Marketing with WordPress and More

I like Twitter because it’s easy to use and it helps me with my online business in several ways, which I share in this post. Read the rest of this entry »

I was wasting a lot of time with trial & error before I read WordPress for Internet Marketers by Leanne King – a treasure trove of excellent tools and techniques that can help you transform your blog into something attractive and profitable.  It’s also one of the best resources I’ve found for information on reliable plugins!

Note: The majority of these are plugins are free and recommended by Leanne King

1. Platinum SEO Pack is often cited as being better than the very popular All in One SEO plugin. It can greatly improves how your blog is indexed in search engines and is a must-have, unless you are using a premium theme that is already properly SEOd (and regularly updated to keep current with what search engines like) like Thesis

2. OptinPop allows you to easily add a customized opt-in box that you can connect with one of the top 2 autoresponders I reviewed in my post Autoresponder Review – Top 2 Choices

However, I am far more keen on Robert Plank’s Popup Software which I’m using on this blog.

3. Privacy Policy is essential if you use Adsense. Starting at the end of February 2008, Google law is that sites that display AdSense ads or search boxes must  have a privacy policy. If you don’t use Adsense it’s still a good idea to have a privacy policy and the wording in this one is general enough to cover many different kinds of sites.

4. Theme Tester is handy because having a great theme for your business blog is essential and you will probably end up switching themes more than once. With this plugin you can test different themes without affecting what your visitors see until you’re ready to make the change official.

5. Robots Meta is awesomely helpful. It allows you to  easily change which pages  in your blog are indexed in search engines (you don’t want download pages indexed, for example) and whether links in a post or on a page should be dofollow or nofollow.

6. Sociable adds social media buttons to your posts  so your visitors can easily submit your site to their favorite social bookmarking and news sites. You’ll see it in action at the bottom of this post.

7. WP Database Backup helps you to backup your blog as often as you like. Backing up  regularly is wise for everyone, but it can be all the more critical if your blog is a source of income. This plugin makes it easy, allowing you to set how often the backup runs and where to send the file for safekeeping. You can read more about backing up WordPress here

8. Maximum Security will fix a huge number of  security problems that allow evil doers to hack (mess with) WordPress blogs. As it stands now, WordPress is fairly easy to hack even if you use some of the security plugins that are available. Maximum Security is still in beta right now but will be released soon. It won’t be free but the beta testers are wowed by it – it will likely be a must-have.  You can sign up to be notified about the release date when you visit the site.

Note: To learn about the best security plugins and strategies to protect your blog from malicious hackers, I recommend John Hoff’s excellent ebook and video package: WordPress Defender: 30 Ways to Secure Your Blog from Attack that Anyone Can Do

9. TESTIT makes it possible to split test different posts within Wordpress. You can write two versions of any post and  see from within the WP Admin which post generated more clicks or which blog post inspires the most people to click through to other pages on your blog, other categories, other posts, what you have in your sidebar, etc.

10. Podcasting is a great way to get your message out. This plugin takes a file from your site or another site and adds it to an iTunes-based feed. It also includes a player so visitors can tune in on your blog. Having a good microphone is important.

11. Auto Social Poster Gold will auto bookmark your blog posts to over 30 bookmarking websites as soon as you click Publish. It also has a random submission option if you want to avoid being slapped for submitting to too many sites at once. This works far better than software like Web2Submitter in my opinion. I learned about this product from James Schramko -  a marketer with a refreshing amount of integrity and an awesome ninja coaching forum that you can join. Have a look: Super Fast Strategies

~ Lillea Woodlyns

Leanne King is known as The WP Queen. It’s easy to see why when you read WordPress for Internet Marketers , her WordPress how-to guide that helps beginners and pros turn WordPress into, as the product tagline says, a money press.

I am VERY happy with this product. It’s one of the best things that I’ve bought for my online business.

The guide is filled with easy to understand directions and lots of screenshots. Leanne knows how important it is to explain things clearly. Beginners and advanced users will appreciate this because WordPress can be fussy to work with at times.

WordPress for Internet Marketers offers lots of information about free and paid WordPress services & tools which will help you to easily:

• install, backup and upgrade WordPress.  Note: Power users will appreciate Leanne’s how-to for installing WordPress on several sites at the same time.
• fully optimize your WP blog for search engines like Google

• customize the look of your WP blog with one of the many free and premium themes that she has carefully tested. To learn more about good themes, see my post  Best Wordpress Themes
  
• create many different kinds of sites. For example:

• membership site – one of the most interesting options she covers is the ability to charge a fee to access an individual post
• salespage – Example: landing page for affiliate sales
• Amazon store, e-store
  
• article directory – could your blog be the next Ezine?
• review blog, video blog, job search directory … it’s amazing how many options she covers. Before I read this guide I didn’t realise that WordPress could be used to create so many different kinds of sites so easily.

Bonus with purchase: 100 simple WordPress themes, some with resale rights + WordPress upgrade reports *

* Leanne’s upgrade reports are time and stress savers. WordPress is notorious for frequent upgrades that can change how your favorite WordPress plugins and features behave. Leanne beta tests new WordPress versions and alerts you about what will be new and improved after each upgrade.

Option: Comprehensive video tutorial package to speed learning. I went for this option and it has helped me tremendously!

I think that the price of this product is very reasonable for what you get. Most people will never find most of the information that Leanne reveals because she is a thorough researcher and WordPress is her specialty.

Leanne and I have many friendly exchanges on Twitter and the SFR Business Coaching Forum. It’s cool to interact with marketers who put a lot of care into their products and respond quickly to questions. Leanne King is a marketer with integrity which is very important to me.

WordPress for Internet Marketers can help you even if you aren’t interested in making money with your blog. The directions will show you how to create a great looking blog quickly.

I truly love this product.

Is there anything that I don’t like about it? Yes, but it’s minor. I don’t like most of the free themes that are bundled as a bonus, but that’s fine, the themes that Leanne recommends in the book are great and I have my personal favorites anyway such as the theme I’m using on this blog and frugal Theme.

There is also a minor flaw in the book: the Adobe Acrobat pages and the pages that Leanne has assigned in the book don’t match – the result of dividing such a long book into several PDFs I imagine. Keep that in mind when you read the table of contents and try hunt down a particular section. See the example below to understand what I mean about the page mismatch:

Feel free to ask me questions about this product by writing to me at AskLillea.com – I’ll do my best to help you determine if this product is right for you. I’m also happy to contact Leanne King on your behalf.

~ Lillea Woodlyns

P.S. If you’re interested in WordPress for Internet Marketers by Leanne King I suggest that you buy it ASAP. The price may go up soon.

Tags: Leanne King, Leanne King WordPress, make money with WordPress, WordPress for Internet Marketers, WordPress for Internet Marketers Review, WordPress membership site plugin

Google Adsense is a popular way to try to ‘monetize’ blogs and sites.

But I won’t use it.

Why? Before I reveal all, here is a basic overview of how Adsense works:

• You go to https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/ and sign up for a free Adsense account.
• You paste the code Google gives you into your site.
• Within minutes, ads from Google appear on your webpage where you pasted the code.
• If someone visits your site and clicks on an ad you can make money from their click.

Over time Google gets better at ‘reading’ what your page/site is about and gives you relevant ads.

How does Google do this? Google’s software scanners (’spiders’) look at various things such as the titles you use, the text in your links and the number of times you use keywords that match what people are searching for in Google every day.

If I put Adsense code into this blog, ads about products and services related to WordPress and making money with blogging would likely appear.

Why I Won’t Use Google Adsense

Making decent money with Adsense is not quick or easy or very lucrative any more.

Marketers who are successful with Adsense use techniques that encourage higher paying ads to appear on their sites. They also know how to position the ads so they’re more likely to be clicked. They started doing this years ago, when it was lucrative and the rules, etc. weren’t as they are now.

There are plenty of e-books, etc. that claim they can teach you how to do this, but now you need to put Adsense on a huge number of sites to even have a shot at a reasonable amount of money!

Adsense can rarely be relied on to produce a steady, quit-your-day-job income, or even close, at least not these days.

HOWEVER the low pay isn’t the only reason I don’t want to use Adsense.

Another reason I won’t use it, even if Adsense paid well is:

I can’t select the ads that will appear!

This is about ethical issues in marketing. When I recommend a product or service it means that I think that the quality is high and the price is reasonable for that quality. I put a lot of care into research before making a purchase for myself and recommending a product to others.

It would be incredibly time consuming for me to research every product that displays on my site via Adsense.  I would also feel the need to write a warning if an ad appeared for a product that I knew was s—  to make sure visitors didn’t click!

I realise that other marketers don’t feel as ‘personal’ about Adsense ads. There is good money to be made with Adsense with the right techniques and perhaps they view the ads on their sites as profitable ‘decoration’.

How do you feel about Adsense? Do you like it, dislike it, or remain neutral?

~ Lillea Woodlyns

The number of dofollow blogs is growing. We’ve joined the movement by installing a dofollow Word Press plugin for this blog.

To understand what dofollow is and why it can help you promote your business, you first need to understand what link building is.

Why Link Building Can

Help You Promote Your Site for Free

Link building is placing links to your site on other popular sites and blogs – sites and blogs that already rank highly in search engines like Google. When link building is done correctly, it will help boost your site’s seach engine rankings.

Why is a good search engine ranking important? The higher your ranking, the more likely it is that a link to your website will appear on the first pages of results that a potential customers sees when they search for products on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.

How does all of this work?

It’s rather complex, but to sum up search engines have software components (often called ’spiders’) that scan websites. The information that spiders collect is used to determine what a site is about and how important it is compared to other sites online.

If a site already ranks highly in a search engine, the outbound links on that site can be seen as important, too. Outbound links are links that lead away from a site. For example, in this post I include links to other sources of information about dofollow. Because the links take you away from my blog they are called outbound.

The Most Common Free Ways to Build Links Are:

• posting comments on other blogs/sites because you are usually allowed to include a link to your site with your comment
• submitting the link to your article/post/story to a social news site like Digg. Many blogs and sites, including this one, have buttons at the bottom of posts so you can submit them easily
• putting your link into the ’signature’ part of any posts you write in online forums
• submitting articles to free article directories like Ezine. You simply put the link to your site in your author resource box. For more information on article writing as a way to promote your site for free, see Promoting Your Site with Short Articles

Why Dofollow Helps with Link Building

Links that you post on high ranking sites won’t help your website get a higher rank unless the site you’re posting on uses dofollow. Dofollow is a software code that tells the search engine spiders to look at the outbound links and give them a higher ranking simply by association.

By default, most blogs are nofollow, meaning that the search engine spiders won’t follow the outbound links and give them higher ranking by association. To make a blog dofollow you need to install a special plugin. You can find a link to the free WordPress plugin I use at the end of this post. It’s easy to install.

Keep in mind that many dofollow blogs and sites don’t have a high rank in search engines. Some never will, some may soon. That’s okay. Having your links on other sites can be very beneficial -  you may get some clicks that result in sales. Yes, it’s always worthwhile to have links in spots where potential customers might see them. Dofollow just gives you an extra boost by increasing your chances of being listed in the search results on search engines.

Dofollow or nofollow, you must be careful with what you write on the site. Show respect for the site or forum you’re posting on, don’t simply promote your own products in a blatant way.  If you aren’t careful about this, you will be seen as a SPAMMER and your link will probably be deleted.

And please feel free to leave non-spammy comments on this blog. I’m doing link building myself so the blog will increase in rank over time.

Want to Know More About

Search Engine Rankings & Dofollow?

Where to Find Dofollow Blogs

Dofollow Search Engine

How to Check Google’s Site Rankings (known as ‘page rank’)

Google Toolbar  – comes with a button that lets you check page rank

How to enable the Google page rank checker in Google Toolbar

How to Join the Dofollow Movement

Dofollow WordPress Plugin

~ Lillea Woodlyns

For best results blogs should have a search engine optimized (SEO), easy to navigate theme and quality content.

The theme for Speed Online Wealth Blog was the free default WordPress theme, Kubrick, for a while. I optimized it as much as I could, but I still wasn’t happy with it. The search for something better began.

There are many free WordPress themes on the net.  Search for  ‘free WordPress themes’  and you’ll find hundreds. Free themes can be fine for business blogs when you tweak them with several plugins. This post may help you: 11-Wordpress-Plugins-for-Internet-Marketers

Best Free Theme Resources I’ve found

Note: the best free themes aren’t just lookers – they are full featured & reliable

One Hertz.com

Best WP Themes.com

1blogtheme.com

You can change the theme for your business blog as many times as you like. I ‘tried on’ many different themes before I found any that I wanted to use.  Usually a quick preview was all I needed to figure out if I should axe a theme right away.

BUT it can be quite risky to change themes so I wanted to be careful.

Why can it be risky to change themes?

It can mess up crucial blog settings. This can create a lot of frustrating extra work for you. I learned my lesson with this, believe me. Many of the themes I tried needed too many tweaks for a non-programmer like me to handle.

What Does It Take to Create a

Truly Stellar Business Blog Theme?

Investing in good theme software is wise if you want full features and support. This is also referred to as a ‘premium theme.’  Not all premium themes are fully customizable or good, of course, but many of them are well worth the expense.

The Best Premium Themes…

• make it easy for you to have the look and features that you prefer, not what another person prefers, which is a problem when you go with a free theme template or many of the premium themes on the market

• optimize your blog for search engines (SEO) so that more people can find your site, or at least be easy to tweak with plugins for the same effect. Out-of-the-box they should at least have a structure that is reasonably good for SEO.

• allow you to change to a different ‘look’ if you want to while keeping your preferred settings. So if you want no sidebar or several, a large header or small, etc. it will be possible and won’t mess up your blog overall.

• have great technical support & ideally an active user forum
• have free lifetime upgrades

• allow you to use the theme on sites you built for other people (usually there is an additional fee for this)

Check Out:

frugal Theme

It meets ALL of the above criteria

People often mention Thesis as being a great premium theme, but I prefer frugal Theme.

Why?

• It’s easier to customize. I bought Thesis and ended up returning it in a few days to buy frugal instead!
• Eric Hamm, frugal’s creator, is EXCELLENT about getting back to customers. He offers great technical support too.
• every now and again there is a terrific sale on frugal

Remember, whether you use a free theme or a premium theme, you should provide great content on your blog so people will want to return to read more. Looks alone won’t do it.

Will you return to this blog to read more? I hope so.

~ Lillea Woodlyns

P.S. I’ve been asked why I use Mandigo theme instead of frugal Theme on this site. Great question. The answer is that I have set up things to suit the theme I’m using, so switching would mean more work for me and I have a number of projects on the go right now. I may switch in the future, but for now I’ll stick with Mandigo Theme on this site.  I’m developing other sites with frugal - I bought a developer’s license for it -  so I DO use it and I love it! That’s why I 100% recommend that you check it out and consider it before ANY other premium theme!