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I’ve recently instituted several changes on my blog and I’d love to share them with you:

Upgrading Wordpress Plugins Automatically

I never realized just how awesome the latest version of Wordpress was until I was able to automatically upgrade most of my plugins from within the Wordpress admin control panel! I was looking to add some new plugins to my blog and when I was going through my list I noticed a link underneath several of my Wordpress plugins that said ‘upgrade automatically.’ Now I’m usually hesitant to try something new like this for fear of things going wrong, but I decided to make a site backup and give it a go anyway. If you’d like to do this yourself just follow these steps:

1. From the plugin page in the Wordpress admin control panel find a plugin that has the option to ‘upgrade automatically’ link and click it
2. Enter your FTP login info
3. Select ‘Yes’ to the Use SSL option to be more secure
4. Click ‘Proceed’

I was surprised the first time that I did this because I expected things to be more difficult. However, sure enough it worked like a charm for every single plugin I use that had the option to upgrade automatically. So after I spent some time upgrading my current active plugins I set about looking for and installing new ones.

New WordPress Plugins

Feed Footer

This plugin allows you to add a copyright message or advertisements in your footer. I’d love for something like this to be integrated into OIO Publisher so the advertising could be managed through one plugin, so in the mean time I think I’ll just use this to add a copyright message.

Home Page Excerpts

This plugin allows you to set how many posts you want to have display their full text or if you wish to only show a certain number of words before adding a ‘continue reading’ link. I chose to have the first post display the full text and the rest of the posts to display 100 words. The primary reason why I installed this plugin was to get rid of any concerns about duplicate content; however, an additional benefit will be an increased number of page views because it will require visitors to click into a post to read the full contents. I’m going to keep my eye on this though as I may set all of the posts on the front page to display in full as I find it irritating to go to blogs where every post requires you to click a link to continue reading. That’s primarily why I did a compromise and had only the first post display in full.

What do you think though? Should I display more posts in full or do you believe it’s a perfect balance?

Sociable

I really like this plugin because it allows you to display icons for all of the various social networking sites after each and every post to allow readers the chance to submit to them easily. So please use the icons if you like the posts I used this post to replace the ‘Share This’ plugin that I had been previously using because that plugin causes some errors on my blog.

Similiar Posts

This requires this Post-Plugin Library to operate which can be downloaded here. But this is another fantastic plugin. I used to run a different plugin for my related posts but after I tried taking the code and putting it into my new theme the plugin broke. This turned out to be a good thing though because the Similiar Posts plugin is much better than the previous plugin I was using.

Those are all of the new plugins (besides OIO Publisher) that I’m using now and if you care to see some of the older plugins that I was using check out this post.

Sidebar Ad Price Dropped:

When I finished the plugin updates I decided to drop the price on the sitewide sidebar 125×125 ad block to only $15 a month. While the rest of my advertising inventory has been selling well the sidebar blocks haven’t done as well as I expected them to. So if you’re looking for a bargin you can pick one up by clicking here.

So what do you guys and gals think of the new plugins?

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Improving your Technorati rank may not seem like a priority to you, but it’s important to remember what a lower rank (lower = better) can do for you. You can make more money off of your advertising and sponsored reviews and you can also receive a big boost to your Google page rank by having a good Technorati rank.

So because of these factors and my top 10,000 Technorati rank goal I have come up with a list of ways I’ve been successful in moving towards that goal. Some of these I’ve yet to fully work on but I’m confident they will work. But first let me tell you where I a sat three months ago. My blog had an authority of 38 and a rank of 211,248. So obviously, there was plenty of room for improvement so without futher ado the following is a list of the ways to help improve your Technorati rank most of which I’ve tried myself.

1. Write Guest Posts

I can’t think of a blogger that doesn’t allow a guest blogger to link back to their own blog. In fact they usually don’t even mind it if you link back a couple times in a post. By writing guest posts for bigger bloggers it’s an easy way to get a link back to your blog as well as some extra traffic too. I’ve written a couple guest posts for bloggers with over 1,000 RSS subscribers and these posts have helped to improve my rank a lot. I plan on writing several more guest posts in the future.

2. Exchange links with other bloggers

I’ve exchanged links with a couple other bloggers that are around the same size as me and it has helped to not only improve my technorati rank but I’m sure it’s contributed to my Google page rank as well. The important thing to remember is that even though many bloggers are nice people they won’t exchange links with you if they clearly do not benefit much from the exchange. So don’t approach big blogs asking to exchange links with you unless you’ve developed a relationship with them first.

3. Link to other blog posts

By linking to other blog posts and sending out a trackback there is a good chance (especially if it’s a lesser known blogger that you link to) that they’ll check out your blog to see what you had to say about their post. They’ll likely comment on the post and in the future they may link to one of your posts as well. This may even turn into a potential blogger to exchange links with too.

4. Create a great Wordpress theme and give it away

By offering a great Wordpress theme and giving it away for free you can link back to your blog with a footer link. Simply request that people do not remove the footer links in the footer file and most people will be alright with doing so. I’ve seen this strategy work well for other top bloggers.

5. Sell your custom Wordpress theme

While this idea is similiar to the previous one some people don’t have the skill to create a useful wordpress theme (like myself) or the money to spend on a designer only to give it away for free. So one option is to offer your custom blog design for sale and include your footer link in the blog. You can then offer a more expensive version with the footer link removed. My theme designer is actually working on this for me right now and I’ll be posting a few different color variations to this theme for sale because I know the feedback on this theme has been very positive.

6. Comment on do follow blogs

While this tactic is great in practice, I’ve found that a lot of the lists of do follow blogs on the net are outdated and no longer do follow blogs. Overall, while I think this tactic can be beneficial it’s also time consuming to comment on lots of blogs that are on do follow blog lists only to later find out those blogs don’t follow.

7. Run a blog contest

In your blog contest require that entrants link back to your blog to participate in the contest. I’ve done this in the past and had some success. You can read what I’ve learned from running a past blog contest here, but one thing is for sure - the bigger the prize pool the more links you’ll receive.

8. Write helpful resource lists

Writing helpful resource lists provides an excellent opportunity for people to stumble or digg your content or to bookmark for future use. Many bloggers will also link to your list if they find it’s of value to their readers. In fact, if you think this list was useful to you please give me a thumbs up with Stumble Upon or link to it on your blog

9. Disclose the income you earn

Although I don’t make a lot of money from my blog yet because I’ve disclosed my income I’ve been linked to by various “Top bloggers lists.” Now I do find it hilarious that I’ve only made a little over $100 in my best month and still managed to make it on the list it doesn’t matter because people are still linking to me. Also, keep in mind this tactic won’t work in most blog niches. i.e. people reading your blog about geology won’t care to see how much money you make every month.

10. Participate in blog carnivals

I haven’t tried participating in a blog carnival yet, but I’ve heard that it’s one of the easiest ways to earn backlinks and help improve your technorati rank. I’m going to be testing this out soon and will certainly post my results here.

Wraping it up

After incorporating several of these tactics I now have a Technorati authority of 62 and a rank of 106,632, which is still short of my goal of breaking the top 10,000 by the end of the year, but I have plenty of time left in the year and plan on really working on my rank hard in the upcoming months.

What tactics have worked well for you? Do you even care about your Technorati rank? Discuss in the comments below.

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Although attending a conference to network with other internet entrepreneurs is not on my list of goals for 2008, it’s certainly something I’d like to try and fit in this year. With all the conferences around it’s hard to pick which one to go to. If I had a choice I’d probably prefer to go to a blogging conference; however, with that said I’d be open to attend any in the Seattle area.

Here are a few internet marketing, blogging, search and affiliate conferences that I’ve found in my searches:

Affiliate Conferences

Affiliate Summit

Blogging Conferences

Blog World Expo

Search Conferences

Search Engine Strategies
Search Marketing Expo aka SMX

Internet Marketing

Elite Retreat
PubCon

Please help me add to the list by giving me info on additional conferences so I can put them in. I created this list first as a way to find out where I might try going this year but turned it into a post because I thought it would be useful for some of you as well. Looking at this list now one of the best options would have been SMX in Seattle. In fact, I found out one day before the conference that SMX was going to be in Seattle on June 3rd and June 4th, so I didn’t have a chance to request time off to attend. In fact the confernce was two bus stops before where I get off to go to work! So needless to say I was disappointed that I missed it.

I hope this list helps you out and again if you know of any other conferences I missed let me know and I’ll add them to the list. Which conferences have you gone to?

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This marks the second month that I’ve offered advertising on my blog and unfortunately I did not make more money than I did last month. The primary reason why I didn’t pass my numbers was because of an inline ad sale that got pushed to this month’s numbers and a sponsored review that didn’t come through. There were a few problems with my ad management system OIO Publisher that caused the delay but they look to be resolved now. I just received the paypal payment for the ad today but because it didn’t go through last month I didn’t want to apply it to last month’s. Anyway enough of the excuses check out the earnings break down:

Private Ad Sales: $65
Kontera: $.95 (Didn’t run the whole month)

Total: $65.95

It’s too bad that the sales I had expected to come in didn’t, but these things happen and you can’t let them get you down. I’m an inside sales account manager in my day job and have had my fair share of sales that I expected to come in that didn’t, but June is a new month. I’m sure that I’ll hit $200 this month especially because I already have a good start and another banner renewal coming in (no hopes up though lol).

Advertiser Shout Out:

Thousand Dollar Profits - Thanks Mark! Too bad we couldn’t get the order in last month though
Fresh Press Themes - Hyder won the 468 x 60 banner two months ago and decided to renew it last month because he was receiving some good traffic from it.
I Need Alex - Thank’s for your blog button purchase Alex
Web Design - Nice snag on the sitewide link. I’m surprised more people haven’t taken advantage of this considering this blog now has a PR4 and the links are only $10/month!

I’m still making progress towards my $1,000 a month goal by the end of this year and although there was a slight downturn this month I remain confident that I will reach my goal. If you’re interested in advertising on this blog please read my advertising page for more detailed information. For more ways to earn money on your blog or to read about the companies I work with check out my recommendations.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have several case studies that I’m currently running and will be posting more info on those this month. To ensure you don’t miss out on some great ideas be sure to Subscribe to my RSS feed.

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WPAuctions is a wordpress plugin that allows you to post auctions for items on your blog without having to pay fees. I’m currently running it on my blog (I need to add another item right now though) in the right hand sidebar.

Here is my WPAuctions Review in case you’re interested in reading about the plugin in more detail, but either way if you thought about picking it up before I’d recommend snagging it now at the reduced price. You can buy it for $15 on DealDotCom now.

I’ve been following this website for a while now and haven’t seen a lot of amazing deals so I’ll only really post about the true gems. What do you guys and gals think about these short posts where I highlight the best deals on DealDotCom?

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In the past few weeks I’ve been working on several ideas for some really compelling content on my blog. In fact, as I write this post I currently have 36 drafts in my wordpress admin area. Some of these drafts are just one line topics but others are half completed work in progress posts that I’ve been updating slowly from time to time. All of the posts ideas I come up with are done using my simple steps to avoid writers block that I’ve written about before.

The posts that I’ve been slowly working on for the past few weeks are the ones that excite me the most. These are the posts that I truly believe have the potential to be linked to by top bloggers, receive a spike of traffic from Stumble Upon, Digg etc. and could even be used as a future resource for bloggers to come back to. I’ll be posting a few of these in June and am really interested to see how they do to not only increase traffic but to also improve my RSS subscription numbers.

Other posts that I’ve been spending a lot of time on are case studies. What I won’t do is write about a new website I’m going to launch on my blog (post the URL) and then analyze the web statistics after a certain period of time. Do you see where the problem is? If you’re analzying data after posting the URL on your blog the numbers won’t be as accurate as they show be. I hate when people do this. Especially if the website that is being written about is a test to see how much money can be made from it “without work.” Either way I really enjoy reading detailed case studies because I’ve been able to learn a lot from them which is exactly why I want to document and share more of my real life examples as well.

How do you plan out future posts or do you just pick out a topic to write about it that day?

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I’ve posted on numerous occassions that I run this blog, along with the rest of my websites as a part time job on the side. It has always been my goal to do it as a full time living, but I’m still not there yet. Obviously the benefits to working for yourself on a full time basis are numerous but what sticks out in my mind as the best part is the extra time you have in the day to work on your projects. You can see why by reading what a typical day looks like for me:

1. Get up at 6:04 AM and get ready for work
2. Leave at 6:20 AM and head to the train station
3. Get on the train at 6:35 AM that heads north
4. Try to get work done on the terrible train internet connection
- I turn my computer on and bring up my feed reader before I leave my place because most days I never get a connection. I usually just read my RSS feed, but when I have an internet connection I tend to get a lot more done.
5. Arrive in Seattle by 7:20 AM and walk to the bus
6. Get on the bus at 7:28 AM that heads down the Seattle waterfront
7. Get off the bus at 7:42 AM and start walking to work (Enjoy the Seattle waterfront view)
8. Arrive in the office at 7:51 AM and “start the day”
9. Take lunch at noon until 1:00 PM play a couple games of foosball
10. Finish up work by 5:07 PM
11. Leave the building and walk to the bus
12. Get on the bus by 5:18 PM that travels south along the Seattle waterfront
13. Get off the bus at 5:32 PM and walk to the train station
14. Wait ten to fifteen minutes for the southbound train to arrive
15. Log onto the internet as the train departs at 5:55 PM (The internet is better on this train)
- Check email, read RSS feeds, write posts for this blog, do minor administrative tasks for other websites
16. Reach my train stop at 6:40 PM
17. Walk to my truck and head back home
18. Set foot in the door at 6:50 PM
19. Make some food / hang out with my wife Ann
20. Get onto Halo 3 and start doing Halo Lessons at 8:00 PM
21. Turn off my Xbox 360 at around 11:00 PM
22. Finish out the day by doing a few of the following things:
Update the Excel spreadsheet that contains all of the Halo lessons that have been paid for, make lunch for tomorrow, upload any files to my websites, post on various forums (mostly my own)
23. Get into bed by midnight
24. Repeat cycle

So as you can tell by this schedule, I’m either at work or traveling to it for nearly 13 hours every day. Fortunately I am able to use the internet on the train; however, it’s not very good connection especially on the way up. I’m probably going to buy a Verizon wireless card for my laptop so I can get more work done and feel more comfortable logging onto secure websites (rather than using an unsecured wireless connection), but I just haven’t spent the time to research it.

The Halo Lessons portion of my day will probably drop down to about one hour a day soon, but I’ve basically been doing about two to three hours of lessons a day for Halo 3 because of a recent donation to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for $500. My wife is running a marathon in June and has been tasked with raising $4,000 for Leukemia and Lymphoma research as a part of the process. In the month of March I donated all of the money earned from lessons to the cause and a friend of a friend found out about what I was doing. He is a successful guy with a desire to improve his Halo skills so he donated $500 (which was actually doubled because his wife works for Microsoft that has a matching donation program). So I’ve been doing a couple hours a day with him.

/sidetrack

So on average when I’m not doing a lot of Halo lessons I have around three hours a day to hang out with my wife, do more intensive web work, watch movies, be lazy etc. Pretty busy huh?

What’s your work schedule look like? I’d love to read about your day so let me know if you write a post by using the contact form above. Or better yet link back to this post as your inspiration for the post idea

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