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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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How Do You Go About Comparing Shopping Cart Software

By on March 28, 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 Do You Go About Comparing Shopping Cart Software?

Anyone who desires a successful Internet business understands the importance of a good shopping cart. There are so many shopping carts online now that it can be difficult to wade through all your choices to locate the one that will work best for you.

One way of knowing which shopping cart is best for you is to read shopping cart product reviews that you can find online and in IT magazines. Read about what others think of the shopping carts, make note of the features discussed and compare what is offered to what you need.

Another way to find what is the best shopping cart software for your business is to do some comparison-shopping yourself using a list of what you need in a shopping cart and your budget.

When you have pared down the possible candidates to just a few, then it is time to look at live stores that use each of the candidates shopping cart programs. Notice how easy or not it is to navigate, search for products, add to or delete products from the shopping cart and the features available for the customer. Look to see if the shopping cart software companies offer a customer service and give them a try to see how they respond to you.

When you are paring down your list of possible shopping cart candidates do it by comparing price, feature, and by reading the reviews of each shopping cart. Look for the shopping carts that seem to be up to date on the latest technology, are easily integrated with payment processors and your Website. Make sure you discard the shopping carts that are older or have lower quality.

When investigating live stores that use the various shopping carts that you have pared down your candidates to you want to get a feel for how the shopping carts work when in use. Typically the shopping cart companies will provide a list of several online stores that use their shopping cart. Some of the things you will be looking for are how well the shopping cart blends in with the Website and does each store look different from the others? Actually use the shopping carts on these stores to see how the carts perform.

When filtering out the candidates use a list of the top 3 things that you are looking for in a shopping cart and if a candidate does not have one of the top 3 than cross it off your list. Make a list of the features that are important to you and which ones you cannot do without this will help to narrow down your list of candidates.

If you know you will be using electronic certificates that cross off any shopping carts that do not offer this feature.

Make sure you investigate how good each company’s customer service department is by sending them each an email asking some pre-sale questions and make notes about how fast they respond, if they respond with a canned reply or really give you individual attention.

Do the candidate shopping cart companies have technical support? Take a look at the FAQs and index of help topics to see how helpful they are and if they are easy to understand. Download the user guide and review it to see if it is understandable.

Read shopping cart review from respected sources to see what is recommended. See if you can find user reviews on each of the shopping carts that you have decided are the biggest contenders for your money.

Once you have your list narrowed down to just 3 or 5 shopping cart software companies than it is time to look at the total cost of using each shopping cart, and also look at what the strong points are for each of the remaining carts.

Look at price, features and support and make your best decision.

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The Best Ways to Monetize your Website

By on March 20, 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 Best Ways to Monetize your Website

Once you have built a website and you have some traffic coming in to your website then you’ll probably be looking at the ways you can make some money with your website. There are plenty of opportunities out there that will allow you to make a great income, but you’ll need to find out what works best for your website. All niches will require different types of monetization and some will be more difficult then others to monetize so make sure you consider that before making your website. If you can’t find many ways to make money off of the traffic you’ll be targeting then you might not want to choose that niche at all and move on to something more profitable.

There is a huge list of different ways to monetize your website and you should try using as many of them as possible. Some of the methods used to make money off of your website can be used on basically any website and topic where some of the methods will need a specific website to use the type of monetization. The more diversified you can make your website the better shot you have at making a long time income. This is due to the fact that sometimes some methods will not earn as much some months and you’ll need other methods bringing in income to cover the losses. Never rely on just one form on monetization on your website or else you’re just asking for trouble. We’ll now take a look at some of the ways you can monetize your website.

Adsense

Adsense is by far the most popular and most widely used platform for webmasters. You simply register an account create an ad in whichever size you need and then add it to your website. Every time someone clicks one of the ads in the box you’ll get paid. Depending on the advertiser will reflect how much you get for your click but generally health and finance are the highest paying topics. Adsense pays out monthly as long as you meet the minimums, but in the beginning don’t worry about this as you probably won’t make enough the first month.

MaxBounty

MaxBounty has both leads and sales offers for website owners, and you simply place a link or banner on your website to make money this way. You find the offer you want to add to your website then get the code for the link or banner and implement it into your website. They pay by Paypal every month which is a great way to get some extra money coming in every month.

Commission Junction

Commission Junction is one of the leading affiliate platforms on the internet where many name brand advertisers offer affiliates a chance to make money. You can sell products for almost any niche you can imagine which means this is a network you should join. Each advertiser has there own rules and commission payouts so make sure you read everything about each affiliate you sign-up for.

There are plenty of other ways to monetize your website out there, but these three will definitely keep you busy. I would recommend only joining these three at a maximum in the beginning because you want to build up your money on only a couple networks. This way you don’t need to wait for the minimum payout on a bunch on networks as it will take longer to do so. Once you reach minimum payout on the above networks then you can try out some other networks the next month to see if they convert.

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Steps to Successful Blogging

By on March 16, 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

Steps to Successful Blogging

There are many individuals who are owners of extremely popular blogs
but do not believe in the commercialization of the blog. These proud
owners of these admired blogs somehow feel that it is unethical to use
their blog as a source of marketing and income. At the same time, it is
important to add here that there is no dearth of individuals who plunge
into blogging with the sole purpose of converting the blog into a
constant source of income for them.

This chapter comes to the aid of all those who want to become
successful through blogging. Discussed below are some steps which
will take your efforts towards successful blogging to the next level.

Start with a free blog hosting service

It is best for the beginners to start their blogs with a free web hosting
service. It can certainly help in the initial stages of the blog as it allows
one to concentrate on the content of the blog or rather than focusing
on the technicalities of the blog. The best part is that once your blog
takes off, you can easily upgrade it to a paid one. Not to forget that in
the worst scenario of your blog being ignored by the web, you do not
have to incur any financial loss.

Determine on a popular niche

When people talk about popular niche, it is very crucial to understand
that the determined niche should generate huge interest and passion
among the readers. And for that, it is very important that you yourself
are passionate about the niche and have a very good understanding of
it. Before deciding on one particular niche it is better to have a good
idea of the target audience generated by it. One can use tools like
Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo Buzz to find the most frequently searched
topics.

Blog as frequently as possible

Updating the content of your blog on a regular basis will keep the
loyalties of your readers intact. Any negligence on your part can lead
to loss of readers for your blog which is nothing but loss of potential
clients.

Generate traffic by promoting your blog url

A successful blogger does not leave any opportunity of promoting
one’s blog. It is important to promote your blog through various
means and methods including word of mouth. However, when it comes
to promoting one’s blog, the best method is to submit articles to
reputed article directories with back links to your blog. This is one of
the best ways of increasing the visibility of the blog on the web.

There are numerous methods and strategies for becoming a successful
blogger and one can go a long way in blogging, provided they are open
to new trends and ideas. Other than that, simple steps like tracking
one’s blog on a regular basis, adding quality and interesting content,
proper keyword research, using multiple blogging accounts and
displaying non-advertising digital graphics can make your blog
interesting and popular. Once your blog has gained popularity and has
regular visitors, the next step is to monetize it through contextual and
graphical advertising.

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How Do You Choose A Shopping Cart For Your Business

By on March 12, 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 Do You Choose A Shopping Cart For Your Business?

When deciding on what type of shopping cart and what features you need to have with your shopping cart you need to take a good look at the needs of your customers and at the needs of your business. Your shopping cart can show your customer that you are a professional that they can trust in order to make a buying decision. The shopping cart is a very important part of your commerce website.

Your shopping cart should fit the size of your business including how many products you have and what features you will be using such as multiple items, discounts, shipping and payment options, the ability to collect contact information, the ability to process credit cards and echecks. Your shopping cart needs to have the ability to save information, to calculate discounts, and sales tax and multiple purchases. Your shopping cart needs to look like your website and to look professional.

You need to have a shopping cart that fits your program skill level, and ability to make changes to it with html. You need to be able to see in real time what your sales figures are, who your buyers are and how many sales you have. The shopping cart should be able to give you accurate inventory totals based on sales generated.

Your shopping cart needs to be easy to navigate for your customers, blend well with your website, and be easy for you to make changes to. Your shopping cart should give your customer all the information needed when making a purchase including what items are in the cart, the quantity of each item, any options such as size, color etc., and any discounts or certificates available. Your customer should be able to choose payment and shipping options right from the cart and should be able to see a total for their purchase prior to getting to the credit card information page. The shopping cart needs to be able to give information that is accurate and responsive to what the customer does including changes made in any of the shopping cart fields.

You choose a shopping cart for your online business that meets the needs of your customers, and meets the skills and abilities of the person in charge of administering the shopping cart. The shopping cart should be able to grow with your business; meeting your future needs as well as filling the shopping needs you have today.

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Steps to Building a Mailing List

By on March 8, 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

Steps to Building a Mailing List

All successful webmasters are always talking about how valuable a mailing list is, but most of them neglect to teach everyone how to build a mailing list. Nowadays you can choose between both free and paid services to build your mailing list, and I’ll leave it up to you to choose your mailing list software. You will need one though so make sure you pick one and get familiar with it so you know what you’re doing. A mailing list is great to have because then you can email them all at once with promotions, specials and anything else you want to as long as it isn’t spam. If you have a big enough mailing lists then you can make thousands of dollars off each email that you send out. You generally send out an email to promote a product to sell as this is how you’ll make money. One key thing to remember is not to email your list to often as then they’ll unsubscribe and you’ll lose potential profit.

Once you have chosen your mailing list software you need to set-up a form on your website so that people can join your list. You’ll want to mention what you’ll offer in your newsletter emails so that people will want to join it. You can also offer a free report or eBook to people so that there more likely to join the mailing list. Many websites out there focus on just list building and there simply one page websites that giveaway something free in order for an email and name. You can do this on your website by creating a new page and setting up a little article for people to read. I find that you should always try offering something for free in exchange for the reader to join your mailing list as most people need a reason to join anything these days.

After you’ve set-up your subscriber page with the free gift and mailing list form then you now need to promote this page and build some links for it. Of course your website traffic should be able to clearly see on every page that you have a free gift offer in exchange for there email. The more noticeable the better as you want your readers to know it’s there. Apart from your website visitors you should also submit the new page to social bookmarking websites. This brings in a lot of traffic and since you’re offering something free many of them will submit there email for the freebie. You can also submit articles to article directories and in the resource box make sure you notify people that they can receive a free gift by going to your page and submitting there email.

Having a mailing list is so important to earn revenue online nowadays that I recommend everyone begin working on there mailing list immediately. Even if you don’t have much traffic right now that’s alright as you can still build your list slowly. You don’t need to send out emails until you reach at least one hundred subscribers though as you want to make it worth your while. If you wait though then you’re just throwing away potential people who would sign-up for your list and you can’t afford to do this. I suggest you get a mailing list software program as soon as possible and begin building your future.

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Steps to Dominating a Niche with Blogs

By on March 4, 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

Steps to Dominating a Niche with Blogs If you want to dominate a niche on the internet with blogs nowadays it’s completely possible and although it will require a lot work the payoff is huge. Not many webmasters or companies can say that they dominate there niche and it’s very difficult to do, but with the right planning you could do it. The first thing you need to do is choose your niche, which should be something you enjoy and are familiar with. Don’t choose a niche that is overcrowded with webmasters though because then ranking your blogs with become a lot more difficult and in some cases nearly impossible. You don’t want to compete against any big companies for search engine rankings, because most of the time there budget is a lot larger then your budget is and you don’t need that hassle. Once you a narrow down a niche that isn’t very competitive then you need to begin planning out your exact plan so that you can simply follow through on the plan. Also don’t expect to be dominating a niche in a week either as it takes time and hard work. The number one reason why webmasters don’t succeed is because they give up without allowing their websites enough time to establish themselves and earn money. Step One The first thing that you need to do is establish an authority blog, which should cover the entire niche. Your niche should be small enough that you can have an authority blog ranking for many of the terms in the niche. You should spend a couple months establishing this blog before moving much deeper into your network of blogs. Once you have some traffic and rankings then you can begin to expand. Step Two Once you have your authority blog established then you need to know break down your niche into anywhere from three to ten categories. You’ll know create a blog for each of those categories and begin adding content to them as much as possible in the beginning. Content is important on blogs and you need as much of it as possible so never think you’re writing too much. The traffic you get from these blogs should be targeted and could earn you some good money. Step Three In this step you’ll be creating small blogs that simply consist of only a few pages a piece. These blogs will be used to promote the different products in your niche. These are the small websites that you’ll be sending your blog traffic to in order to convert them into customers. Blogs can build up great search engine traffic and this is the best traffic to sell products to which is why you should send all your blog traffic to these websites. As these blogs age you’ll also begin getting traffic from search engines for the keywords you targeted. As you can see if you follow these three simple steps then you’ll be able to dominate a niche within one year pending the competition isn’t to stiff. You’ll need to of course spend long hours building links and traffic to the blogs in order to have any success, but if you do the work then the money will follow. Nothing is handed to you on a silver platter in the online world so always be willing to work for what you need or else find a typically 9-5 job now before you waste anymore time online.

 

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