A Good Time is Blog Time

When it comes to blogging on WordPress creating a membership site has pretty much been catered for on all fronts. I could go into great detail on exacty how to do that, but in fact that would be a complete waste of time because the Plugin I found to perform this task is an excellent example of a project that provides not only most, if not all, the functionality you will need from a membership site but also a comprehensive set of clear easy to follow instructions for implementing it.

So instead of telling you how to create a membership site I am going to discuss some of the reasons why you might want to and about levels of membership. So here we go:

• Building a list
• Managing paid membership
• Secure posts, pages, URI’s and download directories
• Non member sales

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There are so many WordPress widgets to choose from that it can be quite bewildering as to which ones you should be using or need. The answer to the question which WordPress Widgets or Plugins do I need very much depends on what you are trying to achieve. But there are some that are, as a general rule of thumb, ‘must have plugins’.

But before going any further it is probably a good idea to clarify what the difference is between a WordPress Widget and a Plugin. In truth they are both software accessories for your blog that add functionality. But the widgets tend to be limited to use in the sidebars of your blog. In fact, to make things even more confusing, some widgets start life as Plugin’s i.e. you can download them as a plugin, but then when they are activated you access them through the widget panel because they are used in a sidebar. Plugins that perform other functions, like adding a share option to a post for example are not restricted to the sidebar and they may in fact be performing back office functions that are not visible to your visitors. A good example of this might be a sitemap generator that creates a sitemap and submits it to search engines. This type is never publicly visible but it does add functionality that isn’t included as standard. Clear as mud isn’t it, the main thing to hold onto is that widgets and plugins offer additional functionality, they just deliver that functionality in different ways.

Below is a list of plugins/widgets with a description of what they do, that pretty much any serious blogger should have installed on their blog: Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know about you, but I thought it was quite difficult to check the page rank on all my blog posts. Until recently I was simply trawling through them all using the Google toolbar option. Which is what most people do. Trouble with that is it can be a bit tedious, especially when you have a number of different blogs or websites with multiple posts on them.

It occurred to me that for a real look at which of the pages were truly valued by the Internet community, checking PR was the way to go. There are other methods for seeing which pages are visited the most, Google Analytics or Webmaster tools will do that, plus you can also see what links are going to the various pages or posts. But even so, just getting a list of all the posts on your blog or pages on your website indexed against their individual page rank was bound to give a great insight into which pages were being bookmarked and linked to, remembering page rank comes primarily from links to a ‘URL’. Plus there is only really one valid reason that is done and that is because the content is valued.

I thought it would be a no-brainer, bound to be a WordPress plugin that does that? Well if there is I couldn’t find it, but what I did find was an article describing how to go about doing exactly what I wanted. Funnily enough it was called How To: Check PageRank Of All Pages Within Site because it does exactly what it says on the tin. Here is the link to the one I created following the instructions provided, it’s called .. Page Rank Checker.. so if you can’t be bothered with figuring out exactly how to set your own up then you are welcome to use mine.

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The first thing you need to know is that Google will charge you more for non-relevant ads than they will for relevant ads, and clearly if you have decided to use Google ads then you will be looking for the most traffic at the least expense. That statement is all about click through rate and click through rate is when people see your ad and decide to click on it taking them to the target URL. The higher the click through rate the more traffic you get and the more chance of making a sale. If your ads have a low click through rate, you get less traffic and less chance of a sale, plus Google are likely to charge you more because the ad is not being effective and they are not earning enough due to the low level of clicks. In a nutshell if you write a non-relevant ad (versus your chosen keywords), you are likely to get very little traffic and you pay more for the privilege.

This along with the next paragraph really is the crux of using Adwords, the ads you produce must be absolutely laser focussed both in terms of selecting the keywords relevant to the ad you create and then delivering on the promise the ad offers.

So what does that mean exactly, it means there is no use choosing a keyword that is focussed on a B&B when you offer self catering for example, or an iPad when you are selling digital cameras. This is the second part of the equation i.e. if you marry up your selected keywords brilliantly with your chosen ad format and lots of people click on your ad, at a cheaper rate reference the first paragraph but remembering you have to pay for each click all the same, then they arrive at the URL you have promoted and what happens. Doh!!! wrong product and off they go on the search for the right product. So who is the winner? actually no-one because you didn’t get the sale and the prospective customer didn’t get the product they were looking for.

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There is one major benefit that I see Traffic Anarchy offers and that is value for money. The reason why is that the program targets four of the key components required to get free traffic to your site at a very affordable price.

The way it does it is to automate the submission process for articles, press releases, RSS feeds and social bookmarking sites. You can of course do this manually for free, but for $37 why would you want to. Once everything is set up and you want to get your information out there it really is as simple as filling in a form and clicking a ‘start’ button.

Is it the best traffic generating system in the world? Probably not in truth, but it is very cheap and it does do a pretty good job all in all. This is because it takes the pain out of manually submitting to lots of different services. Don’t delude yourself either, if you want free traffic you do have to go through this process one way or another. This is illustrated on my Link Building Strategies post which in actual fact shows the manual options that Traffic Anarchy has automated for getting links to your site in addition to giving your site visibility in prominent positions.

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