4. Extra Stuff
Tools...
If you have your own hosting and you're looking to create a mass number of blogs the easy way then
Blogs Organizer is for you. It's not wordpress, it doesn't have a lot of the features wordpress has. But if you want a mass amount of blogs this tool is amazing, I use it on several domains of mine. It will take some time to get the hang of it but once you do you'll love how easy it is to create more blogs. It doesn't really come with any good themes but you can buy some extremely cheap or make them yourself.
If you want to put your blogs on autopilot check out
Blogs Automator. It works with wordpress, wordpress MU, blogs organizer, and other blogging software. This script saves me a lot of time.
If you're looking for more useful scripts check
all of these out. I personally use blog organizer, blog automator, gallery scraper. These tools aren't free but more than worth the price compared to anything else I've seen. When I first looked those scripts up I instantly closed the page. It looked like one of those crappy ebook pages so I figured the software must suck. But after trying them out I was kicking myself for not using them sooner. (Sorry for the design comment if you read this Kaktusan.)
Domains and link trading...
If you buy a domain I'd suggest moniker.com but most places will do fine. Personally I would buy domains that contain the keywords I'm shooting for in google. For example, "hot latina", if you can't get hotlatina.com or .net then try hotlatinablog.com etc etc. When you start trading links at
thunder-ball use that term in the link to your site "hot latina". Make sure the term gets several hits a month and there isn't a huge amount of good competition. As an example odds are you won't ever rank #1 for porn.
Take your link trading seriously if you want your site(s) to get anywhere. There's nothing wrong with trading outside of thunder-ball but it's going to be more trouble. You'll need tools that tell you if people are keeping their links up to your sites. Over the years a lot of people put up automatic trade scripts, they accept trades and then delete them after some months. It can be a pain in the ass keeping up with them all. Thunder-ball has a built in function to let you know if someone drops their links. I believe blog organizer also has a link checker built in for trading links.
Rewriting...
Your blog will likely be removed from google if you just import feeds without rewriting the words. The best tool is
Blogs Automator, you can also rewrite with
Blogs Organizer but if you're going the free route use rss2anywhere. You can get morphing feeds from some sponsors such as BV Bucks above but honestly it's better to change it up yourself too. It will take some time to get a good list going but in the long run it's worth it.
Hosting...
Although I suggested
dreamhost above which I think is great for the reasons I listed and other reasons I won't go into now, you may hear they suck. Well they aren't the best, if you want to pay for some better hosting there's always
nationalnet and others. I use both nationalnet and even dreamhost still after 4 years or so now. Spreading your sites out is a good thing, for one reason it will make a difference when link trading. Some people won't do link trades with you if all of your sites are on the same IP.
Dreamhost usually gives you IP numbers that are far apart and usually different class Cs when you add a domain, you don't even have to request it.
VPS Hosting...
VPS plans are a joke IMO. I've tried several VPS plans and they just aren't worth it. Most of the time they aren't any better than shared hosting because resources are still being shared. You may find a host that gives you a VPS that's better than shared hosting. But if they start overselling (adding too many VPS customers on your server) then you'll be screwed, sometimes worse than if you were just on shared hosting. It's better to stick with shared and upgrade to dedicated later if you need it or keep your shared hosting account too.
Wordpress plugins...
There's a good amount of wordpress plugins out there. If you're building blogs on a mass level you probably won't need many plugins or none at all. One that's already used at
skank blogs is
all in one seo. This tool makes it easy to optimize your wordpress themes for SEO. Another great one is
wp super cache, it's a great tool that serves static pages instead of taking up server resources. If you want to leave comments on for your blogs make sure you enable
akismet.
Don't forget to signup and start blogging at...
SkankBlogs.com