Your blog’s success or failure goes back to the very first thing you do and that is not…
Buying a domain
Installing a blog
Picking a blog theme
Choosing the best plugins
Creating back links
Having a great opt in offer
Or any of a myriad of other technical things even though the items listed can all help improve your success.
It is not creating great content (although you will need that too.)
The very first thing you need is to find a profitable topic.
Get this one thing right and you can mess up some of the technical items, not have a super look and you can still see some success. Get it wrong and you can do everything else perfectly and still end up frustrated.
So your first step is to find a topic that people are not only interested in but spending money on. After all, whether you are monetizing your blog by recommending products, creating your own or selling advertising the profit will only be there if people are spending money.
Next time I will look into finding a topic like this but if you are looking for a short cut to finding profitable topics you might want to check out Susanne Myers Affiliate Niche Packs.
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
MyBlogLog is closing on the 24th which is Tuesday. Despite being sad to see MyBlogLog go it is important to save aggravation and start removing their widget from your sidebar. It was nice social proof of who was visiting your blog but as they are closing the doors on Tuesday it is a good reminder to take the time and remove it now.
Not sure how it will display but there is a good chance that it will create an error of some type so take the time to remove them today while you are thinking about it.
I am.
No sense having trouble if it can be avoided.
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
The Sunday Goodies are back as I was in a chocolate induced coma over Easter and did not post one. Not really. Was having fun with two young ladies that may have had a bit too much chocolate. They don’t like it as much as Christmas but it is close.
So lets get started on our trip through the blogosphere this week.
Our first stop will be to visit Melanie Kiseel’s blog for a post I really enjoyed titled “Two Ears and One Mouth – Do the Math”. The title says it all .
The last stop this week but certainly not the least is to visit with Michelle MacPhearson to her blog of the same title. A post you need to read but may not be exactly happy with. (Often what we need is not always what we like;) titled “Sheena Was A Man“.
That is all for this week so let me know which one’s you like and any that you have found that I should not miss by leaving a comment below.
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
Yesterday I took off to play taxi driver and take my Mom’s cousin to Mom’s house while she is recovering from hip replacement surgery. This is not the first replacement for her. At this point she has both hips and a knee replaced. (Why she is now the bionic Mom .)
There is something big to be learned here. One of Mom’s favorite things is to get out shopping. When they coined the phrase “Shop Till You Drop” they had her in mind.
Obviously problems with her hips and knee were keeping her from her favorite sport.
If you aren’t familiar with joint replacement there is always a good bit of rehabilitation that takes place to get things back to normal. Mom attacks it like a man that is thirsty crossing the desert upon finding an oasis. Often times, too much too soon but despite her age (no I won’t say how old as I want to be able to continue to visit her) she always ends up being a therapists dream patient.
She follows the routines to the max and the only problem they have with her is slowing her down so she does not over do it. We had that problem yesterday when we brought her home.
Now at this point I am sure you are wondering what the heck this has to do with anything about blogging. There really is a point here.
As your blog grows you will have things break down and not work well. It is a given.
It may be…
the way you are monetizing things.
problems with your theme
lack of your voice resonating with your readers
and many more things
You can attack them head on knowing that it will take some pain and it will take effort to get comfortable with doing new things. It often is not pleasant to make changes or you can stay comfortable and suffer because of it.
Are you always ready to address the things that seem to be stopping you from having the blog you want? Are you willing to go through the “rehab” of learning new things and making them part of your repertoire?
That is how you will improve your blog. Being wiling to go through learning curves for new things and being uncomfortable for a short time to become better is the key.
Guarantee you that Mom will be in perfect shopping shape in a few months and back to her “Shop Till You Drop” philosophy. Will your blog be improved over that time frame?
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
It would be nice if you did not have to worry about the security of your blog but that would be an ideal world. It does not work that way unfortunately. Here are just a few notices I have received this month from WordPress Firewall for this blog.
I get one of these just about every day. Often more than one as they try multiple times to access it. Yep every day someone is trying to access my blog and not just this blog but all of the blogs I have. That is why it is important to protect your blog.
Here are 7 ways to improve your blog security
1. Password and login
You should not have a user of admin and always use a solid password. Your password should have upper and lower case letters along with numbers and symbols. It should be a unique password for each blog.
Now I know this can be a pain in the @ss but you can use a tool like Roboform that will track your passwords and logins. This tool also will generate passwords for you. Definitely the first step in securing your blog.
2. Making data base extensions not wp_
If you use the standard installation WordPress always has the extension of wp_ added to all of the data base tables. Using a different extension will make it harder for the cretins to find your data base tables to attack then. Changing this is easy when you install a blog directly.
Just change the table prefix in your wp-confg.php file when doing your installation.
If you have already installed the blog or used Fantastico here is a guide you can grab that will walk you through the procedure to change all of your table extensions manually – Securing Fantastico Installations.
3. Install the WordPress Firewall 2 plugin
WordPress Firewall 2 is a security firewall plugin for WordPress. It was originally developed by SEO Egghead, and has been revamped by me.
This WordPress plugin investigates web requests with simple, WordPress-specific heuristics, to identify and stop the most obvious attacks. There are a few powerful, generic modules that do this; but they’re not always installed on web servers, and usually difficult to configure.
Install through your dashboard or you can download it here.
4. Install WP Security Scan plugin
This plugin scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions. Except for the data base this will primarily make sure that your server permission settings are secure.
Install through your dashboard or you can download it here.
5. Install Antivirus for WordPress plugin
AntiVirus for WordPress monitors malicious injections and warns you of any possible attacks. This looks at some of the injections that are common.
Install through your dashboard or you can download it here.
6. Install WordPress Exploit Scanner
This plugin searches the files and database of your website for signs of suspicious activity. It will not stop someone hacking into your site, but it may help you find any uploaded or compromised files left by the hacker.
Install through your dashboard or you can download it here.
7. Install WordPress Database Backup
Now this is not for security but or when you have a problem. Hopefully you never need it but… Much better to be prepared because despite taking action to stop bad things they still can happen. You need to be prepared for that possibility.
Here are two posts that cover in more detail how to use this both to back up your blog and to help you fix your blog of the worse happens.
Would be nice if a post like this was never needed but unfortunately it is. My Eagle Scout background taught me to “Be Prepared” and if you apply this seven tips you should be.
At the worst you will be able to recover from the cretins if necessary.
Do you have any additions that should be added here? Leave your comments below.
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday for the Christian community and marked the start of lent. Mardi Gras is over and it is time to switch from excess to sacrifice. Lent usually includes giving up something. It may be your favorite beverage, chocolate or any thing else that would be a sacrifice.
Maybe it is time to think about using this time frame to give up a plugin from your blog too.
It is not unusual to find that the 5 or 6 plugins you started with are now 25-30. Maybe more for you or maybe less. I know I am guilty of this quite often.
You know how it works. You see something new and neat and just have to add it and see how it works. We all love new shiny objects. Then the bad part happens.
You forget about it. Next thing you know the number of plugins keeps climbing. You think you have 10 or 15 plugins and when you check and actually look, it is double that number.
So as we start lent, now may be a good time to check how many plugins you are using. If your number has climbed, just take a minute or two and see what you have actually added.
Are they helping you or hurting you? A slow load speed can hurt you with Big G, so do you really need all of them.
If you find you have a few that you don’t even remember why you added them then maybe you should give them up for lent. Check and see if it helps or hurts your results. (You are tracking your blog aren’t you?)
If it helps or is neutral then maybe you did not need it to start with. Obviously if it hurts your results then start it back up.
Take advantage of this time of sacrifice to do this and find out if your blog is bloated. Like changing the batteries in your smoke alarms when the time changes it can be a good maintenance item.
Just going through and checking how many plugins you have installed may be an eye opener for you.
That is what I think. What do you think? Leave your comments below.
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
HTML5 is becoming the standard for web design. It is more dependent on using css to display pages. CSS works well with the structure of WordPress. Now if the browsers ever started displaying things the same it would become even more prevalent.
More and more people are using a blog structure as their website. I do for almost all of my sites.
With the changes over the last couple of updates to WordPress it has become very easy to use the software as a CMS (content management system) and display different types of pages in different formats. Some pages with a blog look, others with a website look.
No longer is it necessary to hack a theme to make them look similar. You can just set up custom pages and it is now easy to maintain the same look across the board because you are drawing the same theme across the board.
A variety of new themes have taken advantage of this and now it is point and click simple to change pages with the appropriate theme.
This way you can easily get the look of a website but maintain the advantages of a blog across your site.
So has the new question become why isn’t my website a blog?
What do you think? Leave your comment below.
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
Closing out the month of February and this week I decided to change a couple things up. As a rule I don’t link to the “big guy’s blogs” that are super well known even though I regularly read them. Most people are already aware of them and I prefer to focus on the second tier.
Occasionally there is something there that I just feel you need to see. It won’t be a regular thing but this week there was a post that I needed to highlight.
Also have not previously linked to a post that is primarily a podcast but really enjoyed thr content on one this week. Lets start our travels there.
Our second stop is to Pro Blogger for a guest post by Stefanie Flaxman. Now I am not a grammar Nazi and often disagree with super strict grammarians but there are some excellent points in this post to pay attention to. Check out “Eliminate 21 Reputation-Crushing Writing Mistakes from Your Blog“.
And for our last stop this week but certainly not least lets stop by Income Diary. Load speed has become a factor in the way Google ranks your content so this is a post from Michael Dunlap titled “15 Ways To Speed Up WordPress“. Definitely some things to consider there.
That is it or this week but I will be back with more next week.
Let me know which ones you liked and if you found a good one this week leave it in the comments below.
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
Had to do a bit of playing today to talk about some of the posting changes that are in WordPress 3.1. Regular readers know that I rarely use the built in posting area in WordPress and prefer to use a desk top application for my blog posting like Blog Desk. (Windows users only)
Even then any editing I do tends to be in HTML mode. Guess I am just old fashioned and when I started blogging before WordPress that was necessary for the old pMachine blogging platform.
When I first went to WordPress way back when they WYSIWYG frankly sucked.It has come a long way since then and there are a few things in the new version that make it even better.
Wil I change what I do? Probably not. I am old and bald and set in my ways for too long. Not always a good thing but I am nothing if not a realist.
Below is the new minimized WYSIWYG.
I have highlighted the last two icons. The furthest one changes the bar and shows all of the potential features for the WYSIWYG. The second one allows you to change to a full screen WYSIWYG for creating your post. You can see the expanded mode below.
Won’t go through all of the features because if you mouse over any icon you get a description. There is one nice feature added that I think is very helpful.
You can access related posts through the add link function. Highlight the text you wish to link and click the link adder.
When you click that you get the option to add any link or you an search and link to a post you already have on your blog. This makes it very easy to interlink your older posts to your current content with applicable anchor text. Saves you a bit of time doing it.
So that is one of the new features available in the latest version of WordPress and how to take advantage of them.
Will be adding more on new features in WordPress 3.1 at a later time.
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
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