HOW TO EARN MONEY AS A BLOGGER?

When I started my blog a little over a year ago, I didn’t really know that it wasincome. Since I was absolutely clueless about all of this when I first started, I thought it might be helpful for you all if I shared some of the ways I’ve found for how to earn money as a blogger.

possible to earn any kind of dough from running a website. I’d heard of bloggers, of course, but they might as well have been mythical creatures of the new millennium. I didn’t know any steadfast bloggers, and certainly none that were making cash from their hobby. But as I began to dip my toes deep into Blogland, I realized that the possibilities were nearly limitless. With hard work and some research, I knew that blogging was a gateway and tool to reach many other things. One of those things simply being,

AD NETWORKS / CONTENT MARKETING

Ad networks are kind of like the middle men. They work with brands and companies to create ad campaigns and sponsorships with bloggers. There are various types of collaborations that they facilitate, from sidebar ads to sponsored posts . If you’ve ever seen a sponsored post on a blog, it was likely the product of a collaboration with an ad network (though, not always). Below are some of the most popular (and in my experience, best) ad networks for bloggers. The first three are the ones I’ve had the most success with.

1. Tap Influence
2. Pollinate Media
3. Clever Girls Collective
4. Massive Sway
5. Lijit / Google Adsense / Yahoo Bing Network
6. Blogher (I have been on their waiting list for like, a year. Seems difficult to get into this one!).

AFFILIATE MARKETING

Affiliate marketing is a little bit different, but easier to explain. Basically, you can sign up to be an “affiliate” with different companies — meaning that when you share about that company on your website, and someone goes to that company’s site and buys things, you will earn a commission. There are thousands of affiliate programs out there. Seriously, tons. If you’re curious, sites will usually have a link at the very bottom of their webpage that says “affiliates,” which explains how to sign up for their program. However, there are “affiliate networks,” like Share-A-Sale, where you can easily browse through and search for your favorite brands and apply for their programs. Usually, you’d sign up to be an affiliate if you like the brand already. It’s kind of like, if you’re going to talk about a product on your blog, you might as well earn a commission for marketing that company’s product to your audience. I find affiliate marketing to be easier if your blog has a clear niche or focus. I imagine fashion bloggers could earn decent commissions because they have the chance to link their clothing using affiliate links. My blog? Not as much. But I still use them from time to time if there’s a product I want to share. Bottom line, if you like something, why not become an affiliate? Here are a few popular affiliate networks:

1. Share-A-Sale
2. VigLink
3. Commission Junction
4. Amazon

SIDEBAR ADS / SPONSORS

Sidebar ads are just that — ads you see on the side of a site. Though, they can also appear elsewhere, like at the top or bottom of a page. Basically, you earn money when someone buys a little piece of web space on your blog. I have a some on the right side of my page — see ’em? Sponsorships, as they’re often called, can also include other things — like a tweet about your sponsor’s site to your Twitter followers, for example. I use Passionfruit Ads to handle my sponsorships and have never used anything else. There’s a small, yearly fee to use their service, but I personally think it’s well worth it. I’ve been running sponsors on my blog for almost a year now and have really enjoyed the experience, as it’s not only made me an increasing amount of income, but also connects me to tons of other bloggers each month.

BRANCHING OUT

Personally, I think that the most lucrative way to earn money from your blog is to use your blog as a marketing tool and stepping stone, rather than the whole shebang. Branching out also helps you to grow your blog in general, because it increases your presence around the web (and the world). So, what do I mean by “branching out”? Here are some examples of how you could use your blog to gain income and create more followers:

1. Sell e-books.
2. Sell e-courses.
3. Create a membership group (like this one or this one) that people can pay to join and subscribe to.
4. Teach live workshops.
5. Speak at events, such as blogging conferences.
6. Create a digital business that can be promoted through your blog. For example, many of my graphic design clients are people who have found me through my blog. Other ideas are to create an Etsy shop or be a social media guru.

FINAL THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW TO EARN MONEY BLOGGING

1. Don’t expect it to come quickly. I have worked pretty tirelessly on my blog and genuinely love blogging, but realistically, only make 20-25% of my income from blogging (13 months later). It takes time and an awful lot of work. Don’t feel bad if it takes a year or two to start seeing any momentum.
2. I don’t know many bloggers who earn money from their blog alone. By that, I’m referencing mainly to my previous point about thinking bigger than your blog. Most bloggers don’t earn a living just from selling sidebar ads and writing one post everyday. A Beautiful Mess sells books and e-courses. Designlovefest teaches Blogshop, a popular Photoshop workshop for bloggers. Oh Joy! just created a line of products for Target. These are some of the biggest bloggers I know of, yet they are constantly innovating and thinking of new ways to use their blog as a creative starting point and marketing tool. Be an innovator. Branch out.

I know this is a lot of information and I hope it doesn’t overwhelm you! Basically, there are a LOT of ways to earn money from your blog, if that’s something you want to do. Be creative and think of new ways to build on what you’re already doing or interested in. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments!  Do you earn money from your blog? What have been your best strategies?

Read More

Examples of Custom WordPress Themes

To give you a sense of all the different kinds of blog themes that are possible, we have hand-selected five of the top blogs from the Internet and are now showcasing their respective themes. As far as we can tell, all five of these sites make use of custom themes and while they may or may not all be powered by WordPress, such layouts and styles are achievable using a WordPress framework.

MEGATechNews: Focused on Reviews

As a technology site, MEGATechNews is inherently catering to people who are perhaps more tech-savvy than the average consumer. These are people who want to know about all the latest news and happenings in the technology world, but they also want comprehensive reviews of these products to help with their purchasing decisions.

For this site, the design allows for a series of featured articles to scroll near the top of the content area, but there are six substantial boxes located beneath that area to highlight the “MegaTech Reviews.” These are the product reviews that serve as the focal point for the site. Below that, readers can look for the latest news and find the latest videos in the sidebar. The theme has also been optimized for advertising, since it is a commercial property with a goal of turning a profit.

The theme is relatively “clean”, but it is robust enough to offer a range of content and enough advertising opportunity as a revenue source.

John Chow dot Com: Two Themes, One Blog

John Chow is perhaps best known online as the “dot com mogul” who makes money online. He has made a name for himself not only as a professional blogger, but also as an affiliate marketer and Internet entrepreneur. He also has two different sets of audiences to consider and that’s why he fundamentally has two themes within the same blog.

On the main John Chow dot Com site, you find a magazine style layout where John is able to show featured articles near the top. Perhaps just as importantly is the slot below that for his “Dot Com Lifestyle” video. This main site caters primarily to people who are new to John’s site and this gives them the best overview of what they can expect from his blog.

If you go to JohnChow.com/blog, however, you’ll find a much more standard reverse chronological configuration for his site. The header, sidebar, and footer areas stay the same, but the style for the content area is more standard. That’s because the “blog” subsection caters more to regular readers and people who are already familiar with Chow and what he does. They don’t need the “overview” or “introduction” that the magazine style aims to achieve.

XKCD: Simplicity of a Webcomic

XKCD is a popular webcomic that is said to offer “romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” Its aesthetic style is very simple, as the webcomic itself only involves stick figures and speech bubbles. Thsi simplistic style lends itself to a simplistic site layout as well.

The main site for XKCD is single column and displays today’s webcomic. Above and below the webcomic are links for navigating to previous, next, and random webcomics found in the XKCD archives. This simplified interface is perfect for a webcomic that is itself quite simplified. XKCD also has a blog (“blag”), but they are only using the default theme for WordPress. Once again, this speaks to the simplicity that the author is trying to portray for his webcomic.

Joystiq: Consoles, Media, and Networks

A part of the Weblogs, Inc. network owned by AOL, Joystiq aims to combine several key elements into a single blog theme. Since it is a blog that is dedicated to video games, the theme includes a series of icons next to the main logo that indicate each of the major video game consoles.

This is important, because someone who owns an Xbox 360 may not necessarily be interested in news and rumors surrounding products for the PlayStation 3. The site is also highly optimized for advertising and multimedia, both of which are integral to its overall success. The main content takes on a largely conventional reverse chronological design, but the footer lends itself to promoting other blogs in the Weblogs, Inc. network, including Engadget, Autoblog, and Urlesque.

You’ll also notice that the choice of fonts, color scheme, and other features lends itself to a great deal of branding on the Joystiq site. This is important, because the blog needs to set itself apart from the countless other blogs that also write about the video game industry.

Huffington Post: The Internet Newspaper

Calling itself “The Internet Newspaper,” the Huffington Post is essentially “just a blog,” but it has the same kind of stature, reach, and respectability of a conventional newspaper. It presents itself with this same level of professionalism and polish, borrowing elements from some of its larger, corporate counterparts.

The main page for the Huffington Post, for example, features one very large image toward the top of the page, just below the navigational links for different cities and site sections. This is not unlike the front page story that you might find on a newspaper, clearly featured above the fold and designed to draw you deeper into the newspaper. It’s meant to be a selling point and the one that catches your eye before anything else.

Every blog post in the left-most column before this clearly has its “section” highlighted too, just as you would find in the different sections of a conventional newspaper, whether it be world, entertainment, or business. The other two columns are more image-heavy, as multimedia is much more important in the Internet-based arena. The site reads like a newspaper, but for the modern age.

Completely Different Designs for Completely Different Sites

Every blog is different and every blog should be different. If you want to give your blog the best possible chance for success, you really do want to invest in a custom blog theme that best suits your type of content, the “brand” that you want to portray, and the preferences you have that would provide for the best experience given your target audience. These five examples are a good launching point for you to ponder these considerations.

Read More

Best WordPress Plugins for Social Media Exposure

In the previous article, we touched on the importance of social media and how the “Share and Follow” WordPress plugin is very useful in this regard. Not surprisingly, it is far from being the only option when it comes to integrating your blog with the various social networking channels that are out there on the Internet.
The world wide web, as it were, is more connected and more social than ever. That’s why it is positively essential that you make good use of the right WordPress plugins to drive social media traffic toward your blog. More and more people are spending large amounts of time on sites like Twitter and Facebook, so it’s important that you reach out these audiences in whatever way you can. This can help the growth of your blog greatly, as well as develop an increasingly large group of loyal readers.
So, what plugins should you consider? Here are a few that are definitely worth noting and, yes, all of them are free to download, install, and use.

• Twitter Tools: This plugin creates complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. This works both ways. The plugin can pull the tweets that you send out and create new blog posts, but it can also send out Twitter updates each time that you publish a new post too.
• Wickett Twitter Widget: This plugin will display the latest tweets from your Twitter account as a customizable widget on your blog’s sidebar (or anywhere else you use widgets). You can customize the number of tweets displayed, filter out @replies, and more.
• Tweet This: Want to make it easier for your readers to share your blog posts with their Twitter followers? This plugin will insert a “Tweet This” button in your blog posts, making the sharing process as simple as clicking a single button. This can also be used to tweet out new posts on your own account, using your choice of URL shortening services like bit.ly, su.pr, and TinyURL.
• Facebook Connect: Facebook has millions of users, so how can you get them onto your blog? This plugin checks to see if the person already has a WP profile that corresponds with their Facebook email address. From there, they’re able to connect to your blog with their own account. This plugin also includes a sidebar widget.
• Facebook CommentsTNG: On the one hand, you want to encourage people to interact with your Facebook fan page, but you also want to capture that content for your own blog. This plugin will automatically pull the comments from your imported Facebook notes back into your blog.
• Share Post: In addition to allowing your readers to quickly and easily share your blog post on their social media accounts, this plugin can offer a real-time count of the Facebook likes, Twitter tweets, and Diggs associated with that post. People like to follow other people, so proudly displaying high “like” and “tweet” counts can be very advantageous.
• Smart YouTube: You may have noticed that when you try to embed a YouTube video in your blog posts that, while they show up fine on your site, they do not appear in your RSS feed. This WordPress plugin fixes that problem. This is partly because it uses xHTML valid code, allows for full-screen viewing, and is iPhone compatible.

Read more at http://wpwidgets.net/best-wordpress-plugins-for-social-media-exposure/#rvlILezEOQzIDJDm.99

Read More

Top 10 Free WordPress Plugins

With literally thousands of different WordPress plugins out there to consider, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of choice. You now recognize the value that these plugins can add to your blog, but which ones should you use?
Just looking at the tip of the iceberg, we have narrowed down the list to ten of the best free WordPress plugins. They’re quite varied in what they have to offer, really demonstrating what is possible with just a simple installation or two.
1. Akismet
One thing that you’ll quickly discover about running a blog is that the comment section can become very prone to spam. One of the most popular and most powerful tools to combat blog comment spam is Akismet. They maintain a database of spammers and keep those non-comments off your blog.
2. All in One SEO Pack
If you value search engine optimization but want to save a substantial amount of time to dedicate to it, the All in One SEO Pack is a great plugin for WordPress. Even if you consider yourself a search engine optimization expert, this plugin can help greatly with inserting the right meta keywords, defining your home description, adjusting the post title format, and so much more.
3. Contact Form 7
It’s important that you make yourself available to your readers. One way to do this is with the Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin. It creates a contact form on your blog, complete with a skill-testing, spam-preventing question. There are many other contact form plugins out there, most of which are free, so feel free to try another if you find that this version isn’t your cup of tea.
4. Datafeedr Random Ads V2
A common phenomenon on the Internet is something called “ad blindness.” If a visitor sees the same ad in the same spot every time, he will eventually become “blind” to it. You can minimize this effect with the Datafeedr Random Ads V2 plugin, which lets you randomize through a series of ads in the same slot on your site. This should help to increase clicks and revenue.
5. Show Top Commentators
Want to encourage more comments on your blog? The Show Top Commentators plugin allows you to show the people who have posted the most comments within a defined time period through a simple sidebar widget. This way, the people who are contributing most to your online community are rewarded for their efforts with “dofollow” links.
6. WP Super Cache
Speed has a lot to do with the user experience and that’s why WP Super Cache is so useful. It is able to convert the dynamic content of a WordPress blog into static HTML files. This helps to reduce the load on your webserver, but perhaps more importantly, it speeds up the page loading time. This means that people are able to access your blog content more quickly.
7. WordPress Database Backup
Just as you should be backing up your personal files on your computer, the same can be said about your WordPress blog. You never know when something can go wrong. With WordPress Database Backup, you can have a full backup of your database emailed to you on a regular basis. This way, should something go awry, you can “relaunch” your blog very easily.
8. WPtouch
More and more people are accessing the Internet from their smartphones. What WPtouch does is offer a more mobile-friendly version of your blog when it detects that someone is reading from an iPhone (or other supported mobile devices). This is a very important moving forward, as mobile users might not want to wait for the “full” site to load.
9. Flickr Photo Album
There are at least two reasons why you may want to consider the Flickr Photo Album plugin. First, it allows you to store all of your blog’s images on Flickr. This lessens the load on your own web host and saves you a great deal of storage space. Second, it allows you to access all of your Flickr-stored images from directly inside WordPress. No need to copy-and-paste that messy HTML code.
10. Share and Follow
Social media is becoming increasingly important in today’s Internet. The Share and Follow plugin is very robust and easy to use, connecting to Facebook, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and more, making it easy for readers to share your blog content with their friends and followers.

Read More

What are WordPress Plugins and How Do They Work?

The concept of WordPress plugins was briefly discussed in an earlier article in this series, but they are definitely worth revisiting. Plugins serve as a critical part of your WordPress blog and so it is important that you recognize what they are, how you can get them, and what they can do for you.

Expanding and Customizing WordPress

The official definition coming from WordPress is that plugins “can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine.” In short, these are smaller software components that can add specific capabilities to a larger software application (like WordPress). They are not programs themselves, but they act as an add-on or expansion pack, so to speak.

WordPress plugins can affect just about every aspect of your WordPress blog. There are plugins to change how you interact with the administration control panel. There are plugins that help integrate your blog with your social networking profiles. There are plugins that change certain aspects of how your blog looks to readers. There are plugins that work behind the scenes to make for a better blog. They really can change just about anything.

A good analogy to consider would be car modifications. If you think of WordPress as your car, then plugins would be such things as car stereos, new paint jobs, new steering wheels, upgraded exhaust systems, rear spoilers, new tires, sportier suspension, and so forth. The car itself is still the same car, so to speak, but these accessories and upgrades can completely change not only how you interact with the car, but also the car’s performance and how it is viewed by people on the street.

Free and Paid Plugins

Just as there are both free and premium (paid) WordPress themes, the exact same thing can be found when it comes to WordPress plugins as well.

In addition to the free WordPress plugins that developers give away on their own websites, there is also the official Plugin Directory on WordPress.org. There are currently over 12,000 free plugins available there.

Premium plugins are sold through a number of different marketplaces, like Clickbank, as well as through the sites and online stores of the developers themselves. Pricing can range considerably with many of the most popular and most powerful WordPress plugins selling for hundreds of dollars. Some of these, for instance, are able to convert WordPress into a true e-commerce solution, complete with PayPal and Google Checkout integration.

How to Install and Activate

The process of installing a WordPress plugin is easier than ever.

Log into the WordPress control panel using your admin account. Click on the “Plugins” area in the sidebar to reach the main plugins screen. From there, you can see a button near the top that says “Add New.” From here, you can search for new plugins or upload one that you have already downloaded.

In the past, it was your responsibility to download the plugin, extract it from its compressed folder (if necessary), and upload it to the appropriate directory on your blog using an FTP program. That is no longer the case. Even if you don’t use the search function, you can upload a new plugin in its compressed .zip format directly from the WordPress control panel.

After the upload has completed, you activate the plugin through the main plugins screen. Depending on the WordPress plugin, you may then need to configure its options through the Tools or Settings sections in the control panel. Be sure to read the specific instructions (usually found on the plugin’s website or through a “readme” file) for further direction.

Read More

What are WordPress Plugins and How Do They Work?

The concept of WordPress plugins was briefly discussed in an earlier article in this series, but they are definitely worth revisiting. Plugins serve as a critical part of your WordPress blog and so it is important that you recognize what they are, how you can get them, and what they can do for you.

Expanding and Customizing WordPress

The official definition coming from WordPress is that plugins “can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine.” In short, these are smaller software components that can add specific capabilities to a larger software application (like WordPress). They are not programs themselves, but they act as an add-on or expansion pack, so to speak.

WordPress plugins can affect just about every aspect of your WordPress blog. There are plugins to change how you interact with the administration control panel. There are plugins that help integrate your blog with your social networking profiles. There are plugins that change certain aspects of how your blog looks to readers. There are plugins that work behind the scenes to make for a better blog. They really can change just about anything.

A good analogy to consider would be car modifications. If you think of WordPress as your car, then plugins would be such things as car stereos, new paint jobs, new steering wheels, upgraded exhaust systems, rear spoilers, new tires, sportier suspension, and so forth. The car itself is still the same car, so to speak, but these accessories and upgrades can completely change not only how you interact with the car, but also the car’s performance and how it is viewed by people on the street.

Free and Paid Plugins

Just as there are both free and premium (paid) WordPress themes, the exact same thing can be found when it comes to WordPress plugins as well.

In addition to the free WordPress plugins that developers give away on their own websites, there is also the official Plugin Directory on WordPress.org. There are currently over 12,000 free plugins available there.

Premium plugins are sold through a number of different marketplaces, like Clickbank, as well as through the sites and online stores of the developers themselves. Pricing can range considerably with many of the most popular and most powerful WordPress plugins selling for hundreds of dollars. Some of these, for instance, are able to convert WordPress into a true e-commerce solution, complete with PayPal and Google Checkout integration.

How to Install and Activate

The process of installing a WordPress plugin is easier than ever.

Log into the WordPress control panel using your admin account. Click on the “Plugins” area in the sidebar to reach the main plugins screen. From there, you can see a button near the top that says “Add New.” From here, you can search for new plugins or upload one that you have already downloaded.

In the past, it was your responsibility to download the plugin, extract it from its compressed folder (if necessary), and upload it to the appropriate directory on your blog using an FTP program. That is no longer the case. Even if you don’t use the search function, you can upload a new plugin in its compressed .zip format directly from the WordPress control panel.

After the upload has completed, you activate the plugin through the main plugins screen. Depending on the WordPress plugin, you may then need to configure its options through the Tools or Settings sections in the control panel. Be sure to read the specific instructions (usually found on the plugin’s website or through a “readme” file) for further direction.

Read More

What Are You Going to Blog About

Blogging is a very worthwhile endeavor, but even before you dive into a conversation of finding the right web hosts or how you will go about monetizing your site, there is one very important question that needs to be addressed: Why are you going to blog and what are you going to blog about? You need answers to these before you can even start blogging in the first place.
Sure, asking what you’re going to blog about seems like simple enough of a question, but depending on your answer, the goals for your blog can swing heavily. Your blog can become a very different kind of website and your strategies can be vastly different too.
Blogging for Fun
If you are going to blog simply for the fun of blogging, you really can choose any topic that you’d like for your blog. The majority of people who start their first blog are creating personal blogs. With these kinds of sites, the blogger usually discusses personal interests or offers an online diary of sorts.
These kinds of blogs are great for learning how to blog, making new friends online that might share the same interests. For example, you might be a big fan of the Vancouver Canucks and you start a hockey blog. The goal is to have a good time, just because you want to have a proper venue for voicing your opinions. You might then get in contact with other Canucks fans around the city.
When you’re blogging for fun, just about any topic will do. This is because you are likely less concerned with profitability and other metrics. It’s more about making friends, having a proper venue to have your voice heard, and learning about the different technologies and innovations that are available to bloggers today.
Blogging for Business
If you are going to blog as a branding exercise for your company, your goals can be very different from a personal blog. Corporate blogs and official company blogs are an entirely different animal from the blog of a regular individual.
With business blogs, two main trends seem to emerge. On the one hand, some companies will only blog about company business. They may offer customers and partners an “insider’s look” into the company, showing them what happens behind the scenes. This is the case with the Disney Parks blog, for instance. They can also use the blog to highlight new products and other company announcements.
Alternatively, some companies use their blogs as a way to establish themselves as experts in their field. While some posts relate directly back to the company itself, many blog posts are simply about that particular industry. A financial services firm, for example, may offer posts that discuss the current economy, setting up your accounting books, and so forth.
Blogging for Money
More and more people are getting into blogging with the sole purpose of making money from them. They see larger sites like Engadget and TMZ making substantial amounts of money and they want to get in on the action. This is perfectly understandable.
If you are thinking about starting a blog with the goal of turning it into a viable business on its own, then you will have to take a completely different approach than you would with a personal blog or a corporate blog.
In the next chapter, we will discuss in detail how you can go about finding the right and profitable niche for you to start blogging about. Choosing the right subject matter can mean the difference between making thousands of dollars a month or barely being able to afford the hosting costs.

Read More

Connecting Your Blog With RSS, Social Media and Email

Before you start creating a ton of content for your blog, just hoping for random people to start stumbling upon your site, it’s important to put the right tools in place to get it noticed. A big part of this is working to connect your blog to the major social networks, as well as a better way to connect with your readers through e-mail and RSS.

Don’t know how to do this? Don’t know the deal with RSS and why it matters? Don’t worry: we’re here to help you out with that too.

RSS and E-Mail Subscriptions

What is RSS and what is with all this talk of feed readers? RSS, most commonly understood as Really Simple Syndication, is a family of web formats that are used to publish frequently updated work, as would be the case with blog entries. By offering an RSS feed, readers are notified when there are new posts on your blog and they are able to read these new articles through services like Google Reader.

The good news is that WordPress will automatically generate an RSS feed for your blog and this can be accessed at http://yourblogdomain.com/feed. The bad news is that this feed can be somewhat limited in its functionality and that’s why we recommend that you sign up for a free account with Feedburner.

By allowing Feedburner to manage the RSS feed on your blog, you are able to know exactly how many people are subscribed to your feed, as well as other useful tidbits of information. You should promote your RSS feed on your blog as it helps to grow a loyal readership.

Even for people who don’t use feed readers (also known as aggregators) like Google Reader, RSS has immense value. That’s because Feedburner also allows you to offer e-mail subscriptions. When someone signs up for your e-mail updates, he or she will get an e-mail message when you have a new blog post. This encourages repeat readership and brand loyalty.

A Facebook Fan Page

Every blog should have a Facebook fan page. Note that this is distinctly different from your standard Facebook profile page, because a fan page is not associated with a person; it’s associated with a brand or product. In this case, that would be your blog.

While you are limited to the number of friends you can have on Facebook, you are not limited to the number of fans you can have on a Facebook page. It also helps to separate your personal life from material that is directly (and only) related to your blog.

You can even syndicate the RSS feed from your blog through your Facebook fan page. Check out Facebook applications like Social RSS and RSS Graffiti to do that.

A Blog’s Twitter Account

Twitter is a great way to stay connected and engaged with the readers on your blog. Every blog should have a Twitter account. This way, readers can interact with you in real-time, helping you “retweet” your blog posts, promote your contests, and all sorts of other wonderful things.

Just as you can syndicate your blog’s RSS feed through e-mail and Facebook, you can also do this with Twitter. There are many different ways to do this. There are WordPress plugins, like WordTwit, that offer this functionality, as well as online services like SocialOomph and Hootsuite.

Other Networks and Services

As much as we love our own blogs, not everyone has the time to visit each blog they enjoy every day to find the latest content. That’s why RSS, Facebook, and Twitter are such powerful channels for staying connected with your readership.

Depending on the nature of your blog, it may also be worthwhile to connect your blog with other social networks too. Flickr is great for images, YouTube for videos, and so on.

Be sure to do “cross promotion” with these accounts too. Actively promote your Facebook and Twitter profiles on your blog, and actively promote your blog on your Facebook pages and Twitter accounts too. This greatly helps to strengthen and reinforce your blog’s brand, lending itself to greater success.

Read More

Customizing Blog Theme Layouts and WordPress Options

When it comes to your home computer, you may have taken the time to choose a new wallpaper, install your favorite applications, and do other customizations so that it works just the way you want it to work. Your blog should be no different. In fact, it’s even more important that you take the time to customize your blog, because you’re sharing it with everyone on the Internet!

Thankfully, customizing the various options and features in WordPress is a very straightforward and easy-to-understand process. You could stick with the default settings, if you’d like, but you can do so much more by adjusting a few options here and there.

New Layouts, Themes, and Templates

Under the “Appearance” section in the WordPress administration panel, you’ll find the ability to customize the layout and general “look” of your blog. This starts by choosing a theme.

We’ll be going into further detail in future chapters, but the gist of it is that you can download and install different themes for your blog. This defines the layout, color scheme of links, and other features that are pertinent to the look and feel of your blog. There are many free themes available on the Internet, as well as premium paid themes and the ability to get custom themes too.

Most contemporary WordPress themes, which are sometimes called templates, provide what is known as widget support. This means that you can customize the content located in the sidebar of your blog without having to go into the actual “code” of your blog. Widgets can easily be moved, rearranged, and changed. Common widgets include category listings, search bars, and recent comments.

Installing WordPress Plugins

Another great way to customize your WordPress blog is through what are known as plugins. Just like the themes described above, there are both free and paid plugins available on the Internet.

Plugins serve a variety of different functions, limited only by imagination of the plugin developers. The idea is that they can add to or alter the functionality of WordPress to best suit the needs of each particular blogger.

There are plugins that aid in reducing spam, improving search engine optimization, creating useful contact forms, showing related posts, automatically backing up the WordPress database, and more. Some are more useful than others and, thanks to the newer WordPress versions, installing and activating plugins is easier than ever.

We’ll be describing some of the best plugins (and how to use them) a little later on.

User Profile Options

Whether you are the only writer on your site or if you manage a staff of several writers, each contributor is given his or her own user profile. There are options for turning the visual editor on and off, for instance.

Perhaps more importantly, you should take the time to fill out your user profile with your name, your preferred display name, your e-mail address, website, and biography. Depending on your chosen theme and layout, these may or may not be displayed.

You’ll notice at the end of each post on Blogging Tips, for example, the author is given a brief “author box” that includes his or her name and a link to his or her website. This adds to the connectivity and community that your blog can offer. It provides context.

WordPress Settings and Options

As you install more plugins on your WordPress blog, you may encounter more settings and options pages. Even at its default “bare” installation, though, WordPress has many key settings and options that you should know about.

Among the “General” settings, for example, are fields to define the site title, tagline, timezone, date format, and time format. Under the “Writing” settings section, you’ll see the size of the post box, whether emoticons should be automatically converted to graphics, and whether you allow for posting via e-mail.

Take some time to go through the various settings pages — like Reading, Discussion, Media, and Permalinks — and see what other changes you would like to make. All of these can have a rather important impact on how your blog is read, displayed, and enjoyed by your site visitors.

Read More

Adding Images, Links and Categories to Your Blog

The most successful blogs in the world are the ones that provide the best information, link to outside sources and have great images throughout their respective sites. These can sound like daunting tasks for people new to blogging, but WordPress makes it extremely easy to add these types of features to your blog. In this article, we will show you exactly how to do it.

Adding Images to Blog Posts

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. A relevant image that adds something to the article can be worth much more than that. Whether you need to illustrate a point or you simply want a picture to draw attention to your post, having an image (or more) attached to your post can be very helpful.

So, how do you do it? First, go into the area in the WordPress administration panel when you can write a new blog post. This can be accessed by the button near the top-right corner or via the navigational links in the sidebar.

When you are in the “Write Post” area, you’ll notice that there are a series of icons located between the title text area and the body text areas. When you hover over the first of these, you’ll discover that it is used to upload and insert images. Click on this icon.

In doing so, you’ll see a new dialog box appear on the screen with three tabs at the top: from computer, from URL, and media library. The first of these allows you to upload an image file (JPGs and PNGs are usually best) from your computer. You can then go through some of the available options for sizes, alternate text, alignment, and so on.

The “From URL” tab allows you to embed an image that is already located somewhere else on the Internet and the “Media Library” tab lets you choose images that have already been uploaded and associated with the blog post.

Linking to Internal and External Sources

A blog post never really exists in isolation, so it is important for a myriad of reasons to link to both your own articles and to resources outside of your website. This helps to give context to your articles, as well as supporting materials and related reading.

There are several different ways for creating these links. If you are familiar with HTML, then you will likely want to deactivate the “visual editor” in WordPress (you can do that in the user profile options). You can then use basic HTML tags for creating your links.

If you are not as familiar with HTML, that’s okay too. WordPress has been designed to be as approachable and easy to use as possible. Going back to the area where you can write a new blog post, you’ll notice a “link” button above the main body text area.

Clicking on this will create a pop-up window asking for the URL that you’d like to link to. Copy the URL in there and click OK. Type in the “anchor text” (the actual text in the area that will be linked to the URL), then click in the “/link” button to “close” the tag. That’s one way to do it.

Another way to do it is to highlight the text in your article that you would like to be linked, then click on the same “link” button. You once again enter the target URL and click OK. This creates the same result as the method described above.

Organizing Content with Tags and Categories

Just as you have folders on your computer to help organize all your different files, you can create a similar type of organization in your blog to manage all your different blog posts.

There are two systems that are built into every WordPress installation: categories and tags. These work in a similar fashion, but you’ll likely want to use both for optimal performance. Categories act like folders on your computer, while post tags are like keywords related to your post.

Along the right side of the area where you can write (and edit) your blog posts, you’ll see fields for choosing your post categories and post tags. For most sites, you’ll want to keep the number of categories relatively low (less than 20), but you can usually use more tags, assigning several to every blog post.

In doing so, it is easier for readers of your blog to find related content. If you wrote on your experience with your new iPhone, for example, it might fall under your Technology category and it could be associated with tags like Apple, AT&T, and smartphone. Visitors can then look up other posts using the same tags or categories to find related content on your blog.

Providing the Best Information

This is perhaps the hardest part of blogging! With so many blogs on the Internet, it can sometimes be difficult to get noticed. That’s why it’s so important to provide the best possible content that you can, giving value to your readers that they won’t find anywhere else.

How can you help your content get noticed? We’ll go over some possibilities in the next few sections.

Read More

Creating Your First Blog Posts and Pages

Congratulations! You are well on your way to having your very own blog on the Internet. Youv’e already purchased your domain name, you’ve set up your web hosting account, and you’ve installed WordPress. Now, let’s start creating some terrific content for your blog. After all, what’s the point of having a blog if you don’t have any articles on there for people to read?
When you first log into your blog’s WordPress user dashboard — which you can access by adding “/wp-admin” to the end of your domain (i.e., http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin) — you will see that three default test areas are already created for your blog. These help to demonstrate the very basic functionality of WordPress as a content management system. The three test areas are a blog post (“Hello World”), a blog page (“About”), and a blog comment.
What do these terms mean and how are they different from one another?
What Is a Blog Post?
Blog posts are the main articles that serve as the main content of your blog. This is where you will update the blog with new content on a regular basis. Most of the articles that you see on other blogs, like BloggingTips.com, are considered blog posts. Each time that you create a new article for your website, it is a new blog post.
With most of the themes and layouts for blogs, the latest post is seen as the newest content on your site and it is usually shown at the top of your blog. This goes with the reverse chronological configuration that has become the primary standard for blogging. Some blogs use a “magazine style” layout that is a little different, but we’ll get into that a little later on.
Blog posts are also used to interact with your readers, providing a commenting system at the bottom of every article. It’s up to you how you want to moderate the comments and how you want the comments to be displayed, but it is generally with the blog posts that you will be sparking the conversation.
Your first blog post can typically be used to introduce your blog to your new readers, but it’s completely up to you how you want to “launch” the site to the awaiting Internet audience.
What Is a Blog Page?
While blog posts are largely viewed as the “dynamic” content of your blog that gets updated on a regular basis, a blog page is a static page for a blog. Common blog pages include About Me, Contact, and Advertising. Blog pages are usually used for information about the blog that is needed, but is not updated nearly as often.
For example, the test article set up with every new WordPress installation is an example of an “About” page. This is where you might give some brief background information on who you are as a blogger, what you’ll be blogging about on the site, and why you should be viewed as a respected authority in that field.
What Is a Blog Comment
You may have encountered other blog comments over the course of your Internet journeys. They’re in place on BloggingTips, for example.
Basically, it is a system built into WordPress that allows visitors to the site to comment on specific blog posts. They may offer feedback and insight into the topic or they might have a question related to the material being presented. The comments can also have multiple tiers, allowing visitors to post comments in a discussion-based format on top of other comments. Generally, comments are associated with posts, but you may use them with pages too.
Depending on the subject matter, you may opt to disable comments on certain posts or across your site as a whole. I recommend that you keep comments open, however, as it facilitates more communication with your visitors and they can feel like they are a part of your online community rather than simply an outsider passively reading your articles.

Read More

3 Basic Tips for Blogging EntrePreneurs

So you are dreaming to be a successful blogtrepreneur. I mean a famous and well-earned blogging entrepreneur aka successful blogger.

Although very less people have donned that special cap, it’s very much possible to be a successful blogger with solid strategies.

There is no fixed yardstick to measure the word “successful.” It has different meaning for different people.

This article refers successful blogger as “a blogger who is reputed and authoritative in his blogging niche, and earn sufficient bucks to lead an independent and healthy life.”

So, without much ado let me tell you the 3 basic pillars of blogging as an entrepreneur.

1. Content – Quality along with quantity

Bloggers, by virtue of their trade are always voracious content creators.

Content are your products, for which online readers come to your shop (blog) for consumption. Sometimes they act as sales persons, helping the visitors and convincing them to buy your products and services.

To be successful in blogging arena, I mean to earn reputation and money – Your content should be powerful. It should be awesome enough to satisfy your readers. It should be unique and helpful enough to make them subscribe your newsletter.

When it comes to blogging “quantity matters.” Give your visitors more topics to choose. Offer them variety, offer them different ways to solve their problem.

Finally, producing quality content, frequently and regularly is the only stepping stone for successful bloggers.

2. More Traffic – SEO to Social Media, to Word of mouth

Blogging is a competitive field, and getting one or two thousands of visitors daily can’t help you in a big way.

You have to cater a greater online audience. To entertain such a huge audience (visitors) you have to make some kind of arrangements (vehicles) to carry them to the stage (blog).

And that vehicles are Search engines (or SEO), Social Media and Offline Publicity.

• SEO: Driving well targeted traffic from search engines is considered affordable and best. This can be achieved by well executed SEO strategies. Things you should consider are – Optimization of your blog theme, on-page optimization of content and link building etc. You should also consider “guest blogging” for building reputation and traffic.

• Social Media: Social media marketing is the backbone of content marketing as a whole. It not only drives tons of traffic from various social networking sites, but also supports your SEO efforts in a big way, by sending a +Ve ranking signal to search engines.

• Offline Publicity: It’s permanent and more effective, if done in a proper way. Consider attending blogging camp or work-shop as a guest speaker, or even as a simple participant. Introduce yourself to like minded people to build a personal relation. Nobody knows – tomorrow you might get a link or social mention or even a co-citation from an influential blogger in your niche.

3. Monetizing your blog – Explore all possibilities

How can you run your blog for coming months and years without money? How will you pay your internet and electricity bill?

The single answer of all the above questions is money, I mean adequate monetization of your blog.

Don’t restrict yourself to selling Ad spaces to Google AdSense, BuySellAds.com and likes. If you are expert in a specific niche – consider selling products and services via your blog.

You can also offer online training, sell your eBook, and even offer online paid consultation on your blog.

Finally, your approach should be a combination of different monetization options instead of restricted to one.

Read More

Increase Page Rank With 10 Proven Tips

It’s a fact that Google gives more emphasis on Page Rank of a website or blog when ranking content in SERPs.

A site with higher Google Page Rank is considered authoritative and trustworthy in its niche.

Pages of websites with high PR always tend to rank higher in search results, even though some of their content is less informative than their counterparts.

Google Page Rank: Google says – The heart of their search engine algorithm, which ranks content in SERPs is Page Rank. This system of content ranking, as well as the term Page Rank was developed by Larry Page, the co-founder and CEO of Google.

Links are like confidence votes between websites and pass link-juice to one another. Links (or backlinks) are devised by Google to help ranking content and better functioning of World Wide Web System.

Definition: Page Rank is the “Quantity (total number) of inbound links or back-links to a particular website or page, along with the quality of the linking pages (Page Ranks of sites providing the links).”

It’s a whole number between 0 and 10. Where, 0 represents the least important site or page, and 10 the most important and authoritative. Without much ado let’s dive in to the strategies to improve Page Rank of a site –

1. Blog Commenting

Let’s start with low hanging fruits – which is blog commenting. It has a surprising effects on Page Rank.

By adopting this technique along with others, webmasters have achieved Page Rank 5, 6 and even 7. But the backlinks should be of good quality, I mean, you have to choose high Page Rank, and leading blogs in your niche to leave comments. Comments on blogs outside your niche may affect your Page Rank adversely.

You should also choose some DoFollow blogs in your niche for blog commenting. Because these blogs pass link-juice and help to improve Page Rank fast. Also remember, try to leave quality comments which add value and take the discussion to the higher level. In this way you are helping other commenters as well as blog readers.

Here, you are hitting 2 birds with one stone – getting backlinks to increase Page Rank + targeted traffic to your blog. But use this strategy in moderation. Leaving 500 comments overnight is a spammy activity and may harm your Page Rank. Using blog commenting software and packages are strictly No No.

2. Forum Commenting

Again, a great way to acquire backlinks. A good profile with judicious use of your niche keywords, and a backlink to your blog is helpful.

Find forums strictly related to your niche and leave quality comments. When improving Page Rank, quantity as well as quality of the backlinks matter. So the forums should be top-notch in your subject matter.

3. Directory Listing

Well established and authoritative article directories like Squidoo, HubPages,RedGage are great places to build quality links.

These sites provide you complete control over your outgoing link destination. They are also flooded with content seeking and really engaged visitors. So, along with quality links, you will also receive targeted visitors.

4. Social Media Profile

Use social media networks not only to boost your Search Engine Optimization efforts, but also the Page Rank.

All you need is a keyword rich profile along with your blog URL. Join the leading social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, StumbleUpon etc., even though you are using few.

For your information, the links you are sharing on different social media sites while twitting or posting messages on Facebook don’t help to boost your Page Rank. Here, social profile (presence) and popularity matters the most.

5. Guest Blogging

Links from guest blogging are usually DoFollow and pass link-juice. Bloggers usually allow 2 backlinks inside the author bio box, which are generally DoFollow.

Of course the value of a link from author bio box is less than a link from the article body, but still these are quality backlinks.

Guest blogging is a time consuming and tiring process, but with a rich rewards. Now you are hitting 3 birds with one stone – Backlinks, Targeted Traffic and Authority (or Publicity). Go for it, when you get extra time.

6. Use of NoFollow tag

By using NoFollow tag on both internal and outbound links, you can preserve as well as improve Page Rank.

To preserve the Page Rank of Home page you can NoFollow all the internal and outbound links (leaving from Home page). If you want to promote a special post or pages, you can DoFollow them from Home page by giving some link-juice.

Also, linking (and DoFollowing) your high Page Rank posts to your Home page helps to increase the Page Rank of the entire site (Home page). This way you are making your domain authoritative in Google’s eye.

7. Internal linking structure

Internal linking of blog posts doesn’t directly help to increase your Page Rank. But helps you to preserve the Page Rank or link-juice of important blog posts and pages.

You can interlink important posts of your blog by using desired anchor text to uniformly distribute the link-juice. Internal linking not only increases user experience, but also sends a signal to search engines about the subject matter of linked posts. By using this trick you can increase the Page Rank of your most desired posts and pages to promote higher in search engines.

Finally, use internal linking for preservation and distribution of link juice, and of course better user experience by providing references of old articles. Let’s your old articles get some love from your readers!

8. Spammy Neighborhood

Linking to spammy sites means – wasting link-juice and coming under Google’s suspicion radar.

Frequently giving outbound links to websites involved in spammy activities may results in complete ban and de-indexing by Google. Check for authenticity of the site before linking to it. But, anyhow,  if you have to link a suspicious site on your blog post, then always use NoFollow attribute.

If your site is not hosted on a dedicated IP address, check for the other sharing sites and blogs (for intentions and activities). Sometimes spammy activity by a single website makes the whole pond dirty.

9. Acquiring Special Backlinks

Links from .gov and .edu are difficult to get, but help to increase page rank significantly. I will tell you the easiest method to get some great links from these sites.

Find some .gov and .edu blogs in your niche, which are open for registration and commenting. Leave some constructive comments, otherwise your comments will be rejected or marked as spam, as these sites are very strict in their comment policy.

Use Google Search for finding quality .edu and .gov blogs. Try the below search –

• site:.edu “add comment” OR “post comment” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”
• site:.gov “add comment” OR “post comment” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”

Hire a student who has access to .edu blogs. Most students in the US have access to student blogs, forums and pages. Tell him to give you a backlink for 4$ beer money, and he will be happy to do that. You can also request him to write something about your site and place a link to it. You can easily get students like these by searching sites like Reddit or Craigslist.

And don’t forget to get a link from Wikipedia (at least try your luck).

10. Say No to Spammy Activities

Say no to link buying, selling, reciprocal linking and participating in contest meant for link schemes.

Newbie bloggers always become a victim of link schemes by cunning websites. They organize blogging contests and ask bloggers to link certain number of blogs or blog posts or bloggers. Then the blogs you linked will nominate (link) other blogs, and the scheme goes like this…never ending. Stay away from this.

Sometimes, in the name of blogging contest, sites distribute widgets and badges to the winners. And they usually choose 100, and even more than that as winners (1st, 2nd…99th, 100th). These widgets have hidden links of their websites or domains. Their main aim is to get links,not to distribute prizes for free. But there are some exceptions.

99th Point: Register your domain for more than 1 yr. Domains which are registered for more than 2 yrs, 5 yrs and even more trustworthy and non-spammy in Google’s eye.

Make you blog W3C compatible, I mean, your blog  or site should be clean coded. Check your site for any coding error here.

To brush-up your knowledge – Google gives individual Page Ranks to Home Page and Sub-pages of a site. So, all the blog posts and pages have different Google Page Ranks.

To increase your website Page Rank – Your efforts should be to get more number of links (both quantity and quality) and be popular in your niche or subject matter. Every few months (sometimes more than 6 months) Google updates Page Ranks. Let’s check your Page Rank here.

Read More