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10 WordPress Plugins For Your Tech Blog

By on October 25, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

10 WordPress Plugins For Your Tech Blog

As a general rule of thumb most errors you’ll encounter with your WordPress blog are the result of excessive or incompatible plugins. While many find the selection of essential plugins a conundrum I believe in testing each plugin one-by-one with the latest version of WordPress so I can isolate the problem to determine the cause of the slow load times, call function errors or php memory limit warnings. The most valuable tool I can tell you when it comes to plugins is that when possible look for existing code that can accomplish the same result.

Of course there are certain plugins that even I use in my WordPress Blogs. I’ve compiled a list below of the top 10 plugins that I use on a daily basis that I believe will help any tech blog:

* AdSense Now – There are many ad insertion plugins for WordPress, but if your tech blog is using AdSense – this is the plugin I recommend. It allows you to insert your ad blocks aligned left, center or middle in 3 sections of a post. It also gives you the option to suppress ads on pages, category pages, tag pages, archives and more.

* Audio Player – Being able to insert mp3 clips or podcasts into your blog can be a problem. Audio Player is a plugin that makes this process simple – simply create a music folder on your site via FTP and then upload mp3 tracks to the directory. You can insert the built-in audio player into any of your posts or pages with a simple line of code – painless, simple and easy.

* Facebook Sharecount – It’s no secret that social networking sites like Facebook are effective ways to create a fanbase, but being able to harness that power relies on an easy way to share your great content. Facebook Sharecount will make it easy for visitors share your posts and monitor your content.

* Foliopress Descriptions – Once your tech blog has hundreds or even thousands of posts you will need a way to mass edit your descriptions. While the importance of meta descriptions is debated, I still believe that a hand written summary should be written for each post. Foliopress Descriptions supports post excerpt, These and All In One Seo meta description fields.

* Google XML Sitemaps – If you’ve read my previous post on how to get indexed by Google and Yahoo you know that having a sitemap is essential. This plugin auto generates your sitemap in a nice and neat XML file and let’s search engines understand the content on your tech blog. After installing and activating the plugin Google XML Sitemaps will take care of the rest.

* NextGEN Gallery – Managing your images and photo galleries can be a pain, but NextGen Gallery makes this simple. With features like auto resizing, watermarks, thumbnail creation as well as gallery effects – NextGEN Gallery is a must have plugin.

* Star Rating for Reviews – When you run a tech blog sooner or later you will start receiving products for review. Creating a solid review is as much about content as it is about presentation. Star Rating for Reviews allows you to create ratings for the products you review or even rate different aspects of the product and averages the ratings to determine a final score. The possibilities are limitless with the plugin – a must have for anyone looking to review tech.

* TweetMeme Retween Button – If you look at the posts on TechBlogStartup you’ll notice a yellow Retweet button aligned to the right. The power of Twitter is growing by the day so making it easy for your reader to ReTweet great content can prove very valuable. If you’ve installed Google Analytics like I explained in my previous post here, then you will be able to monitor just how many visitors enter your post through Twitter. If you are wondering why I haven’t included ShareThis it’s because I manually insert the code instead of using a WordPress Plugin.

* WP Super Cache – If you’ve heard of Digg then odds are you’ve heard of the Digg Effect where an article on a website becomes so popular so quickly that the flood of traffic to the website causes the server to crash. Since WordPress blogs are built on SQL Databases they are highly susceptible to this condition, but installing WP Super Cache can almost eliminate this threat. The plugin builds a cache of your posts and creates a static html page so that the server load is reduced and your site can handle more visitors. If your tech blog is brand spanking new I would install the plugin but not activate it until I started to see spikes in traffic or one of my articles was picked up by a major tech blog like Engadget or Gizmodo.

* All in One SEO – Search Engine Optimization is a key ingredient to driving organic traffic to your tech blog. Writting great content is key, but after you have created that content you need to make sure that it targets keywords and includes some basic optimization to ensure it is search engine friendly. All in One SEO does this job very well. If you are using the WordPress theme I use (Thesis) then you will not need this plugin, but for pretty much every other WordPressTheme I recommend installing it right away so that you can start writing your custom meta descriptions

All of the plugins I’ve mentioned above can be downloaded manually and then uploaded via FTP to your blog or you can add them from within your WordPress Dashboard – personally I prefer the latter. If you are wondering why certain plugins are not listed on my top 10 list – I just don’t find them essential to a tech blog. You will notice that I do somethings with TechBlogStartup that many people use Plugins or Widgets to do – eg. the top 6 articles aligned horizontally at the top of the site or the Recent Posts section in the side bar. For tech blogs that receive a large volume of traffic, limiting the plugins helps reduce the SQL memory load and if you’ve ever had a website crash you know just how important this is. Do you have some WordPress plugins on your tech blog that you think we should know about? Go ahead and drop your own list or links to the plugins in the comments section below so we can check them out.

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Important Reasons why you should become Active in the Blogosphere

By on September 6, 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

Important Reasons why you should become Active in the Blogosphere

There are millions of blogs out there on the internet and thousands of them are promoted on a daily basis and updated regularly. This means that in most cases there will be other bloggers in the niche that you choose to blog about, and although there your competition they can also help you out. You don’t always want to look at your competition as your enemy when it comes to blogging because there are ways you can benefit from other bloggers in your niche. The importance of becoming active on the authority blogs in your niche is becoming more important as each day passes and you should make sure you start commenting now. If you’re unsure as to why you should spend time becoming active on the authority blogs in your niche that’s fine as we’re going to take a look at some of the reasons now.

Reason #1

The first reason you want to become active on blogs in your niche is for the backlinks. The backlinks only count in the search engines if there do-follow, but nowadays there are lots of bloggers who use the do-follow feature on their comments. You should find all of the blogs that offer do-follow comments in your niche and you should make a note of commenting on these blogs regularly. The search engines love relevant links so by commenting on blogs similar to yours you’ll be getting about as relevant as links as you possibly can manage to get.

Reason #2

Commenting on blogs helps to also gain traffic for your blog over the long-term, and is one of the main benefits of commenting on blogs in your niche. As visitors see your comments on the blogs they’ll be able to click your link and visit your blog. You won’t get to much traffic from doing this, but it adds up over time and you should use any advantages you can over your competitors. The traffic you get from the comments will also be targeted and could result in a long-term reader of your blog or even a customer.

Reason #3

If you comment regularly enough on the authority blogs then the owner will begin to take notice of you and it could benefit you and your blog. As you grow a relationship with the other bloggers in your niche you open up your chances of exchanging links with them. To get an authority backlink in your niche usually means spending a lot of money, but if you can grow a friendly relationship through blog commenting then you may be surprised what the bloggers may do for you. If your blog has good content then they’ll have no problem linking to you in one of there posts, and this is when you get the real traffic.

There are even more reasons as to why you should become active in the blogosphere, but these three are the main reasons that I do it. You don’t need to go to blogs in your niche and spam all the posts on them as this will just upset the blog owner. You should comment on a regular basis as the blogger adds new content, as then they’ll know that you continually check their blog out and will make them more likely to check out your blog.

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Making-money-through-adsense

By on August 3, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Making money through adsense.

Adsense can bring in a lot of money if you are with a lot of sites. Suppose you are with 50 blogs. And on an average, if you are getting $1 from clicks from each of the blogs per day, then your monthly earnings from the 50 blogs will be around $1500. It may sound easy and simple. But its difficult to accomplish.

For running 50 blogs, you should be ready to deliver at least a single post in each of the 50 blogs on a daily basis. If you think you’ll be able to make 50 posts for your blogs then it’s okay. Otherwise you should look for ways to get it done. For that you may hire article writers who would be willing to provide you articles on a daily basis for a pretty good price. Don’t always go with cheap services – if you want to make a quality blog, then hire a good article writer who knows what he writes. It can one way or other way, help you in making money out of your blogs.

But do you think doing so, you’ll be making any profit? There is no point in taking risk. If you are damn serious about making money online through adsense, then try doing these things for a month. Yeah, I’m telling you to make 50 posts per day, on your blogs yourself. It’s hard work for sure – and I know that very well. But you’ll see some easy money coming in your way if you are going to do like that. Also, there won’t be any investment other than the price for the domain and hosting. These days, hosting accounts can be bought freely – so you’ll have to spend money only for buying the domains.

Running 50 sites on your own, for a month, will make you an experienced guy. From then on, without anyone’s help you’ll be able to continue making money online from your blogs. Earning $1 per day from a blog through adsense won’t be a difficult task if you’ll be able to deliver content on them on a daily basis. And ya, you should be promoting it a bit – at the same time. Doing all these things may feel a bit untidy. But believe me, its worth every minute that you’ll be spending on your blogs. After a month or two, you’ll be with the required money to hire professionals to do these things for you.

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Making-money-online

By on July 31, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Making money online

Are you thinking of making money online. Okay, there is nothing wrong in that. This is the best time to make money online, and you’re on the right track. But have you thought of keeping some time for these kinda things from your daily routine? Without doing this step, you won’t be getting anywhere near to even a single penny online! That’s for sure.

You would have read people telling that they make money online working part time. Let me tell you one thing – money can’t be made that easily. If those guys are telling the truth, then they would have spent a lot of time online to create a platform for earning money on a daily basis. And if you also want to get such big checks that many claims they’d got, then you should also be creating a platform for yourself, to make money online.

Creating a platform to make money online means to do the basic things which will help you make money easily in the long run. Don’t do things for temporary purposes. Lets take a simple example – suppose you’ll be needing some quick dollars for the next week. If you start your online venture for making those silly bucks, then you won’t be reaching anywhere. You should aim big and you should also have a lot of patience in you to see the very first dollar that you’ll be making online. In short,targeting simple things for temporary purposes, is not the way to deal with things if you are really serious about making money online.

Depending on the skills that you posses, your journey in becoming an online entrepreneur will vary. If you learn things pretty fast, then you would be moving forward easily, at the same time making some quick decent cash. On the other hand, if you don’t know anything about internet or making money online, then you should be first of all learning those basic things. Only then, get to things like – making money online and other such stuffs. That’s because, making money online, is not at all an east task. For a newbie, it’ll surely be taking at least 3-4 months before he earn some money online. So, prepare to learn the basics things first, and then get into the world of making money online.

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Make-money-selling-ads-in-your-site

By on July 22, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Make money selling ads in your site

One of the easiest ways to make money from websites is to sell ad space. You can sell ad blocks of different sizes at different places in your site. And depending on the size and place where you are planning to sell the ad blocks, the money you’ll be getting out of them will vary. Advertisers will look for buying ad blocks that will be getting maximum exposure. So, try to sell ad blocks at places in your sites, where chances of getting a click to the ad blocks is maximum.

But in order to sell ad blocks, your sites should be with decent traffic. Try referring your friends to the sites that you want to promote. And ask them to refer to their friends as well. But a vast amount of the visitors won’t be coming back again to your site – if its not worth a visit again. That means, your sites should be having something special in it for the readers. Then only they’ll come and visit your site again and again. If it’s a blog, then create quality content. And if you keep on posting quality content, then without you even telling to others, they will start referring their friends. They will even bookmark your site so that they would be able to read it on a daily basis.

Even after you get traffic to your sites, it’s not over yet. Once you are with traffic, you should go and find advertisers. One of the best place to look for advertisers would be in webmaster forums like DP, V7n, and Netbuilders. There you’ll be able to sell links, ad blocks, banners etc in your sites. You may even find buyers ready to buy advertising on a long term basis. But in such cases, you’ll have to provide some discount on the price.

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Make-money-blogging

By on July 16, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Make money blogging

If you are thinking of making money by blogging, then you should be with a lot of blogs. With just one or two blogs, you won’t be getting anywhere near to even $ 100 per month. But before you think about making money this way, you should be having experience running at least a single blog in the past. If you are already having a blog of your own, then it’s okay. Otherwise start with one blog, and keep blogging for at least a month, before you follow what we are gonna mention here.

It’s better to start with 20 blogs. These 20 blogs should be about different niches. Articles should be posted in these blogs on a daily basis. If you are good at blogging, then it’s better to post an article in each of the 20 blogs on your own. This way, after a month you’ll be with 30 posts in each of the 20 blogs. And if these blogs are with decent traffic, then you would be able to sell links in them. On an average you’ll be getting at least $ 10 per month from a blog. So, from 20 blogs you’ll be getting $200. If you sell, like 10 links in each of the blogs, then you’ll be getting like $50 from a blog. And if that’s the case, your monthly earnings from the 20 blogs will be around $ 1000.

One thing to remember before creating blogs is that – the domain names should be good ones. It can help you in getting higher page ranks for your blogs. A high PR blog will help you earn more money online, per month, than a lower one. You should also do a lot of promotions to your blogs. Getting backlinks can do miracles to your blogs. So, go for it, if you think you’ll be able to do it on your own. Otherwise hire someone to do it for you.

And if you are putting adsense, in the blogs, then your earnings will be even more than what we have mentioned above. After you continue with such a plan for about 3-4 months, you’ll be with the money to hire workers to do all these things. From then on things will be pretty automated – and you can concentrate just on earning more and more money out of the blogs – without doing all those time consuming works.

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How to Retain Your Blog Readership

By on May 20, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Retain Your Blog Readership

There are countless articles published on the internet talking about how you can build traffic to your blog and there seems to be an unlimited amount of resources to building your traffic. The only problem is that most of the traffic generation techniques that are being taught don’t send return visitors. I simply mean that you may get traffic by completing certain things like article marketing, social bookmarking and link building but the traffic typically won’t sustain and everyday you’ll need to regain the traffic. The point of blogging is to have a solid readership that comes back to your blog on a daily basis, and this is when you can start making good money with your blog so you need to do your best at retaining visitors. There are some great methods at retaining your visitors and building a readership and I’m going to briefly talk about some of these methods with you right now.

Unique Themes

You should make sure that your blog uses a unique theme, simply because too many people use the free blog themes and they don’t stand out anymore. If you use a unique theme that is attractive you can build your blogs branding while also gaining a solid readership. People are also more inclined to read blogs that are designed nicely according to surveys recently conducted. You can buy a coded WordPress theme for under $200 nowadays on many webmaster forums so the investment isn’t going to make you reach too deeply into your pockets.

Great Content

An attractive theme isn’t going to be the only thing you need in order to stand out from the rest of the blogging world and you’re going to need to put a lot of effort into your content as well. Writing blog posts is an ongoing process that you need to do everyday, but you need to make sure that you do in fact post daily so that when you begin to grow a readership they have content to read that is fresh. The search engines also love content so the more you post on your blog with useful content the more search engine placements you’ll begin ranking for.

RSS Feed Subscriber

You need to make sure you utilize the RSS feed subscriber which allows your readers to read your blog from a number of different blog readers on the internet. The more RSS feed subscribers you have the better because this means that people want to keep your blog nearby so they can continue reading it. You should have a widget in your header or sidebar that allows all of your readers to join your RSS feed and there is also a plug-in that you should use. The plug-in will post a short line at the bottom of each of your blog posts automatically that asks the reader to join your RSS feed and gives them the link to join. This is a great way at reminding people about your RSS feed and can result in more readership.

As you can tell there are quite a few methods that you can use to make your readership stick around and keep coming back to your blog. You should also keep reading the internet for other great sources because there are more ways to retain your blog readership other then the ones I listed above. You should also be trying to make your blog more enjoyable for the readers because after all the success of your blog depends solely on the readers.

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Promoting your Website through Social Media

By on May 17, 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

Promoting your Website through Social Media

In this day in age you need to utilize social media as a website owner if you want to reach out to the most amounts of people. Social media websites make up the highest visited websites on the internet so if you can reach out to these massive crowds then the potential for making money is endless. There are two forms of social media that every website owner should utilize at one point or another, and the sooner you implement these tactics the quicker you can build your traffic and earnings.

The first form of social media advertising is through social bookmarking websites. These websites are abundant nowadays and there are literally hundreds of them all over the internet. You don’t need to submit to all of these obviously, but you should find a list of the most visited ones and make sure you submit to them often. You’ll always get a rush traffic from them and the more viral your content is the more response you’ll find on the social media websites. The goal is to gain votes and get listed on the high traffic pages of these social media websites, which is a lot easier said then done. With many bots out there that cheat the systems it can be difficult to land a front page listing, but if you ever do then you can expect large amounts of traffic to come from them. You should generally post to social bookmarking websites every time you add a new page to your website. It takes minutes to submit a webpage to a social bookmarking website so the time investment is definitely worth the traffic you’ll receive.

The second form of social media advertising you use is a lot less crowded right now and there is also more potential for finding clients using this method. The method is video advertising and as you know websites like Youtube receive tons of traffic on a daily basis. There are hundreds of video sharing websites out there that you can submit your videos too, and although time consuming it’s worth it. Once your video is live on the video sharing website then it’s generally fine to sit there and receive traffic for months to come without having to worry about doing anything else. The more viral your video is the more traffic you’ll get leaking to your website obviously, but any video is better then no video. A lot of webmasters don’t know how to make videos so if you can do this then you already have an advantage over most webmasters. Most of us need to outsource this type of work and even though it’s costly I still find it worth the money.

Social media marketing and advertising is only becoming popular now, and if you think it’s already popular then wait to see how it is in three years. You need to implement these tactics into your website now before it becomes too late and too many people use them. There will always be room for these mediums of marketing, but once there crowded with webmasters then the potential for profit becomes lower. It’s always better being a leader then follower, so don’t want for everyone to jump on the social media bandwagon and start using the methods now before everyone else.

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