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Some Methods for getting Activity on your New Forum

By on August 25, 2011 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

Some Methods for getting Activity on your New Forum

If you’ve made the decision to make a forum then I must warn you that you’re looking at a long road ahead and you can’t give up. It takes a little while to get a new forum off the ground, but once you do then it basically runs on autopilot and earns you money. There is no limit to how big a forum can become either and that’s the great thing about starting a forum. You might make nothing, but you might also become popular and make thousands of dollars. There is definitely some risk for you when starting a forum though because you need to buy a forum license and some tools for your forum. You’ll also need to purchase a design for your new forum so that it stands out from others. It can cost you anywhere from $200-$1000 to get a decent forum started, so you need to decide if you can risk that amount of money. There is no guarantee your forum will become successful which means that your money might go down the drain, but like in most things you need to spend some money to make some money. We’ll now take a look at some of the methods you can use to gain activity on your forums while it’s new.

Choose a Niche

Often when people make a forum they want to cater to every topic out there because they think it will bring them more traffic which isn’t the case. You should choose a niche for your forum and then from there start adding content that is on topic with the niche you chose. People aren’t going to join an empty forum so in the beginning you need to do a lot of the posting to get some information into the forum so that people have a reason to join.

Hire Guest Posters

There are some websites out there on the internet that have a staff of people who strictly post on peoples forums. This will cost you some money, but often you can find deals for as low as $.15 per post which is literally pennies. Of course these members won’t stay once there done there job, but it’s a good way to get some activity on the forums so it at least looks busy. Also don’t hire just one person to do the work, you want as many different people doing small amounts of posts so that the member number increases. Don’t invest too much on forum posts, but spend a couple hundred bucks to get some activity on the forum.

Social Media

You can find hundreds of social media websites on the internet now and a few of them happen to be amongst the most popular websites on the internet. If you want to draw in some more forum members then you need to utilize these websites. You can do this by submitting your forum to social bookmarking websites with proper keywords, and also by submitting some viral videos on websites like Youtube. If your video becomes viral then you could generate a hundred or so members just from one video, so don’t overlook the power of social media.

Run a Contest

Running a contest will be a sure-fire way or you to increase the activity on your forums. Some people will only post while the contest is being run which sucks in a way, but there will be members who stick around if they like the forum.

All of these methods can bring in new members and make your forum look more active, but if the people don’t like the forum then it will be hard to keep them. You need to offer awesome information, have members post daily and a great theme before you ever make money on your forum. You will probably spend a year designing and building traffic for your forum, but once it’s active and moving then you can sit back and watch the money start rolling in.

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So What

By on August 21, 2011 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

So What’s New In WordPress 2.5.x?

In the beginning, everyone was excited about the news of the release of WordPress 2.5 but just when it was about to make its official debut on March 10, 2008, the release date was pushed back crushing the hope of millions of bloggers worldwide waiting anxiously for its release. Now, the latest stable release of WordPress (Version 2.5.1) is available for download at http://wordpress.org/download/

However, as of the time of release, it’s still in its early copy and was still under some concluding rounds of testing the program and also tweaking it; but it is now stable enough to provide you with a quick overview of some of the feature changes and additions, along with a brief comparison against its predecessor, WordPress 2.3.x series. It’s time to change!

i) The Dashboard

The very first thing you laid eyes on will be the dashboard which is similar to the hub of your blog. The new dashboard now not only features a sleek and more focused design but also comes with a few colour schemes which has switched from very cool, cool blues to the even colder icy blue, sexy dark grey and exotic burnt orange. The other change you will notice right away is the content’s layout. You will no longer have the content on your left and the blog statistics on your right but now you have a single column which has some quick links to the post composing screens, followed by blog stats, any recent comments you received, incoming links and lastly aggregated feeds.

On the plus side, now you can customize the feeds to the feeds that you want to see at a glance. Thus, you are no longer restricted to feeds from the WordPress development blog or WordPress planet. You’ll also be able to personalize your incoming links display such as from Google Blog Search to Technorati.

ii) The Navigation Menu

The navigation menu also has been changed from the straight forward menu of items in WordPress 2.3.x to a reduced menu with a few menu items completely renamed. While Write, Manage, Design, and Comments could be found in the usual spot, but the Plugins, Users, and Settings are now in the mid-upper right corner. The name changes are Presentation to Design, Options has become Settings and Blogroll renamed to Links and can be found under Manage. Under Write, there is also a Link navigation item where you’ll be able to add links to your blogroll.

iii) The Post and Page

The write pages have also undergone complete overhauls, leaving power bloggers who has grown accustomed to the many of the advanced WordPress features such as tags, categories, and trackbacks to do quite a bit of scrolling. Gone is also the option to drag and drop items in the order you’d prefer as you could in version 2.3.x. However, you may find a cool new addition which is the media manager. Currently, it only supports uploading from your computer but soon, there will be an option to add media from popular services such as YouTube and Flickr.

iv) The Post/Page Management

The Manage page no longer has the manual one at a time posts delete or clicking on the Edit link next to a particular entry. In version 2.5.x, to edit post, instead of edit link, just click on the post title while to view posts with a particular tags listed on the Manage page, just click on the tag and WordPress will list all those posts, the same with clicking on the author or category. As an added bonus, you can now mass delete entries.

The date format has also changed to sporting a user friendly “2 hours ago” as opposed to an actual date. After a 24 hour period, it will change to the usual date format. Besides that, you’ll also be able to see the posts’ tags and publication status.

v) The Edit Post Page

Most notable change is the “View this Post” button which has replaced the “preview” link that was hidden between the title and post content. In addition, you’re also able to quickly edit the post slug on the fly. Finally, there’s a quick link for deletion that enables the users to quickly delete their posts and there is an option to view the comments associated with the post, all comments, or even all posts.

vi) The Tag Management

Under Manage, you’ll probably see a brand new sub-menu named Tags. It allows you to do some basic tag management such as adding, editing, or deleting individual tags similar to category management page.

vii) The Media Management

The other new link appearing under the Manage tab is called Media Library, which has replaced Upload, and it’s where you can find and manage each of your uploaded files. WordPress is now supporting a multitude of file formats, such as video and audio.

viii) The Widgets Management

There will also be no need for you to click on any particular widgets onto the sidebar because you now can click on an Add link next to it and it is added! Once it’s already on the sidebar, then you’re free to click and drag however you want them to be arranged. To help beginners, each widget now comes with a brief description detailing what the widget does and widget filters as well as a search function (in case you lose track).

ix) The Other Changes

First, the user filters have been improved a little and clicking on a specific role’s link will only display users with that particular role. Secondly, WordPress will now show you exactly how many comments you have waiting for review in the navigation menu so you no longer have to click on comments to discover them. Third, there is an option (you can also disable it) to support avatars straight out of the box.
In conclusion, this version seems to be heading in the correct direction which has improved over the previous version with several small, yet significant changes to WordPress. For the most part, most people will either love it or hate it. But one thing for sure is WordPress will certainly leave a lot of commotion in its wake.

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PHP Shopping Cart Benefits Your Website

By on July 28, 2011 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

PHP Shopping Cart Benefits Your Website

You are an Internet entrepreneur hoping to make it big in the online world of business. You realize that your website has to be functional, accessible to viewers and attractive to keep the attention of the viewer; but do you realize the benefits of having a PHP shopping cart on your website? A PHP shopping cart can allow the visitor to your website to perform many functional tasks such as adding to the cart, updating the cart when changes are made to the items in the cart and deleting unwanted items from the cart. The shopping cart should be set up in a familiar way and should have a textual message on each page to inform the visitor of how many items are in the cart to remind the visitor when they are browsing the site of the existence of the cart in this “non-physical” world where a virtual cart is not as visible as a real shopping cart would be in the real world.

You can make a PHP shopping cart very accessible to the website visitor by a link, such as “add to cart”, or a visible button located by each item on the web page. You can also have both button and textual message for each product on the page.

The PHP shopping cart has many traits that lends success for your business such as having the requisite information being sent to the cart, the ability to locate and execute a high compliance cart, and the ability to call an external PHP file. It is also possible to have the PHP shopping cart to have the option of paying via the popular Paypal service.

Most PHP shopping cart software programs come with complete ready-to-run PHP shopping carts that do not require any programming knowledge. The software is usually cost-effective and can be complement major ecommerce features. PHP shopping carts are usually easy design integration with any HTML editor and are usually accompanied by ready-to-use skin templates. PHP shopping carts are search engine friends, and gives the website owner the ability to accept online credit card processing. Most PHP shopping cart software allows for real-time shipping quotes and easy order notifications by email or SMS. If you are looking for a software program consider PHP shopping carts.

PHP shopping carts are flexible, fully functional that can easily be integrated into any ecommerce website. Look for one with custom template systems that will make the cart easy to set up with multiple payment gateways. When purchasing a PHP shopping cart make sure the in company you purchase the software from has free technical support, multiple currency support and offers multiple shipping configurations. You want total control over your shopping cart and having separate links from each product to the shopping cart will allow the customer to easily add products to the cart.

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Why You Should Start a Membership Website

By on July 24, 2011 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

Why You Should Start a Membership Website

Membership websites have been around since the internet began and they’ve always been very popular forms of revenue for webmasters. There are many reasons why you would benefit from starting your own membership website and we’re going to look at some of those reasons today. Membership websites are now more popular then ever due to software programs coming out that makes setting up a membership website a breeze. There are also over a dozen payment processors to choose from to process your member’s payments which help make things easy.

Basically you’ll be required to set-up your website and then from there you’ll only need to promote it and add updates. There are many choices you need to make when you’re setting up the website in the early stages. You’ll need to decide what you want to offer in the member’s area, and you should be using more then one type of content in your member’s area. For instance if you have a webmaster membership website you should have articles, reports, eBook, software, templates and anything else you can think of. People like seeing lots of options in the member’s area, even though they won’t use most of it they like knowing that you offer enough value for the money. Once you’ve chosen what’s going to be in your member’s area you need to get it done and add it in. You also need to set-up your payment processor and decide whether it will be monthly, yearly or one-off payment. This is strictly preference and you can choose what you want, but generally you should choose monthly.

With monthly recurring payments you’ll be making a stable income from your membership website and this is the goal. There is no point marketing your membership website and then selling one-off payments because then once the crowd joins you won’t make anymore money and you’ll still need to update it. I would go with monthly recurring payments and make sure you offer enough weekly updates so that your clients want to stay a member.

Once you have a membership website with members and recurring payments rolling in you’ll only need to work on updates for the website. This could be outsourced at this point in time since you’ll be making good money and then it’s on complete auto-pilot. You won’t need to do anything except whatever promotions you want to do, and whatever communication you want to make with the members. You should play a role in the communication because people like to talk with the owner and many people will also have questions. You should just make a forum and that will make it very easy for everyone to communicate.

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What Are The Most Frequently Asked Questions About Shopping Carts

By on July 8, 2011 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

What Are The Most Frequently Asked Questions About Shopping Carts? There are questions about shopping carts that are asked by customers and there are questions that Website owners have about shopping carts when they are looking to add a shopping cart to their Website. Some of the questions are the same, but most of the questions are different. What are the questions that customers and Website owners ask about shopping carts? Customers often ask questions about a shopping cart’s navigation such as how do I add products to the cart, and how do I delete items if I chance my mind? Customers want to know if they will be able to use their preferred payment method. They also want options when it comes to shipping so they can choose the quickest way, or the cheapest way or the preferred carrier. Customers are very concerned about security when it comes to using credit cards online. They also want to know which credit cards are acceptable to use? Customers also want to know how to make choices such as color or size when ordering. While browsing for multiple items customers also want to know if they can see what is in their cart and also if they can see a tally of the total dollar amount of the items in the cart? Customers want to know if there is any sales tax charged and if the store ships to where they live? Customers want to know not only what the shipping options are but they want to be able to compare the costs of shipping. There may be some customers who need to know if you ship to APO or FPO addresses or internationally? Website owners often ask a lot of questions when they are looking for a shopping cart solution for their business. They want to know how well the shopping cart will blend in with their Website. They have questions about how much HTML knowledge they will need to know in order to install or configure the shopping cart? They are naturally going to want to know about technical support if they encounter problems while installing or configuring the shopping cart. They are also going to want to know how responsive customer support is and how helpful they are. They are going to want to know if there is a user’s manual or a help topic or FAQs section that they can find answers when customer service is closed. When in the buying phase they will have lots of questions about features, administration, installation, maintenance, and upgrades. They will also want to know about pricing and payment plans so that they can know if the shopping cart is within their budget or not. It is up to the shopping cart software company to answer the questions of the Website Owner and it is up to the Website owner to answer the questions asked by the customer about the shopping cart. The shopping cart is a very important part of the success of any Website that sells products or services so answering questions about the shopping cart are vital too.

 

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Never Buy or Trade Traffic for Your Blog

By on July 4, 2011 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

Never Buy or Trade Traffic for Your Blog

No matter what niche of blog you have there always seems to be a traffic exchange system where you can either trade or buy traffic. Now for the most part you never want to trade or buy traffic for your blog simply because it’s a waste of money. You only want to change trade traffic if the other traffic is coming from another website or blog that is similar to yours and offers good traffic. If it doesn’t offer good targeted traffic then there is no reason why you would want to trade traffic with the website and you should stay away from it because it won’t help you out.

If you trade all your hard earned traffic then your blog visitors will be leaving your blog and you’ll be receiving visitors from the website you’re trading traffic with. Now if the website you trade with is a toplist or something then the traffic isn’t going to be worth exchanging traffic to get. You need to determine which trades will offer you equal or more traffic for your traffic, and the traffic needs to be targeted. There is no reason sending away your targeted traffic to get junk traffic in return that won’t amount to anything.

Now for those of you who have been thinking about spending money on buying traffic I would advise against doing so. You don’t want to buy traffic for your blog because the only reason traffic is for sale is because it isn’t good targeted traffic. If it was targeted traffic then you would never see people selling traffic by the thousands for dollars. The reason they sell their traffic though is because there traffic is garbage and they make more money by selling it then trying to convert it into sales. Now you could try and hope to convert the bought traffic into sales, but for the most part you won’t even see one sale from any traffic you buy. Unless you find someone who is selling some private traffic that is targeted and converts then you shouldn’t buy traffic.

Some people buy traffic to try and boost there website stats before selling it, but the problem with this is that it won’t help you. People will want to see the referrer stats and once they see that the traffic has been bought then they won’t want to buy your blog or if they do they won’t pay much. Buying traffic seems dodgy because the only reason people really do it is to boost their stats and other webmasters don’t like buying blogs with bought traffic.

Buying traffic from bad areas can also cause your blog problems in the future with the search engines. The more unnatural stuff you do the more likely the search engines are to find something wrong with what you’re doing and penalize you. The last thing you want to do is get penalized by the search engines so make sure you follow the rules. Stick to building links and getting organic traffic and the revenue will begin to build up. Buying traffic is just a waste of your money and you shouldn’t spend time even considering spending your hard earned money on useless junk traffic.

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Totally Wicked With Widgets

By on June 22, 2011 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

Totally Wicked With Widgets!

Feeling bored with your old theme? Want more customization in your blog? You can do that now with the WordPress Widgets! WordPress developer, Andy Skelton has announced the next generation of funky new WordPress plugin, WordPress Widgets, which drove the blogging community to both ends of the enthusiasm spectrum. Whether you love it or hate it, it’s here to stay.

To the people around the world, gadgets or gizmos are typically used to refer to helpful little high technology devices or tools. But to the tech savvy people of the computer or technology world, a widget is used generically for a plugin that can be placed in your blog’s sidebar. The best thing about widget is that even if you do not have any knowledge of html or how to edit a web page, you can still easily drag and drop for convenient customization or to increase your blog’s functionality. Through the use of widget, a self-contained piece of code that allows you to move into, out of or anywhere inside the sidebar area of your blog without touching a line of code, you can easily personalize your blog and deliver information just the way you wanted it with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Apart from the standard widgets in WordPress, there is also a vast variety of external widgets to choose from. Webpage such as http://www.widgetbox.com provides thousands of widgets for your blog, profile, or webpage with numerous categories ranging from humor, news, movies, music, sports and a lot more. Besides having widgets, it also contains several guides on how to make your own widget to give your blog a ‘truly yours’ experience or if you’re a developer, writing a WordPress Widget is as easy as a plugin and they’ve even documented all the APIs (application programming interface) for you, as well as including guides for theme authors and current plugin authors. In addition to the 130,000+ blogs on WordPress.com, the talented developers also have the ability to keep tab on to the thousands of people who are still downloading the WordPress program every day and the many hundreds thousands of the already existing WordPress blogs out in the World Wide Web.

By using Javascripts and Ajax, widgets are very much similar to boxes representing content elements within your theme’s sidebar. The only disadvantage is that you can’t change how they look or work. The standard elements include;

Archives – displays archive links for each month that has posts.

Blog stats – displays statcounter and traffic count to your blog.

Calendar – displays a calendar of the current month with dates appearing as links if there are posts for that day.

Categories – displays a list of post categories as links to those posts.

Links – displays list of links (blogroll) separated by category.

Pages – displays a link to each Page.

Most Recent Posts/Comments – displays list of the blog’s most recent posts or approved comments.
Meta/admin – displays links to meta functions such as Site Admin, Login/Out, Entries RSS, Comments RSS, and WordPress.org.

Search – displays a Search box to enter text to search your blog. A submit button is also provided.

Text – used to enter HTML, Javascript, or just plain text. Using this opens a number of possible uses for text widgets.

Also a very cool thing you can do is to add RSS feeds from other websites with these new widgets in your sidebar. And as such, widgets can be used for an infinite variety of purposes limited only by your imagination. The only downfall is that too many widgets can slow down your blog. Hence, try to control yourself from over-widgetizing your blog and avoid badly designed widgets. After all, too much of anything is too much.

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