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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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How To Make A WordPress Website

By on December 6, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How To Make A WordPress Website

There are tons of software programs out there now that will help you; learning how to make a WordPress website is fairly easy and quick. This program is designed to be simple, and it lives up to that.

There are no HTML codes to learn, and no confusing software to use for getting your pages online. WordPress is set up to have hundreds of templates for you to choose from. Once you get the one you like, it may take a couple minutes for it to be on the web. After it is up, you can then go back and customize your site. It’s a simple matter of pasting the information you want into the spots open in your template. There is no confusion about it. You simply put what you want where.

There are other aspects to learning how to make a WordPress website. You can add in pages and posts. You can also create your follow-up sequence. The most important step though, is using the keyword tool. This is not part of the software packages, but it’s a step you should take, and there are free keyword tools out there that you can use. You are going to want to do this before you create the site.

Why keyword? You are going to want to target your website to the best phrase for your niche. Please remember that the most searched word phrase is not always the best. If you do that, chances are you page will end up somewhere at the back of the list. You want to pick something with 5000 searches or less. This allows you to have a better chance for placing on the first page when your phrase is searched through a search engine. You will want to use the same keyword phrase for the home page content of your website, as well as at least one article. This will allow you to tie everything in together and get the traffic you want.

Let’s face it, traffic means nothing if they don’t buy anything. With the targeted keyword phrase you are appealing to people already looking for your type of product, and because of that are more likely to buy something.

After you get the keyword, use it for buying your domain name. You will need this to set up the site. You may also need web hosting, though that depends on whether you are set up as a member where you have unlimited hosting services. Entering in your domain name and pointing to your web hosting server are the first couple steps in learning how to make a WordPress website. You can save yourself some time in actual set up if you get these before you open the program.

Then all you need to do is pick your stuff. Choose a template, review your choices, and create. The last page will give you all your site information including domain name and web hosting information. You would be wise to either save this information or print it out for your records.

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About Woo Themes – A Premium WordPress Themes Developer

By on December 4, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

About Woo Themes – A Premium WordPress Themes Developer

Overview of Woo Themes

Woo Themes is a premium WordPress theme developer offering dozens of themes that function on self-hosted WordPress websites (not wordpress.com sites). All themes are guaranteed to function correctly with WordPress 2.8 and all versions that came out after that. Earlier versions of WP may not work properly with all Woo Themes.

There are currently 77 themes offered by the site and all of them are professional quality and well designed. Of course, you get what you pay for, so this is one of the best but also one of the most expensive premium WordPress theme developer services in operation today. They are probably more suited to professionals rather than hobbyists or personal bloggers.Most Popular Themes

The top 3 all-time downloaded Woo Theme themes are (at the time this article was published):

Fresh News: offers a variety of color schemes and can be used as a blog page or a homepage. 3 homepage layouts come with the package.
Gazette: professional, upscale theme with some unique features, layout options, and color choices.
Busy Bee: supports ad space and tons of multimedia features right out of the box and offers a super stylish, sleek appearance.

Woo Themes are easy to customize and offer great features:

Custom Sidebars: You can create new custom sidebars for placement throughout your website using an easy-to-use panel.
Shortcodes for creating buttons and columns within a page or post (this is very cool):
Create custom navigation menus with a very easy-to-use panel (no coding knowledge required).
Built-in SEO panel: You can configure the search engine optimization for your site easily in themes developed by Woo Themes (without knowing any coding).

Pricing & License Model for Woo Themes (at time this article was published)

This is one of the more complicated things about Woo Themes as a premium WordPress theme developer. You can opt to purchase a single theme or a club membership which gives access to all themes. There are several options no matter which way you go.

The options for purchasing a single theme include:

Standard Package: your chosen theme plus 2 bonus themes. The license permits you to use the theme on as many websites as you want and you receive lifetime access to updates for all three themes. One-time fee is $70.
Developer Package: your chosen theme plus 3 bonus themes and PSD file. The license permits you to use the theme on as many websites as you want and you receive lifetime access to updates for all four themes. You can make any changes you like using the PSD file. One-time fee is $150.
Enterprise Package: select themes are Enterprise themes which include advanced features not found on other themes. No bonus themes are given but you do receive everything else that comes with the Developer Package, including the PSD files. One-time fee is $200.
The options for joining the club include:
Standard Subscription: unlimited access to all the themes plus at least 2 new theme releases every month. Access to support services and all theme updates is included. No PSD files for themes used. One-time start-up fee is $125, then the monthly club fee is $15.
Developer Club: the same terms as the Standard option, but you have access to PSD files for all themes. One-time start-up fee is $200 and monthly club fee is $20.

Woo Themes uses a private service for payment processing which accepts all major credit cards plus Paypal as long as you are paying in U.S. dollars. If you are signing up for a subscription service you will not be able to cancel the subscription on your own. You have to contact the company before the subscription is set to renew in order to have it cancelled.

PSD Files with Woo Themes Purchase

PSD files are included with select membership packages. See the information under Pricing & Licensing Model above to see what packages include these files.

All image logos are intended to be samples and there is a simple process on the site where you can replace this with your own logo. You don’t need Photoshop or any other program to do this!

Technical Support with Woo Themes

All support is handled through an open support forum where Woo staff answers questions and help resolve problems with installation or functioning of all themes. Like most other premium WordPress theme developer services, Woo Themes will not answer questions or resolve problems through email or telephone.

Access to the support forum and basic technical support continues even if you cancel your subscription. You also receive updated versions and corrections to your purchased themes, even if you are not a current club member.

History of Woo Themes

Learning about Woo Themes as a premium WordPress theme developer service is a study in how technology has changed the modern world. This is a true international company that started up with three passionate web designers all living in different countries. Today, their service has expanded some and many of their themes are designed by some of the top professionals in the industry.

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WordPress Company Sites

By on December 4, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

A decade ago, it is not surprising and embarrassing if large corporation did not have their own websites. Now, a company without its own website loses its credibility and respect due to vast demand in online business. WordPress websites are made for companies and individuals to compete in this competitive cyber world. Whether it is for commercial or personal purpose, websites are staples in the Internet as a form of communication approach. The success of a website depends on how appealing it is to search engines. To make websites easily accessible, WordPress are created to be SEO friendly.
WordPress can be customized easily to optimize search. The term ‘SEO’ which stands for search engine optimization, is used as a tool to gauge traffic and volume of a website. It is not difficult to change WordPress URL into a more SEO friendly one with a few simple steps. Users just need to change and update their permalink structures. The reason behind this is to create a new SEO keyword-friendly URL structure. Bloggers need not worry about their old URL because all incoming links which are associated with the old URL will be directed to the latest optimized URL.
Being a platform of blogs and commercial websites, WordPress is user- friendly in terms of site administration and configuration. Users do not have to be highly- skilled in IT knowledge but to learn a few advanced technical optimization to prevent duplicate contents and make their blogs SEO friendly. Some useless archives in the blog need to be disabled to avoid duplicates which will adversely affect blog ranking in search result. It is also wise to exclude unnecessary links and pagination.
Using suitable WordPress themes can shoot your blog to stardom with better SEO. Users can download SEO friendly templates to revamp their blogs to increase popularity and readership. The secret to choose the best template that fits your blog is the matching the theme with blog contents and blog name. Search engines will easily recognize the keywords and WordPress theme used when the blog fulfills certain SEO metrics such as highlighting its contents, onsite optimization and appropriate look and feel.
On top of that, WordPress is blog- publishing software that is compatible to many useful and SEO friendly plug- ins. Killer plug –ins like Comment Luv, Feed Footer and Who Sees Ads give your blog more functionality. WordPress is already great software by itself. With enhanced features by plug –ins, your blog will be more manageable and SEO friendly. Plug – in like Google XML Sitemaps helps to make your blog more visible for search spiders. Marking the online presence of your blog through sitemaps makes you a more successful blogger.
Also, WordPress blog is made to host a more well- structured layout. It is a design stage for corporation and individuals that need no fancy design features. Moreover, design features such as Flash and Javascript might hamper search effort as they are not SEO friendly. Search engines prefer simple but loud layouts that clearly reflect the identity of the website. WordPress websites are not heavily designed so that the websites can appear easily and quickly in the search result.
You can also optimize your WordPress front page with texts. Texts, preferably permanent ones, are personalized to make blogs more visible in search engines. More tags on the front page also optimize search especially the unique ones. You can even replace the “Read More” link with something more meaningful to your every post. This little thing makes a huge difference in your WordPress SEO.
To conclude, many people underestimated the power of SEO in elevating their WordPress websites to greater height. Through intelligent comprehension and understanding of SEO, blogging is not a mere entertainment anymore, but a sign of success in blogosphere.

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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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How to Install WordPress Widgets

By on December 2, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Install WordPress Widgets

One of the things that makes WordPress so easy to use is widgets. What is a widget? I will try and explain them the easiest way possible. Basically, a widget is an area of a website or blog where you can control the location by dragging and dropping it. In WordPress, widgets are usually found in the sidebar section. As far as what can be places in them, there are really no limits. There are literally hundreds of different ways to utilize widgets within WordPress.

However, before you get started you should probably learn how to install WordPress widgets. The good news is that a lot of widgets come preinstalled with the WordPress package. The common ones include things like recent posts, categories, tags, and a search function.

However, if you want to add any functionality to your blog or website then you will want to know how to install WordPress widgets from plugins. Many WordPress plugins come with widgets built in so all you have to do is install the plugin and then browse to the widgets section in WordPress.

If the plugin comes with a widget, you should automatically see it listed under the available widgets. If for some reason you do not see any new widgets, then you should make sure the plugin is activated. If for some reason it is not, it will not show up under widgets. The other possibility is that the plugin does not come with a built in widget. If this is the case, you may have to find the short code that works with the plugin and add it to a text widget.

So there you have it, a quick lesson in how to install WordPress widgets.

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WordPress plugins and some of the popular plugins

By on December 1, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

WordPress plugins and some of the popular plugins
There are a large number of plugins available for all WordPress users with the intention to enhance and improve their blogging experience. The number of plugins is increasing from day to day, but not all of the plugins are good for you as some may damage your WordPress installation or even harm your site. Some of the plugins that are worth trying out are:
1. Sideblog- this is a way to post short notes on the sidebar with options such as the number of entries to display, defining the sideblog categories and exclusion from RSS feeds. It is useful to post updates and sharing of links. Some of the options include cool themes, made the sidebars invisible from the search robots or adding feeds to the sideblog.
2. Secure and Accessible Contact Form- this is a plugin with a number of features such as extensive security with 16 individual abuse countermeasures, form an overview page to confirm the general configuration of the plugin, maximum accessibility and usability, option to use your own style sheet or extensive on board documentation library if you ever need any help.
3. Sociable- this plugin attaches a list of social bookmarking sites, which allows your visitors to bookmark and it is found at the end of your posts. It automatically add links to your favourite social bookmarking sites on your posts, RSS feeds and pages and you can choose from 99 different sites.
4. Gravatar 2 Plugin- this plugin allows the display Gravatar which is a globally recognized avatar of your commenters. This allows you to distinguish yourself from other users in an online community such as websites, forum or chat rooms. In WordPress, Gravatars are hosted on a single server by encrypting the user’s email address. You can have one avatar for each forum you visit.
5. Search Everything- this plugin allows you to search everything in the database as the default WordPress search engine does not search some pages such as static Pages or metadatas. There are options for you to choose, so you can choose what to search. Some of the options are to search every page, tag, category, comment, attachment, excerpt or non-password protected pages.
6. Admin Drop Down Menu- this is a very useful plugin as it saves you more time. Usually, you have to click a number of times to get from one page to another. With this plugin, just hovers the arrow of your mouse to the category that the page is located to save more time. Instead of going from one page to another before reaching the final destination, you can choose from the menu itself, which can inactivate a second menu from the first.
Do not be scared by the number of plugins available out there. The best thing to do is to do your research. Read blog posts, reviews or comments on the plugins which are widely available in the Internet. Choose those that will enhance your WordPress sites wisely.

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Why Have a Professional Build Your WordPress Website

By on November 30, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Why Have a Professional Build Your WordPress Website?

Once upon a time the WordPress CMS (content management system) was designed for blogging sites, which could be created easily by the bloggers themselves. As the platform became more robust over the last few years, WordPress has come to be considered as the basis for traditional and e-commerce web-sites as well as just for blogs. It can be the perfect way to go for
your business if you use a professional web developer.

The Advantages of a Professionally Built WordPress Website

For a simple personal blog site, where graphic design and flexibility are not so important, you may be able to get by with a do-it-yourself site that is hosted by WordPress. However, such a hosted site (“”yourbusiness””.wordpress.com) is not recommended for your business. Your business should have a professional set up a
self-hosted web-site, with its own domain (like “”yourbusiness””.com). You will be able to display ads, have more control of SEO (search engine optimization) and have all the flexibility you need into the future.

While the WordPress development platform is fairly easy to learn for someone with web programming experience, a do-it-yourselfer, with no programming experience is very likely to have trouble tackling this endeavor. The professional who is familiar with web development, can navigate the nuances and get you a better, sharper result in far less time. And, if you do attempt to build this website, and you get stuck, then a professional can generally come to the rescue.

Your Site Can be Up and Running Quickly

The beauty of this type of web site, that is based on a CMS, is that a professional web developer can build your site in a straightforward manner from a starting theme and customize it for your needs. Then you, the not-so-programming-savvy site owner, can add content and post updates with relative ease.

Your web developer can get the job done generally much more quickly than with traditional programming in HTML or php or JavaScript. Yet, this professional will have those web languages at their disposal, if needed, to make customizations not supported by WordPress or your starting theme. Also, if you want to have your existing traditional web-site ported to WordPress, then knowledge of traditional web development languages and techniques is a must.

You get so many advantages right off the bat via the myriad plug-ins written for WordPress by independent programmers. Your web professional will know how to utilize these plug-ins to the fullest for your company’s site. The following, can be done very quickly:

– Adding protective backup support- Great web metrics like Google Analytics- Traffic enhancers like SEO- Photo and media galleries- Being able to easily print your web-pages in print-friendly format

What is the Cost to Create Your WordPress Website?

The cost of creating your site will depend primarily on five things:

1. The number and size of the web-pages2. Does your content exist in publishable form3. How fancy you want your graphics, photos and other media4. Whether you will have an e-commerce site (i.e. be selling things)5. Is this a brand new web-site or will it be created from an existing site

Say a website for a small law office has a few pages of credentials and biographies of the counsels plus contact information, with 15 total web pages. This site would typically cost a lot less than a website that is a virtual store with a two hundred page catalog, a shopping cart, etc.

Making Your Site Better Over Time

One of the great advantages of a WordPress site is that it is fairly straightforward for a web professional to take your simple website and add the latest features over time. After a while, you may want to change aspects of the site, such as how it looks, its navigation or to add e-commerce (if not already there). The original designer/developer or another professional can get the job done much more quickly than if the web-site were built with traditional programming methods.

What Are You Waiting For?

So if you want a new website for your business, then you should consider having a web professional build one that’s polished and maintainable. This will help to attract and keep your customers’ attention.

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