Wordpress Themes - 20th Apr 08

Another collection of free wordpress themes released by 20th Apr 2008.

YG Simpleton

Simple Power

LouisBrooks

Excel

RC2

Blog It 750

Envy Blogging - Hate it, Fear it, It’s Still good.

Envy Blogging is the term i use to define when a blogger creates content similar to an already established and popular blog online in hopes of attaining the same traffic over a short period of time. At first it’s pretty harmless and well intentioned, like giving out their own opinion on the matter and leaving trackbacks to get the traffic to come towards them, as soon as that starts working for them, it gets hard trying to keep up with the ferquence of the content coming their way, the work tht they have to put into content now is much harder and before they know it they are copying quotes and important paragraphs from those blogs onto their own and making it their own content and at some point even this becomes harder, letting your content creating abilities fade away is the worst thing a blogger can ever hope for, the moment you actually don’t have anything to say or don’t have the will to write more is when a blogger becomes a spammer, this is where harmless opinions turn into spam, yep, this is how spam blogs are created. The ones that use your feed to copy your own content leaving the original blog a trackback.

Alot of bloggers can find spam links in their wp dashboard everyday that come from blogs that have copied their content without any permission.

Although i think blog envy can make really good bloggers over time if they keep at it and try to develop their own skills more but the most conversions that I have seen are for the worst.

photo credit: Thuy Pham

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Turn Affiliates into Content - Make Money Blogging While Doing It

Coming up with new ideas to blog is always hard, I know what I am talking about when i say writer’s block is the worst thing that can happen to a blogger. I came up with this idea when i had nothing else to blog about and nothing I did to remove the blog was working, when you have nothing to blog about its better to focus on monetization of the blog, If you are already with an Affiliate network, then you should browse their inventory to find something relevant to your blog’s niche, look through the site, then write a review about it on your blog filled with your affiliate links!

This way not only will you get more:

1. Serps
2. Content
3. Indexed Pages
4. Traffic
5. Money
6. Readers

…but you’ll also get another income stream from your blog, having affiliate ads are okay but reviewing a product often if not always makes a sale. I know that I’ve bought 80% of the things I read about in my feed reader. Its about the trust and authority that you have established with your readers that will get you tons of conversions through affiliates.

I have sitelinks at google? kinda sorta yea..

In the last week 2 of the new startup blogs i know got their site links so it got me thinking, why the hell don’t i have them?!

I go to google’s webmaster central..What do i see?

Sitelinks!

I think to myself Okay i just got sitelinks! Woo! lets check google..

Ah crap…celebration over…wtf though!?

Now i have absolutely no idea what’s going on, why i have sitelinks but they don’t show…what good is that now?

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Recap : Ways to make money with your blog

There are many ways that you can make money online by using your website or blog. There are ways that aren’t commonly used and then there are ways that are commonly used. We’re going to go over some of the ways that are commonly used and have been proven to be effective for others who have used these options.

Affiliate Marketing
There are many bloggers and webmasters that have turned themselves into affiliate marketers. Why is that? Well, it seems that money speaks many languages and when someone finds a good way of earning money, they seem to want to use it more than what really doesn’t make them much money at all. Affiliate marketing can be a profitable venture for you. Do your research so that you know without a doubt you have what it takes to become a great player in the area of affiliate marketing.

Google AdSense
AdSense has been known to have a very successful outcome for those that have monetized their website or blog with it. You are paid for each qualified click that you receive from the advertisements that are being shown on your website or blog. There is always an effective way to implement this as well as an ineffective way to implement this. Make sure that you know the effective way and put it to work for you.

Put your skills to work for you.
You can provide additional services on your website or blog to help you make money online. These services can be anything that your visitors might be looking for. This could include writing, web design, etc. The possibilities are endless. If you do something directly related to your niche, why not offer others the ability to have you get it done for them as well? You will both benefit from this, just think about what you can offer and give it a try.

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Another way to make money blogging - Auctions with Wordpress

So far the topics that I have covered on the make money blogging area are advertising and selling your own products in a very simple and old fashion way, so now it’s time to explore other possibilities to make money blogging.

WP Auctions is a great free plugin that helps you put up auctions on your wordpress installation and allows you to have bids on the blog as they come, the bids and auctions are entered in your own database and you control every little detail on the auction. There are no 3rd parties involved here, that’s the most appealing part of this plugin to me at least.

Its a great way to auction of sites or domains or whatever you have that needs to be rid off in the most fluid way available today, auctions!

The part that I’d like to emphasize here is auctioning off domains and websites for the people who flip sites and domain as a profession while running a make money online blog, this is a perfect opportunity for you to engage your readers to be a part of your projects. Let’s say one of your readers buys one of your sites through the auction, then he’s mentioned in the next income report. This way he gets free publicity and is happy with what he/she bought from you.

Although WP Auctions is a free plugin, they do have to make money somehow so they offer some great styles for this plugin.

Better Blogging - Wordpress Plugins - 17th Apr 08

WordPress plug-ins have become an essential for professional bloggers. The benefits that come with many WordPress plug-ins has made it easier for bloggers to improve their blogs as well as save time with administration work. Here’s a look at some of the best WordPress plug-ins that are available.

AdRotator
This WordPress plug-in will allow you to rotate your ads on your blog rather easily. This is great if you have multiple ads for a certain location on your blog(s) and you want to rotate them.

Akismet
Everyone hates SPAM, why let it happen on your blog with comment spam? Akismet is one the most used WordPress SPAM prevention tools. This WordPress plug-in will help prevent trackback and comment SPAM.

Comment Relish
This is an excellent WordPress plug-in that will allow you to send a thank you e-mail to commentators that haven’t ever posted a comment before.

EasyTube
EasyTube is a WordPress plug-in that makes it easier for you to add YouTube videos in your blog posts. You won’t have to mess around with the HTML code in order to add a video when you utilize this handy Wordpress plug-in.

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