Help Yourself by Helping Teenagers to Get On-line
March 22, 2010
I strongly encourage you to do something for yourself: your career, your home business (if you have one or want one), your favorite cause, your hobby, or your sense of accomplishment. If you follow my advice, you will be in a position to help others do the same.
What I recommend is not limited to helping teenagers. Anyone can be helped by this. But when you help someone who is just getting started in life, the payoff is greater. It compounds longer. There is a real possibility that some stranger will think back 50 years and say, "That changed my life." How many opportunities do you get to have this kind of impact?
Teenagers know all about Facebook and Twitter. They are savvy about social media.
They know little about starting a business or promoting a cause. They know nothing about Google ads, ebook sales, or using YouTube to promote a Website.
Maybe you don't either. But in 50 hours -- maybe as few as 20 -- you could learn enough to create a Website and YouTube channel to teach someone.
We learn by doing. We also learn by teaching.
I suggest a project. Set up a WordPress site. Then set up another one on how to set up a WordPress site.
Set up your own site first, on whatever topic you prefer. Then set up a second site on how you created your first site. The videos on how you did it will being traffic to your site.
If you want to do set up sites for free, use www.WordPress.com. If you want to do this with your own domains, use www.WordPress.org. It's also free. But you must get a domain name and a hosting service. You must pay for this. Yiu can register a domain for $7 the first year, $10 thereafter. Hosting one site may cost $4 or $5 a month.
Start with WordPress.com. Everything is ready for you to begin. Start with something simple. Create a site on your hobby, or your children or grandchildren. Get used to using the software. Better to start small than not at all. A blog site on WordPress.com is like a bicycle with training wheels. It lets you gain confidence. Then you go to a two wheeler.
Your next step after a month or so is to get your own site. Think of a domain name. You can get very cheap domain registration by searching Google for "domain registration" and "discount." GoDaddy and others offer 30% off at the top of the page: the ads.
You can pay $35 a year (high) and get WordPress hosting for $25 at www.Mister.net. It offers vPanel with a program to upload WordPress called Plesk. It is easy to use. See this video. Other hosting services sell for $50 a year, and they usually include hosting for WordPress. They also offer cPanel control, which offers Plesk or Fantastico, which lets you upload WordPress easily. A YouTube video on Fantastico is here.
After 30 days on WordPress.com, go to www.WordPress.org and download the free program for your very own site.
Find a free "theme" or template for WordPress. This lets you create the site the way you want. A good one is Atahualpa. A YouTube video series on using WordPress and Atahualpa is here.
Then go to YouTube and set up a channel. Post your videos there.
What videos? The videos on how to do all this.
You can use a free screencast program to record everything you do on-screen. You narrate what the viewer sees on-screen I have reported on www.Screenr.com. It requires you to sign up for Twitter. Or you can use www.JingProject.com. Or use www.ScreenToaster.com. Or, if you want longer videos, download CamStudio.
Spend $30 on a lapel mic from Radio Shack.
If you encourage them to start a business site, refer them to this site: http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com. You may want to use its services, too.
If you will do this, I will link to your site from mine. I'll promote it in Reality Check.
I have posted a page for high school seniors on how to put a site to good academic use: //www.garynorth.com/public/6252.cfm
If this project is not your cup of tea, please forward this page to anyone you know who might be interested.