Switching Over to WordPress Twenty Ten

Posted on September 21, 2010 by Anne

I love WordPress. You love WordPress. We all love WordPress.

Part of the appeal back at the time was the two clean, professional, SEO-friendly themes this blogging software came with. Yet, WordPress also brought on an explosion of creativity as designers have been creating custom themes for years. Along the way, the classic themes became outdated, pretty much, with free and paid themes taking over the lead as the professionals’ choice.

With the release of WordPress 3.0 a new default theme was introduced: Twenty Ten. It took me a while to give it a shot, especially as I had been playing around with Thesis at the time. Lately, I’ve been trying both on various blogs, and at this point in time, Twenty Ten is my favorite.

What I Like About Twenty Ten -

  • Clean Design.
  • Customizable background color and header.
  • Several widget areas.
  • SEO-friendly – or should I say, as SEO-friendly as I need it to be. While Thesis gives you more control over SEO variables, I think it’s actually a waste of time to over-optimize your blog for the search engines.
  • Free and always up to date!

I confess, I like the fact that I’m dealing with a default WP theme too. Keeping it simple, and at the core of the WP open source community.

I’ve just switched over to Twenty Ten on this blog here. Hope you like it – didn’t even bother with a unique header image yet. Once I do that, I may play around with the colors too.

How about you? Have you tried Twenty Ten yet? I’d love to hear more about how this theme worked for others.

Posted in blogging, General, products and services | Tagged , , , , | 24 Comments

The Google Adsense Roller Coaster

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Anne

I have been using Google Adsense for years now. Pretty much since they set up the network, I think, as my reports go all the way back to 2003. In fact, there was a point where Adsense was responsible for most of my online income and it took a concentrated effort on my part to change that.

At this point in time, Adsense accounts for about a third of my revenue. It’s been a good solid network for me for many years.

There are a lot of great things to be said about Adsense. One thing I like less though is the fact that I can never quite predict how much money I’m going to make.

I’m not talking about traffic fluctuations – these are my “end of the deal”, so to speak: to an extent, I have some degree of control over my traffic. No, what I’m talking about is the changes in effective CPM generated by Adsense ads. In other words, the average amount I get paid per click keeps changing.

I am not blaming Adsense for this either. I guess it is to be expected in a system that relies on bidding. It’s supply and demand: at some times merchants are willing to pay more per click than in others. Seasonal changes, or changes in the economy, are reflected in what you get paid.

Just saying though, sending a relatively large amount of traffic in my vertical, seemingly small changes in eCPM can change my revenue quite a bit. It’s odd at times. I work hard on increasing traffic and see no extra return on it. Then other times, traffic slows down, yet Adsense revenue shoots up.

My conclusion? If you use Adsense on a website with a large volume of traffic, be prepared for your revenue to fluctuate, not necessarily in correlation to your marketing efforts. If you’re willing to accept that, I think Adsense may be a great advertising partner for you. And hey, roller coasters are meant to be fun, right?

I’d be happy to hear some feedback from other publishers. Are you seeing a similar pattern, or lack of, with Adsense?

Posted in Monetizing Websites, products and services | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

And…. I’m back!

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Anne

Kids are back in school and Mom (that’s me) is back to having free mornings for work. I’m back, though still need to get back into a full-mode work mindset. I have to say though -

  1. I have thoroughly enjoyed spending time with the kids without having to worry about work.
  2. I like the fact that my revenue stream kept flowing throughout this time without a problem.

That is one of the perks of being an established web publisher. By established, I mean exactly this: that your business keeps generating roughly the same amount of revenue virtually on its own.

I did have to do general maintenance here and there and I have not completely cut myself off “the scene”, but I almost didn’t post anything during this time and I certainly did not build any new sites or embarked on any promotion campaigns.

It’s almost too tempting to keep on doing less and taking things easy. I find myself toying around with ideas of early retirement! Two things keeping me from doing just that -

  1. I suspect that overtime profits will diminish unless I keep tending to promotion. Just simple maths – others are promoting and their sites will eventually take over unless I actively promote mine.
  2. This business is ever-changing and you simply have to stay on the top of things to stay in the game. Leave for too long and your websites could become obsolete in more ways than one.

As my husband keeps reminding me, we rely on my business income for our current and future financial security. It’s a good thing I still enjoy webmastering so much, as it looks like I am not retiring anytime soon after all!

How about you? When do you think you’ll be able to retire and live off the profits of your web business? Or do you like working so much this is not even an option? ;)

Posted in blogging, General, Monetizing Websites | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

The Problem with My Summer Hiatus

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Anne

This is my first post for the month of August and it’s coming almost three weeks into the month. De facto, I am having time off work this month, not so much by choice, but because my kids are home.

Working from home with your kids around is pretty much impossible. I can do the necessary maintenance work on my sites, but anything more than that is a problem. I have tried in the past and always ended up frustrated and with little work done. So, this year, as soon as summer camp was over, I decided to accept the situation and just be with the kids. If you can’t beat them, join them, preferably for some family summer fun! By the way, I’m here today thanks to my Mother who’s taking them to the swimming pool.

So what’s the problem with spending my days at the beach and swimming pool, at the movies or just playing Starcraft 2 with the kids?

The problem is I can’t really cut myself off work. In fact, I keep coming up with ideas for new projects. At least two of these I am exploring quite seriously – one is a new travel blog with a unique take, and another has to do with dropshipping – something I have never tried before.

I am itching to start working again. For now, I am limiting myself to doing some market research in the evenings. Ten more days to go before I can get back to my daily work routine!

Posted in General | 2 Comments

How to Find Blog Sponsors

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Anne

If you’re an established blogger that already knows everything about blog sponsors, feel free to skip the next couple of sections and move directly to the one titled “How to Get Sponsors for Your Blog”.

The Basics of Blog Monetization

There are many ways in which a blog or website can be monetized. A round up of the usual suspects includes -

1. CPM advertising networks that pay you for displaying banners.

2. CPC advertising such as Google Adsense.

3. Affiliate marketing where you get paid per sale.

4. Direct advertising where you get paid to display a company’s banner, link or run posts about their product.

Note that selling text-links is not mentioned here. Even with direct advertising, you should never offer to sell a link for SEO purposes. Don’t make the mistake of even mentioning your Google Pagerank when making an online media kit, unless you don’t mind being kicked off the Google charts.

Direct Advertising – Your Blog Sponsors

Blog sponsors are those advertisers that you work directly with. With no ad network to mediate, you form a relationship with your sponsor. The best scenario is one where both you and your sponsor benefit from co-branding by being associated with each other.

Of course, the sponsor is also the paying party. Usually, they make a monthly or yearly payment that covers at least a banner or sponsorship message. The idea is to create a long-term campaign where the blogger becomes actively involved with promoting the sponsor’s product. That could mean mentioning the product in posts, comments on other blogs and any other way you can think of.

How to Get Sponsors for Your Blog

I owe you an apology here for what might be considered an ambiguous, not to say misleading, post title. You see, this post isn’t a guide on how to find blog sponsors. Nope. This time, the title is actually a genuine question.

I have been approached by a fellow blogger the other day with this very question, and I figured the best way to find out is by throwing the question out into cyberspace. As I explained to my friend, all the sponsors I have ever worked with approached me. They were looking for advertising opportunities, and I suggested long-term sponsorship which they accepted.

So the question remains open -

How do you go about actively looking for blog sponsors?

Not to leave this post without any tips, here are mine:

Once approached by a potential sponsor, offer a detailed plan which clearly states how you’re going to promote their product or site. This can include things such as -

  1. An introductory detailed post.
  2. A “sponsored by” statement at the top of  your sidebar.
  3. A recurrent mention in your weekly newsletter.
  4. Mentioning the sponsor in at least two more posts every month.

These are just examples, of course. Get creative here, and offer as much as you think is right for you and your potential sponsor.

Be prepared to offer information about your blog as well. Sponsors usually look for benefits other than SEO, so while a high pagerank is nice to mention, you should focus on your blog’s contribution to your niche and the number of readers it gets.

So, now that I’ve shared my tips, what are yours? Established bloggers – can you share how you go out looking for sponsors? Does anyone have a good resource on the subject? Please share in the comments section!

Posted in blogging, Monetizing Websites | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

Sites in Languages other than English

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Anne

My first ever website was in Hebrew.

This was back in the late 1990′s and I simply wanted to create an informational website about cats and cater to the local cat lovers population, seeing as there were no cat-related websites in Hebrew at the time.

The site was a huge success in terms of media attention. The internet being such a novelty back then, I was interviewed by national newspapers, radio shows and even twice on TV. Traffic followed, of course, but back then, monetizing on the site proved to be difficult.

There were many reasons for my decision to shut down the site, and in retrospect, I’m not sure it was the right thing to do. In fact, I did not so much shut it down as switched to a website in English, catering to the far larger English speaking population of the world in a cat website in English.

And so, over a decade later, I am thinking of testing the small Israeli market once more. Different niche altogether, but still, a website in Hebrew!

Building the site is so much easier now!

Hebrew is a difficult language on the net. Not only does it have a different set of letters, it is also written from right to left. Back then, you actually had to type words backwards in order to get them to display properly in an HTML web page. Thankfully there was a small script that would reverse the letters for you, but it was still very time consuming. These days, browsers have Hebrew versions that can read Hebrew right off the HTML code page. What’s more, popular content management systems, including WordPress, all have Hebrew versions. Just type and hit press!

Monetizing sites in Hebrew is also easier. Adsense offers ads for Hebrew pages, and there are Israeli CPM networks too. Since I’m now opting for the international travel niche, hopefully I’ll be able to use some good international affiliation programs as well. Of course, that’s all in the future – I’m still in the building and promoting phases.

I’d love to hear feedback on this from webmasters with websites in languages other than English. Have you ever tried that with your home market (or any other market)?

Posted in General, Monetizing Websites | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

The Best WordPress Gallery Plugin

Posted on July 6, 2010 by Anne

Hey, guess what? The best WordPress gallery plug-in out there is not even a plugin!

For years, managing collections of images in a WordPress blog post required a plug-in. NextGen was one of the most popular plug-ins around but there was no shortage of alternatives.

I’m not a big fan of using Plugins. Sure, they allow you to customize your blog in unique ways, but they also require a lot of attention in the form of keeping them up to date. It may not be an issue when you manage just one or two blogs, but when you run a few dozens or more, trust me, you want to keep updating to the absolute minimum. What’s more, plugin developers sometimes give up on the project, leaving you stuck with a plugin that eventually stops working with some new WP version. Been there, done that…

If a feature is important enough to enough bloggers it needs to be incorporated into WordPress itself and eventually, almost always, it does become an integral part of the script.

I always felt that the ability to add galleries to your posts was an important feature. Over the years, I’ve tried a bunch of different gallery plugins with various results, but now, finally, no more plugins!

Having tested it in several blogs, I am perfectly happy with the WordPress gallery feature. Here’s how you use it -

1. Upload more than one image to your post – just use the “insert image” button as usual. Either add one image after the other, or select multiple images by holding down the CTRL key.

2. Once you have your images uploaded and saved WordPress automatically creates a gallery tab for you:

3. You can click the Show link next to each one and edit the file name, alt text and description. The little box next to that link is for you to order images in the gallery if you wish to.

4. The gallery settings at the bottom allow you to control where the images lead to when clicked. Here’s the real cool feature – you can automatically create a page for each picture in your gallery, complete with your full template, comments and everything else that you get from WordPress.

5. Finally, set up the order in which you want your images displayed and the number of gallery columns and voila – insert the new gallery into your post:

As you can see from the above gallery, every image that you upload to your post will be included in the gallery. I still haven’t found a way to easily exclude images from the gallery, unless you actually upload them to another post or page and then just link to them there. I guess the wonderful people who code WP still have some work to do there.

However, I think it’s the best gallery generator for WordPress I have found so far, and hey, it’s a “Look, Ma! No Plugins!” moment!

I’d love to hear from those who have tried this feature. How do you feel it compares to existing gallery plug-ins? And if you’re not using it, care to share why?

Posted in blogging | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Blog Comment Links – Where Do You Link To?

Posted on June 23, 2010 by Anne

Blogs help you keep up to date on current professional issues, get inspired and motivated, and interact with fellow bloggers and webmasters.

The interaction is done by leaving a comment where views and ideas are shared. And yes, you get to leave a link back to your site with that comment, which helps drive traffic back to that site.

Varying Your Comment Links

Now, considering commenting is a form of interaction, it makes sense to link back to your blog, right?

However, if you own or manage more than one site, why not vary your comment links? You can send traffic back to other sites of yours, or even, as suggested by Kristi Hines in this post, to articles you have published on other sites.

There are advantages to link variety when commenting on other people’s blog posts. For one thing, you’re sending traffic and linkjuice to sites that may need it more than your main blog. Also, by sending people to your Hub Pages, Squidoo lenses or syndicated articles, you are building pagerank and authority of pages that have backlinks to your blog or blog.

Of course, you would be presenting visitors with a site that is not as personal as your blog. You also risk coming across as being spammy in the eyes of fellow bloggers, to the point of having your comments trashed.

The advantages here are significant, but you need to do it right -

  • Make sure your first few comments on a blog link back to your main blog.
  • Set up your Gravatar picture and make sure you use the same email when commenting so that your “identity” remains whole.
  • Establish a relationship with other bloggers and make a name for yourself before you start linking to your other sites.
  • Never use affiliate links in post comments. Link back to your own pages and articles.

So, what about you? Do you always link back to your main blog, or have you tried varying the links in your blog comments?

Posted in blogging, SEO | Tagged , , , , , | 24 Comments