The bonus though is that they will remain at the same price until September 30th if you want to renew them early. I will probably renew a few for a year or more to save a little bit. A little here and there, right?

The bonus is that it flags your comments based on their database of spam and then you have the option to delete it as spam or to approve it. Nothing seems to get by it like some of the others I have tried. Right now on this blog: "Akismet has caught 114 spam for you since you first installed it. You have no spam currently in the queue. Must be your lucky day." You also get ip's that you can ban through your htaccess which is nice.

If you are blogging do youself a huge favour and activate this plugin.

1. Google XML Sitemaps – This is a simple tool to use. It creates sitemaps to submit to  Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. If you are going to blog submitting your sitemaps to each of these sites is very important.

2. Ultimate Tag Warrior – Tagging your posts is important, it allows your to organize your related posts, allows your readers to find other similiar articles on your blog. This is the "ultimate" tag plugin.

3. WYSI-Wordpress - This is the only text editor you will need for writing your blog posts, it has everything you need. The image uploading feature is second to none, you can upload your photos and make thumbnails or resize them anyway you want.

4. Spam Karma 2 - If your blog is new it won't be long before you under siege from spammers. This plugin stops it dead in its tracks. Everytime I log into my blogs I am amazed how many spammers it has stopped. A definite need.

5. Subscribe Me - I like Subscribe Me, it a quick and easy plugin to display your RSS Feeds. Takes two seconds to set up.

6. Social Bookmarks - Adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites. There are lots of them out there. This one does the trick and is easy to use.

These are just six basic must have WordPress Plugins. They are nothing fancy but will save you alot of grief down the road and help you build your blog. Next time I will go over some of the more fancier plugins.

I recently came across a great service called Pay Per Post. I found it on a webmaster board that seasoned bloggers use to discuss blog development. Pay Per Post gives bloggers the opportunity to make extra cash from their blog posts. Their service has a number for great benefits to bloggers. First, you can get paid to review items and services that you want to blog about. You give your honest opinion or review and you will get paid for writing. Next, you can also generate income when other bloggers choose to write about your posts and finally you can gain valuable page links back to your blog.

It is a great program for bloggers looking to expand their money making opportunities so please check out their program. It was easy to sign up for and my blog was approved quickly. Now is your chance to get paid to blog. 

WordPress Free Hosting is a great way to start out with your own blog. It's free and has all of the bells and whistles that you would get with your own hosted blog. It's from the developers of Word Press so you know you are getting a quality product. Some of their free features include dozens of free templates, tagging and social bookmarking plugins, spell check, stats and privacy and spam protection. It's a great way to start your own plug and really get a feel for blogging.

Another great tool for free web blogging is from Blogger. Just sign up with your Google id and you are off to enjoying a great free blogging webhost. They make it fast and easy to get your free blog off of the ground and offer all of the tools you need. They also have extensive help files that will help you understand how to successfully promote you blog. You can even buy your own domain name and have it hosted through them.

Those are your two best places to have get a free blog. Sign up and start your blog empire with no cost to you. Come back for more informative blogging tips and articles on how to make money by blogging.