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Boost Your Affiliate Commissions With WordPress

Boost Your Affiliate Commissions With WordPress

Any affiliate marketer would love to increase their earnings. If the increase in earnings can be made without additional work then that will be fantastic for you.

Now many marketers will promote affiliate programs through web 2.0 properties or article marketing, but that isn’t the only way. What if you could increase your commissions whilst building valuable virtual real estate?

Hosting a site on your own domain is a great way to build your virtual real estate empire. Throw WordPress in to the mix and it quickly becomes the affiliate marketers dream. WordPress is such a powerful piece of software you will soon wonder how you managed without it for so long.

WordPress has many benefits for the affiliate marketer. Firstly, it is loved by the search engines and is simple to set up. You can create an amazing looking site without any technical knowledge and in just a few clicks of a mouse.

WordPress also allows you to extend its functionality by using plugins. This means that with a couple of clicks you can enhance existing features or add new features to it. This allows you to create the website you want with advanced features without a technical background.

WordPress is very useful for the affiliate marketer. Out of the box it is already very search engine friendly, but add in one of the popular SEO plugins and it becomes a dream piece of software that the search engines will literally drool all over.

On top of that you can get free plugins which will not only cloak your affiliate links but also track clicks for you. Often affiliate marketers spend a lot of money on software like this, but here you can find it for nothing with advanced features.

Plus it is very easy to make very pretty looking sites that your visitors will really like. It doesn’t take a lot of work and you don’t have to know any HTML or other web design languages. So long as you can point and click you will be able to configure WordPress and make it look fantastic.

If you also monetize your website through AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network then plugins exist which will allow you to instantly add these contextual adverts to every page on your website. If you have pages on your website already then this is a massive time saver for you.

With additional plugins you can add ClickBank products, turn keywords into affiliate links and without any additional plugins put Amazon widgets anywhere in your site.

WordPress is a very powerful platform that if you are not using as an affiliate marketer then you are missing a trick. By building valuable virtual real estate built on the WordPress platform you are creating a long term sustainable business that will earn very well for you.

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Beginner’s Guide to Installing a WordPress Plugin

Beginner’s Guide to Installing a WordPress Plugin A WordPress Plugin is an add-on that allows you to easily add customization and functionality to your blog without programing any files. Basically, they add tons of new features to your blog in a simple manner. There are thousands of plugins available for WordPress, and each one exists for a certain purpose. For example, there is a plugin that will display your most popular posts in the sidebar. Now that you know what a plugin is, its time to learn how to add them to your blog. There are a few ways of going about this, but for the beginner, this is the most simple and straight-forward method. Once logged on and in the WordPress Dashboard, find the ""Plugins"" tab located in the left sidebar. Under this tab you will find a section labeled ""add new"". Click on this. You will now be in the plugins section where you can search, browse, and upload plugins. Type in the name of the plugin you are looking for. (For example: ""Popular Posts""). This will bring up the search results. Browse through these and find one that strikes your interest. (Pay attention to the star-ratings of the plugins, because they will give you an idea of what other WordPress users think of them). Once you find an appropriate plugin, click on ""Details"". Here you can read more about the plugin, view screen shots, and most importantly, check if it is compatible with your version of WordPress. If everything checks out with the plugin, all you must do is click on ""Install Now"". The plugin will now be installed, but you still must activate it by simply clicking on ""activate"". Once you have activated the plugin, you will see the title of your plugin displayed under the ""Settings"" tab in dashboard sidebar. Here you can edit the settings of the plugin to further customize it. (Please note that not all plugins have settings to adjust). You have now successfully installed your first plugin! Way to go! It wasn’t so hard, was it? Beginner’s Guide to Installing a WordPress Plugin

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The Dawn of a New WordPress

The Dawn of a New WordPress – V2.5.x

Not long ago, the ever popular blog hosting site which goes by the name of WordPress gave their system a remake, thus giving birth to a newer and better WordPress 2.5. It is a major improvement over WordPress 2.3 and these are the areas where the new features are prominent.

Dashboard
The dashboard is now designed to look very much like your blog’s hub and is designed in a sleeker and more focused manner which provides you an interesting choice of colour schemes. The new layout is now more organized with quick links at your disposal and easy to use. Also, feeds are now customisable for your viewing convenience and are not only limited to WordPress Development Blog or WordPress Planet feeds. To add to that, the displays of incoming links such as the ones from Google Blog Search are can now be personalized.

Navigation Menu
One feature which went through a major revamp is the navigation menu which has shrunk in menu items, a number of which have been renamed. Renamed items include Presentation (changed to Design) and Options (changed to Settings) and these are now included under Manage.

Post & Page
This area had a major overhaul which leaves bloggers who use the ‘tag’ and ‘trackback’ features needing to scroll more when using the new WordPress. There is also no more drag and drop option for items. However, WordPress 2.5 will provide the option to add pictures and videos directly from the likes of YouTube and Flickr.

Post/Page Management
Navigation and management is now a lot easier as users can now skim through and edit their posts according to tags or authors. Also, there is now the ability to mass delete unwanted entries. An interesting change is the date format, which will give displays such as “3 hours ago” for any edits or posts within short periods of time.

Edit Post Page
Basically, the most prominent change would be the renaming of ‘View This Post’ to ‘Preview’. However, it is now more convenient and faster when it comes to post editing and there is a quick link for quick post deletion. Overall, it is a whole lot more convenient.

Miscellaneous Management
There is now a ‘Tags’ option for easy tag addition, editing or deletion. As for media, there is now a Media Library which supports more file types than what WordPress 2.3 could where all your uploaded files can be managed. Also, it is easier to manage widgets now than before. They are easy to add onto the sidebar and once there, can simply be dragged as you wish for your desired arrangement.

Other Changes
There is now an improvement on the user filters which makes it more user-friendly. Also, you can now see the exact number of comments in the navigation menu pending your review. One last notable addition is the ability to support avatars directly from the box. Overall, WordPress 2.5 is quite an improvement but the changes make it a love or hate affair. Either way, it is certainly the talk of the blogosphere.

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Installing WordPress Plugins – A Little Goes A Long Way

Installing WordPress Plugins – A Little Goes A Long Way

WordPress is the most popular blogging and CMS (content management system) platform used by inexperienced webmasters. The reason it is so popular is because you can add plugins to increase the functionality of the site without having to have any kind of technical knowledge. However, there are some very important factors you should know about before adding plugins to your WordPress website.

What is WordPress and What is a Plugin?

WordPress, on its own, is a very powerful and stable program. It is an OpenSource (free) program that is installed on a database and is designed to manage the content that you input into it. It is updated regularly to correct any known issues or to add more features to the core program. You should always make sure you are running the newest version on your website. Upgrading to the newest version is as easy as the click of a button in your user dashboard.

Plugins are scripts that are developed as add-ons to the existing program. These give you the ability to add new features to the program to help customize the site to your needs. Because WordPress is OpenSource, it means that any web developer can use the source code or API to create new scripts for the program.

Caution is Needed When Adding Plugins

Because plugins are created by all different developers, they are not always compatible with each other. When compatibility issues arise, it can make the database unstable. In other words, the engine driving your website will begin to fail. This can result in your site crashing.

Another reason to exercise caution when installing plugins is because every one you add on to your site adds more code to the core program. Adding too many will bloat the code and make your website slow and sluggish. It can also hamper the ability of search engine bots from crawling your website effectively.

Which WordPress plugins should you install?

I cannot give you a definite answer to this since every webmaster and every website has different needs and functions. What I can advise is this; only install the plugins you really need. Typically this would be an SEO plugin such as All In One SEO, a database backup plugin such as WP Database Backup, a contact form plugin such as Easy Contact, and a social plugin such as Sociable or Share This. These are the plugins I consider to be essential.

Any other plugins you should only install one at a time and tested for compatibility before adding any more. Always do a database backup before adding new plugins as a safety net in case any issues arise and you need to restore your website.

WordPress plugins are wonderful inventions and can help you create the website of your dreams, but before you go on a wholesale plugin installation spree, be aware of the consequences.

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