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Wordpress is my CMS and blog platform of choice.  I have tried a lot of different programs in the past, Geeklog, Drupal, Joomala, and even PHP-Nuke.  However the power and simplicity of Wordpress has made it the one for me.

Here is a list of the plugins that I install on EVERY site that I start either for myself or for a friend.

1. Add-Sig – This addon is great for adding a signature to every post.  I put in my twitter link, a reminder to add my feed at the bottom of every post.  Remember to keep it short though, you don’t want your signature to over-whelm your visitors.
2. All in One SEO Pack – If you are going to do nothing else for SEO, install this plugin and use it.  This plugin allows you to give every post its own title and meta information.
3. Google Analytics for Wordpress – This is the easiest way to add your site to Google Analytics without having to modify your theme.  This plugin also gives you the ability to NOT track the information of the admin which will give you a better idea of the traffic on your site when you are starting out.
4. Google Sitemap Generator – Google loves its sitemaps.  I know I said above that if you did nothing else for SEO you should use the All in One SEO Pack, well you should install this too.  With this you just have it install it, and every time you make a post it will add it to a XML sitemap that Google will use to hopefully index your site.
5. Contact Form – One of the things that Wordpress doesn’t have built in is a good contact form.  This plugin will allow you to add a contact form and allow your readers to get in contact with you, without you having to worry about making email public….if you’re worried about that sort of thing.
6. Twitter Widget – You’re on Twitter….right?  Well if you are and you have a Wordpress blog you know that the widgets that they have suck.  This plugin gives you a widget that will match your theme and allow your readers to see what you have been talking about on Twitter.
7. What would Seth Godin Do? – Seth Godin once said in his blog that you should use cookies to ensure that visitors to your site get a unique experience.  This plugin allows you to give first-time visitors to your site a special message.  With this message you can welcome them, point them to other great posts, and tell them where to go next.
8. Wordpress Super Cache – So you just started a blog and you are wondering why you need a caching system.  Well be positive, your blog will be popular enough and if you get a huge traffic spike you want to be sure that your site can handle it.  So install it, test it, and be ready for everything.
9. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin  – This plugin puts a list of past posts that you have made with the same tags as the one that your visitor is reading.  This gives the blog more stickiness so that your visitor has somewhere else to go when they finish reading the post that got them there.

These are my must have plugins for every wordpress installation.  What are some plugins that you would recommend for all wordpress users, or how about alternatives to the ones that I have listed here.

It has been a long time since I updated this site, and for the readers that I have left…Sorry.

Where to Start?

The long and the short of it is that I have been working hard on my Ebay sites and developing a network of sites for the past 3 months  I am building the sites within the same overall horizontal niche so that I can easily interlink them.  This allowed me to develop a following on one site and gain visitors to a new site by “Guest Blogging”.

That was going great until something on the Ebay end changed at the start of this month.  The month of April was amazing for me, I had an ROI of over 300% with no one site earning a huge majority.  I felt that was great news and I continued to plug away.  Then something happened, my ROI dropped hugely at the start of May with my earning no Ebay commissions for the first 4 days while changing nothing on the traffic generation end.  In other words something over at EPN (Ebay Partners Network) changed.  It got to the point that yesterday I turned off all of my PPC Campaigns to my EPN sites to re-group.  I was losing money in buckets and at this rate I would have lost all of the gains that I made last month.

 

Regrouping

Today I started the re-grouping.  Last week I started a WordpressMU site on a domain that I had been hanging onto for a long time.  With this I plan on starting my own little blogging network, with my own sites, that I will be able to drive traffic to using different types of offers.  At the core it will be a review site with me reviewing a different niche on every sub-domain.  I will be sure to review everything that I have an affiliate account with, and the ones that I don’t I will review only if there is not enough competition.

I have also started dabbling in ZIP offers from AzoogleAds and have been promoting them on Facebook.  I haven’t had much luck there yet since FacebookAds seem to like not approving the ads.  I have even tried re-writing ads for offers that are very similar to what I have researched as already accepted and still no luck.  The fact that they take so long to review the ads is not helping.

 

Blogging

I am also starting to do more writing and after following ProBlogger.net’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog I have a lot of good ideas.  I have already started on some of them and will be doing the entire series on this blog in the next month.

I feel that this is the site that has the most potential and I will be spending more time developing articles that will help you not make the same mistakes that I am, and hopefully there will be nuggets of information that will help you be more successful with what ever you are doing.

One of the things that am going to start doing is reviews of particular tools and Wordpress Plugins that I use when I develop a site.  Some of these cost money and some are free, but all are very useful.  I will also start updating on what Networks I am using for my PPC Campaigns and Affiliate Marketing.

There has been a lot of talk lately about how this current downturn that the worldwide economy is in is not going to be going anywhere in the near term.  The Western big business philosophy is to recoil and wait for people to start buying again.  The Eastern and entrepreneur philosophy is that this is the time to buy good business cheap and manoeuvre yourself into an incredibly profitable position.

Online Meeting Software

One of the methods that I have been using lately to limit my travel both for personal work and with my day-job is running online meetings using Go-To-Meeting.  I chose Go-To-Meeting by default since it was the program that the company that I work for was using.  I got to play with the software before getting it myself to use for my own meetings, it isn’t that my side projects are to the point that I do a lot of travel meetings, none actually, but it did add a very advanced communications channel.

I don’t just use the software because it is what I started with, but don’t take my word for it there is a decent go-to-meeting review here. One of the tools that I have used a lot when working with designers is the ability to take over the others mouse and keyboard to better explain what I am looking for.  This is almost impossible to do over the phone, and it is very slow when you try it by email.  Using a messenger service is faster, but it is still much slower than using GoToMeeting.

Try out GoToMeeting for 30 days free and if you click here you will also get $10 off when you order. 

You have to CLICK HERE, to be sure that you don’t miss out.

My father finally got high speed at home.  Now it is not like they were avoiding it, it was simply not an option until a WiMAX provider came around.

So I asked him if he has cancelled his dial-up and he said no.  Why?  Well it is because he has had the same email address from the very beginning (10+ yrs).  You know the one, user@serviceprovider.com, and it is the one that everyone has.  He has signed up for some free web accounts since, but most people on his mailing list don’t have them.

I told him that there is an easy way to ease people into using the right email, and it is really easy if you use Gmail.  So if you don’t have a Gmail account, get one.  You will need it for the rest of this tutorial.

This post will describe how to:

1. Add a POP Account to your Gmail
2. Add a signature to all your emails so that people know to update their contact information for you.
3. And that’s it.

Adding a POP Account.

Since you probably use Outlook, Thunderbird or another email program to download your emails from the ISP servers, you most likely use POP to access them.  So go into the email settings of your program and write down your POP server.  It will most likely be either mail.serviceprovider.com or pop.serviceprovider.com.

You will also need your username and your password.

Now sign into your Gmail Account and go to Settings > Accounts

And click Add a mail account.

Fill in the email that you are planning on getting rid of in the future.

This is where you need to dig out that information that I mentioned above.  You are going to want to click the Label Incoming Messages check box.  This will allow you to keep track of the people that are still emailing you to your OLD email address.

Now you simply click the Add Account button and you should be done.

Next you are going to make sure that every time YOU send an email you will be from your NEW address.  To do this you go back to the Accounts tab and activate the radio tab with “Always reply from default address” just make sure that the Default address is the one that you plan on using.

Setting up a Signature

Now you are going to Settings > General and modify your signature.  You are going to want your signature to be clear that you are going to be changing your email address and in the near future you will not be able to receive emails from the old one.

Now What

Well that is pretty much it.  You are going to want to keep your old email active for a month or so.  Monitor the old email label and remind people that are still emailing you to the old address.

If you have any questions ask them in the comments, and I will do my best to help you out.

And if you have other ideas on how to do this let me know in the comments.

I have been neglecting this blog a little more than usual, but that is alright.  I am doing good on other fronts and am actually making leeway.

Here is something to keep you thinking.  I found this cartoon at ReadWriteWeb and thought it important enough to post. It is originally from Noise to Signal.

 

So remember, safety first online.  Only sign into things that you trust, and you should trust nothing unless proven otherwise.