Setting up a website via a blog is a simple way to get your business online.

You go to Hostmonster and get a domain name and also their hosting package as they use cPanel and Simple Scripts, and you can set up a WordPress blog in just a few minutes. Why use WordPress when Blogger is available? you ask. Well, WordPress is the darling of the search engines. The RSS feed is easy to spider because it’s all text. There’s no code to hinder their progress. Plus, WordPress is very user friendly and there are many, many excellent themes (paid and free) that you can use to customize your blog any way you want. You can also gain search engine optimization advantage by using some of many available plugins. This means more traffic because your blog will show up in the search engine results pages pretty quickly.

But you can also use your new website for list building. How? By putting an opt-in box in the top widget of its sidebar. You want it high on the page so that people can easily find it and subscribe to your list. You’ll notice that we have a widget for our opt-in box in our sidebar, and it works to get new subscribers for us every time we post.

Then, just drive traffic to your blog to attract opt-ins, and there are many ways to do this. Try uploading your videos to places like YouTube.com or Google Video and to your blog at the same time, giving you advertising and content all at once. Do an audio recording and turn it into a podcast. You can advertise in ezines or write some articles and place them in article directories. It’s all up to you.

Blogging via WordPress also has the benefit of the continual use of Web 2.0. If you bookmark every post you make in places like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, you’ll get traffic from people who see each story and are interested in reading more. When they come to your blog, enjoy your information, and see the opt-in box at the top of your sidebar, you may have a new subscrber, as well. Or, go make friends with people on Twitter or Facebook, and start a group for your clinic or services. Make the URL to your blog part of your signature. You’ll be amazed at how well this works. You can do this when posting in forums, too.

Keep readers coming back to your blog by giving them valuable content, and always be sure to place the opt-in box where readers can see it. Your list will be growing in no time.