Benefits of Using WordPress

Written by MichaelZ on February 28, 2010 – 11:43 am -

Many people resist things they don’t understand and that’s how I felt about WordPress for many years.  As I become more familiar with it and saw what it could do for my marketing, I became a convert.

WordPress Is Search Engine Friendly

Search engines love WordPress and there’s a good reason for that.The WordPress developers worked with the search engines to ensure that WordPress would be easily crawled and indexed.Search engines are able to easily crawl and index your blog’s content because of that.Then be sure to write some original content.

Pinging Your Blog

Pinging is by far one of the best features of a WordPress because it tells a web blog tracking system that your blog has been updated.Pinging services are to blogs what search engine spiders are to websites.Pining is the fastest way to get your blog crawled and indexed.  Find and sign up for as many pinging services as you can because a well pinged blog can attract many visitors.The URLs of the pinging services can be entered in the WordPress Settings - Writing - Update Services box.

Switching Themes Is Easy

After having developed many traditional HTML websites of my own, changing the design and layout is a major undertaking, yet one that needs to be done from time to time.  Unfortunately, things often get broken in the process. 

WordPress makes it very easy to switch themes without affecting the data.  A theme is like a pair of window curtains around your blog.  Post, pages, categories, and widgets don’t change, only the window dressing changes.  WordPress is especially fun around major holidays when you can switch from summer to fall to Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas, and so on. 

Make Your Own WordPress Themes

Developing your own WordPress themes is fun and easy with theme development software like Artisteer.Artisteer can also make Joomla themes, standard HTML templates and more.Ever wish you could hide the sidebars completely or move them from left to right?  Want a tabbed menu instead of a navigation bar?  Or perhaps change the width of the layout and have a bigger space for a header image?  Here are two blogs I made with Artisteer, one about the best WordPress hosting and the other about free workout videos.With the help of a few free plugins, you can also make themes to look more like a standard HTML website.

If you haven’t already given WordPress a try, I encourage you to do so.If you can click on icons to run other popular software programs, you can use WordPress.

 

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How to Set off Blogging for Money

Written by MichaelZ on February 28, 2010 – 11:43 am -

Not every blogger is blogging for money. But wouldn’t it be nice to earn a few bucks from your blog to help pay for your daily expenses and luxuries? For some people, blogging can be a profitable moneymaking activity. This brings the question, “How can I earn money from my weblog?”

As much as everybody would like to make dollars from blogging, it’s not a walk in the park. If you think that all you have to do is to put up a blog, fill it up with articles, slap all sorts of ads on it, then wait for the money to roll in, then you can never be more wrong. Blogging for cash is more than that - it means creating a blog that the community like to visit over and over again, and that’s where the profit potential shows.

Have A Blog, Earn Money

The best place to be blogging for dollars is, obviously, from your own blog. Unless you are blogging with your friends or business partners, you have total control over the income streams for your blog, be it text ads, banners or affiliate programs.

To maximize your profit potential making money with blogs, it is advisable to get a domain name for your blog. Many advertisers and affiliate programs accept only members that have their own top-level domain names.

Income Opportunities for Blogs

As blogs become increasingly popular, numerous income opportunities have opened up for bloggers. Let’s take a look at the most popular earning opportunities for bloggers.

Advertising Programs

This is the most common and popular income source for bloggers. Google Adsense is the arguably the most widely-known advertising program for bloggers, with Chitika, YPN, Adbrite, Bidvertiser, among others, as worthy competitors.

Making money from advertising entails a lot of high-quality content in your blog. For instance, if your blog is all about mobile phones, advertisers will put up ads about mobile phones. Your blog’s readers are then more likely to click on those ads because they are interested about mobile phones in the first place.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs like Amazon, Clickbank, CommissionJunction and Linkshare allow you to promote products and websites on your blog. You earn commissions everytime a sale is generated through your blog.

If you love to blog, there’s no reason why you can’t make money from blogging. Just remember to be passionate and knowledgeable about what you’re blogging, and you will soon be blogging for money.

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How to Make Money Blogging - Tips For Turning Your Blog Into an Affiliate Product-Selling Machine

Written by MichaelZ on February 26, 2010 – 10:35 pm -

Want to know how to make money blogging? While there are several ways that you could use to make profits from your blog, affiliate marketing is one of the easiest and best ways to do it. However your blog must be able to dramatically sell affiliate products that you pitch if you want to make a huge impact. The following are (2) great strategies to help you turn your blog into an affiliate product-selling machine: 1) Genuinely recommend and personally endorse beneficial products Making money from affiliate programs is not as simple as just adding links to them from your blog. The simple reason why visitors will keep coming back to your blog is simply because they trust and respect you to a certain level. Genuinely recommend and personally endorse affiliate products that will be of benefit to them so as not to destroy the trust and respect that they have for you. One of the best ways to do this is to give an honest and open estimate of the value pr quality of the affiliate product. Include both the strength and weaknesses of the product. Tell readers who the product is suitable for and those it is not for. The truth is that people want to know what they are going to spend their money on. Even if a product has its drawbacks, your readers will still buy it if it meets their particular need. That’s exactly how to make money blogging by genuinely recommending affiliate products. 2) Where do you place affiliate links on your blog? Most people don’t know it, but where an affiliate link is being on a blog determines whether an affiliate program will be successful or not. Position your affiliate links at hotspots on your blog - meaning, place your affiliate links at places where your blog visitors will easily see them on your blog. The sole purpose of using affiliate programs on your blog is to make money by recommending them as a source for more information or solution to a problem. So don’t hide your affiliate links - make them as visible as possible. Here are some strategic places to position affiliate links at your blog: o The top left hand side of your blog. o At the middle of each content post on your blog. o At the end of each blog post above where people get to leave their comments. o Just after the introduction that comes with each blog post. There you have it - how to make money blogging and 2 strategies to help you profits heavily from affiliate programs. I’m sure that almost all of you want to learn more techniques on how to start a blog. Different tips are available online on how to start a blog. You can visit the site now and get helpful tips on how to start a blog.

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