Glenda Watson Hyatt, aka the Left Thumb Blogger, shares how blogging with wordpress has enabled her to be heard by the world and increased her circle of friends. She blogs at www.doitmyselfblog.com.

Blogging is not new today and the number of web host has increased dramatically. There are certain criteria to look out for when one is choosing appropriate web host for blogging.  It may not be easy to browse the internet and select a web host that suits you. However, one can be certain that a popular web host with high numbers of blogs, visitors and subscribers is a reliable web host.  A web host offering free and tailor-made blogging services attracts more of the community and thus gains more popularity as compared to those without these offers.

Starting blogging is simple using WordPress. WordPress has been serving the community for the past five years globally since 2003 and it is free for all. When service from WordPress started, there were only a small number of users. At that time, there are other major competitors who are getting most of the attention from the community. Movable Type and Greymatter were dominators of the blogging world back then; however they were outcompeted by WordPress along the way. WordPress offers services that none other competitors did.

The success is proven by the numbers of users it has, which has reached millions of people worldwide and is the most widely used web host outcompeting others. There are reasons why millions of people globally chose WordPress. WordPress is convenient for those who are interested in blogging but do not want to spend any money yet on blogs and everyone can start blogging with the easiness. An individual can start blogging with only a username and email within a couple of seconds. Once the individual has obtained WordPress, he can start his blog right away. There is no requirement for blogging using WordPress and everything is up to the creativity of the blogger.

Some of the popular and widely used features offered by WordPress are:

•    Support group who works 24 hours providing services to those having blogging problems

•    It is easy to obtain a free WordPress, starting to blog and tailor-made to suit your style with optional upgrade which requires payment

•    There is Automatic Spam Protection to guard the safety of published blog

•    Options for bloggers to display their blogs to the public or only to members of WordPress, for example diary entries that contain personal issues and the blogger only want to share with a limited number of people

•    Bloggers can choose from a wide variety of themes to suit their taste. There are constant updates based on feedbacks from the users

•    Features such as Videos, Photos, Autosave, Previews, Words and Spell-Check made blogging easier in creating good blog posts. An integrated statistic system that comes with the upgraded version allows bloggers to survey the responses from the visitors

•    WordPress is flexible with the feature of Page management. It allows users to take control by not only posting blog entries, but with the ability to create their own webpage

•    Features such as Import and Export allow the transfer such as blogs from another web host and other imports.

•    Users can leave WordPress anytime providing that their data is not locked

Thus, WordPress is indeed a success in the blogging community of the world when they are offering unique and useful features that no other web hosts had. Apart from these, the support group provides good service in developing, upgrade and troubleshooting to the users. They are indeed very passionate and dedicated of their job to provide assurance to the users. Let start our own blogs using WordPress today.
 

 Blogging has become a phenomenal trend of the century with the birth of free web hosting such as WordPress, Blogger, Xanga and LiveJournal. One of the most prominent webs hosting in blogosphere, WordPress is most preferable for its versatility in tutorial posting and editing. Layouts in Wordpress blog are designed by Kubrick, which is also known as Default Theme. Kubrick has been around for years as the main template of WordPress. However, custom theme has soared as the next big thing in WordPress.

    Custom theme in WordPress is slowly replacing Kubrick theme as blog layout. Users prefer to customize their blogs to make them outstanding among millions of blogs in the Internet. This especially true for famous and influential bloggers who hired professional IT individuals to encode new CSS and HTML required for new layout design.

    Although changing codes might be difficult for beginners, there are various tutorials that can be learned via World Wide Web. With advanced technology, there are even websites that offer to customize blog theme for free. WordPress users take this advantage to revamp the whole layout look. Beautiful and extraordinary layout or theme displayed in the blog is believed to attract more readers and create heavier traffic into the blog. People do this to increase online income through advertising in their blog. Hence, custom theme is preferred as the first step to better layouts for their blogs.

    Some people also love to create layouts from scratch. They believed that their layouts need personal touch to make their blog really special and one-of-a-kind. Tutorials in YouTube are big help in such matter. Professional IT individuals sometimes created blogs of their own to spread knowledge about customizing blog layouts. In their blogs, some innovative suggestions are given that makes Kubrick theme seemed so outdated and old- fashioned.

    Fresh layouts and themes are also available in design-oriented sites. All WordPress users need to do is downloading the theme that caught their attention. Later on, they just need to upload the custom theme onto their WordPress sites. Such convenience made Kubrick theme less popular because rigid theme is no longer applicable to cyber world that requires constant makeovers.

The smart ones designed more themes to be sold to big companies and famous bloggers as side income. People see this coming as the next revolutionary change in WordPress which created job opportunity for graphic designers. This is why Kubrick theme is much forgotten by users especially to experienced bloggers. In the Internet, you might find plenty of sources to provide new design themes to WordPress blogs.

    WordPress documentation and application tabs also makes layout changing less frustrating to many. Instructions are stated for people to follow which makes more users opt for major layout makeover. Some users alter Kubrick theme instead of the old Kubrick theme to make their layouts less boring. However, the downside to Kubrick re-adaptation is sometimes the CSS files are in header files, not in style sheet that might be confusing for beginners. It is not recommended if users want totally different design since altering Kubrick theme means you will still stuck with Kubrick look with minor changes.

    Although Kubrick theme has served people as the main theme in WordPress all these years, it is time that people move on to world of creativity and changes. Custom theme is here to stay to dominate WordPress sites unless Kubrick theme changes into a better and more eye-catching theme.
 

Learn more about setting up a blog here. www.2createawebsite.com

Bloggers blog for different purposes; some may be due to their interest, some as their job or for business. No matter what the purposes are, WordPress Plugins are universal as they are suited to almost every purpose. For those who have blogs for business purposes, below are the WordPress Plugins available to enhance your business blog.

    The first plugin is the Business Directory which enables you to set up a mini directory on a page of your blog pages where you can list relevant resources for the information of you and the readers, advertisers, community or affiliates. You can invite them to submit a simple advertisement listing on your blog. These listing include information such as the name of the company, a short description on what they do and contact information.

    The next plugin that is worth a though is qTanslate plugin. This is especially important for those who are targeting readers from different parts of the world with different languages. Some of the features include easy switching between languages, build-in languages such as English, Chinese or German, one language for each URL and automatic download of .mo files.

    Look around and you will find that there are some bloggers who are including related entries to their blog posts, usually at the end of the posts. This is an effective way to keep your readers on your blog even longer as they will usually take the time to read the related entries. Moreover, this is a good way to promote your blog as some may decide to come back to your blog after reading a few articles and like the contents of your blog pages.

    Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator is another useful plugin for WordPress users. It is important as it generated a sitemap file on the server and which Google can read. This plugin will ensure all of your posts are indexed properly, enabling search engine crawlers to find out what are the available pages, recent changes and crawl accordingly.

    For bloggers who are using videos on their blog posts, EasyTube – YouTube plugin is one useful plugin. With this plugin, you need not bother with the troubles cause by HTML codes. It works simple by tagging the URL of the YouTube video in your WordPress. Furthermore, you can adjust the dimensions of the video or set autoplay to videos.

    Backing up your blogs is essential, and thus WordPress Database Backup is essential. It allows you to back up not only the major database tables, but also other tables in the same database. Backing up regularly is important for bloggers as we do not know when will the server crash, resulting in loss of data.

There are certainly useful plugins for you to use on your blog to enhance your blogging pages. It is not only for you as the blogger, but also for the convenience of the readers and most importantly to attract readers and make sure they are coming back. After all, one of the important purposes of a blog is to attract traffic to read your articles.
 

This video is Video Tutorial #13 in the “Blog Marketing Series”. The Blog Marketing Series is a series of videos designed to show you how to create a Wordpress blog, market it, and promote it to the world. The rest of the videos can be seen, FOR FREE, at www.blogmarketingseries.com. Check it out today. This video will show you the best plug-ins that you can get for Wordpress. Plus, you can see many more videos that will ignite the power of your blog at www.blogmarketingseries.com….

Benefits of Running a Contest on your Blog

There are numerous benefits as to why you should run a contest on your blog and we’re going too look at all of those benefits throughout this article. The most obvious reason is too increase your traffic and reader interactivity with your blog. Before you can benefit from running a contest on your blog you’ll need to know how to run a successful contest.

The first thing you need to do is organize your contest which is one of the most important steps. Make sure you have everything organized from the actual contest to the prizes and don’t leave anything out so that there are no surprises once you begin the contest. One thing you need to remember is that once you start your contest you need to fulfill the contest or else your blog readers will be very upset and usually never come back to your blog. Some will even bad mouth your blog so never start a contest without finishing it. I would recommend you buy the prizes for your contest once you have it planned so that you have them ready for when the contest is over.

Once the contest is planned out and you’re organized enough to run it you will need to start drawing in people to enter the contest. You need to get the word out about your contest to as many people as you can and with the social networks online today it shouldn’t be hard. You can use the social networking websites and any forums based around your blogs niche for finding people to enter your contest. You should start finding people to enter the contest well before the actual contest so that this way more people will have the chance to hear about the contest and join in on it.

When you run a contest on your blog the prizes don’t need to be anything huge either to draw in big traffic it should be related to your blog though. For instance if you have a video game blog then you’ll want to get some video games as prizes as this is directly related to your blog niche.

Now that you have some idea about running your own contest on your blog we’ll briefly look at the benefits of running a contest on your blog. There are plenty of benefits for running a contest on your blog and here are some of them.

•    Increased Readership
•    Increased Blog Activity
•    Exposure from other Blogs
•    Traffic Spikes during Contest

The main reason to run a contest is to get people on your blog and once there on your blog then you need to convince them through your content that they should stay. If they stay then you’ve done your job. You should run a few small contests on your blog to see how well they do and see if your return visitor increases at all. If your visitors do increase start running larger contests to see if you can’t keep the same conversions.

I run contests on my blog all the time and usually have one at least every month. This keeps the readers on my blog active and interested with what’s going on with the blog. Sometimes the prizes can cost next to nothing, but it still generates lots of traffic and comments. Try running some contests on your blog and see if it helps increase your current readership.
 

Benefits of Having More Then One Blog in the Same Niche

There are many people who have blogs in the same niche and many people own multiple blogs in the same niche and there is a reason for this. The most obvious reason is that you’ll make more money from having more blogs, and this is true but it takes more work. You need to be prepared to spend a lot of time on your blogs and once you start opening multiple blogs your workload starts doubling and tripling. The advantage of making your blogs in the same niche is that you’ll be able to write content and do your promotion at the same time for every blog. If you had blogs spread across different niches then your marketing and promotion would need to be different for each niche most likely which means you wouldn’t have enough time to properly run the blogs and make them successful. If you run the blogs in the same niche then the promotion and marketing can be done at the same time for the blogs and although it will take a bit longer to submit everything each day it could really boost your revenue. Ideally you’d target different keywords for each blog because there is no point competing with yourself for keywords, and there are enough keywords in every niche that it should never come down to you needing to optimize a blog for keywords that you’ve already optimized on another blog. Having multiple blogs can have many benefits down the road and we’ll talk about some of them throughout the rest of this article.

More Blogs = More Profit

It’s simple to say that multiple blogs can earn more money, there is an argument that one big blog could earn more, but more webmasters say multiple blogs makes more profit and also makes promotion easier. You should build one blog at first though and let it get traffic going before making other blogs, if you do this then you should be able to send traffic from the flagship blog to the new blogs you create over time.

Interlinking

Pending you’ve spent the few bucks it costs for dedicated IP’s you can interlink your blogs. Make sure the blogs are on their on IP though and if possible own hosting plan. I say this because if you’re caught interlinking blogs on the same IP then you may get de-indexed from Google which would be horrible. Interlinking your blogs is what makes it a network though and traffic can flow from one blog to the next. Ideally that is what you want and why you should target different areas of the niche with each new blog you create in the network.

Owning the Niche

Although you’ve already gotten a niche blog for one topic you could always start creating blogs in the same general niche but using different niches in that general niche. For instance you could blogs for all the celebrities you like and then interlink them together and make a niche network. You’ll begin to own the niche with many powerful blogs and can make a lot of money through this method.

Having blogs in the same niche is very beneficial and it can also lead to more money down the road. If you have ten decent blogs compared to one good blog you’ll usually make more revenue on the multiple blogs and when it comes time to sell them you’ll make more typically as well. Unless you have a blog that is a complete authority in the topic then going with multiple niche blogs is a wiser decision. You can then also sell only apart of your niche blog network and you have the option then to keep some of the revenue coming in monthly and also selling a piece of the network for quick cash. Niche blogs I feel dominate general blogs, especially nowadays with there being millions of blogs on the internet now.

Working With Merchants Contacting the merchant of your interested program is an ideal way to increase your sales, which can save you a lot of time and heartache. Once you contact the merchant, be sure to let them know what you are doing to promote their products, and ask for their advice when it comes to marketing. The merchant will know the product the best, and they will have a good idea of the strategies that are being used by other affiliates to make sales. By contacting the merchant, you’ll also show them that you are dedicated to succeeding with affiliate marketing. Contacting the merchant also shows your enthusiasm for marketing their products and services. Any merchant who knows affiliate marketing also knows that over 90% of sales are generated by less than 5% of the affiliates. Good merchants recognize your efforts and provide you with information and resources and may even boost your commission rates! Dealing with merchants If you email a merchant and they don’t respond, try again. If they still aren’t responding, you should think again about continuing the partnership, as a lack of communication can indicate other problems as well – such as payment. Keep in mind that many merchants make big promises, and set a high payout rate knowing that very few affiliates will actually meet it. This isn’t a good way to do business, and you should avoid working with these types of merchants. Communication When you communicate with merchants, you should ensure that you use a professional tone. If you have suggestions of how a merchant can improve their offers, you should let them know. Many merchants appreciate feedback, and know that any feedback they receive can improve their programs. Wise merchants always understand that good affiliates are hard to find and will treat them with respect, assist with resources, and be prompt with payments. Wise affiliates are the same way, and understand that merchants want quality promotion and sales performance. To get the most out of your partnership, you should always be professional and understanding with your merchant. Good merchants are always busy, which may make them seem like they aren’t that good. They will answer your questions and emails, although it may take them a little bit of time. The longer you work with a merchant, the more you’ll understand how they do things. If you are just starting out in affiliate marketing, a merchant can help you understand how things work. If you listen to them and show initiative, you’ll be well on your way to making it to the top.

Why You Should Promote Residual Affiliate Programs

Are you a webmaster in need of additional income? Or are you planning to set up an online business but you still don’t have any product to sell? If so, affiliate marketing may be the best solution for your problems. With affiliate marketing, you won’t need to worry about the products you have to sell. All you need to have is a website with sufficient contents that are related to the products of a certain online company offering affiliate programs. By becoming a member of the program, or by becoming an affiliate, you can start earning a certain amount of money right away!

Affiliate marketing is some sort of business relationship established between a merchant and his affiliates. In affiliate marketing, an affiliate agrees to direct some traffic to a merchant’s website. If that traffic is converted into some kind of action, like a visitor purchasing a product on the merchant’s website or a visitor becoming a lead for the company, the affiliate who directed the traffic will be compensated. Compensation may take the form of either a percentage sales commission for the sales generated or a fixed fee predetermined upon the application of the affiliate on the merchant’s affiliate program.

Promising a lot of benefits both for the merchants and the affiliates, affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular online marketing methods today. In fact, almost every merchant or retailer site today offers an affiliate program that any one can join into. Most retailers would entice people to become affiliates or members of their program by promising great benefits like large commissions, lifetime commissions, click through incomes and a lot of other benefits. But would all these affiliate programs bring off the same benefits?

Most affiliate programs would pay you, as an affiliate, a one-time commission for every sale or lead you brought to the merchant’s website. Commissions for this kind of affiliate programs are usually large, ranging from 15% to a high of about 60%. Other affiliate programs would pay you a fixed fee for every click through or traffic you send to the merchant’s site. Programs like this often pay a smaller fee for every click through, usually not getting any larger than half a dollar. The good thing about this kind of program, however, is that the visitor won’t have to purchase anything in order for the affiliate to get compensated.

Another type of affiliate program is the residual income affiliate program. Residual affiliate programs usually pay only a small percentage of sales commission for every sale directed by the affiliate to the merchant’s site. This commission often comes only in the range of 10% to 20% sales commission. Because of this, many people ignore residual affiliate program and would rather opt for the high paying one-time commission affiliate program. Are these people making a mistake, or are they making the right decision?

We can’t tell, for sure, if people are making a mistake by choosing a high paying one-time commission affiliate program. But we can definitely say that they are making a large mistake if they ignore residual affiliate programs. Residual affiliate programs would indeed pay at a lower rate, but merchants offering such kind of programs would generally pay you regular and ongoing commissions for a single affiliate initiated sale! That means, for the same effort you made in promoting a particular affiliate program, you get paid only once in a one-time commission program, and a regular and ongoing commission for a residual program!

So, are the benefits of promoting residual affiliate programs clearer to you now? Or are they still vague? If they are still vague, then let’s make them a bit clearer with this example.

Suppose there are two online merchants both offering web hosting services on their sites. The first merchant offers a one-time commission type of affiliate program that pays $80 for every single affiliate initiated sale. The second merchant also offers an affiliate program, but this time a residual affiliate program that pays only $10 for every single affiliate initiated sale. As an affiliate, we may get attracted at once at what the first merchant is offering, as $80 is definitely a lot larger than $10. But by thinking things over before actually getting into them, one may be able to see that the second merchant is offering us more opportunity to earn a larger amount of money.

Supposed you have directed traffic to the merchant and it converted into a sale, you’ll get paid once by the first merchant for the sale you have initiated. But with the second merchant, you’ll get paid monthly for as long as the customer you have referred to the merchant continues to avail of the web hosting service. That means that for the same effort of getting one customer to avail of the merchant’s service, you get paid monthly in residual affiliate programs while you only get paid once in a one-time commission type of affiliate programs.

So, are residual affiliate programs worth promoting? Definitely yes, because you virtually get more money from these types of affiliate programs in the long run! And would residual affiliate programs work best for you? Probably not, probably yes. It is not really for me to tell. But with the benefits that residual affiliate marketing can provide, it would really be unwise to ignore such programs.