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The Importance of choosing the right WordPress Theme

By on April 5, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, article directory, article plugin, article themes, Blog Business, Blog Platform, Blog Posting, blogging, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, Free Reports, Google Adsense, Membership sites, Mobil Blogging, New Blogging, SEO, Themes, Traffic, Web Design, Websites, widgets, wordpress, World Internet Summit, Wp Headers, Wp Themes, Youtube Video

The Importance of choosing the right WordPress Theme

Once you have set-up your WordPress blog one of the first things everyone does is chooses the theme for their blog. You don’t need to keep the same theme and can change it anytime you would like. In the beginning when your blog is new I would just use a free wordpress theme that is related to your niche. There are hundreds of different free wordpress themes out there that you can use and many of them are very well done with great graphics.

As your blog starts to get older you’ll need to determine whether or not you want to keep using the free wordpress themes or if you want to adapt a custom wordpress theme to your blog. Normally what will determine this is whether or not your blog has any traffic or revenue. If you have traffic and are making some money off of your blog then I would recommend getting a custom wordpress made for your blog. Once you have a custom wordpress theme it’s like jumping up the ladder in blogging and makes you almost like royalty. Most readers will stay on custom theme blogs longer than other blogs as well because when you use a free wordpress theme people see those everywhere, but when you adapt a custom theme your readers will have never seen any blog like yours before.

WordPress themes have come down in price over the past couple years and you can get a great custom wordpress theme for under $200. This isn’t a small investment for a blog that isn’t making money and isn’t a very wise investment either. If you have traffic on your blog though, and making some money off your blog then spending $200 won’t seem nearly as bad. It should also help increase your traffic and revenue so it’s a wise investment in some situations. Make sure you have established traffic and revenue before spending money on any theme though, this is because a lot of blogs will never make any money. The last thing you want to do is spend a couple hundred on your blog and it never make any money.

If you look around the blogosphere you’ll notice that most of the established and authority blogs all have custom themes that look amazing and unique. It helps to retain traffic and also assists in increasing your return visitor traffic. If you’re a designer and coder then you can most likely make your own wordpress theme and if you can do this then you should definitely do it for all of your blogs. You don’t need to wait for traffic and revenue if you can do the work on your own time because it isn’t costing you any money.

When you decide to implement your own custom wordpress theme to your blog make sure that it stands out and is unique. You don’t want to spend money on a theme that looks similar to another theme because that defeats the purpose. The purpose of a custom theme is to stand out to your readers and to retain the traffic you build to your blog. Try to add some new features to your theme that you can’t find on other blogs or try changing the layout of the conventional style and making your own style. Always make sure that you use a custom logo or mascot for your theme as well because this will help brand your blog, especially a mascot.

As you can see the importance of your wordpress theme is very important and there are many reasons you should be considering when choosing a theme. If you’re choosing your theme for looks only then you aren’t doing enough. You need to think about how many people are doing that as well, because many do and end up with the same free wordpress themes. If your blog can afford to invest some money into it then I would first spend it on a custom wordpress theme.

A custom wordpress theme will also help you sell your blog if you ever decide to sell it in the future, and you’ll be able to fetch top dollar for your blog. So your themes is more of an investment then anything else, but if money is tight then wait until your blog is making money before spending money on a custom theme. If you’re using free wordpress themes then you should consider switching your theme every month or so, this is so that your readers don’t get bored of the same theme. You should try switching your theme with a newly released free theme each month as then your visitors will be less likely to have already seen the theme.

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Best Ways to Learn WordPress

By on April 2, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Best Ways to Learn WordPress

WordPress is an open source web publishing platform. Once the favorite of bloggers, it is quickly becoming the go to application to build any type of website. There are a lot of benefits to using WordPress, including it being search engine friendly and it is simple to change an entire website’s design. The feature that makes it a must use for me is that you can put the control back into the web owners hand. WordPress is significantly easier to update than your traditional HTML websites. This is important because it means web designers can create a website that their clients can control. Anyone who has seen their web designer go AWOL knows the importance of this.

This brings up one question though: Where do I learn how to use WordPress?

1. WordPress.org: If you are new to WordPress make this your first stop. This site is home to the WordPress codex and it contains just about every piece of WordPress knowledge known to man. The codex can be a lot to wrap your head around at first, but there is also a message board here that is quite handy. The message board will allow you to ask the questions you couldn’t figure out from the codex. You might run into some people who just tell you to “”Learn The Codex NOOB”" but most people are willing to help.

2. Online Tutorials: There are a number of WordPress tutorials online. If you have a WordPress issue you can probably search and find a tutorial dealing with that. Using Google and YouTube searches is probably your best bet. Whether you prefer written or video tutorials you should be able to find what you are looking for. Some of the downsides of this method are that video quality can be bad and sometimes the person doing the voice over has an annoying or intelligible voice. I hate having to rewind five times tying to catch what someone is saying. Depending on where you find your tutorial, the creator may not be actively answering any follow up questions you have. This is extremely annoying if you get to end of tutorial and notice you have an issue they didn’t address. That said, if you search around enough you can find good quality tutorials.

3. Coaching: This is the proverbial Cadillac of learning options. There is usually a cost involved but when you figure in how much your time is worth, it is the best option. This is actually how I learned WordPress and it saved me weeks and weeks of time. I spent my first week on WordPress complaining about how it didn’t make sense, and how I wanted to switch back to HTML. I ended up spending a couple hours with a new colleague and he had me up and running in no time. A coupe hours of coaching was able to accomplish more than an entire week of learning on my own. The benefits are that a WordPress coach has dealt with new users before. They have probably already answered your questions. Also he had some tutorials that were unmatched quality. Lastly, instant feedback was amazing. I didn’t have to wait and see if someone would reply to my blog comment. I asked a question and it was answered. If their wasn’t an answer right away – I knew their would be within the day. This is definitely the easiest way to learn.

It is up to you what way you want to learn. All of the above techniques will get you where you want to be, it is just a question on how quick and direct the route is.

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Top 10 Best WordPress Plugins That Make Your Blog Badass

By on March 21, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Top 10 Best WordPress Plugins That Make Your Blog Badass

What is the best wordpress plugin? If you guys are brand new to the idea of blogging, a wordpress plugin is simply just an add-on that you can put into your blog. There are all sorts of various plugins at your disposal. But only a really handful of wordpress plugins are actually USEFUL to converting more of your readers into buyers, email opt-ins or loyal readers.

So what are they?

Let us get into the thick of it as they say… Now these are not just fluff stuff that will slow your blog down. These are actually the #1 things that can grow traffic to your blog and make your blog 200-500% better than where it currently sits if you’re flying-solo without any at all.

Time to dive in!

Top 10 Best WordPress Plugins

1.  Facebook Share

This was the original facebook share button. A lot of blogs have gone away with this blog in favor for the “”like”" button on the blog. I say BOTH are important. Here is why the old facebook share button makes our little best plugins list.

It allows social proof to be seen a lot quicker and more dramatically displayed. As we know, readers are more enticed if they see that a lot of people are sharing an article or a piece of content. So by having that at the top, allows us to display the number of how many times we have been shared on facebook. Also the “”like”" plugin ruins a lot of the head space in your blog. Which is why I include it at the bottom of my blog versus the top.

The FB share button is still super effective and highly recommended!

2. Tweetmeme

This plugin is pretty much exactly the same as facebook share. The only obvious difference is that it is for twitter not for facebook! I am not a HUGE fan of twitter as any of you who follow me already know. I rarely use it, though I should, but a lot our readers do use twitter and absolutely love it. So allow them to spread the love across their 140-character-long diaries.

3. Facebook Like Button

I love the Like button, I include it at the end  of every blog post. The cool thing is it will tell you everyone who liked it, and sometimes it’ll be someone the reader is friends with or respects if they are heavy in your niche. Which causes them to respect you and your content even more, and make it more likely to share your stuff with the world.

4. Commentluv

Let us be honest. Majority of people reading a blog, especially in the make money niches and network marketing niches, have something they want to sell too. To reward these people for commenting on our blogs, we become a “”Dofollow”" blog and allow their latest blog post to appear on our own blog. This allows them to do a little bit better advertising of their content when they comment to enrich our own.

I love commentluv, cause it builds really good backlink juice, which for you SEO nuts is awesome.

I actually have people hiring and outsourcing people to come and comment on this blog. No idea how many, but I am sure the fact I have commentluv is a big reason why! (Other than my AMAZING content!)

5. All In One SEO Pack

Even though it is constantly wanting to update itself which is semi-annoying, this is an awesome plugin for SEO junkies and any real-time blogger. Because it allows you to put in all the SEO info you need at one go. Put it in and you’re done.

This is a requirement if you want be successful with SEO on a blog as far as I am concerned, and really easy to use.

6. Google Analyticator

This plugin is a behind-the-scenes deal, but basically using this tool you can quick updates on traffic coming to your blog. What is even cooler is going into the back office they have and you can see exactly where everyone is coming from. Whether predominantly from facebook, or from the search engines. Of course, the biggest traffic source you want is called “”Direct”".

Meaning people actually just come on the internet and type in your blog into the address bar! Because those are the people who are loyal fans and like what you have to say.

Other useful information are things like understanding bounce rates, and the most frequented pages on your blog. Don’t get lost in the numbers, but do understand what they are saying about your blog so you can adjust and optimize everything.

7. Google XML Sitemaps

Also a powerful SEO plugin. This automatically creates a sitemap on your blog which helps with SEO. Basically the sitemap organizes everything more neatly and makes the Google spiders and gods go through your content and index it quicker and better. (Which means higher rankings on the search engines)

8. WP Ezinearticles

I really like this, no idea how helpful it TRULY is, but I believe it is worth to have on your blog even if you’re not big into article marketing. Basically what it does is creates a little box in your wordpress “”Add new post”" section. When you are done writing your post, you can click the “”submit”" button and it will automatically send your blog post to Ezinearticles as a submitted article all in the span of a few seconds.

Saves a lot of hassle if you enjoy submitting articles like me.

9. ThatMLMBeat Beat It Button

I just started using this myself, it is a plugin similar to tweetmeme only instead of twitter it shares your content on ThatMLMBeat. A website community focused on blogging specifically in the mlm/network marketing and internet marketing niches. Everytime someone clicks on it, your post will get bumped up into the top and front page of their community.

Which is pretty awesome targeted traffic for most of us in this niche! You do need a ThatMLMBeat account, but that’s for free unless you want the premium. Highly recommend it.

10. SSG Google WordPress Audio Player

I LOVE this thing. This is one of my favorite wordpress plugins, if not THE BEST wordpress plugn on this list in my opinion.

You see, I hate doing videos but I love doing audios. (You know got that hot Alaskan silky voice haha) and doing interviews. I actually have a small library of interviews with many six-figure income earners in our profession I have been waiting to whip out and never had a chance to till I found my hosting solution. See I was messing with Amazons3 and all this other crap I couldn’t figure out, till my friend Brandon Connell told me about this plugin.

It hosts all of your audio on your blog for free and it will also embed an actual audio player inside your blog post instead of your reader having to open up a new window for your audio (for free). Super useful.

Advice on the Best WordPress Plugins…

Please do not look at this as a definitive list. I love blogging, but it is a constantly changing and evolving world. There is new plugins coming out all the time. And some plugins I know of that I use that I didn’t mention here (but will soon in another post) used for different purposes. These are the basics, the stuff I believe every network marketing blog if not at least blog itself should have.

The greatest piece of advice I can give you on using and finding the best wordpress plugins is network with other active bloggers. Constantly be on the search for them. Developers are always coming out with new and cool things that you can use. So keep your eyes OPEN.

That way you will ALWAYS have the best wordpress plugins on your blog, and make your audience very happy and giddy to promote you all over the internet-worlds that-be. Goodluck and good wordpress plugin hunting/installing.

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