placed AdSense ads on their websites. It took me a while to get to this, so the campaigns are still pretty new.

Here’s a snapshot of the past three days:

Now, the keywords for Learn To Be Your Own VA (”create blog”) get a hell of a lot more traffic than do the words for The Diabetic Weightlifter (”diabetes and exercise.”) Still, I should get some traffic for the latter, but nobody is even SEEING that ad (zero impressions.) So something needs to be tweaked there.

But, hey, 10 clicks for the former. No takers yet, but the ad is drawing. I don’t expect immediate results. Remember, this is about rail error, and being prepared to burn money in the interest of learning.

PART TWO: Article marketing

I’ve confirmed that this is going to be virtually useless for my Learn To Be Your Own VA site. But, it is drawing traffic for The Diabetic Weightlifter. Here’s what I mean:

So in summary:

• AdWords will draw for the VA site but not the Weightlifter site.

• Article marketing will draw for the Weightlifter site but not the VA site.

Pretty cool marketing research, eh? I think this kind of discovery is badass. If you don’t think it’s badass, you’re probably — I don’t know — the kind of person who would wear a fruit hat. Don’t lie.

PART ONE: The “free blogs” promotion

The good news is that my offer to create free, self-hosted WordPress blogs for people in exchange for promotion was really popular. The bad news is that it wasn’t as popular as I would have liked with the target audience, which was people currently using Blogger or another shared blogging platform.

I did get Blogger folks interested, but many of them flaked out and vanished. I got a lot more interest from people who just didn’t have a website at all yet (i.e. they weren’t on Blogger and hence wouldn’t be able to promote me to their Blogger friends).

And that’s why I decided to make a business out of this by doing blog setups for anyone who wanted one, and who fit a few basic criteria. (Mainly, they can’t have hosting or a domain name yet. I can charge less if everyone gets new hosting as part of the process and hence ends up using a host that I’m already familiar with, so that I can churn through them.)

To promote this new service, I’ll do those setups for free until the end of April, which is Thursday. On Friday, I’ll start charging. So if you want me to set up your blog for free, email me or hit me up on Twitter and we’ll make it happen. (Or, just comment in this thread, but be sure to subscribe to follow-up comments if you do it that way.)

I even have a free webinar today about fancying that blog up some once you have it.

So that’s that. I actually have several stages to this whole blog setup thing laid out and it’s going to be so badass. I’ve even figured out a cool way for any of you fine IttyBiz readers to directly use what I’m doing here to start making money online yourselves. It’s totally not going to be hard. I’ll mention that next week. (But you’ll probably need a nice, fresh self-hosted WordPress blog to get the most out of it. Hint-hint.

The red-headed stepchild

Ah, yes. The Diabetic Weightlifter blog. Seems like I’m ignoring it, right? Well, there’s a good reason. Naomi and I chatted about it, and I actually have a cool one-two punch going here:

• It will be easier to make money on the VA site in the short-term, thanks to abundant affiliate tie-ins and a wealth of services that people need now, and that I can immediately deliver.

• The Diabetic Weightlifter site has greater long-term potential because it’s a far less exploited niche. There are a billion people online teaching people how to… well… do stuff online. There are far fewer quality diabetes sites. But, it takes time to build trust and authority with these people, and far longer to build a respectable audience and sell stuff to them.

The success of the VA site will give me more free time and confidence to work on the diabetes site. So, I’ve been moving more slowly on the diabetes site. Little by little, I’m writing articles to draw traffic using article marketing. And little by little, I continue to write blog posts and work a bit on the e-book. I’m no longer in a rush to get that e-book out, because frankly, there’s no audience there yet to buy it.

At this point, there’s really nothing else to say other than to remind you yet again that if you don’t yet have a self-hosted blog and would like one, you have until Thursday to get it for free. So be cool and get one. All your friends will be jealous. But then, you should absolutely tell them about it so that they can do it too. But don’t worry; you’ll still be cooler because you’ll always be able to say that you were there first, just like my friend Nate who was into Green Day years before anyone knew who the fuck they were. And naturally, once they got popular, he stopped liking them. Crazy punk rock kids.