Written By: Sujan Patel On November 26th, 2007 | 1 Comment
Did that title sum you up in a sentence? Do you write like a shotgun, do you sit down and give it all you have got without any regard for the outcome? When you pull the trigger on a shotgun, it goes off, it doesn’t think about whats in front of it or the damage it may cause, it is simply an instant reaction. Many bloggers perform the same way, they sit down and right without any thought of what they are writing about or where they want to go with the article or the possible repercussion of their words as they spill onto the screen.
Thoughts and ideas need to be developed and built upon to form an article. Simply slapping text on the screen is not enough. Readers are often aware when you have given little thought to an article because it reflects in your work. It often results in a short, poorly written piece with little interest or emotion. Some commonly seen blog posts that are a result of no thought are “5 links of the day” or a simple paragraph explaining somebody else’s post with a link to that. These types of posts bring no interest to readers, anyone can develop a list of more than five links, but you chose not to spend the time doing so and it makes you look bad.
Devote Time to Your Blog
Devoting time to your blog is crucial to its success. Many shotgun bloggers find themselves trying to cram a quickie article in before they go to bed, usually because they neglected to write anything the rest of the day. Even if you work or attend school you should devote a minimum of an hour to writing every single day. If you give yourself an hour, you should have ample time to construct an article and respond to comments from the day before. Create a plan for your blog, give it some direction and things will naturally come easier as you move ahead. Many blogs that are not given enough time eventually sizzle and die and it is unfortunate because had the blogger worked a little harder and devoted a little more time, they would have had a potential for success.
Think of your blogs as children, they require attention, time and love to grow. You can’t just leave them off to the side or they will eventually get into trouble. You have to be passionate about taking care of your blogs or perhaps you should consider doing something else. Your writing needs time and shouldn’t be rushed, so create a schedule and go by that, your blog and readers will thank you. If you are unsure if blogging is right for you, take a look at Blogging 101, Introduction to Blogging, for a better understanding.
Written By: Sujan Patel On October 10th, 2007 | 2 Comments
These days there are a wealth of tools at our disposal for making money online through your blog. Yet with all of these options many bloggers tend to place their focus on Google’s Adsense program alone. Although this program is profitable for many people, diversity is the key factor to experiencing increased financial gain from your marketing efforts.
The old saying “Don’t place all of your eggs in one basket” reins true with this topic. Spreading your advertising across multiple channels allows your ads to appeal to a larger audience, therefor increasing your chances for that golden click or affiliate sale.
Just because your blog doesn’t receive several thousand visitors a day or have a high page rank, does not mean that you are locked into some third dimension filled with Adsense. There are other options out there that can and will work better for you. When seeking a new advertising strategy, keep an open mind and consider your topic of interest, you want to keep your advertising relevant to your niche. Below are some ideas for you to consider while in the market for a new advertising strategy.
1. Practically every market or niche has a product. This may be a book, merchandise or something physical that an interested consumer can purchase. These products make exceptional affiliate opportunities for you to market. Consider placing Amazon affiliate links at the bottom of a post rather than Adsense. Prominently display a list of your favorite books on the subject, directly in your sidebar. Affiliate sales often have considerably higher payouts than a pay-per-click form of advertising.
2. Advertise your interest in writing paid reviews for new products and other blogs in your niche. Setup a little “review me” button with a direct link to pay via PayPal. Allowing an advertiser the opportunity to pay immediately will often drive more sales on impulse alone. If you require them to first contact you and discuss the review, you will likely lose the sale. You can always refund them if the review is something you do not wish to cover.
3. Check out in-text advertising. Although this is highly debated form of advertising, some consider it intrusive. Many bloggers are realizing nice profits from this and remember you are keeping options open. One of the most popular companies providing this is Kontera, so they are a good place to start.
4. Selling text links on your blog is another great way to make some income. Many small blogs tend to sell one sponsored blogroll link for between $5 and $15 dollars per month. As your traffic increases you will have the ability to demand larger amounts for these placements.
Remember that above is only some of the options available to you. Get creative and find unique ways to monetize your blog. These days people have trained their eyes to avoid advertisements as advertising surrounds us each day. So you have to be on constant lookout for something different that may stand out enough to warrant a click or make a sale. Visit your competitors blogs and see what techniques they are using to make money. Ask others what has worked for them, some bloggers may be happy to share.
Written By: Sujan Patel On October 8th, 2007 | 1 Comment
What is Technorati?
Technorati is a search engine that functions in real-time. This means that when bloggers update their blogs Technorati automatically updates. Technorati currently tracks over 104 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media, such as video, news, movies, music and games.
How to Join Technorati
You can join Technorati and bookmark your favorite blogs and various social media items. Most members join because they are blog owners and they want to claim, or submit, their blog to Technorati. Wordpress users can choose to have Technorati pinged when they add a new entry, but some blogging platforms do not offer this feature. Members can go to Technorati and ping their own blogs, to update the search engine.
Technorati
Technorati monitors the links between blogs to determine the importance of a particular blog, photos, videos etc. Essentially, they are monitoring the entire blogging community and the discussions that result.
You can use Technorati’s search box to locate articles on virtually any subject and you can search this massive search engine to find blogs that will interest you.
What is MyBlogLog?
MyBlogLog is basically a social community for bloggers and those that read blogs. However, they do offer many benefits to their users.
The Benefits of Becoming a MyBlogLog Member
- When you join MyBlogLog you create a profile page that features your bio, your blog(s) and you can also feature your business (or personal) site as well.
- You can find other blogs that interest you and become part of their community.
- MyBlogLog is a great place to network for both business and personal reasons. When you network and join communities you are publicizing your blog and establishing an Internet presence.
- All bloggers know that they need readers and they will find them at MyBlogLog.
- Having a blogging community support you is extremely helpful and it is easy to create a community at MyBlogLog
- Free Stats- MyBlogLog offers free stats that tell you where readers came from, what they read and what links they clicked on. It is a great feature. You can pay for more in-depth statistics.
- Widgets- MyBlogLog lets you create a customized widget that will show which members of MyBlogLog have been to your blog. Reader’s avatars are featured and by clicking on the picture you are brought to their MyBlogLog profile. This is a great feature for networking and publicizing your blog.
- MyBlogLog picks up your RSS feed and it is available on the MyBlogLog web site for everyone that has joined your community.
- You can send private messages or a public message to all of the members in your community.
What is Blog Catalog?
Blog Catalog describes itself as “the social blog directory on the Internet”. If you want to promote your blog, network with other bloggers or find blogs on a particular subject you can do it all with Blog Catalog.vv You submit your blog for approval and the Blog Catalog Team will review your submission. If your blog is not approved they will tell you why and you can re-submit later. If you continue to network with other bloggers and members it will increase the success of your blog when it is approved.
Blog Catalog offers widgets that are essentially the same as MyBlogLog’s. You create a customized widget that will tell you which Blog Catalog members have visited your blog. Each avatar leads back to the member’s profile page. These widgets allow you to learn more about your readers and their blogs. They also allow your readers to learn about the members of Blog Catalog that have visited your site. Again, networking is very important and Blog Catalog makes it easy.
Other benefits include private messaging, the ability to post comments and your RSS feed is featured on your profile page.
Written By: Sujan Patel On October 1st, 2007 | 1 Comment
Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress v2 Final
This plugin will make an XML-sitemap for your WordPress Blog. Many describe an XML-sitemap as “a Google sitemap”, but Yahoo and MSN also want XML sitemaps. Once your sitemap is created you want to make sure to submit it to Google.
Features:
- This plugin is WordPress 2 compatible
- Has a user interface that allows you to customize all parameters like change frequencies, exclusions, priorities etc.
- Available in fourteen languages
- Generates a static XML file in your Blog directory (Filename is customizable)
- Can generate a gzipped version of the sitemap
- Generates a sitemap for homepage, posts, static pages, categories and archive pages
- Calculates a priority for each post, based on the number of comments, but this can be turned off
- The XML file is automatically rebuilt when you change, edit, create or publish a post
- The sitemap lets Google know about changes automatically via Google-Ping
- You can include external pages which aren’t generated by WordPress or are not recognized by this plugin. So, you can add the home page of your business and the search engines will know that your blog and your business site are linked.
- You can define a minimum post priority, which will override the calculated value if it’s too low
- The plugin includes a WordPress filter for other plugins
Visit ArneBrachHold.de to download.
All-in-One SEO Pack
The all-in-one SEO pack creates boxes that will allow you to create custom title-tags, keywords and a description for every post and page. You can also choose to let the plugin automatically generate these areas for you.
More importantly, this plugin can prevent the search engines from indexing categories, archives and more to prevent duplicate content. This is a “must have” plugin for optimization.
SEO Title Tag 2.0 RC2
The SEO Title Tag plugin allows you to easily create effective title-tags for every page and post on your blog. Title-tags are a crucial part of optimization. Every blog and/or web site needs optimized title-tags and this plugin allows you to personally create them.
Features
- Allows you to override the title-tag WordPress automatically makes for your pages and posts and replace them with a custom one.
- A Title Tag input box in the “Edit Post” and “Write Post” forms.
- Mass editing of title tags for all posts, static pages, category pages, tag pages, tag conjunction pages and archive by month pages.
- You can define a custom title tag for your home.
- You can define the title tag of 404 error pages.
- It can handle your internal search result pages.
- For users of the UltimateTagWarrior plugin (which should be everybody!), incorporates the tag name into the title tag on “tag pages”
- When you use this plugin with Ultimate Tag Warrior you can customize the title-tags on tag pages and on tag conjunction pages too.
Netconcepts.com provides the plugin.
Ultimate Tag Warrior
This plugin is not the easiest to use. There is even a support forum of it. The Ultimate Tag Plugin allows you to creatively use multiple tags and you can include them at the top and bottom of your posts. AJAXy search is included in the download. For a more in-depth explanation of this plugin please visit the Ultimate Tag Warrior.
SEO WordPress
The SEO WordPress Plugin was designed with search engine spiders in mind. The creator wanted to help bloggers avoid the supplemental index. A combination of Robots.txt and noindexis used. For more information visit UtheGuru.com.
Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin
This plugin uses a 301 redirect if a requested URL is different from an entry’s or archive’s permalink. This eliminates more than one URL being associated with a specific blog entry. Fucoder.com has more information and downloads.
Static Front Page
This plugin allows you to use a static page as the front/home page of your WordPress site. The blog becomes a blog page. Another bonus, your home page is removed from page lists and permalinks your blog’s URL to help avoid duplicate content. You can download the plugin and visit a forum for any help you need at Semilogic.com.
Search Meter Plugin
The Search Meter Plugin will help you keep track of what your visitors are searching for, if your blog features a search box. It keeps a record for you and breaks down the results by days, weeks or months. You will also be told how many searches were unsuccessful and you can feature the most popular searches for your readers. No configuration is necessary. Thunderguy.com features the plugin.
Akismet- Comment Spam Blocker
Akismet has a great reputation because it stops spam from appearing in your comments. Most of the time, the spam comments include many keywords and links to questionable sites. It is a great plugin that requires very little effort on your part and at the same time it eliminates a lot of frustration and comments that could hurt your blog, optimization wise. If you have a WordPress blog you need to download Akismet.
FeedSmith
This plugin redirects an ordinary feed from self-hosted WordPress blogs to a much more powerful FeedBurner feed. When you use the FeedBurner feed you are able to track your subscribers. Comment feeds and post feeds are both forwarded. Please visit FeedBurner for more information and facts from the creator, Steve Smith.
Written By: Sujan Patel On July 10th, 2007 | 9 Comments
“But dude, how can you make money with a blog? By the way, what’s a blog? Is that some kind of Internet thing? That sounds so stupid, it’ll never work!”
What you see above is a probably a common response from your friends and co-workers when you talk about the possibility of someday making enough money from your blog that you won’t have to report to the hellish cubicle you are enslaved in every day.
Sometimes it is hard to explain all the opportunities that a successful blogger can take advantage of to make a viable income from a blog. But when you start dropping numbers, the conversation quickly changes to “how can I do that”! As soon as you tell them about the people that are pulling in several thousand dollars per month from their blogs, then the ears start to perk. It’s so fun to see that. Money gets people listening and motivated, and fast!
The first thing they ask after you go over the very basics is, “how much does it cost to start a blog?”, and, “is it hard to maintain?”
Your answers to those questions should be:
1. Little to no cost.
2. Not if you’re passionate about your niche.
It’s best to mention Blogger and Wordpress as their starting points, as they are both very user friendly and there are tons of tutorials and help forums for each platform. So after you get done explaining the “getting a blog started” part, and then prepare for the next barrage of questions which are the most exciting - the ones where they ask you how they can actually make money online with a blog.
Right off the bat, I refer them to the “A-Lister” blogs, which can be very motivating. The best thing to tell them to do whenever they have time, is to research the heck out of the popular blogs, to get a feel for what people want. There is so much valuable information on these blogs, that it’ll keep them busy for a few days. They’ll soon learn to appreciate the hard work, passion, and dedication it will take to make money with their blogs.
After they have their blog up and running, the first thing you should recommend is for them to create some quality posts and content (pillar articles) to sort of “jump start” the blog, and then sign up for a Google Adsense account. A good thing to explain to them is how Google Adsense is an easy entry into the advertising revenue world, and signing up can be done pretty easily in less than five minutes. As most of you know, Google Adsense is one of the most common ways to monetize a website or a blog.
One disclaimer you should always throw at them is that “this is not a get rich quick scheme”. You have to be passionate about your writing, and the only way to become successful and gain more traffic is to write creative, informative, interesting and unique writing. Without that, a blog is nothing. They might earn a few bucks here and there, but it won’t even be enough to buy that Mocha Latte that they get every morning at the coffee stand. If they have a decent amount of quality posts that people want to read - rinse and repeat for months on end, then someday they might be lucky enough to brag about their earnings. Making a steady income from their blog won’t happen overnight. It’s taken most successful bloggers at least a year to start bragging about anything. Once they hit that mark, and then once they hit their goals, then its time to push for more!
But it’s not easy. And it takes dedicated, hard work to get the ball rolling. You need to tell them that they’ll need to make a commitment to deliver on promises to their readers every day. Let them know that they’ll need to keep writing until they think it’s a hit, and then drive some more or they’ll quickly fall behind. Research and networking are highly important and should be part of the daily routine. The more people they know the better off they will be! Having quality backlinks from high ranking blogs and websites is one of the key aspects to their traffic and visitor success. Start small and set goals. Tell them to think of it as a game – after each success, pretend that you move to the next level. Then do it again, and again, and again….
Written By: Sujan Patel On June 21st, 2007 | 19 Comments
So you’ve been invited to be a guest blogger on someone else’s blog? Congratulations! Guest Blogging can be a great way to gain exposure, sell yourself, network, and could get you invitations to be a guest blogger on even more blogs. Heck, some writers out there live off of guest blogging alone. To be a successful guest blogger, there are a few things that you need to bring to the table every time, and the tips listed below will give you a great head start. So before you attempt to write your first guest blogging article, check out the advice below to see if all of your bases are covered.
1. Demographics and research. Before you attempt to write for someone else, you need to find out as much about their blog as you possibly can. It’s very important to know who you’re writing for, and what range of topics you can write about. The last thing you want to do as a guest blogger is write something totally irrelevant to the blogs readership and turn people away. Go through their last fifty or so posts, and see which ones were the most popular and widely read. Be unique and write in your own voice, but don’t try and reinvent the wheel. The last thing that the blog owner wants to do is apologize to readers for off topic posts that were written in his or her absence. A good couple of hours of research should do just fine.
2. Stick to your commitment. If you were hired or invited to guest blog while the author of the blog is away for a few days or more, and he/she wants you to write at least three posts per day, then you’d better do it! Put yourself in their shoes. If you were going away and had someone lined up to post three times per day and they didn’t follow the schedule, then you would have a giant mess to clean up when you came back. If you don’t think you can commit to something like this, then you need to politely tell them up front so that they can alter their strategy before they leave. When you guest blog for someone, you are selling your reputation and the blog owner’s reputation at the same time, so you need to bring your “A-game” in every post, and follow the rules to a “T”. Commitment and reliability is half the battle.
3. Readers come first! Sure, guest blogging can be a great way to expose yourself to a brand new audience, but you have to remember that the blogs readers come first in every situation! Don’t plug your latest invention/project/marketing scheme…just write good, helpful content that pertains to the audience at hand. Again, the last thing you want to do is make even one of their loyal readers mad enough to unsubscribe. Being a good guest blogger can bring many benefits to you, the blog owner, and the readers, so when you’re done guest blogging, try to make sure that when you’re done blogging that the blog is in better shape then when you found it. Make a good impression, and you’ll surely be invited to do it again, and possibly for other blogs that see your professionalism.
4. Don’t forget your own blog! While you’re putting all of the monumental effort into creating great guest posts, it behooves you to make an even bigger effort to maintain your own blog. You see, while you are on a guest blogging assignment, you will naturally attract new readers to your own blog from the blog owner’s reader pool. So when those new readers are curious enough to check out your home blog, you want to make sure that it’s up-to-date and ready to read. Since part of the guest blogging experience is selling yourself, the last thing you want to do is turn away any new readers/subscribers that you might gain over the course of your guest blogging experience. Put out some grade A content on your own blog while you’re guest blogging, and that way you’ll keep the new readers interested and coming back. Remember, be creative but be yourself. Don’t try to be someone your not, because new and old readers will see right through it, every time.
Guest blogging can be a great experience for everyone involved. Following the above tips and advice will ensure that you don’t blow it! Remember, first impressions are everything, and if you bring all of your skills and talent to the table while you guest blog, then you’ll reap the rewards for a long time to come.
Written By: Sujan Patel On June 14th, 2007 | 10 Comments
I’m sure you’ve noticed lately that there have been a lot of new blogs popping up in “making money online” niche. The great thing about this is that there are quite a few of these that have some potential. There are many future “A-Listers” in the making and one of the more important aspects of how much money they will make down the road (after gaining readership and traffic) is obtaining a decent Google PageRank and maintaining it.
The last PageRank update was in April. The experts say that a PageRank update takes place, on average, every three months. That’s perfect for the younger breed of bloggers out there because there is still a decent amount of time to prepare for the next update and at least gain some PR out of it. Below you’ll read about five ways that you can boost your PageRank starting today!
1. Look for a list of DoFollow blogs – Basically, blogs that have the DoFollow (sometimes called NoNoFolllow) plugin mean that you can leave a comment on one of those blogs that are on the list and Google counts it as a link to your site. Two important things to remember here:
a. When leaving a comment on a DoFollow blog, make sure it’s sincere! No one wants junky, generic comments just so you can snatch up a link. Keep in mind that a lot of the time the crap comments are moderated out, so don’t waste your time with comments like, “nice post”, or “cool blog”. Spend some time submitting a great comment and not only will the author appreciate it; but you might even get some extra traffic from it!
b. When you’re ready to leave a comment, put one of your main keywords in the “name” field. This isn’t necessary, but it sure as heck won’t hurt your keyword rankings if you are going after a certain one to garner more “organic” traffic from it. For example, if I own a blog about SEO, then when I leave a comment on a DoFollow blog, I would put something like “SEO Tips” in the “name” field. Overall, these extra links that you pick up from leaving a comment will help you with many different things (Technorati, Google, more traffic, etc…)
To find a list of DoFollow blogs, the easiest way is to Google it. There are many great lists of these maintained out there, so you won’t have any trouble finding one pretty quickly.
2. Get links from power players in your niche - This is a very important aspect of gaining PageRank. You see, when Google crawls for ranking purposes and they see a link from a PR6 site coming in to your site, it will score you more points. It can do wonders for your search engine rankings. There are a few ways to obtain these big time links.
The easiest way is to pay for them. On most of the “A-Listers” blogs you can buy link on their site for a monthly fee through a link broker such as AdVolcano, Text-Link-Ads, or even a private sale. Purchasing a link is not always an option though, as they can be very expensive for a highly popular site. No worries though.
You see, a lot of these “big player” blogs/sites have a review exchange or something similar going on, which usually involves you writing a review of their blog/website, and then they will link to it from their site using the anchor text of your choice. For about ten to fifteen minutes of your time, you can write a review and get a very nice link back to your own blog for free. Start doing reviewing these, because it’s well worth it.
Last but not least, there is one more way to get linkbacks from these big sites/blogs. It’s free and only involves your creativity. Can you guess what it is? Content! Write a fantastic article and there is a good chance that it will get picked up in one of their “speed-linking” sessions or if you’re lucky they might even write a post about your article. This can bring you quite a bit of traffic and it will also do wonders for your future PageRank. That leads me to my next point…
3. Content, content, content - Without good content, a blog is doomed to fail. Google loves unique content and will index it rather quickly, especially if it contains strong keywords and an original perspective. This is a strategy that will help you over the entire life of your blog. The more content that you put out equals the more times Google will find it and index it - and in turn you’ll get more links, traffic, and readership. If your stuff is good enough and ranks high in the search rankings then you’ll surely garner some good PageRank out of it several different ways over. So keep those articles coming, they all help!
4. Directory submissions - This can have a tremendous effect on your Google PageRank score as Google recognizes a lot of directories as “expert” or “authority” sites. So getting an inbound link from them is huge! There are a few ways you can go about doing this. There is a website out there called Add URL.nu which lists 945 directories that you can submit to, which is pretty handy tool to have around. Another option to make the process a little faster (believe me, it’s very boring and tedious submitting to directories) is by downloading a free program called Directory Submitter Standard. This free program is a miracle. It speeds up the tedious process of submitting by quite a bit. You can submit to five directories using Directory submitter in the time that it takes to manually submit to one. Again, gaining inbound links from directories will score you big points when the next PR update comes around.
5. Article marketing - Article marketing is an often forgotten way to build quality backlinks. As you can see from the above four entries, link building and link popularity are key to landing you a great Google PageRank. Basically, article marketing can gain you tons of exposure in the writing world, and you even have the possibility (if the article is good enough) of gaining hundreds or even thousands of incoming links from relevant sites/blogs after they pick up your article. There are literally hundreds of article marketing websites out there, so with a couple of quick Google searches on the subject, you’ll easily be able to find one that suits your needs.
Hopefully some of these strategies aid you in your quest to obtain a decent Google PageRank when the next update comes around. Start doing all of the above steps and you’ll surely nail down a great PageRank out of the deal. The best part about the above mentioned steps is that not only will you gain PageRank, but you’ll also receive extra traffic and readers, short-term and long-term. Combining all of these strategies is a sure way to grow your blog in many different, yet important ways. When it all boils down, PageRank equals money!
Written By: Sujan Patel On June 11th, 2007 | 18 Comments
There seems to be a large number of new bloggers who are realizing that Wordpress is the blogging platform of choice for nearly every successful blogger out there and in turn are making the switch from the free blogging sites to a self-hosted Wordpress blog. Good move! As a matter of fact, it’s probably one of the best decisions you can make as a young blogger, especially if you ever plan on monetizing your blog.
Due to this increase in new Wordpress users, I’ve decided to compile a list of ten must-have Wordpress plugins. Even some of the veteran bloggers might pick up a few ideas from this list.
1. Sidebar Widget – Easily the most useful plugin for Wordpress. This plugin allows you to change and customize the way your sidebar looks without editing the PHP files, which can be very complex and complicated for the new blogger. This has a striking similarity to the “Blogger” way of changing your sidebars in the template layout section, so all of those that had a Blogger blog will feel very comfortable with this one. One disclaimer comes with this one – you must be using a “widget compatible” theme in order to use this plugin. I highly suggest using a widget compatible theme anyway, but especially for this. Download Sidebar Widget
2. Google Sitemap Generator – This plugin is a very important one to have enabled on your blog. If you ever plan on having Google indexing your blog in an efficient, steady pace, then you need to have this plugin! It automatically creates a new sitemap for Google every time you add, edit, or create new content on your blog. This will get your site indexed a lot faster and again, it’s definitely a must have. Submit your sitemap to Google. Download the Google Sitemap Generator plugin.
3. Wordpress Database Plugin – This built in plugin that comes with Wordpress could possibly be a blog-saving miracle! Often, when new and veteran bloggers tweak and tinker with their files, something might happen that hoses your entire blog, and if you don’t have a backup file ready to upload, you’ll be out of a ton of lost time. If you need to, download a copy of Wordpress Database Plugin.
4. Sociable Plugin – This one is highly recommended. These days, social networking and bookmarking sites can account for a great deal of your daily visitor count. Whenever you write a great article, it’s in your best interest to share, bookmark, digg, stumble, or plug it to the world! The only catch is that when someone reads a great article of yours, you want to make it easy for them to do this. That’s where sociable comes into play. With the Sociable plugin, you can make it very easy for the reader to submit your story with the click of a button. It appears at the end of each post, and you can customize the heck out of it in your options screen. It’s my personal opinion that this plugin is a must-have. Download the Sociable Plugin.
5. Adsense Deluxe – For any bloggers who use Adsense (most do) to monetize your blog, then this plugin is one that will help insert Adsense or YPN (Yahoo publisher network) ads into your posts. If you don’t already know, having an ad inside your post is one of the best placements, conversion wise that you can implement. This plugin manages basic and advanced options for inserting these ads into your posts. I couldn’t do without it, as it makes managing Adsense so much easier. Download Adsense Deluxe.
6. Related Posts – For an easy way to keep those old post pages alive, you should really consider downloading the Related Posts plugin. This plugin will find other blog posts that are related to the current one and add links to the related posts underneath the current post that the reader is viewing. At the end of the article, if the reader enjoyed it, they can click one of these related post links and it gives them the chance to read similar ideas and writing. This will generate extra page views, as well as open up the door for more backlinks to old posts to keep them alive in the search engine rankings. A must-have for sure. Download Related Posts
7. Popularity Contest – Looking for a way to guide readers in the right direction as far as what the most popular posts are to read? Then you need the Popularity Contest plugin right away! By tracking page views, feed views, comments, and trackbacks, Popularity Contest assigns each post a rating based off of your most popular post. After a post has a rating, you can display the popularity in a number of different ways. You can put the percent popularity in each post, display your top X posts somewhere on your site, or just keep the statistics to yourself by viewing the popularity page which is added to your WordPress administration interface. Very easy to customize, and very handy to have. Download Popularity Contest.
8. Wordpress Contact Form With Spam Protection – Every blog should have a way for readers to contact them directly. Having a “Contact Me” page is very important and without one you could be missing out on a lot of opportunities that could arise throughout the life of your blog. This contact form is especially nice as it comes with spam protection, which is running rampant through the internet these days. I highly recommend this one for many different reasons. Download the Contact Form Plugin.
9. Akismet – Speaking of spam, even if you’re blog has been alive for merely a couple of weeks; comment spam can really start to pile up. Without a good spam protection plugin, you’ll be spending more time bulk moderating comments than you will writing articles! Have you ever wondered what that plugin called Akismet is that comes installed with your Wordpress theme? It’s only the best spam protection in the world! I highly suggest you enable this plugin sooner than later, as it will save you a ton of headaches down the line. If for some reason you don’t have it, or accidentally deleted it, you can download Akismet.
10. Subscribe to Comments – There are a lot of times that your readers will leave a comment and they want to track all the responses to it. However, they might also being trying to track the status of their comments on several other blogs at the same time, so it’s important that you give them the easy option of subscribing to comments! This plugin simply installs a checkbox that a commenter can “check” to subscribe to everyone’s comments for a particular post. This makes it easy for them to check back on a regular basis, and also it keeps them coming back to your blog, which we all know is very important. One evil option that is available is the ability to have the box checked by default…use at your own discretion! Download Subscribe to Comments Plugin.
In conclusion, there are dozens of other great plugins out there that are available, but these will get you going in the right direction. Whether you’re looking to monetize, organize, or super-size your blog, the plugins above will definitely help you in your quest to do so.
Written By: Sujan Patel On June 6th, 2007 | 4 Comments
What is a Blog?
A Blog is an abbreviation of the term Weblog. A Weblog is a website that is a chronological order of information provided by the author, similar to an online diary. The most recent posts are at the top of the page. Blogs can range from covering someone’s personal life to highlighting a business’s new products or services. Blogs are interactive as readers can post their comments and feedback relating to the blog entry. At the time of this post, technorati.com is reporting over 70,000,000 blogs.
Where to Blog?
There are many different blog service providers. The most popular include: blogger.com, wordpress.com and typepad.com. Most blog services are free or have a minimal monthly charge. It is best to visit a few providers to see which one best fits your needs as some of them are more flexible with designs, editing HTML and adding widgets.
What should you Blog about?
The first question you need to as yourself is - what is your purpose for starting a blog? Do you want to sell a product or service, promote your expertise, build a community around your passion, broadcast news to the world, or keep your family and friends up-do-date on your activities? Most blogs fall into the following categories: personal, organizational or business. Personal blogs are basically online diaries. Organizational blogs facilitate communication with internal and external readers. Business blogs promote products or services for profit.
Do I need to know and computer programming language?
You don’t need a computer science degree or any programming knowledge to start a blog. Most blog service providers provide point and click updating with editors similar to a word processing program. You can start a blog in about 5 minutes, it’s that easy.
Start Blogging and Keep It Updated
For every blog that gets started there is one that has not been updated for months. If you are going to start a blog and attract readership, then you will need to keep your blog updated. Most blogs are updated at least once a week, while others are updated many times a day. Write and post regularly so your blog doesn’t get stale. Beware, blogging is addictive.
Good luck and have fun blogging!
Update: If you choose to use wordpress here is a quick start guide to hosting and installation with wordpress
Written By: Sujan Patel On June 5th, 2007 | 3 Comments
So why should you hold a contest or competition on your blog? For many reasons, my friend! Holding a great contest on your blog can bring you several benefits that you might not have otherwise received. These benefits can include, but are not limited to: building up links, extra traffic, stirring up buzz about you and your blog, gaining loyal readership, and making your blog more “sticky”. These benefits work with each other and actually have a “domino effect” if executed correctly. Let’s talk about the potential benefits below.
If you work it right, the links will come in like crazy! One of the key aspects of holding some type of contest on your blog is to list the requirements and/or rules in an organized manner that will be easy for the reader to follow. Since most contests will be unique, I can’t tell you an exact set of rules to use, but I can suggest one that will highly benefit you in the short-term and long-term life of your blog. You see, in order to help accomplish the other benefits above, you need to establish in the “rules” section that in order to have a valid entry, the entrant must write a quick post about your contest and link to your contest announcement post. Make it a rule, and if your contest is popular enough, get ready for a flood of incoming links! It works great and I suggest this rule be in every contest that you create from now until the end of time. The extra links will help with traffic, link popularity, and gaining more exposure.
Speaking of traffic – the success of your contest will depend on the extra traffic to your blog from the launch of the contest all the way until the end. To begin the process of receiving extra traffic, you need to “jump start” it yourself. By this I mean you need to start talking to all of the friends in your blogging “circle”, literally “pimp” your contest on all of the social networking sites, bookmark them on the social bookmarking sites, and then if it’s relevant to the topic – leave comments on other blogs that mention your contest. Once you’ve taken a day to do all of this, do it one more time! Assuming you really busted your butt promoting and if your contest is offering a decent prize, then watch your stats because they’ll start climbing pretty quick!
What I just described above is also related to stirring up buzz about you and your blog. I’m talking about two different kinds of “buzz” – long-term and short-term buzz. The short-term buzz will start to stir during the beginning of the contest and will last throughout the end. This is good to have and might make a few people remember you, which is always nice. However, the best buzz is the long-term type, and to be honest, the best way to get this kind of buzz is to make the contest really worthwhile to the reader. I’m talking about a big prize! What constitutes a big prize? From what I’ve seen in the past, and the ones I remember best are the prizes worth $200+. This may seem like a lot to some people, but in the long run, it’s the cheapest way you’ll ever promote your blog. Ever. If you blog about gaming, then give away an Xbox 360 or something similar. If you can afford to swing this, then it could be one of the most strategic moves you’ll ever make to gain readers, traffic, and long-term buzz, and keep them. If you really want to have some fun with it, then give away something big, buy some reviews on a couple “A-lister” blogs and have them talk about the contest, and then set up a Google Adwords campaign to promote it. You won’t be able to fathom the amount of buzz and traffic you’ll create. The best part is – you’ll have a blast doing it!
Perhaps one of the most important rewards for you that come out of a successful contest will be the loyal readers you gain afterwards. Let’s be honest, some of them may just stick around in hopes that you’ll have another contest, but you’ll also have plenty that stick around to read what you have to say on a daily basis. This is worth more than any of the other benefits in my opinion. To have someone load your page several times a day and/or subscribe to your feed, then you’re definitely on the right track to blogging success. These loyal readers will interact more and engage your community because they feel a sense of ownership of your blog after entering the contest. That is one of the key aspects that will make your blog more “sticky”. If you want your blog to be the first one loaded in the reader’s browser in the morning when they wake up, then you’ll need a sticky element to your blog in order for that to happen. Have a largely successful contest is an important way of creating the “sticky effect” that will sustain your readership from now until the end of your blogging career.
One more important thing to remember about your contest is its length of time. This can be the downfall of your contest if it’s not timed right. Typically you don’t want to drag the contest on and on because that will make your readers tired of it and they may lose interest. On the other hand, you don’t want it to fall short because it may not give the contest enough time to create the buzz effect and could limit the amount of overall entries you receive. From what I’ve seen in the past, the average contest will last 1-2 weeks. There are exceptions of course, but for less trafficky blogs I would go with 2 weeks. This gives plenty of time to promote the contest and get the word out. More popular blogs who already have a high readership and who can generate buzz quickly should stick to around the 1 week mark.
Again, holding a successful contest on your blog can provide the benefits and life-force that your blog will need to sustain itself for the long haul. Not only will it do that, but it will also lighten up the atmosphere, turn casual readers into loyal readers, and most importantly it will make visiting your blog fun! Once your blog reaches a point to where people are excited to check it every day, then you’re well on your way to blogging success.
