Archive | affiliate marketing

Best WordPress Plugins

By Randy R on April 18, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Best WordPress Plugins

Before getting into the best WordPress plugins out there, let’s cover a couple of definitions for the uninitiated among us.

WordPress is the world’s most widely-used open source Content Management System (CMS). While it is often employed as a blog, WordPress is strong enough to run entire websites. So it isn’t just a blogging platform. WordPress is powered by PHP and MySQL, and has exciting features such as templates and plugins that make building fantastic websites relatively effortless. WordPress is used by 13% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites in the world, no small feat considering the breadth of options available.

Plugins are simply applications that augment the capabilities of WordPress and make it better to work with. Most plugins are free.

Here are the best WordPress plugins out there. My opinions are highly subjective, but these are plugins I want you to know about.

#1: All-in-One SEO Pack

The All-in-One SEO Pack makes on-page search engine optimization simple. For this reason, it’s my top pick. With this plugin, adding Meta tags such as title tags, meta descriptions, and keywords has never been easier. This is a good thing, as too many websites are missing these crucial elements (and missing out on online lead generation and/or online sales as a result).

#2: Askimet

Askimet allows you to quit moderating comments. It automatically checks comments left on your website against the Askimet web service to see if they look like spam or not. If it’s spam, they toss the comment out. To keep the service honest, you can analyze the spam it catches to make sure the plugin is doing its job accurately. There are two things that make using this plugin vital. One, your readers will never have to type in a CAPTCHA again. Two, your readers will never have to wait for their comment to be moderated again (this drives me nuts when we visit other blogs).

#3: Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps will produce a special XML sitemap which will allow search engines to index your blog. If that sentence makes your head hurt, just know this: it makes it easier for Google to read your website. That’s a good thing. If Google can’t or doesn’t read your website, that’s bad. You want them to read it so they can share your website with people that use the Internet. Consider this a crucial WordPress plugin if you enjoy trading your labor and/or skills for money.

#4 Subscribe to Comments Reloaded

Consider this one a cherry on the top of your delicious WordPress sundae. Subscribe to Comments Reloaded will change the way people use your blog. Without it, people just stop in, leave a comment, and never return. With this plugin, your readers can click a box saying they wish to be notified of follow-up comments via email. This email notification will (in some cases) cause the reader to return and leave a comment. This will give you more Web traffic, more comments, and it will make your blog more conversational.

#5: TweetMeme

Guy Kawasaki once called this the most important button on the Internet. It probably isn’t at that level today, but it is certainly still highly useful when it comes to getting your message to the masses. Twitter has proven to be a highly beneficial viral marketing tool. If you have something important or interesting to say, odds are Twitter will go a long way in getting your voice heard. Within the Twitter-sphere, there is nothing more valuable than a ReTweet. A ReTweet occurs when someone that reads your content re-broadcasts it to all of their followers. When this happens, viral marketing magic happens. TweetMeme makes it convenient for your blogs’ readers to ReTweet your content, which will bring you more traffic, more comments, and (hopefully) more business.

So there you have it. Those are, in my estimation, the five best WordPress plugins out there.

How to Install WordPress Theme

By Randy R on April 16, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Install WordPress Theme

So you have hunted high and low and found the perfect WordPress theme. Now you need to know how to install WordPress theme or it will just be a pretty file collecting dust on your hard drive.

Installing a WordPress theme is not as complicated as many people think it is. The thing that tends to confuse people is that there are two different methods you can use when trying to figure out how to install WordPress theme.

Manually install WordPress theme

First I will go over how to install WordPress theme manually to help you get familiar with the WordPress structure.

To install a WordPress theme manually you will need to download the theme, which I am assuming you have done by now.
You will also need to unzip the WordPress theme to a folder on your hard drive (try not to forget where you put it).
Now you will need to fire up your FTP program and FTP to your site.
At this point you will want to navigate to the themes folder by going to the ‘wp-content’ folder and then the ‘themes’ folder.
Once you are in the themes folder on your web site, you will want to navigate to the theme you unzipped on your hard drive (you did remember where you put it, didn’t you?).
You will then need to upload the theme on your hard drive (folder and all) to the themes folder on your web site.
After your all FTP’d out you will want to go back to your browser and log into your WordPress blog on your site.
You will then go to the ‘Appearance’ option on the left side menu and select the ‘Themes’ option.
At this point you should be able to see your theme listed as an option. If not then you probably uploaded it as a folder within a folder and will need to double check it.
You should now be able to preview and then activate your theme by selecting the appropriate options listed under your theme.

Automatically install WordPress theme

If you are lazy like me you will want to let WordPress do all the work for you. So now we will learn how to install WordPress theme by letting WordPress get down and dirty.

To put WordPress to work you will need to first log into your blog.
You will navigate to the ‘Appearance’ option on the left side of the menu.
Next you are going to click on the ‘Themes’ option located under the ‘Appearance’ tab.
Once you are under the ‘Themes’ section, you will see ‘Manage Themes’ at the top of the page. Next to the ‘Manage Themes’ tab you will see the ‘Install Themes’ tab which will probably be grayed out. You will want to click on the ‘Install Themes’ tab to make it the active tab.
Now you have a couple options here.
Option one is that you don’t have a theme in mind yet and want to search for one. In this case you will select the options you are looking for and click Search. Once you have the results up on screen you can scroll through until you find one that you like and want to use. At this point it is only a matter of previewing the theme to make sure it is what you are looking for and if it is, then you can click Install and let WordPress do its magic.
Option two assumes that you have already downloaded the theme you want to use. In this case you will want to select the Upload option that you will find available under the ‘Install Themes’ tab. Once you have selected the Upload option you will want to browse to the theme file you downloaded and select it. (Yes WordPress will even unzip the file for you. How’s that for service!) Then it is just a matter of clicking ‘Install Now’ and let WordPress go to town.

What Are The Top WordPress Widgets In Use For Blogging

By Randy R on April 14, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

What Are The Top WordPress Widgets In Use For Blogging?

WordPress as a content management system is very popular. In my opinion one of the main reasons for it’s popularity is the WordPress widgets. If you are new to this blogging platform you may be asking yourself “”What are widgets?””. Well, in an nutshell they give you full control of the content in the side bar of your blog. Widgets allow you to insert HTML code for banners of various shapes and sizes, they also allow you to insert contact forms otherwise known as autoresponders.

I would like to discuss the top WordPress widgets, that I use on a daily basis.

1. Wp Spamfree. This widget removes spam from your website. It finds unnecessary content and gets rid of it.

2. Wp Polls. This allows interaction between your visitors and your blog. This widget helps you create new polls and display them on your blog.

3. All In One Seo. This will take care of your search engine optimisation. This widget takes care of optimising keywords, tags and HTML. This widget helps in getting your site ranked higher in the search engines.

4. Featured Content Gallery. This widget gives your site an nice look and give your visitors an nicer experience while on your site.

5. Font Resizer. Font resizer give your site visitors the opportunity to change font size with just a click.

6. Secure WordPress. This widget secures your website content.

7. Follow Me. Twitter has become very popular and there is a widget called follow me, which allows site visitors to follow you on twitter, thereby increasing you twitter following. You can in turn market your site or blog to your increased twitter following.

8. Sexy Bookmark. With this widget you can give your visitors the choice of bookmarking any useful content on the various social bookmarking site. This is an excellent tool for website promotion.

9. Recent Comment This one is self explanatory, it displays recent comment.

10.Related Posts. This one encourages your blog visitors to stay longer on your site by reading related posts. They may even bookmark your site and read more content at a later stage.

These are just a few of the top WordPress widgets I use. WordPress widgets are crucial for your website or blogs design, functionality and promotion, so enjoy and take action.

How to Build Your Traffic on a Blog

By Randy Roedl on April 13, 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

How to Build Your Traffic on a Blog

Blogs have become a webmasters best friend and it’s allowing everyone with or without programming skills to create very appealing websites. With the content management system so flawless on WordPress and so many different themes that you can choose from, a lot of the work is already done for you. Most people had to design there websites by scratch which limited them in the amount of time they had to build the traffic on their websites. With blogging you’ll have lots of time to build the traffic on your blog and it will be one of the main projects of making your blog successful.

Traffic doesn’t magically appear, well it could I suppose but if you want targeted traffic then it’s going to take time and work too accomplish. The first thing you need to do as a blogger is make sure you have added a nice amount of content onto the blog, you should also be posting new content on a daily basis in the beginning so that people can see you’re adding new content regularly. A lot of people will just leave the blog if they notice that there hasn’t been much activity going on, and this is what you’re trying to avoid. You want the traffic to stay on your blog and come back in the future so you need to offer lots of great content to do this successfully.

Once you have the content generation down to a science then you need to work on the actual building of the traffic. This will consist of building links in high traffic areas and also in areas that will help increase your search engine rankings. Traffic from the search engines is the most targeted and valuable traffic that you can get for your blog and you should be focusing on ranking for keywords that will bring you traffic. It’s not easy to take over search engine rankings and you’ll need to do a lot of link building in order to take over your competition, but in time it’s definitely possible.

There are also some other traffic generation methods that you should look at for your blog which consist of social bookmarking, article marketing and traffic trading. Sometimes trading traffic isn’t the best choice, but it’s an option so always keep it in mind because you’ll never know when it could work out for your blog. Social bookmarking and article marketing are both ways to increase your traffic and also increase your search engine rankings, so doing these two things are very important. The traffic you get isn’t the best, but it all helps and the backlinks you build from doing it will also help you get traffic from the search engines.

Your blog traffic is always at risk, which means if you decide to stop posting for some reason then over time you might lose all of your traffic. People go back to blogs because they like what you’ve written in the past and want to see what else you have to say, but if you don’t post then people will quickly stop coming. A blog takes constant work, and even though you might like the idea today in a week you may have changed your mind which is what most webmasters do. If you’re in it for the long haul though then you’ll find it takes at least three months before you notice any steady traffic from your blog.

How to Install WordPress Plugins With Your cPanel

By Randy R on April 12, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Install WordPress Plugins With Your cPanel

Most plugins only require the easy install. However if you have bought a plugin or if you have a special plugin you will need to install it via your cPanel. This is the “”back office”” as set up by your web-host, like Blue Host or Host Gator, and where you probably installed WordPress.

Have you downloaded your WordPress plugin?

First you need to download your WordPress plugin. If you have bought it, they should have sent you a download link. If the plugin is part of a membership site, they have it on their site somewhere.

Has the plugin passed qualifications?

Make certain it is a quality plugin that is not going to cause problems. It could cause problems with WordPress, for your readers or otherwise. Thus you want to check any plugin against a qualification list.

Do you know what your cPanel is?

Once it passes, you will need to log in to your cPanel. When you signed up with your webhost, you should have been given a special page or site on your webhost where you log in. The cPanel is basically your back office, and gives you the site owner access to a variety of different tools.

Where is the File Manager?

Towards the bottom you should see a box that says something like Software and services. Look for “”File Manager,”” this will allow you to upload the plugin with relative ease. Once in the File Manager, make certain you are in public_html.

How do I find my WordPress site?

Next you will need to search for the name of your blog. You may or may not see “”.com”” or anything after the name. If your blog is a sub/directory under a name like example.com/blog/ you will need to click plus sign for “”example”” then plus sign for “”blog.””

Where will I upload this WordPress Plugin?

Now click plus sign for the file called “”wp-content”” Click the file “”PlugIns”” in that file will be some pre-installed plugins. Go toward the top. Click Upload, browse and upload in the new window.

Is my WordPress plugin installed now?

Go back to your “”File Manager”” page. You may need to refresh, then you should see your plugin name with a box beside it. Click the name to highlight it. Then look for “”Extract”” a box icon. You should see a blue file with the name of your plugin. Log out of your cPanel. Now when you log in to your WordPress account you should be able to find your plugin and activate it.

Best WordPress Plugins to Help With Website Design and Functionality

By Randy R on April 10, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Best WordPress Plugins to Help With Website Design and Functionality

The great thing about WordPress is the ability to continually add new functions into your blog as they are developed. This functionality is added through plugins which can be easily added through an admin panel. As someone who uses them daily, these are the best WordPress plugins in my opinion.

Deans FCK Editor

This replaces the default WordPress editor that comes with WordPress 3.1. The main reason that I use this is for setting columns and rows inside the pages. This plugin makes it child’s play for setting pages as you can tell it to make the width 100%. The plugin then figures out the pixels for you. With different width themes this is a time saver.

All In One SEO

Setting a website without this plugin is tantamount to criminal neglect. The plugin adds fields underneath the blog post for title, description and keywords metatags. You don’t need to know code or visit metatag generator sites any more.

CBNET Ping Optimizer

During the initial set up of your website, you will probably make lots of changes to pages. This will save your WordPress blog from being tagged as spammer as it won’t post the edits only the new pages.

Contact Form 7

This allows you to set up a contact form on any page. You can create as many forms as you like for the various pages including radio buttons and drop down selections. It creates a piece of code that you can then place on the web page in the appropriate area.

Really Simple Captcha

This useful plugin allows you to have a simple captcha on your contact form above. It’s not the hardest captcha to break but it will stop a certain amount of automated rubbish traffic to your email which can be very annoying otherwise.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin automatically updates your sitemap and sends it to Google, AOL and Bing automatically. You need to get an API from Yahoo for it to send automatically to it. You can manually rebuild the sitemap or leave on automatic. It is a great set and forget plugin.

WP-Sticky

This allows you to make a post sticky at the top of the blog. For those who have never heard the term sticky it simply means that when you click the sticky option on a blog post it is never pushed to the bottom of the page when other posts are made.

Multi Level Navigation Plugin

This allows you to have drop downs from any top menu on your site. It allows unlimited drop down levels if you want. For SEO purposes placing too many sub levels will not be great but it’s there if you really want it.

Page Lists Plus

This allows you to create pages but not show them in the menu. This is perfect for creating privacy policy, terms of use and similar pages which you will probably want to manually add in the footer.

To add in a plugin for your blog, simply click on the plugin menu on the left in the admin section and then choose the “”add new”” option. It will then give you a search box. Type the plugin name and it will find it for you from the WordPress extension site.

How To Install WordPress Onto Your Website

By Randy R on April 8, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How To Install WordPress Onto Your Website

In this article, I will be showing you step by step how to install WordPress onto your website.

Now, before we continue, let’s talk a little bit about WordPress. Until recently, I was exclusively building websites the old fashion dirty hands way. Not only did I find it excruciatingly difficult to design, it took up so much of my time and learning. Thankfully, none of us have to go through that stage anymore, as WordPress makes it so much easier and simpler to create high quality blogs that look and feel just as good as a website designed by a professional web designer.

Today all I need to do to come up with high quality blogs is to simply work with WordPress, and at my disposal, I’ll be able to add blog posts, change the look and feel of my website, add plugins that increase the value of the site and this can all be done with WordPress alone. It’s a very neat platform used by nearly all bloggers online. It’s very popular and if you haven’t tried it, you can find out what it’s all about by simply installing it to your website.

Here’s a step by step guide on how to install WordPress:

Step 1. Log into your “”website hosting account”” control panel

In the following tutorial, I’m going to make a very bold assumption and assume that your hosting company is with HostGator. If you’re not with HostGator, that’s okay, most hosting companies are very similar and should have all the features similar if not the same to HostGator.

So anyways, we are going to be installing WordPress through HostGator’s “”admin control panel””. To get to the control panel simply go to your web browser and type in, “”www.[yourwebsitename].com/cpanel””.

Next, you should be taken to a login page. Enter the username/password according to the email HostGator has sent you via email.

Step 2. Click on Fantastico De Luxe

Now that you have the admin control panel in front of you, go ahead and scroll down all the way to the bottom where under software/services you should see a little blue smiley face icon that has under it “”Fantastico De Luxe””.

By the way, if it’s your first time inside HostGator control panel, you might feel there are just so many icons everywhere. Don’t worry too much about them, although HostGator does offer a lot of options for you to use, the truth is there’s only really a couple of them that are important. So you don’t need to absolutely know everything at this stage.

Onward.

Step 3. Under “”Blogs”” click on “”WordPress””

You’ll be taken to a white background page. Here you’ll find all sorts of different scripts and programs you can add to your website. Since, we are only interested in installing WordPress, go ahead and click on the “”WordPress”” link (It’s under Blogs).

Step 4. Install WordPress

Click on “”New Installation”” and it will take you to a page asking for your website details. It will ask you stuff like, where do you want to install WordPress, login information, website details. Simply fill them in. Make sure you leave the “”Install directory”” box empty. All it is, is that it simply wants to know whether you want to install WordPress under your domain name and not any other extensions, in our case, we do so we’ll just be leaving it blank.

The other stuff you should be able to fit in accordingly to what sort of topic of interest you’ll be discussing. It doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect, besides most of these details you can change at a later stage anyways.

Once you’re done filling in the details, you’re pretty much finished. Click on “”install WordPress””. Then click on “”Finish Installation””

Step 5. Accessing WordPress Control Panel

So there you have it, you have just installed WordPress onto your website. Cinch huh? I told you it was easy. But hey, one more thing, you’re not finished yet, there’s one more thing you got to know. So now that you have installed WordPress, how do you go about customize your blog, adding content and all other devilish things you might want to add? Everything you need to know to change the look and feel of your website is done inside “”WordPress Admin”” (or wp-admin for short), you can access it by typing into your browser “”www.[yourwebsitename].com/wp-admin”” then enter your username/password. You’ll be then taken to the admin page where you’ll be able to do everything from posting up content, changing themes, adding plugins… There’s a lot of stuff in here, and it takes time to get accustomed to all the different options you have. My suggestion is to play around for a bit… Just to get a feel for WordPress and how to go about doing certain things.

That’s it for this mini tutorial, if you are reading up to this part, I’m assuming you have successfully installed WordPress to your website. Like I said earlier it’s very simple and easy. Anyone can do it, but more importantly you’ll be able to come up with quality website blogs very easily. So I urge you to play around with it, get a feel for it and sooner or later once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to customize and build high quality websites that really stand out in a matter of moments. Take care and stay tuned for future articles.

Using Plugins in a WordPress Blog – How to Use WordPress Plugins on Your Blog

By Randy R on April 6, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Using Plugins in a WordPress Blog – How to Use WordPress Plugins on Your Blog

WordPress is an astounding blogging platform right out of the box. It is packed with features and functions that allow you to blog at a pretty high level even at its most basic. But there might be some things you want your blog to do that the default WordPress blog won’t. That’s where plugins come in. WordPress plugins are so ridiculously awesome that I think we should crack open a bottle of something and toast to them together.

Basically, a plugin is a program that adds a specific feature or function to your blog and it’s integrated seamlessly with the design of the blog allowing for stupidly simple customization without changing the actually programming of WordPress at all. Best of all, there’s a plugin for just about everything and although there have been brilliant plugins developed that have a small price tag, there are thousands of mind-blowingly fabulous plugins that are absolutely free for you to use. Here’s why I love them so much. I am not a web designer. I don’t know code. I don’t intend to learn code. But I can design you a pretty kick butt website by simply starting with WordPress and adding a theme and the right plugins. And you can do the same. So here’s how to get started with plugins on your own blog.

In your WordPress dashboard, check out the menus going down the left side. Find the one called “”Plugins””. Click “”Add New””. This is where you’ll always come to search for plugins that you need. I guarantee you that for most needs you’ll ever have, there will be a free plugin available that will serve your purposes brilliantly. Let’s first talk about a few plugins I recommend that you install right away. Then we’ll walk through an example of how to install the plugin and activate it on your blog.

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