Well it may be time for some insane marketing tactics. I’m not sure if it has something to do with Friday and the time of the year, but today’s traffic seems to have dipped a bit with a few of my web sites. Maybe today is graduation day for a lot of people? Hmm…not sure.

Anyway, I had a crazy idea when I woke up this morning. Do you remember the forehead ad guy from a year or so ago who raked in $37,375 to put an ad on his forehead for a month? Well, tons of people have done the same with the attempt to get money – but as far as I know, nobody has done it for a link on the homepage of a high traffic site. My gut feeling tells me that someone out there would do it. Imagine getting a homepage link on digg, TechCrunch or Fark in exchange for a forehead ad?

Well, it’s just an idea. If anyone wants to borrow my idea, you’re welcome to it. I’d be very curious to see if it works. Who knows, maybe I’ll give this one a shot.

Well, it has been one week since I started this blog, completely “from scratch” and I have brought in 1,027 visitors with an average of 133 visits per day. As for page views, this blog brought in 1,944 total with an average of 246 per day. Not bad, I guess? For the latest stats on this site, click here.

I have definitely learned a lot in this first week and have also changed my opinion on some things since I started. Since one of the main reasons to get a lot of traffic is to make money and one of the most popular sources of revenue is Google Adsense, I take back what I said earlier about using traffic exchanges and anything that resembles that. Darren from problogger first clued me in on this. I wondered though if StumbleUpon would fall into this category. I emailed Google and they could not say anything about any specific company. They repeated the phrase “We recommend that you exercise caution when using traffic exchange programs”.

So, whether you can use StumbleUpon is a mystery. I’d say it is better to play it safe and don’t bother…for now, it’s not worth the risk. Which is too bad, because you can get some really good traffic for a fairly reasonable cost…and it is very well targeted.

If you’re not using Adsense or any other advertising network and don’t have to worry about being banned then perhaps traffic exchanges are for you.

Overall, I think this article and this article brought in the most traffic. I was mentioned in a few other blogs and forum posts, creating a mini snowball effect. Probably the quickest and easiest way to get good traffic is to write high quality posts that others will want to blog and talk about. Leverage the power of sites like digg, and if you’re lucky – one front page story could bring you bucketloads of traffic.

Other than this I think optimizing your blog is the next important thing. I’m still not getting very much (if any) traffic from Google, but my site is listed. Perhaps I have need to optimize a few more things?

I’m definitely running low on steam and have gone kind of overboard lately. I’ve got at least 5 blogs that I’ve started, and ideas for a few more I’d like to start. I know it’s insane and not the direction I should go in…but I guess I temporarily have “blog fever”. If I get my head together, I’ll focus on two or three blogs at most. Really, I should just focus on one – but I don’t see that happening yet.

I wonder what is best – to have one blog (using one domain) covering many different topics…or have several very specific blogs each with their own domain? I’m taking the latter route, so I guess I’ll wait and see what happens.

[tags]blog,blogs,blogging,Blogging+Tips,weblogs,blog-tips[/tags]

Ok, I’ve had enough with the default masthead that comes with the WordPress, so I finally made something a little more eye pleasing. It’s not the best in the world, but not as embarassing as the default look. Well, I didn’t plan on doing this, but perhaps I should make this a quick tutorial in case anyone else out there would like to know how to do this.

Step 1:

To get started, first right click and save your default masthead to your desktop. It should be a blue masthead that looks something like this:

Step 2:

Using Photoshop or other image editing software, select the white border on the outside of the blue and then COPY the selection.

Step 3:

Hopefully you have already found a good background for your masthead. If not find one and open it up. Now simply pasted your selected area to this background picture. Add text or other graphics if desired:

Step 4:

What I do from this point is crop in the white area and then paste this on top of the original blue masthead image. By default, your masthead is probably stored in a location on your server at:

/wp-content/themes/default/images/kubrickheader.jpg

To make things easy, safe your new masthead as kubrickheader.jpg and upload over the old one. Save the old one if you like as a backup.

Now, your new masthead should show up on your blog. But, you probably notice your blog title overlapping your masthead making things look screwy. You will also want your masthead clickable so readers can use it to easily navigate to your home page. To do this you will need to go into your blog admin and click on “Presentation”, then click “Theme Editor”. On the right click the link that says “Header”.

It should say at the top: “Editing header.php”. Select and copy everything and save this as a backup on your computer in case you make a mistake. The section you will need to edit is near the bottom of the header.php file.

At this point I will send you to a more detailed explanation of how to edit the code. Click here to continue…

Now, what does this have to do with increasing traffic to your blog? Well, nothing directly. It has more to do with making your blog pleasing to your visitors…so they will keep coming back.

[tags]blog,blogs,blogging,Blogging+Tips,wordpress,weblogs,blog-tips[/tags]

For money making and business ideas to help you out during today’s uncertain economic times, please check out Business Idea Directory

I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed this lately, but Technorati has made it EXTREMELY difficult to find the blog claim form.  I’m guessing perhaps their servers are overwhelmed and they really don’t want to keep track of new blogs?  Who knows… but, if you’re one of those people who are frustrated because you can’t find it… here it is!

Click Here to Claim Your Blog at Technorati

You may need to be signed into Technorati to see the blog claim.  For me once I go to the above URL I have to scroll all the way down to the bottom.  For whatever reason, they certainly don’t want this to be found easily.  It will be interesting to see if they move this URL around from time to time…

I’m going to do a little experiment on one of my blogs and see if high quality, relevant comments can increase traffic to your blog.  In the experiment I’m going to go some of the most popular blogs out there and leave so called “qualified comments” and see what happens.  I think I’ll shoot for 100 comments and see what happens.

Will it increase my traffic or do nothing?  Stay tuned and find out!

Tired of the bland look of your default kubrick WordPress theme? Want to make it “pop” a little more and stand out from the thousands of other blogs that use the same theme? Follow these simple steps to add color to your background, and make your content stand out more..and hopefully increase the stickyness of your blog. The image to the left is what this blog looked like before I changed the background to blue.

Basically, there are five image files you need to modify to change your background color. First you might want to use this online color schemer to pick a background color that matches your masthead and the rest of your blog. Once you have decided on a color, it is time to modify the existing background image files.

If you haven’t modified your masthead, and are still using that ugly blue one, you might want to follow this tutorial: Customizing Your Masthead in WordPress.

Locate the following image files in your web server/hosting company via FTP: kubrickbg.jpg, kubrickbgcolor.jpg, kubrickheader.jpg, kubrickfooter.jpg and kubrickbgwide.jpg. Basically, you will need to go open these in Photoshop or your favorite image editing software and select the outer grey area of these files and fill or replace the color with the color of your choice. Then you upload them over the original files and you should be good to go. You may need to reload the images on your browser for them to show up for you.

For older versions of WordPress (I think before 2.2) I’ve noticed that sometimes the footer is 1 pixel off. I found a fix for this and basically you go in your theme editor and modify the style.css file.

Look for this:

#footer {

padding: 0 0 0 1px;

margin: 0 auto;

width: 760px;

clear: both;

}

And change it to:

#footer {

padding: 0;

margin: 0 auto;

width: 760px;

clear: both;

}

That should fix the footer pixel problem. So…. there you have it – a simple way to make your blog more appealing to your audience and in turn keep them on your site longer, and keep them coming back.

Test king tests have resolved many candidates problems by pursuing tests in the most effective manner. Microsoft certifications such as 70-296 and 70-292 have increased the scope of individuals in the job market. Another test numbered 70-290 also widens the scope of candidates for various opportunities. Tests like 350-018 and350-030 are based on Cisco certifications. Another test pertaining to Cisco training is 642-176. Citrix certification is also available at test king an example can be SY0-101.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year or so, you probably know that YouTube is one of the most popular web sites on the Internet. Every day millions of people visit YouTube to watch the latest viral videos, or check the recent activity on videos they have uploaded to their account. If you play your cards right you may one day wake up to find one of your videos featured on the YouTube home page – which could result in millions of views and could even give your career a significant boost.

One day I logged into my account and found that a video I uploaded was featured on the YouTube home page. I lucked out and this happened the week that Google acquired YouTube which further increased the exposure of my video. In less than a week that video received over 1.5 million views. To date it has been viewed over 3.5 million times. But how did this increase traffic to my blog?

Continue reading →

Well, well…July 1st has come and gone and some of you out there may be wondering if I hit my $50/day goal. Well…I hate to say it, but no I did not. But…I’m over halfway there! I think I’m realizing it will take longer than the month or so I gave myself to reach that goal. It’s probably smarter to increase your daily income goal in smaller amounts – perhaps each month I should set a goal to increase my daily income by $5/day? Or go for a monthly goal instead of a daily goal. Yes..that sounds good!

Well, at least my income has increased. I do think staying focused helps. It also helps to blog your brains out and promote as much as you can. I will say it hasn’t been easy. Fun, but not easy. I’m probalby putting in 12 hour days – blogging, researching, promoting, etc. But, I love it… so it doesn’t bother me. To me it is like building up a type of virtual real estate that will hopefully keep moola coming in as the days, weeks, months and years go by.

So, to be realistic…perhaps I should set a goal to reach $50/day by…November 1st, 2006. Hopefully, I’ll reach that goal sooner..but at least I’ll have some breathing room.

The web development these days is done through cheap web hosting. The cheap hosting also provides cheapest domain name and domain name info. The websites use dedicated servers for is efficient running. The affiliate program and wireless internet ads pay the website hosts for their services in this regard. The world of web is ever growing and is multiplying with no boundaries drawn.

Since I’ve started putting a serious effort into blogging I have created a checklist to make my new WordPress blogs more pimped out and optimized than the default install gives. These steps will improve search engine optimization, looks, and help you better monitize your WordPress Blog.

If anyone would like to add to this list, please do! I would love to hear more tips on how anyone else out there “pimps out” their WordPress blog. If you send me your tip, I’ll include a link to your blog on this post. Click here to send in your tips. And now…for the checklist:

Step 1: Install WordPress

For me, this step is a snap. I host with WebHostIsland.com and can have as many domains and blogs as I would like. From my control panel, I enter a few settings and push a button to install.

If you don’t have the one button install feature, you will need to download and install it yourself, or have a third party do it for you. If you would like me to install it for you, contact me and I can give you an estimate.

After you install WordPress, you will probably need to fine tune some settings in the Options menu. From your Dashboard, click Options and that should bring you to the General tab to start. Double check to make sure the WordPress address and Blog address are how you want them. I usually make sure there is a www in the address.

Adjust your time zone settings so your post times will be correct with where you live. I live in the central time zone in the US, so I have to set my time to a -5 in the field next to where it says “Times in the weblog should differ by:”. The default is 0, based off of UTC time. Click here for info on UTC time. The easiest thing to do is just look at what the UTC time is displaying, then add or subtract what you need to make the time correct.

On the default install there are links in the sidebar that come with the installation. These are presumably links to important people that helped develop WordPress. If you like, leave them there, or delete and start from scratch. To delete, just click on the Links category on your Dashboard.

Finally, you will probably have a default post titled “Hello World.” Delete this post and change your default category as well. These can be done from by clicking on Manage link on the Dashboard.

Step 2: Install Key WordPress Plugins

There are a lot of great plugins available for WordPress, but here is a short list of plugins I use when starting out. This should be sufficient to get you started. If you would like to see more plugins, click here. Anyone recommend any other plugins? Let me know.

Plugin installation is very easy…usually you just download and upload the plugin files to your wp-content/plugins directory, then activate them from the Plugins category on your dashboard. Some plugins require a few extra steps, so be sure to read the documentation of each plugin for details. Here are the plugins I start out with:

• Bsuite – Gives blog stats, shows incoming search terms, tracks top stories, etc. After installing, I edit the single.php file (go to Presentation, Theme Editor, then click on “Single Post” to edit single.php). Click here for instruction on how to get search terms and other options to show up on your blog.
• Google Sitemaps – Helps make your blog more search engine friendly to Google. Download and activate. Once you have added a few posts, go to Options, Sitemap and then click on “Rebuild Sitemap”.
• Sociable – Adds little social bookmarking icons to the bottom of your blog posts. This is useful for promoting your stories later. Only use if you have an article worthy of submitting – like this one . You might want to adjust your sociable settings after you install as the default install includes over 20 icons.
• WP-ExtremeVideo – Awesome plugin that allows you to embed videos from YouTube and Google Videos.
• WordPress Database Backup – Must have plugin that may come after your default WordPress install. Activate this one and use it. You don’t want to have to re-enter all of your posts should you lose your data.
• WP-Cron – This plugin will make your database backups automatic. I set it up to email my backup to my Gmail account daily so I don’t have to think about it. After you install and activate this plugin, go to the Manage menu, then click on Backup and you will see the option at the bottom for your backup preferences. If you don’t have a Gmail account, I recommend you get one. I believe you still have to have an invite to get one, so if you need an invite, email me and I’ll invite you. The reason I recommend them is because they give you over 2GB of space. If you already have enough email space you may want to use your existing account instead…it’s up to you.
• SimpleTags – Allows you to add Technorati tags to your posts. Makes you look cool.
• Adsense Deluxe – An awesome plugin that allows you to put your Google Adsense code into your blog. If you haven’t signed up for Google Adsense, make sure you have a site that is complete and likely to be approved by Google before you apply. Click the button below to sign up for Google Adsense.

Step 3: Improve Your Blog’s Search Engine Optimization

The default WordPress install isn’t quite as optimized for search engines as it should be. With a few simple tweaks you can fix that. The first thing you can do is edit your header.php file add key words and meta tags. You can edit this by going to the Presentation menu then click Theme Editor, then the Header link on the right. Here is a link that contains examples of what you can include in your meta tags.

Change your title and permalink structure to make them more tasty to Google and other search engines. Here is a great article with details on that subject.

4 – Visual Enhancements

The default WordPress theme (WordPress Default 1.5) uses a fairly non exciting masthead that you will likely want to modify to make your blog look a lot more lively. I discussed how to change this in an earlier article which you can view here. Do this and your blog will look a lot better. The article also explains how to make this masthead clickable, ad how to remove the header text at the top of your blog.

Adding a favicon can spiff up your blog a bit and is very easy to do with this free online favicon generator. A favicon is the tiny little icon you sometimes see to the left of the web site address in your browser’s address bar. You can create a favicon with the image of your choice. Instructions on how to add the generated favicon to your site are included after you generate it.

The defaul 404 error page is pretty basic. When I say basic I mean that. It simply says “Error 404 – Not Found”. You may want to add additional info other than this. To edit your 404 error page, click on Presentation in the dashboard, then Theme Editor, then click 404 Template on the right.

There are some “Meta Links” in the default install I usually get rid of as they contain links to your admin login. Not that this is top secret stuff, but why make it that much easier for people to get to your admin login screen? Info on how to do that can be found here.

Finally, you should edit your About page and perhaps add some info about the blog and yourself. Include your contact information and a picture of yourself if you like…to give your blog a little more personality. I think a lot of people like to see the person behind the blog unless you’re blogging about something you want to keep anonymous.

5 – Add Content

Ok, now you are almost done pimping out your blog. It’s time for the obvious: adding content. Try to add four or five posts before announcing your blog to the world so they will have other stuff to read besides one solitary post. So…start writing! Darren at Problogger.net has a ton of tips on writing content, getting ideas, etc. Click here to read his Writing Content suggestions.

When you have added a few starter articles, try to come up with an article that could generate a lot of attention/traffic. This is tough and is a hit and miss thing…so you’ll have to use trial and error till you get the feel of it. Again, Darren provides another article on this subject.

Now, just keep blogging and after awhile the search engines will pick up your blog and give you more traffic. The more unique, quality content you create, the more traffic you will attract. I try to blog once a day, but have heard even three times a week is good. Think long term and what you might have if you do just one post a day for a year. 365 posts adds up to quite a bit of content. The more you blog the more momentum you build. You may hate it at first, but if you keep at it you will likely get addicted. Is that a good thing? Uh…I’m not sure.

6 – Promote Your Blog

Now that you’ve pimped your blog and added some content it is time to submit it to the web. I’d first start by adding your URL to Google and MSN. Submit your best articles to the many social bookmarking sites to get instant traffic. Here is a list I compiled not too long ago that includes 55 of them.

If you haven’t do so, sign up for an account at Technorati and claim your blog. You will need to add some code that they provide to your blog, click a button and Technorati will check that your code is on your site. Once it finds it, you will be searchable in their directory.

Add an RSS feed button to your blog so people that use feed readers can easily subscribe to your blog. An example can be found on this blog on the sidebar. It’s the square orange and white icon. I use Feedburner for my feeds. Sign up there for free and add your blog and get your code to put an RSS feed button on your blog.

Sign up for a free SiteMeter counter at SiteMeter.com. This is a very popular, free web site traffic stats service that should provide enough information for you to check how your blog is doing traffic wise. You can see how many visitors you are getting and where they are coming from. You may want to make your stats available for the public to see. If you want advertisers, they will want to see your numbers. Sitemeter is a good solution to give advertisers the info they need to see.

Step 7 – Monetize Your Blog

Hopefully you will want to monetize your blog and get something back for all of the hard work you put into it. One of the most popular ways to monetize your blog is with Google Adsense. It is likely you already know about Google Adsense and also likely you have already signed up. Good… add your code to the Adsense Deluxe plugin you installed earlier and you’re good to go. Experiment around with colors and ad placement to see what works best. Use link units at the top of your blog on every page and see how that works.

There are many other ways to monetize your blog. I suggest you read this section on how to monetize your blog for a ton of other ideas, tips and techniques.

Well, that’s about it. After following these steps your WordPress blog will be much better off than when you started. This is by no means a complete article and I hope anyone else out here will add their tips as well. Remember, send in your tips on how you pimp your WordPress blog and I’ll include your blog link on this post.