Blogging with WordPress - tools, tips and tutorials
I bet you log into WordPress as an Administrator, right? Yup, so do I. Nothing wrong with that - after all, most of us run single-user blogs. But did you know that WordPress has built-in support for a wide range of Roles and Capabilities?
By default there are five Roles, each of which has progressively more power:
Just time for a quick tip today. If you’re using PerformancingAds, it’s essential that you remember to tick the No Follow checkbox in your region settings:
It’s not ticked by default, so it’s up to you to do it for each of your regions. Why?
Continue reading ‘Don’t forget to Nofollow your PerformancingAds’
There’s recently been a small debate about Google’s stance on paid links in the comments section of one of my posts, and whether or not you run the risk of being penalized if you buy or sell links. Mitch helpfully pointed us to an article by Matt Cutts on the subject. In case you don’t know, Matt is a Google policy maker who had a big hand in drafting the original quality guidelines.
I spent an enjoyable afternoon reading that and a few other related articles (and their comments) on Matt’s site and the official Google guidelines to try and clarify exactly what Google’s position is. Needless to say some of the comment exchanges are fairly heated, with a lot of emotion on both sides. This is my understanding of the issues:
Continue reading ‘Does Google penalize paid links?’
With blogging, as with anything in life, success is not guaranteed. This may sound like an obvious thing to say, but when you read a lot of blogs in the blogging and make money online niches, the overwhelming message is that “anyone can do this - look it’s easy!”. Well, in many ways it is easy to start a blog, but making any serious money out of it is not (or I must be doing something wrong).
Image courtesy of Tom@HK
Seth Godin makes a good case that there is still a high correlation between hard work and success. Sure, a bit of luck doesn’t hurt, but as Gary Player once said:
“The harder I practice, the luckier I get.” - Gary Player
Continue reading ‘Success is not guaranteed - and why that’s a good thing!’
Since I talked about dofollow commenting the other day, I’ve been involved in a few comment exchanges about the benefits of installing the Dofollow and Top Commenter plugins. The benefits for commenters are fairly obvious - you’re rewarded for your comments with free backlinks. The benefits for the host blog are perhaps not as obvious, but I’ve definitely seen an increase in the number of comments on this blog since installing both these plugins a few weeks ago, and have hooked up with a few new blogs (new to me, that is) as a result. I imagine it’s the same for others.
That’s all very well, but as a commenter, how do you identify these blogs amongst the vast ocean of nofollow ones? I’ve heard of a few methods, for example doing a Google image search for the you comment, I follow graphic which some sites display. There are also several sites that publish lists of blogs using these plugins - see Yan, Peter and Simon’s for example. These are pretty hot posts with lots of interaction - precisely because they’re providing some very useful information - they may be all you need to comment effectively, but for me there is one missing ingredient - the ability to search for specific topics and information in the lists.
Continue reading ‘Dofollow Search Tool is online’
Have you ever wondered how to take online payments via your website for your own products and services? Well, there’s an easy way: PayPal. Yes, you can accept donations, payments for products and services, even set up recurring payments and subscriptions. And the good thing is you’re not restricted to buyers who have a PayPal account, because this mechanism allows your customers to pay via debit or credit card if they choose.
There are a number of benefits to using this service:
So, before this starts to sound any more like an advertorial, I want to show you how easy it is to set up a Donation button to allow your adoring public to shower you with gratuities.
Continue reading ‘Easily take Online Payments with PayPal’
Every day I use several tools and services for creating, maintaining and promoting my blog, tools that are absolutely fundamental to various aspects of the blogging process. Sure, I probably could get by without some of them…but I sure wouldn’t like to try! And I’m not referring to electricity or the World Wide Web - obviously blogging would be impossible without those!
The common denominator in this list is that they are all free, which probably has something to do with their market penetration. But their value is definitely far higher! Without further ado, here they are, roughly ranked according to how indispensable they are - although as I’ve already pointed out, I couldn’t really do without any of them:
Continue reading ‘10 Essential resources for Blogging’
A couple of weeks ago I outlined my strategy for strategic commenting - go ahead and read it if you haven’t already - the key for me is building relationships with other bloggers. Taking over the world one blog at a time, if you want.
But with any strategy, even a good one, there’s normally room for improvement, so while last time I spoke about my philosophy of commenting, today I’d like to mention a couple of tactical tips you can apply to maximise the benefits of your comments to your blog’s authority and traffic. They’re actually closely related - I’ll give you a little hint: neither involves nofollow links…
Continue reading ‘Strategic commenting, part 2′
