Tag Archives | Little Bit

How to Engage your Blog Readers

By Randy Roedl on April 29, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, Blog Posting, Blogs, Conversion

How to Engage your Blog Readers If you have a flagship blog and you’re trying to build an audience of regular readers then you’ll need to be able to engage your blog readers. If you don’t engage your blog readers then they’ll never come back to your blog or join your RSS subscriber feed. There are different techniques that you can use to assist you in engaging your blog readers and we’re going to look at some of those methods. Engaging your blog readers has nothing to do with marketing or promoting your blog. It also doesn’t involve anything to do with link building or anything of this nature. To engage your blog readers it needs to be on-site improvements that you make and we’ll take a look at those now. Blog Post Titles You should make titles that aren’t just stuffed for the search engines as this isn’t very ideal for building a reader base. You need to build nice long detailed titles so that the readers knows exactly what you’re offering within that certain post, and then they can click it if they want to read about it. Your titles should also have some personality in them and not just some generic plain title lacking any personality. Blog Post Body The blog post itself should be broken down into smaller bits of information and the best way to do this is either with bullet points or sub-titles. This way it’s much easier to follow down the page and more readers will be inclined to read the information. You want people to find the information useful and they won’t be able to do that if they don’t even read the information you post about. Use a Picture Try breaking up the text up a little bit by implementing a picture into your blog posts. Try to also add your personality into the pictures you choose so that people can begin to adapt to who you are. To build a blog readership you need to show personality and become active within your blog community. Some blogs may also require more pictures in the blog posts, for instance the celebrity niche should have small galleries under each post as the best blogs do. WordPress Theme You should buy a wordpress theme that is customized for your blog as then you’ll stand out from the other bloggers and it will seem like you care about your blog. A nicely designed theme can attract many readers to stick around to see what information you offer. WordPress themes are very cheap as well so you won’t need to break the bank when buying a theme. These are some of the techniques you can use too engage your blog readers and have them coming back to your blog more then once. If you can build a readership then as long as you continue posting engaging and informational posts then the readers will stick around and you’ll grow further. This is the most profitable blog you could develop, but it also takes the most amounts of work and time to do.

How To Install WordPress Onto Your Website

By Randy R on April 8, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How To Install WordPress Onto Your Website

In this article, I will be showing you step by step how to install WordPress onto your website.

Now, before we continue, let’s talk a little bit about WordPress. Until recently, I was exclusively building websites the old fashion dirty hands way. Not only did I find it excruciatingly difficult to design, it took up so much of my time and learning. Thankfully, none of us have to go through that stage anymore, as WordPress makes it so much easier and simpler to create high quality blogs that look and feel just as good as a website designed by a professional web designer.

Today all I need to do to come up with high quality blogs is to simply work with WordPress, and at my disposal, I’ll be able to add blog posts, change the look and feel of my website, add plugins that increase the value of the site and this can all be done with WordPress alone. It’s a very neat platform used by nearly all bloggers online. It’s very popular and if you haven’t tried it, you can find out what it’s all about by simply installing it to your website.

Here’s a step by step guide on how to install WordPress:

Step 1. Log into your “”website hosting account”” control panel

In the following tutorial, I’m going to make a very bold assumption and assume that your hosting company is with HostGator. If you’re not with HostGator, that’s okay, most hosting companies are very similar and should have all the features similar if not the same to HostGator.

So anyways, we are going to be installing WordPress through HostGator’s “”admin control panel””. To get to the control panel simply go to your web browser and type in, “”www.[yourwebsitename].com/cpanel””.

Next, you should be taken to a login page. Enter the username/password according to the email HostGator has sent you via email.

Step 2. Click on Fantastico De Luxe

Now that you have the admin control panel in front of you, go ahead and scroll down all the way to the bottom where under software/services you should see a little blue smiley face icon that has under it “”Fantastico De Luxe””.

By the way, if it’s your first time inside HostGator control panel, you might feel there are just so many icons everywhere. Don’t worry too much about them, although HostGator does offer a lot of options for you to use, the truth is there’s only really a couple of them that are important. So you don’t need to absolutely know everything at this stage.

Onward.

Step 3. Under “”Blogs”” click on “”WordPress””

You’ll be taken to a white background page. Here you’ll find all sorts of different scripts and programs you can add to your website. Since, we are only interested in installing WordPress, go ahead and click on the “”WordPress”” link (It’s under Blogs).

Step 4. Install WordPress

Click on “”New Installation”” and it will take you to a page asking for your website details. It will ask you stuff like, where do you want to install WordPress, login information, website details. Simply fill them in. Make sure you leave the “”Install directory”” box empty. All it is, is that it simply wants to know whether you want to install WordPress under your domain name and not any other extensions, in our case, we do so we’ll just be leaving it blank.

The other stuff you should be able to fit in accordingly to what sort of topic of interest you’ll be discussing. It doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect, besides most of these details you can change at a later stage anyways.

Once you’re done filling in the details, you’re pretty much finished. Click on “”install WordPress””. Then click on “”Finish Installation””

Step 5. Accessing WordPress Control Panel

So there you have it, you have just installed WordPress onto your website. Cinch huh? I told you it was easy. But hey, one more thing, you’re not finished yet, there’s one more thing you got to know. So now that you have installed WordPress, how do you go about customize your blog, adding content and all other devilish things you might want to add? Everything you need to know to change the look and feel of your website is done inside “”WordPress Admin”” (or wp-admin for short), you can access it by typing into your browser “”www.[yourwebsitename].com/wp-admin”” then enter your username/password. You’ll be then taken to the admin page where you’ll be able to do everything from posting up content, changing themes, adding plugins… There’s a lot of stuff in here, and it takes time to get accustomed to all the different options you have. My suggestion is to play around for a bit… Just to get a feel for WordPress and how to go about doing certain things.

That’s it for this mini tutorial, if you are reading up to this part, I’m assuming you have successfully installed WordPress to your website. Like I said earlier it’s very simple and easy. Anyone can do it, but more importantly you’ll be able to come up with quality website blogs very easily. So I urge you to play around with it, get a feel for it and sooner or later once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to customize and build high quality websites that really stand out in a matter of moments. Take care and stay tuned for future articles.

How to Find the Best WordPress Themes Using Search Engines and a Little Bit of Intuition1

By Randy R on March 19, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Find the Best WordPress Themes Using Search Engines and a Little Bit of Intuition

Finding a good WordPress template can often be a bit of a task and a process that can last countless hours as you manoeuvre through all of the less that suitable options. The standard option for most people looking for WordPress themes is to use a search engine or a popular WordPress templates directory such as Woo Theme, Theme Forest or Elegant Themes. However, there are countless other ways to find WordPress themes and there are even a few under-utilised ways you can utilise to find premium WordPress themes for free.

The easiest way to find WordPress themes is to use a major search engines such as Google and perform a relevant query like “”best WordPress themes””. However, this will typically bring back endless lists of themes from blogger’s whose sole intention it is to profit from the referral commission they generate. A better option is to perform a quick query around your main target term and look at the returned results by opening them up in your browser. Once you have opened them up try appending the term “”wp-admin”” to the end of the root URL (this will allow you to identify whether or not the site is using WordPress).

Then, if the site does use WordPress, look in the source code of the site by going to the view menu and selecting source. Scroll down to the stylesheet tag and look at the filename – this will usually include the name of the particular theme the website is using. Perform a search around the name of the theme and there you have it, an attractive WordPress theme that is suitable to your particular niche or sector.

Another useful way to find potential WordPress template is to be more specific with your web queries – for example, if you are looking to build a technology magazine website then try searching for something like “”Technology Magazine WordPress Theme””. This will bring back more relevant results and results that are likely to be more suitable in terms of how you want your site to look.

How to Find the Best WordPress Themes Using Search Engines and a Little Bit of Intuition

By Randy R on November 12, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How to Find the Best WordPress Themes Using Search Engines and a Little Bit of Intuition

What is the Best Valued Article Submitter

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

What is the Best Valued Article Submitter?

Submitting to article directories is a daily part of webmasters lives and we do it all the time. Submitting to multiple article directories has always been a huge hassle that took up a lot of time that was completely unnecessary. The time I use to spend submitting articles was a complete waste of time, and I wish I could have the many hours I spent back. About three months ago I decided that I was going to start working smarter rather then harder, and to do this I started looking at software I could invest in.

I started looking for article submitters, directory submitters and social bookmarking submitters, and there are all three of these types of products out there. In this article we’re going to discuss which article submitter is best valued and a little bit about it. I have used a few of the different automated article submitters in the past and although they did there job, I knew there was a more efficient program out there. So I decided I would spend some time looking through forums for more options and then I came across Article Post Robot.

Article Post Robot has become a very popular program and I would recommend it to every webmaster. With article post robot you’ll be able to submit an article to roughly 450 article directories automatically, which would normally take weeks to do manually. I mean I don’t even think I had submitted 450 articles before I found automation programs and with this program you can submit to this many directories in minutes. Of course it will take some time for your articles to get accepted and then indexed in the search engines, but once they do you should see a nice increase in traffic and search engine rankings.

How Easy Is Article Post Robot To Use?

• Input the article and author details

• Select which directories you want to submit too

• Simply click one button only and your articles will begin being submitted

This is by far the easiest program out there that I have used, most other article submission programs require that you click a button for each directory. This would mean you would need to click the submit button 450 times to submit your article with some of the programs out there, which isn’t very time efficient. With article post robot you simply input the article and author box and then click submit.

If you compare the prices between Article Post Robot and the other article submission programs out there you’ll also notice that this one is the cheapest. I don’t know how they offer a cheaper price for there program as its way simpler to use then any other out there, but they managed to offer it for this low one-time price. The software also comes with unlimited updates for life, and there support team is always updating the article directory list that they use. We’ll now take a look at the prices of some of the article submission programs out there.

• Article Submitter Pro – $167

• Article Marketer DS – $119.95 per year

• Isnare – $719.40 per year

Article Post Robot is only $127 and that includes lifetime updates of this software program. As you can see it’s by far the best value, and it’s actually priced in most people’s budget which is another great feature. Most of you will be able to invest $127 already so if you can then I would recommend you get this program and start submitting mass articles. It literally takes minutes to submit an article which is a one of a kind program for webmasters.

Tips When Writing Your Blog Posts

By Randy R on September 29, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, Blog Business, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Tips When Writing Your Blog Posts

When you blog you need good content to make it profitable and in order to make good content you should make sure that you know a lot on the topic of your blog. Don’t choose a blog topic that you won’t be able to write articles about daily as then you might run into problems. You need a topic where you can blog about it for months on end without needing to recover topics. Once you’ve decided on a good topic that you will be able to write on then you should follow these tips to ensure you’re writing good content.

You should always use heading in your posts and make them bold so they stand out. Headings catch the attention of your readers and work well when you need to break up a big post so that it’s readable. You should also try writing your posts in point form as much as you can because then you will ensure that more people are reading your posts. It’s very intimidating seeing a big block of content and often people won’t read it so instead break your articles into point form lists.

The last thing you should do is make sure you use pictures in all of your posts. You should try using at least one picture in your post so that it livens up the page a little bit and breaks the content up. Try inserting the picture so it’s in the content. People enjoy pictures in posts so to retain your blog readership you should make sure that you’re writing your blog posts with pictures. Some posts won’t require pictures though, and you can decide on that. Basically if you can’t find a picture that relates to the content then you don’t need to add a picture, this rare but it happens so some posts on your blog won’t have pictures.

7 Big Benefits to Creating Your Next Small Business Website With WordPress

By Randy R on September 7, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

7 Big Benefits to Creating Your Next Small Business Website With WordPress

Which of these choices would you prefer?

A website that requires custom programming costing $3000 or more, requires a knowledge of complex programming languages in order to make even simple changes to the content, and requires a complete redesign (again costing thousands of dollars) if you decide the look is outdated?

Or a website that is built on free software, allows you to easily update content yourself and you can select from thousands of clean, professional looking designs that can be added to the site in a matter of minutes?

No brainer, right?

Meet WordPress.

WordPress, originally used solely for blogs, has morphed into an incredibly powerful Content Management System you can use to easily and inexpensively create a very professional and functional website for your small business.

Here are 7 benefits to using WordPress for your small business’ website:

1. It costs nothing! Not one penny! WordPress is available for download at WordPress.org at no cost – you won’t even have to give up your email address. To host a WordPress site yourself, however, you will need to find a hosting company. That’s generally not free. But it’s not expensive either. For just $5 – $10 a month you can host your WordPress site at any number of quality web host providers. Many of them include Fantastico with your hosting plan which is software that lets you install WordPress in just a few clicks without even having to download the software.

2. Ease of Use. Using WordPress is really quite simple. Yes, especially for the technically-challenged among us, there will be a little bit of a learning curve. However, there’s no shortage of quality WordPress tutorials online to help you get up to speed quickly. Once you get the hang of things, adding content is a snap. It’s no more difficult than using a word processing program. And you don’t have to know how to write code or do anything vaguely technical in nature to maintain your site.

3. Themes. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of themes available for WordPress. A theme is basically a template that changes the look and feel of your WordPress site (a theme can also alter the behind-the-scenes options to make WordPress even easier to customize and use). Some of these themes are free, others you have to pay for. You can also have a custom theme designed so your site meets your exact specifications.

With themes, it’s easy to get a clean, professional looking site without paying a lot for custom design work. And if one day you decide you don’t like the look of your site – no problem. Find a theme you like better, activate it in WordPress and you instantly have a new look and feel to your site – all without having to change the blog posts or pages on your site.

4. Plugins. Plugins are software the extend the capabilities of WordPress to do pretty much anything you want. Using plugins, you can track site visits, add social bookmarking to your site, automate backups of your site, fight spam, create contact forms, improve site security and a lot more. And, with few exceptions, the plugins are absolutely free.

5. Search Engine Love. Google (and the other search engines) love WordPress. Using WordPress can give your search engine optimization efforts a big boost. And if you take advantage of some of the SEO-related plugins available for WordPress, the search engines will really think your site is the bee’s knees.

6. Technical Support. WordPress does not offer tech support for you to email or call with your questions. However, have no fear, there are still a ton of options for you if you have an issue you need addressed. You can turn to the forum on WordPress.org, which is a very active community of WordPress users who are always willing to help those having problems with the software. In addition, there are a bunch of other websites, message boards and blogs that you can turn to for advice. There are also plenty of wordPress experts for hire to assist you. Whatever issue you may encounter, help is always close at hand.

7. Control. Hosting your own WordPress website puts you in control of your web presence. Need to update your content, add new posts or pages? You can easily do it yourself. Want to update the appearance of your site? Find a new Theme, upload it, activate it and you’re done. Don’t like the hosting company you’re using? Find another and move your site – there are plenty of good hosting companies around.

So there are seven strong benefits to using WordPress for your small business’ website/blog. Without a doubt there are reasons why you may WordPress may not work for your situation and hiring a programmer to develop a custom site is the best option.

For most small business owners, however, WordPress will provide all that you need to get a professionally looking website that you, and the search engines will love. It’s a highly functional, flexible and cost-effective option that is hard to top.

How To Create Your Own WordPress Plugin And Distribute It Online

By Randy R on August 8, 2011 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

How To Create Your Own WordPress Plugin And Distribute It Online

Creating your own WordPress plugin takes a little bit of programming background, though nothing that you really have to pay an arm and a leg for. Most of the how to can be found online. But once you create your WordPress plugin, you’ve got to get it out there, so that it starts to bring out the results you are looking for. For that you will need to focus on distribution, but let’s take it one step at a time.

First, you must determine what it is about your WordPress blog that is lacking. Brainstorm a list of functions that you would like to be able to include on your blog. Once you have the concrete details in place, it is time to learn the PHP language for creating a WordPress plugin. What you will want to do is create one or several files that bear the commands you have given to your plugin in the PHP language. In order to teach yourself PHP, it will take a considerable amount more time and space than can be provided here, but it is recommended that you run Google searches for “”learn PHP”” or “”understand PHP language.”” Once you’ve read up on how the formatting operates, you should be prepared to write the code for the plugin itself.

Taking your ideas, and the PHP translation of those ideas, you can easily and effectively incorporate them into the blog by a simple copy and paste into the body of the code. If you are not creating the plugin for yourself but for other WordPress users, then you may want to create an additional txt file and submit to the plugin directory. Getting the word out on your plugin creation will generate more interest, and if it is something that you charge for, it will lead to more money as well.

But exposure is key and to do that you will have to not only get your WordPress plugin seen, but also promoted. Promoting your plugin is simple, but work intensive. There are a number of traditional marketing tactics that you may wish to use, but one of the most dynamic is social media, because things have the potential to go viral much more quickly. If you have a product that is viable and that others find of interest, it could be that you attract thousands of users without ever spending one dime on marketing promotion.

Learning the tools of the WordPress trade will give you more power for functionality on your own blog, and it could help you generate interest in your site or products increasing their earning potential in the process. If you’re ready to take your plugin to the next level, then create and distribute wisely.