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People do not want to feature only their blog contents

By on December 19, 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

People do not want to feature only their blog contents. They also want to show beautiful things like inspirational header and pretty layout. This is a theme comes into rescue. WordPress is highly respected blog publishing software which is known for its well- structured layout. Its default theme, Kubrick theme, which is designed by Michael Heilemann makes a beautiful theme for your blog. However, custom theme is making its wave for being versatile and workable compared to Kubrick.
Custom theme is a theme that is altered into a new layout design. Kubrick is losing out in this case because it is difficult to customize. Even K2, the one version of Kubrick theme is not really improved in terms of workability. If you attempt to install upgrade, strange errors might occur when you explore the Options Page. Sometimes the blogroll and side bar disappear if you messed up with the application.
We are living in a world of convenience. This is applicable to changing your blog theme. You do not have to go through the agony of tweaking Kubrick theme that might take hours to configure. Everything that you ever wanted in a blog theme can be found via World Wide Web. The themes can be downloaded into your computer before uploading the theme into WordPress.
Also, it is not wise for beginners to tweak Kubrick codes if they are not good at codes. The changing process of PHP and HTML is a bit tricky which means you need to certain knowledge before tweaking Kubrick theme. It will be easier if Kubrick theme is plainer which unfortunately not the case in reality. The best thing is to use themes provided by free websites to reduce your agony and pain in tweaking Kubrick theme.
Custom themes are more practical to be used as compared to Kubrick theme. If you are bored of the theme you are using you can simply switch it with another themes that are easily available via the Internet. The best part is that you do not have worry about losing your blog content or some functions of the blog because WordPress has it all covered. Tweaking Kubrick theme blindly might jeopardize your bog if you did not save the default codes of the theme.
Blogging is not only a platform to rant and post about personal life, it is also a place for business and advertising. Giant advertising companies search for blogs that best represent the corporate world and the blogger. Kubrick theme is not a good theme for advertisement because it does not have the space for advertisement. Unlike custom themes, people have ample of space to put HTML and Javascript codes for advertisements.
Furthermore, custom themes come in wide range of selection. Whether you want your blog to look fancy, gothic or professional, it is up to your choice when it comes to design. Custom themes are really easy to upload and they function very well. You do not have to worry if there is no comment box in custom theme because there are some themes that re created for blogs with high readership. This means it is up to you to customize your own blog layout. The restriction is your imagination, not how the theme is set to be.
In a nutshell, Kubrick is great to start up a new blog but it does not shine when a blog needs a revolutionary change. Therefore, custom theme is still very much users’ favourite in layout makeover.

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Why is WordPress Blog Better than Blogger

By on December 15, 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 is WordPress Blog Better than Blogger.com?
Here, we are comparing WordPress Blog with Blogger.com and out of these two, there is only one winner that stands out. These are the two most well-known blog hosts in the blogging community. Both of these hosts provide free hosting services for quite some time and it is their unique features that distinguish the better one. It is their services and features that influences our decision to choose which blog host. Thus to start the competition, their features will be compared to come up with the winner.
Free and Tailor-made
Both are free blogging hosts and allow the users to create as many blogs as they want. With optional paid upgrade, users can utilize additional features to improve their blogs.

Principle
Blogger is Google-owned while WordPress used open source project. WordPress offers more flexibility and reliability as compared to Blogger, and it is very useful especially to more advanced blogging community.

Themes
WordPress and Blogger both offer a variety of brilliant themes for the users to choose according to their own theme and needs. Themes are useful in giving a blog its uniqueness as compared to other blogs, and even the fastidious users managed to find a theme that suits them from these two hosts. Both of them provide features that allow users to design their own web page.

WordPress has limited customization compared to Blogger in terms of additional coding. Blogger allows access to coding allowing more customization than WordPress. However, WordPress counter this weakness by allowing the users to change themes as often as they want in an instance. WordPress are constantly upgrading their themes based on feedbacks from users which enables users to select from a larger variety of themes.

Speed and easiness of blog creation
WordPress only requires 2 steps in starting up the blogging process and can be done within a couple of seconds. On the other hand, Blogger needs 3 major steps with longer time required to start blogging. WordPress wins over Blogger with it simple and fast start-up.

Defense against spam
Automatic Spam Protection in WordPress is a reliable protector against spam for published blogs. However, Blogger only protects against spam in the process of blogging, and not for published blogs. Thus, WordPress is better.

Feedbacks
WordPress offers notification of feedbacks from the visitors. This helps the blogger as feedbacks are a source of improvements. Blogger on the other hand do not provide such service.

Import
WordPress has importing feature which allows the users to import their previous blog posts in other hosts such as Blogger to WordPress. Apart from this, there are a few other importing options as well.

Page management
Page management enables users of WordPress to post up as many pages as they want in a blog post. Blogger again do not have such a features.
Additional features
WordPress has added features such as Words, Spell-Check and Autosave which are similar to those in Microsoft Word. This allows the users to edit their text blogs and check for mistakes without the need to read the whole post after writing. Autosave is important when power failures occur as it allows users to save the work and not losing everything. These features are definitely a convenience to the users and provide security over their works.

It is an easy win for WordPress over Blogger with their features which provide simple and easy to understand steps in creating blog posts. WordPress definitely has advantage over Blogger in terms of attracting larger number of users due to their unique features not provided by other web hosts.

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Free Hosting vs Paid Hosting

By on December 7, 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

Free Hosting vs. Paid Hosting

If you’re just starting out in the webmaster arena then you’ll probably either already be debating between a free host or paid host or you will be soon. A lot of new webmasters aren’t too confident with what there doing and feel that they may not know how to do anything which is one of the reasons why people choose using a free host. There are tons of free blog hosts out there which allow you too create your very own blog on their servers for no charge at all. This means you could potentially make money without ever spending a dime of your own money, but there are downsides to using a free host.

Sure most people talk about how new webmasters should use a free host because it will allow them to test out how to run a blog and will give them valuable experience. Now this is correct in the fact that the person would learn what it takes too run a blog, but then once they do feel confident with blogging they’ll want too move on to their own domain. Now the problem with this is that you won’t be able too take your blog with you and therefore you’ll need to start from scratch from again which isn’t always fun. This is why I recommend starting out with your own paid hosting right from the beginning. For the price that it costs for a domain and a small blog hosting package nowadays there is no reason too be using free hosts.

It will cost you no more then $20 too get your first domain and first months of hosting paid for and from there you can begin making your blog and you actually will own it. On a free blog host you don’t really ever own your blog, but with your own domain and hosting you’re the complete owner to your blog and nobody will be able too take that from you. Free blog hosts have the possibilities of closing down in the future and then all of your hard work would also be lost.

I tend to not enjoy leaving my blogs in the hands of someone else and I personally have never used a free blog host and never will. When you have a successful blog on a free host not many people really care and your monetization methods are slimmer for private advertisements. Private ads are a huge part of blogging monetization and without the option you’re cutting yourself short. When you have a blog on its own domain then you’ll easily be able too sell links, banners and more once you get traffic.

The benefits of coughing up $20 to own your blog is well worth it and can save you from lots of headaches down the road. You never want too leave your web properties in the hand of someone else and by using a free blog host you’re doing exactly this. Now for children and teenagers I understand using a free blog host, but if you’re an adult and serious about giving the online world a chance then you shouldn’t be scared about paying $20 for a domain and hosting as this will be the least of your investments.

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Offering Certificates Coupons Discounts and Sales Through Your Shopping Cart

By on December 3, 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

Offering Certificates, Coupons, Discounts and Sales Through Your Shopping Cart

Driving sales to your Website through use of promotions such as sales, discounts, coupons and certificates is what make for a successful online store. Your shopping cart can help you to drive sales if it has the right features.

Some shopping carts that have more of a storefront system contain many of the advanced features that are useful for driving traffic to the store and we all know that traffic equates to sales. Most any basic shopping cart will allow you to change prices when you want to have a sale but you usually have to do it manually, one at a time. Then, after the sale you have to change them all back again. Some shopping cart systems allow owners to set up pre-set timed sales, where the program sets the beginning time of the sale and the ending time automatically.

Another useful promotion feature of some store-front shopping carts is the ability to feature an item or items on the homepage of the store so that it can be prominently seen by customers as the enter your store. Some even have the capability of placing sale products or new products on the front page to drive sales that way.

Shopping cart software that has the capability to email customers can be set up to email customers about coupons offers or discounts. Not all shopping carts can do this and when they can what they can offer may differ such as some being able to offer a percentage or a dollar amount coupon, and others can offer either specific product coupons versus all-store coupons. Some times you can program the shopping cart to kick-in a discount when the dollar amount of the purchase reaches a certain dollar amount.

Another useful feature is when the software has the capability to offer free shipping when orders reach over $50.00. This type of offer really helps to boost sales.

Customer pricing is another type of discount that kicks in when the customer logs into the Website. The private login password identifies the customer and the customer’s assigned percentage of discount that appears on the order form at checkout.

Just as offline brick and mortar stores offer sales, discounts, certificates and coupons to entice customers into the store. The ability of shopping carts to send out emails enticing customers to visit an online store is crucial for driving sales. An online store is dead without a constant flow of interested buyers. Sales, discounts, certificates and coupons are promotional tactics that a shopping cart can be programmed to handle saving a storeowner time and money. When making a shopping cart decision don’t ignore the power of advanced features to generate greater sales, features such as the ones discussed in this article.

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What is Involved in Shopping Cart Software

By on November 29, 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 is Involved in Shopping Cart Software

There are many things that go on within a shopping cart. There are many different features and management systems, so many that it can be mind-boggling. When deciding on which shopping cart program to purchase you should know what the basic parts of a shopping cart system entails so that you can make a smart buying decision.

All shopping carts have some kind of ordering system whether it is a simple online ordering system that includes buttons that have HTML attached to them such as is done with the Paypal shopping cart or a store-front ordering system where everything is done on site.

All shopping carts also have the ability for customers to add items to the cart, delete items from the cart, and input quantity desired. All shopping carts collect data such as the customer’s name, address and phone number. All shopping carts have to include shipping modules unless the products are all digital in nature in that case there would be a download manager.

Advanced shopping carts would allow customers to have several options per item such as color, size, weight, shape, height or width. Some carts even have choices between bulk or single item orders.

Shopping carts normally have shipping options with common ones being USPS, UPS and FedEx, DHL, CanadaPost, and also AustraliaPost. Not only do you have the different carriers but you also have other shipping options such as delivery time: next day, second day, ground, and air.

Tax calculation are also a part of what shopping carts need to offer when the customer has a physical address that is in the same state or city as the merchant. Tax calculations are done by zip code. Merchants who have stores in multiple rates would have a hair-pulling experience if not for advanced software plug-ins such as TaxWare’s Sales/Use Tax System or CertiTax which can calculate for the customer in real time the exact taxes.

Buyers insist on secure transactions before they hand over their credit cards so it is important for the shopping cart to integrate a payment gateway that is secure, protection for credit card numbers that are stored on the Website, an SSL secure connection certificate between the customer and the Website to discourage hackers from stealing sensitive financial information from the customers. It is also important to have a secure Sockets Layer (SSL) between the customer and the Website. If your Website server is not secure customer won’t buy. It is also important to have secure order retrieval.

Not all payment gateways are compatible with all shopping carts so you need to verify that the payment gateway is compatible before making your purchase. The most common U.S. based shopping cart compatible payment gateways are Authorize.net, LinkPoint, veriSign PayFlow Pro, and WorldPay. PayPal is another alternative payment system for most shopping carts but PayPal’s proprietary Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is not always available so you have to check before deciding to use PayPal.

Most shopping carts nowadays provide email confirmation of order placement and a few provide email confirmation of shipment.

Cookies, temporary IP number assignment and randomly generated cart numbers are all ways that shopping carts have to help keep customer orders straight. Because some shoppers turn off cookies it is important that shopping carts be set up with other methods alongside cookies just in case.

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Obtaining your Blogs Initial Traffic

By on November 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

Obtaining your Blogs Initial Traffic

When you first start adding content onto your blog you probably won’t have much if any traffic and I’m sure you’re dying to get some visitors. In this part of the guide we’re going to look at how you can get some initial traffic to your blog. Search engine traffic is by far the most valuable traffic to obtain, but it takes time and work to get this traffic so you need alternative ways to obtain traffic in the beginning.

Once you have your first twenty posts on your blog you should spend a day or two working on building links to your blog homepage and article pages. You should first work on submitting the pages to the many social bookmarking sites out there, you should choose at a minimum five websites to submit your pages to and make sure they get good traffic before submitting.

After you’re done submitting your pages to some social bookmarking websites spend some time writing a few articles on the topic of your blog. You could also just rewrite some of the posts you’ve made on your blog, it’s totally up to you. The reason you need some unique articles is so that you can submit them into article directories. EzineArticles is by far the most popular article directory and I would recommend sticking with this directory for the first couple months. Article directories will allow you to place 2-3 links in each article in the author resource box. You can gain a lot of valuable links from writing and submitting articles into directories so don’t ever stop working on adding more to your profile.

While you’re waiting for some of your articles to be approved in the article directories you can work on submitting your blog into directories. All you need to do is submit your homepage into these directories for the most part, some will allow deeplinks and I would recommend submitting deep links when you have the option.

You should also spend at least an hour or so a day reading other blogs in your niche. Although there your competition you can gain valuable links from their blogs by commenting on them. The search engines love relevant links and you can get a lot of them from blog commenting. You can also get traffic from people clicking your links on other blogs which happens fairly often.

As you can see there are plenty of ways you can obtain traffic while you wait for search engine rankings to kick in. All of these methods also help your search engine rankings and will assist you with getting ranked. Articles submissions are very important and make sure you never stop submitting articles for the life of your blog. They will help you rank in the search engines for tons of keywords and once you have enough search engine traffic coming in then you won’t need to work as hard on promotion and marketing.

In the beginning of your blog you’ll need to do everything you can to gain traffic though. Spend as much time as you can the first few months building content and links to your blog as this will directly reflect your traffic. If you write valuable content and have an appealing blog then some of the traffic you build will turn into return visitors which are the goal. Not everyone will become a return visitor to your blog, but the more that do the better. Always make sure that you continue writing content for your blog and never stop because for the most part once the content stops the traffic comes to a halt.

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Forum & Message Board Marketing

By on November 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

Forum & Message Board Marketing

Webmasters need to use every marketing method that they can take advantage of and without using all the methods out there you’ll fall behind your competition quickly. There are plenty of marketing techniques out there that you need to use, and in this article we’re going to talk about the power of forum and message board marketing. You’ve might of already used these techniques in your marketing arsenal and if you have then that’s great, but if you haven’t or you rarely use this technique then you should consider using it more.

There is always at least one forum on every topic and many topics have hundreds of different forums available to them. You should gather a list of the forums in your niche and then join them all. You will need to make some posts on them all and get active in the community. On the forums you’ll be able to add a signature line which will appear at the end of all of your posts. You can use this line to add your website link so that you can get direct clicks and also backlinks. Forum backlinks can build quickly and add a lot of value to your current links. Some forums will require that you make a certain amount of posts before your signature line appears, don’t worry about this though and just patiently wait until you reach the amount of posts. Don’t go spam the boards as you’ll likely be banned for doing so.

For message board marketing you may have to add your link at the end of each of your posts, so make sure that you do so if it is required. There is no point helping out others on message boards unless you’re getting the backlink so be sure that you do in fact get a link for each post. Some popular message boards are the Yahoo message boards which covers basically every niche that you could imagine. You simply help people answer their questions and then you post your link under your answer. This will help you get traffic as these message boards are always busy and get great search engine rankings.

A lot of forums and message boards don’t allow do-follow backlinks which means your links won’t count in the search engines. You should try finding some that are do-follow so that you do in fact gain some backlinks from your hard work, but for popular boards with lots of traffic it isn’t so important. For instance the Yahoo message boards will allow you to post a link but it isn’t do-follow. I still recommend using this board though because it’s one of the busiest and on the internet and can bring in great targeted traffic for the lifetime of your website.

Don’t spam the boards or forums though as you’ll get banned and it will also look unnatural to the search engines if you get a couple hundred links one day and none the next. You should aim for the same amount of posts everyday and split them between the forums and boards you use. This way you’ll be able to not look suspicious to the search engines and they won’t penalize you for unnatural link building which trust me happens and isn’t pretty for that website owner.

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