2008 December | Make Money Blogging

Affiliate Marketing During a Recession | 1 Comment
It doesn’t take a genius to understand that the world is into one of the deepest recessionary slumps for the moment and it is going to continue this way for some time. But, it does take some brain storming to understand the business opportunities in this recession period. The emergence of click only companies has made brick and mortar companies suffer in their businesses and this has resulted in a decrement in their profitability.

So, the question springs up, what is the best business to be in now? Bet me on this, the answer is Affiliate Marketing.

This is the time where affiliate marketers actually can earn as much as they desire just because the payment depends on the performance. Also, the products being promoted can be ordered via online shopping which is actually a booming business presently.

The best of the reasons for online shopping catching pace is because it is a cost effective way and a competitive one as well. There have also been various polls being conducted which have emphasized the importance of affiliate marketing through SEO during the recession. There are various internet marketing strategies which can also be followed successfully.

Aojon describes it in one of his posts as -

When the market goes up, spend more on advertising.

When the market goes down, spend as much as you possibly can on advertising.

Few other strategies which affiliates should implement in times of recession to come out successful:
- Target the niche users always helps as there increases the chance of a focused search by a prospective customer who is desperate and has the drive to generate sales for him/her and profits for you.
- Increase in conversions and traffic also plays an important role and there comes in effect the role of proper promotional efforts for your product. It is worth remembering that this is a ‘numbers game’ and the more efforts you put in, the more numbers you get.
- Focus more on PPC because there could be a decrease in the final sales of a product, but there would always be focused searches. So, the scope of earning money through pay per click should be well grasped upon.
- Improve networking in these times with fellow bloggers, websites, community forums etc. as these people would be of help when the recession ends. On the recovery, you could be in a good position to capitalize on the surge in spending. Nevertheless, always keep in mind the target market of yours while interacting and making friends.
All said and done, it could also be the right time to change the design of your site and make it more attractive. Always remember, “Looks do Sell”. Also essential is to understand the fact that there cannot be a mercurial rise in the market conditions in the near future, thus it is time to focus and strategize in a better and effective way. Stress more on the volume which can be generated and keep a close eye on the present rends with the decline in spending all across the globe.

Implement these and I hope to see you smiling all through the recession.

Delete Your WordPress Plugins Automatically | Leave a Comment

Did you know that with the current version of WordPress, you can delete your unused or outdated plugins automatically from the dashboard?

In the previous videos I have shown how to install plugins automatically and also how to upgrade plugins automatically. Now lets look at how to get rid of them

Plugins are now sorted by “Active”, “Most Recently Used” and “Inactive”. Just select the plugins you want to eliminate and choose “Delete” from the “Bulk Actions” tab in your plugins page.

Then you’ll be asked to confirm if you really want to delete the plugin. Of course the answer is Yes or why would you be doing this in the first place?

Then you’ll be asked for your FTP url, user name and password. Unless you’re using some ancient plugin that stopped working ages ago, you should be able to delete your plugins easily.

Watch this YouTube video to see how it’s done:

Using PLR Content On Niche Blogs | 1 Comment
If you manage a lot of niche WordPress blogs, adding new content becomes a real pain in the ass. Its tough enough to find good content for one blog, so how do you do it for say 20?

You may have come across the idea of using PLR or Private Label Right articles. What this means is that you get ready-made article content to use in any way you want and it’s 100% yours. Most good PLR sites including PLR Product Reviews, PL Rights, PLR Gold and PLR Health Wizard can give you tons of content for a very low price.

If you use these PLR content in a ebook or physical newsletter there’s absolutely no issue. But when you try to use it as online blog / website content you’re hit with a juggernaut problem: DUPLICATE CONTENT.

The problem with PLR articles is that you’re not the only one using them. Yup, about 20-400 other people (depending on the PLR provider) have the exact article content. So the gurus say what you should do next is to “re-write” these articles to make them unique.

But that itself is a paradox – why spend your time re-writing PLR articles when you can just write new ones? Why outsource article rewriting, when you can outsource article writing? Get my point?

That’s the main reason why although I do use PLR content to create free PDF reports and email messages, I never used them as blog content. That has changed recently after I discovered these services:
- Article Marketing Automation – Publish / receive unique articles and get one-way links from blogs
- 1WayLinks – Publish / receive unique articles and get one-way links from blogs
- JetSubmitter - Publish unique articles and get one-way links fro article directories
- Firepow – complete blog network including getting / publishing unique content, one-way links and socal bookmarking and much more.
All those services gave me an opportunity not only to use PLR articles as unique blog content, but also as great SEO and link building tools.

Of course by using the services I mentioned, your main goal with a PLR article is to get as many backlinks as possible by submitting it as content for other blogs and article directories. However, with their built-in article spinner / randomizer functions you should be able to get a more unique version of your PLR article. So in a way it’s killing two birds with one stone – creating content and getting backlinks.

Upgrade Your WordPress Plugins Automatically | 2 Comments

If you have the latest version of WordPress installed, you should be able to upgrade your plugins automatically via the plugins page. However I find most people aren’t using it yet.

To use this all you need to do is to click on “Upgrade Automatically” and follow the instructions.

You’’ll be asked for your FTP address, user name and password. Once you enter those and click on “Upgrade” your WordPress software will automatically deactivate the older version, download and extract the new version, and re-activate it.

How’s that for a time saver?

However, it may not work for all plugins, especially older ones which were not downloaded from the official WordPress plugins site. The good news is that even if it does fail, it probably won’t mess up your blog.

Watch the YouTube video for a tutorial:

Install Your WordPress Plugins Automatically | Leave a Comment

Did you know that from WordPress version 2.7 onwards you can automatically search, find, upload and install plugins to your WordPres blog?

This cool feature was in ancient time done by a plugin called “The Installer” but like most plugins, it eventually got forgotten amidst the never ending WordPress version updates. Now not only is it built-in by default, but you can also directly search the WordPress plugins repository and find your favorite plugins.

Or you can also select a plugin in ZIP format on your PC and use that.

The process is darn easy too, I’ll show you how to do it in this video:

Unfortunately sometimes due to heavy traffic or database connection problems, this may not work, But try again later and the auto-install feature will be back in action.

This new feature will definitely help us plugin-obsessed bloggers!

The Future of Internet Marketing | 1 Comment
As Market-Vantage aptly puts

Internet Marketing is the process of using the interactive technologies available via the Internet to further create a dialog with potential customers by connecting with them with good educational content about your company’s products or service offerings.

“Change” is the keyword of every practice and Internet Marketing has also evolved over the years. There has been a sudden burst of click only companies and the success shows that there are a lot of revenues that people have generated. The future of online marketing has been a hot debate topic for quite some time now, but nevertheless, it seems bright.

The online marketing business has grown by leaps and bounds and as this digital revolution keeps growing, the motive behind it has not changed one bit from consumer marketing. The motive has and will remain the same i.e. increasing awareness about your product or service, tracking potential customers and creating value for them. But without doubt, the approach has seen a sea change; be it the way we do business, the way we market, service , sell, communicate, distribute, and work.

The future of online marketing may have the following implementations;
- There will be a transformation from static sites to personalized and dynamic sites which would more effectively enable actual e-commerce. Investment worth millions of dollars in an online business would not raise eye-brows.
- Search Personalization, SEO, rankings and search results will have specially devised internet marketing strategies which will generate more revenue for both the client and the company. This would obviously mean new advertising methods being implemented for the success of the same. This would further result in diversification of strategies and focus on a combination of strategies and advertising models. The concept of 4C’s of Internet Marketing will actually be implemented.
- The corporate citizens across the globe will operate in new digital marketplace wherein almost all e-commerce applications such as shopping, paying bills, entertainment, and banking everywhere will be dealt online. The harbingers of some of these applications have already been implemented in some developed continents.
- The problems of spam, frauds, phishing scams and identity theft concerns will continue, but strict measures will be implemented. This would lead to a reduction in display of banner ads, PPC methods, click frauds etc. Another important concept will be the upsurge in information publishing and copyright of free copyright articles.
- The achievement of Marketing ROI will become more difficult as there would be a plethora of similar services being offered by many sites. This would further result in increased competition which may go the unethical way at times.
The future might also have many surprises in store when it comes to internet marketing strategies, promotional activities, functional specifications etc. but one thing is for sure, there seems to be very less saturation in the online marketing sphere in the few decades to come. Making money online would not remain a secret anymore and internet marketing would evolve to be something more than just another business tool. The internet and internet marketing would probably become more than “OUR LIVES”.

World’s Best WordPress Designers | 1 Comment

It is more than understanding the user’s basic needs while designing a WordPress theme. It involves a sound knowledge of the design aspect, the thoughts behind the designing of a theme, the portfolio of the blog etc.

All professional bloggers are well versed with the relevance of their writing content to their blog theme and this is where the expertise of a top WordPress designer comes into play. Isaac Bashevis Singer aptly defined the psyche of a Designer when he says “Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression”.

Some of the Top WordPress designers whom you can hire are:

1.Pearsonified

Chris Pearson is the founder who is into web development. This site is one of the oldest and widely read sites and it also has a large reader base. This is actually the site which made the famous ‘thesis’ theme and focuses on blog designing, wordpress functions and online businesses.

2. Men With Pens

This site is mainly offering online solutions to blogging, freelance writing, entrepreneurs, content publishing and web designing. Though the background color does not look professional, the site is uniquely featured in its contents and helps the readers to avail the desired services. It also has online contests, book store sections etc. which gets the maximum attention from readers.

3. Brian Gardner

Gardner’s site is a neatly maintained one with an electric blue colored homepage in which he blogs primarily about Internet, its applications, his themes etc. The site offers services such as Blog Designing, Website Strategy and Internet Marketing. The rates at which he offers his services viz. Blog Consulting and Custom WordPress themes are also mentioned. A list of highly recommended people by him are also mentioned in the ‘contacts’ section of the site. The main focus of the designer is on the services being offered by him which are considered to be one of the best in the business. The transformation from being an individual lacking basic knowledge about the web to one of the top WordPress designers within 2 years is really an inspiring one.

Click to continue reading “World’s Best WordPress Designers”

Blog Announce Feature By GetResponse - Great News For Bloggers! | Leave a Comment

While Aweber did the smart move of integrating RSS feed syndication into email marketing, their competitors didn’t seem to quite get the idea. Only recently did GetResponse announce their own RSS to email syndication which they dubbed as “Blog Announce”.

Although it comes with much lesser features, there is hope. Blog Announce lets you send the latest post from your blog to your email subscribers, by simply specifying your Blog RSS URL.

Since GetResponse with it’s one-price-for-unlimited-subscribers model is also much more affordable than Aweber. I foresee a lot of bloggers using this service in the near future too. This just shows that the lines between a blogger and a marketer are diminishing even as you’re reading this.

Blogs have come of age.

How to Improve Google Page Rank & Alexa Rank | Leave a Comment
Every blogger has a dream to make his blog one of the top ranked blogs. But most of the blogosphere actually do not have the know how or tools to actually implement them. The two most important ranking tools which are used are Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank.

Google Page Rank - This works in a pretty unique way because it is one of the most important algorithms and it brings in the concept of SEO to determine the rankings.

Few ways to improvise on your Google Rank for your blog:
- Usage of Keywords – Effective Google Searches can be referred to know more about the working of keyword phrases. It is better to have a keyword phrase for your site as it has to be the most used and most relevant parameter to shoot your ranking.
- Density of the Keyword – The required density of the keyword should be between 3 % - 5 % ideally. The number of times the keyword is repeated which is relevant to the context in a blog contributes to the rank.
- Linking of the Site – The hyperlinking of one’s site by others is ‘the’ most important measure by which the rankings are calculated. The links should be in between the posts or the article to add more value to the hyperlinking than just hyperlinking for the sake of it.
- Well designed page – Another significant influencer to the shooting of the ranking is the design content and properly organized pages. As goes the famous quote, good design is popular design.
- Proper Site Submission – The open directory project is widely regarded by Google as the most essential link in the calculation of its rankings. The best possible submission sites to be added to are dedicated directories and organizations.
Alexa Rank - As a subsidiary of Amazon, Alexa provides ranking of websites just based on web traffic on a particular site. This ranking works on web monetization strategy which focuses on the traffic which has visited a particular site by having an Alexa toolbar installed on them.

According to Alexa Traffic Rank, “The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). The main Alexa traffic rank is based on the geometric mean of these two quantities averaged over time.”

Alexa ranking can be improved by adhering to the mentioned implementations:
- Firstly, install the Alexa toolbar and display the widget.
- Some article can be written about Alexa itself, just to get the required number of links.
- Enriching content writing and promotions on social networking sites and webmaster forums also helps the cause.
- Get the linking of your articles done to stumbleupon.com, digg.com and del.icio.us.
- Site optimization using the keyword phrases strategy.
- An unethical practice is enabling running of many scripts which in turn uses numerous multiple proxy servers to create a jump in the visitor list.
There are other ways also in which the Alexa ranking can receive a major boost.

Implement the above tips to see your rankings shoot up in the blogosphere!

WordPress Link Exchange Plugin and Tools | 8 Comments

Blogrolling is either dead, or dying fast. Most bloggers hardly link to another blog in their blogroll without asking for a link in return (or expecting you’ll return the favor). I can understand why - the same space can be sold to the highest bidder!

Blogs have limited online real estate, and if you link to all your favorite bloggers without getting anything in return, that’s not all too fair isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be better to link to other bloggers who would return the favor, getting you valuable backlinks and improving your SEO score?

For some of my niche blogs, I’ve been looking for a way to create some 2-way / 3-way links exchanges with related blogs. I’ve searched high and low for a solution, and ended up using the LinkEx software along with a WordPress widget that was developed specifically for it. The ironic part is that I finally found the solution by going through massive amounts of Google results and ending up at a adult webmaster forum.

Using LinkEx to Manage Your Link Exchange

Although there are tons of link exchange software all called “LinkEx” or some variation of the name, the one I am referring to is at www.Linkex.dk – which should be the original website for the software. It’s free to use, no catch. Just download the entire thing and upload it to your web server. It contains just one php file and requires no MySQL database, so all the better!

The initial set-up page is very simple too, all you need to do is select your admin username, password, email, web URL and website title. Make sure you set the file permissions to “766” or “755” depending on your type of blog hosting.

Next what you want to do is click on “Categories” and change the name of the default to whatever you want. By doing this you can specify the limit of links, or break up links into different categories and display them on different parts of your blog.

Then you need to edit the way links are displayed. If you want link to be displayed in your current BlogRoll / sidebar area, you need to make sure they are “list items”, which means you have to add the <li> tags before and after like this:

If you want to display only links and not descriptions, you can edit be removing the {$DESCRIPTION} part of the code.

Click to continue reading “WordPress Link Exchange Plugin and Tools”

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Using LinkEx to Manage Your Link Exchange

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