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Introduction to WordPress Themes

By on June 23, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

Introduction to WordPress Themes

Without a doubt, WordPress is one of the most popular blog and website creation tools. That is, WordPress.org which is the WordPress version that is hosted on the hosting company of your choice. WordPress.com is rather limited and is hosted on WordPress own servers. It is free, but you are limited to a small number of themes and the customizations options are limited. As long as you are willing to pay for your own hosting service, ie – Go Daddy, JustHost, MonsterGator, etc., WordPress.org is the way to go.

Most of the top blogs use the WordPress platform. By looking at these blogs, you can see a great variety in their design. In fact, many of them don’t look like blogs themselves, but look like traditional websites.

The reason for this is that WordPress allows users to create their own themes, and upload them to the WordPress website. Many people do this for fun or the good of the community. However, some create what is called a premium theme which is basically a paid version. Some of the themes offer a free starter theme, but a paid version gets you more features.

One of the strengths of WordPress is also a weakness. There are almost too many themes out there. It can get frustrating finding a theme that suits your purposes, especially after reviewing hundreds of similar themes.  To eliminate some of the frustration, consider the following:

What do you want in a theme. On one hand, there are people who are just interested in their blog writing, and they want it to look nice. Commercialization or ads do not interest them. On the other hand, there are other people who are interested in their blog, but would also like to make a little money.

This generally involves AdSense, banner ads, etc. However, the placing of these ads (or the HTML code that supports them) on a blog or website is of prime importance to the advertiser, and also to the website owner. You don’t want ads to distract from your website, but complement it.

WordPress accomplishes this by having areas of your blog where you can place widgets. Widgets are basically place holders where you can place a great variety of content. It could include a link page, a poll, a photo, text, or HTML code that generates an ad.  However, depending upon the theme, widgets will be in different places and different sizes.

The WordPress database allows you to search for specific elements of themes.

For example, when you search the WordPress database, you will find hundreds of themes that say “”ad sense ready.””  Many of these themes have only a few widget areas available for ads, and some have as many as 11 different widget areas.

Generally, the more widget areas the better in a theme, because no matter what your purpose, it gives you more flexibility. 

Another factor that comes into play is that many themes are highly customizable.  Don’t be deceived by the initial appearance, look at the option page before you move on.   Many themes have great features, you just need to choose the appropriate option.  Background image, color, placement of widget sidebars, etc. are all common things that can be customized.

Finding a theme you like is a trial and error process.  However, before you begin, have an idea on what you want to accomplish.  Do you want widget space for small rectangle ads?  Or do you want widget space that will accommodate skyscraper ads, leaderboard ads, and the other popular banner ad formats? Do you want a widget space that will accommodate a particular photo dimension format?

The process of looking for a theme you like is a daunting task, but if you have a general idea of what you want, it will make the process go faster.  With the thousands of WordPress themes out there, you are bound to find one you like.

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The Usefulness of a Shopping Cart To Commercial Websites

By on April 21, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, article plugin, Blogs, Conversion, Domains, SEO, Traffic, wordpress, Youtube Video

The Usefulness of a Shopping Cart To Commercial Websites If you are a website owner you should understand how useful a shopping cart will be to the success of your website. A shopping cart can be used for easy purchasing of items especially multiple item purchases. A shopping cart can be used for physical products, for services, for subscriptions, and for free trials. Shopping carts can calculate subtotal of the cost of the items selected, the cost of various shipping options, and the cost of tax if that is an option. Shopping carts can handle various currencies, domestic and international shipping options and discount and certificate options. Shopping carts are used in commercial websites worldwide. There are many benefits to the website owner in using a shopping cart. When a shopping cart is installed on a website individuals from all over the world can go online and shop on your website. Shopping carts can be customized to accommodate these international visitors. Multiple currencies can be utilized by shopping cart software and can also be made available to different languages. Your shopping cart should have the best security available to protect your customers and to give them confidence in purchasing from you. There are many benefits to using a Paypal Shopping cart including the fact that it is inexpensive there are no set-up charges, monthly charges, merchant accounts, gateway or shopping cart fees. Paypal does payment processing; there is fraud protection, and merchant tools to accept payments, which are included in the fees, accessed by Paypal, which are very reasonable. The fees are only applied when you accept the payment. If the individual does not pay, then you do not pay a fee. The Paypal shopping cart integrates well with other payment processors and is easy to set up on your Website. You can add product details, and use multiple options such as color, size etc. You can use multiple buttons such as a donation button, a buy now button, and a customizable button option. You can also include your own image or logo or even a background in order to integrate the shopping cart to your website. The Paypal shopping cart is the perfect solution for small business owners when they have 50 or less items to offer on their websites. The benefits of Google Checkout are many and include the fact that it can help to increase your sales and it works with AdWords and reduces your lead-generation expenses. You can reach more customers by using the Google Checkout badge on your AdWords so that you are identified as a participating merchant which will give your customers confidence. Google’s checkout process is a secure process. Google has a policy that for every $1 you spend on AdWords you can process $10 in sales for free. Google has reasonable per transaction fees, which is a low payment processing cost.

 

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The 3 Pages That Should Be On Every WordPress Website to Increase Its Effectiveness

By on February 26, 2012 in !Randy Roedl Internet Marketing, affiliate marketing, wordpress, Wp Headers, Wp Themes

The 3 Pages That Should Be On Every WordPress Website to Increase Its Effectiveness WordPress has come a long way in its journey to become the #1 blogging platform out there today. As the features and functionality have increased over time, the possibilities for what can be done with WordPress as a website solution have increased. With today’s features, WordPress can be used to create an entire site in most cases in addition to just a blog. This article discusses which pages should be created in any WordPress blog. The 3 Pages That Should Be On Every WordPress Website to Increase Its Effectiveness

1. Landing Page or Home Page The landing page or home page, depending upon the type of web site, is critical in being able to convert your visitors to taking a specific action. It is very difficult to do that with blog entries as the home page. When people land on your blog home page, they usually land on a page with a lot of content and nothing really directing them to do anything. If any of your blog titles happens to catch their attention, then when they click on a specific post, you may be able to convert that into an action, but only if your post is written up to do just that. If not, then you will just have a reader who may or may not come back to your site. Having a landing page will allow you to prepare the visitor and guide them through the site the way you want them to go. 2. Contact Us Page WordPress makes it easy to put a contact us form on your website that will get emailed back to you when the visitor submits the form. There are a few ‘contact us’ plug-ins that give the website owner a lot of flexibility in getting the kind of feedback that will be most beneficial to them. One of the contact form plugins that gives a lot of flexibility in creating great forms called ‘Contact Form 7’. The 3 Pages That Should Be On Every WordPress Website to Increase Its Effectiveness.

The benefit of having a contact form instead of your email is it is easier to manage communications, you can outsource your customer support much more easily and you can guide the visitor much better with the information you need from them so you can better serve your visitors, prospects and customers. 3. Blog Postings Page If you are going to have a WordPress website, then you should have a blog as well. WordPress is a blogging platform so it pretty much comes with the territory. In this case, you will need to create a separate page to direct the blog postings to. When setting up the blog page, you will need to be sure to label it something that is very clear and enticing if you want your visitors to read your blog postings. Labels like ‘Blog’, ‘Articles’ and ‘Content’ are fairly popular. This is the name that will be on the navigation link for that page as well. This is why it is important to make it something that is easy for visitors to understand. Creating an entire website from WordPress is easy to do with the latest versions of WordPress. It is very easy to create the basic pages that will allow a small business owner to get a website up and running very quickly. Having a landing page, a contact us page and a blog page is a great foundation to build from. Once that foundation is there, additional pages and features can be easily added. The 3 Pages That Should Be On Every WordPress Website to Increase Its Effectiveness

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Shopsite Pro Has A Shopping Cart Solution Worth Investigating

By on January 28, 2012 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

Shopsite Pro Has A Shopping Cart Solution Worth Investigating If you are looking for shopping cart software you should definitely check out Shopsite Pro. Shopsite Pro has many useful features that any Website Owner will be thrilled to have. The navigation is very easy. You more than likely won’t find more complete shopping cart software on the web. You won’t be required to know HTML in order to build your shopping cart as Shopsite Pro gives you the ability to completely customize your site easily, in fact a complete newbie could complete the task and have the shopping cart work. There are so many great features with this shopping cart software including the power edit that allows you to edit many products at once because you first choose what options you wish to edit and can then edit these options in a wide variety of products. You can have real-time credit card authorization, search engine for your Website, sales and traffic statistics, and shipping and tax utilities to help you run your business. You will find a hard time locating an easier to use shopping cart than Shopsite Pro. If you want point and click for your shopping cart, you’ve found it. Shopsite is easy to setup and you won’t need to download or install anything because ShopSite is a server-based software. All you need to set it up is a web browser. If you are a small or medium-sized business, you will get a lot out of using this shopping cart. You will receive lots of tools to help with site creation and management, as well as sales and traffic statistics, and you will be able to offer your customers secure encrypted transactions. You also won’t find a better help platform than the one at ShopSite Pro. You will find screen references that can answer specific questions that pertain to the page you are on, and a section for FAQs, as well as a getting started section, search features, how-to sections, and also an index of help options so that you can find what you need help with fast. You can pay for Shopsite Pro on a monthly basis making it affordable to just about anyone. If you are not looking for all of the features that ShopSite Pro has then you are in luck because they have two other versions that you can choose from – Shopsite Starter and ShopSite Manager. If you are a Website owner and looking to present a professional Website to your customers you really need to have a shopping cart software that will please your customers and give you the features that you need to run your business online the successful way. Any ecommerce site needs to have a shopping cart whether they are selling physical products or soft products like software. If you are in the market for an easy to use shopping cart with loads of useable features check out Shopsite Pro.

 

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Frequently Asked Shopping Cart Questions By Website Owners

By on December 23, 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

Frequently Asked Shopping Cart Questions By Website Owners

When designing a web presence website owners will run up against many questions concerning their website shopping cart. Gaining answers to frequently asked questions about shopping carts could help head off problems and save time and money.

One of the basic questions asked about the shopping cart is how to use it? You should as a website owner guide your visitor to your shopping cart and have visible instructions both in text and in picture as to how to use the cart. There are several steps to using the cart including product selection, reviewing the cart’s contents, payment into, checking out, and order confirmation. Each step should include plain and simple instructions for your customer so as not to confuse them and cause them to leave your site without completing the purchase.

Customers will need to know how to remove and edit items as they change their mind about purchasing items. Adding a FAQ (frequently asked questions section) can be helpful in answering any questions about removing or editing items.

Having a shopping cart system that is capable of saving items in the cart for later completion aids the customer in making the purchase at a later date when interruptions happen. This can actually help save the sale. This usually requires a registration.

Shopping carts can also handle subscriptions, free trials and discount coupons.

When considering shopping carts software find answers to these questions before making your decision. A shopping cart is a very important part of your website function and should command your undivided attention.

Shopping carts should be visible without being distracting from your products. Your shopping cart should complement your website design, not be flashy, and be easy to navigate.

Make sure that you add order buttons to your site, and that you match your shopping cart to your site design.

Shopping carts should allow for multiple items in your cart and to allow the buyer to change the quantity if necessary. The buyer should have the ability to delete an item if necessary or to save the contents of the cart for later.

The shopping cart you chose for your website is an important decision make sure that all of your shopping cart questions are answered to your satisfaction so that when purchasing from you your website visitors will be able to do so without having any questions of their own because you will have thought to insure a successful buying experience by selecting the proper shopping cart for your website.

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Ways to Increase your Search Engine Rankings

By on November 13, 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

Ways to Increase your Search Engine Rankings

As a website owner you’ll know how important it is to raise your search engine rankings and that it’s the most valuable traffic around. If you want to make money online with a website then it’s almost apparent that you’ll need to get some search engine rankings in your niche. There are plenty of ways out there to increase your search engine rankings and you should try to use as many of them as you can. You can guarantee yourself that thousands of other webmasters are out there doing the same so if you want to compete with the big boys then you’ll need to know the tricks.

The reason search engine traffic is so important and vital to your success is because it’s the most targeted traffic around. If people are finding your website for terms they search in the engines then you’re doing something right and should benefit from your hard work. It takes time for the search engines to rank you well though and you can reflect the degree of difficulty by how much competition there is in the search engines. If there is low competition then you’ll be able to easily get high rankings, but as the competition increase in the search engines then you’ll have to work hard to earn the rankings. We’ll now take a look at some of the methods you can use to increase your search engine rankings.

Build Backlinks

The first thing you need to work on is your backlinks and this is an ongoing process that never really ends. The search engines love seeing websites consistently building backlinks as then it seems important to the search engines so you should work on building backlinks every week. You also don’t want to build a bunch of backlinks at once and then stop because it could hurt your website rather then help it out. Build naturally and you’ll notice a great influx of your search engine rankings as time progresses.

Optimize Your Website

You can work on all the link building and promotion in the world, but if your website isn’t optimized for the search engines then you could be in trouble. You should always have an updated sitemap on your website so that the search engines can easily index your website without any problems finding pages. You also need to make sure you optimize the keywords you’re targeting throughout your website. Places to add keywords on your website are in the meta tags and in the content. If you’re website is properly optimized and you build links around the keywords optimized on your website then you’ll be well on your way to some great keyword rankings in the search engines.

Both of these two methods are the main methods you need to worry about when building your search engine rankings up from the ground. Of course having great unique content is also a must, but apart from content and search engine rankings there isn’t much else to do except collect your checks. You’ll need to maintain your search engine ranking campaign over the long-term though if you want the revenue to stick, so owning a profitable website is basically a full-time job.

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New To Online Shopping Carts

By on November 9, 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

New To Online Shopping Carts?

If you are unaware that shopping carts exist online than you will learn a lot from this article. Website owners who sell more than just a few items on their site will usually have a shopping cart so that customers will have a more pleasant and efficient shopping experience while on their Website. Unlike a physical shopping cart that is made of metal or plastic a online shopping cart is a piece of software, or a script, that allows customers to put items they wish to purchase into a virtual (online) shopping cart so that they can save them to purchase when they are done browsing.

An online shopping cart will usually allow the customer to have a running dollar total of the merchandise they have placed in the online cart. Sometimes the running total will even include the shipping fee.

If a customer frequents the same Website multiple times some shopping carts will save the shipping information so that the customer does not have to keep entering it each time they shop on the site.

Online shopping carts can even keep track of inventory levels that can save the customer a lot of frustration and time. Some shopping carts are even smart enough to make suggestions based on the customers past preferences while shopping on the site.

Online shopping carts can make your shopping experience faster, easier and hassle-free. Shopping carts have also been known to send out an email thanking the customer for shopping and confirm the order – can physical metal or plastic shopping carts do that?

Online shopping carts allow customers to add to the cart, delete items, change the quantity of items already in the cart, and also input the size or color of an item.

The online shopping cart can help the Website owner to appear more professional, and can help to create a secure and friendly atmosphere in which to shop. The shopping cart should match the theme of the Website and look like it is a part of the site and not a separate entity. Website owners should choose a shopping cart software that is easy for customers to navigate and have the features that are helpful for both the owner and the customers.

Shopping cart solutions for Website owners can be simple or complex depending on the number of items and the number of transactions that the Website usually handles each month. Shopping cart solutions can be free or they can be very expensive depending on the services provided and the number of features provided with the shopping cart. Some shopping carts are complete storefront solutions and others are basic shopping carts.

A Website that is offering goods or services that does not have a shopping cart may turn customers away if they are already used to the convenience of using online shopping carts.

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