How to Set Up Contact Forms & Archives Pages

How to Create a Contact Form

You would be surprised at just how many bloggers don?t have a contact form on their blog. But why would you want or need one? Well if you are trying to market something, be it yourself, your services, a product or even a brand ? anything at all, you are going to need some way for your potential customers to be able to contact you. Unfortunately with the amount of spam around these days, it is unwise to publish your email address online. A contact form, however, means that your visitors can contact you with an email even though your actual email address remains hidden away on the server.

You can create a form manually using HTML but there’s no need to go to those lengths unless you need something specific. If all you need is a simple way for your visitors to send you a message then I recommend the great WordPress plugin from The Marketing Technology Blog.

Once it is installed, from your WordPress dashboard go to ?Settings? to find a new option called ?Contact Form?. Click on this option to reach the contact form editor.

You’ll need to fill in the email address to send the email to (don’t worry, this is hidden), a subject line for the email, and some standard messages. You can also put in a question that your visitor must type in to avoid spammers.

Once this is set up, you will still need to create the form itself. You can use a WordPress page or post. All you have to do is to type %%wpcontactform%% in to the body of the page, then when it is displayed on your website, the text will be replaced by the actual form.

That?s all there is to it! I would recommend, however, that you send yourself a message via your form to test that it works!

Setting Up Archives Pages

WordPress does have built-in archives features but they will only show the full post, it provides no simple way to merely see a contents table at a glance. Luckily, plug-ins come to our rescue yet again. There is a great one at idunzo.com.

What it does is to create a single page that displays just a single link for each post. It groups the links into months and you can also show the number of comments each post received.

Once the plug-in is installed you will see a new option called ?SRG Clean Archives? in the ?Settings? menu. There are several checkboxes allowing you to tweak the output but you may find that the defaults are fine.

The process for making the archives page is similar – you have a piece of text to insert which gets replaced by the actual archives output when the page is published. However there is one subtle difference – you have to type in the text in the HTML view of the page, and not in the Visual view.

The text you need to type is: <!–srg_clean_archives–>

This is actually an HTML tag (a comment) which is why it needs to be input in the HTML view. If you type it into the visual view then this is what you will actually see on your page when output.

Expert Bloggers Make More Money Than Reporters

There are basically two types of bloggers in the world – reporters and experts – and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report). Becoming an expert is crucial to make money online.

If you have ever taken an affiliate marketing training or attended a seminar specifically for novices, you have probably heard about the two different camps. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you earn an online income then the model is based on content, people are taught to either begin as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I’ll be frank, you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, increased income because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to find you rather than you having to seek others out, partnerships come easier, etc. experts in most cases simply earn more money and attract more accolades.

Most Bloggers Simply Report

The thing with expertise is that it needs – training. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually begin without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by reporting on and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many bloggers it’s a necessity in the beginning until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts – there are far more reporters than experts, hence reporters often struggle to gain publicity and when they do, they often just help the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don’t Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time researching products about the Work from Home niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study affiliate marketing from a mentor (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money blogging you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateur bloggers trying to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry – the affiliate marketing industry – not realizing that without expert status based on proven record and all the benefits that come with it, it’s next to difficult to succeed.

Even people, who enjoy some success, say for example growing an contact list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an contact list of 1,000 people. Now I have no issues with this idea, I think it’s fine to teach novices and leverage whatever achievements you have, the difficulty is that people gravitate to the same niche – affiliate marketing – and rarely can be differentiated.

How many experts out there do you know of that all say they teach the same things – email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the related niches that fall under the category of affiliate marketing. It’s a competitive industry, yet when you listen to your friends and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money online (and let’s face it – making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) – your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the goal is to identify yourself as an expert and you have not spent the past 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another subject to establish expertise in.

Give it time and stick with what you do to learn and then translate that training into training for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.

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Easily Start a Blogging Business with No Technical Knowledge

Starting your own blogging business is a good way to make money online, but when you don’t have the technical know-how to get started it can be overwhelming. But don’t fear, there is a solution for you.

Do you think every successfull blogger or webmaster knows their way around the technical aspects? No, not all of them do, but still they keep creating blogs. How do they do it?

One word: outsourcing.

By handing over the difficult tasks to people that know much more about it than you do, you save considerable time and you ensure that the job is being done right the first time.

Yes, it’s true, outsourcing does cost you some money, but when you consider the time it would take to do it yourself, you will soon see how worthwile it is.

Learn the benefits of having your own blogging business:

- Create a passive income – Work from home – Write about any topic that interests you – Multiple ways to make money – Very small daily time commitment

There are a lot of people that create blog just for the fun of it, but there are also thousands of people that are making a decent monthly income through their blogging business. You can be one of them: you just need to start.

The blog set up might be the first problem that you encounter when starting your blogging business. When you don’t have extensive knowledge of domain names, hosting and blog installation this might be the hardest part. If you can outsource this to someone that is experienced in this domain, you will save yourself many hours of frustration!

Outsourcing the blog set up will save you time, which you can use to research article topics and work out a promotional plan for your blog. These things are the ones that are important, as they will bring you the money! Let someone else do the tech tasks while you focus on the things that are the most important.

When you are really serious of setting up a blogging business, but you just don’t know where to start, outsource the initial technical tasks while you work on the content of your blog. Remember, it’s the content that will keep the visitors coming back for more.

Make Money Blogging

Have you ever wondered how people make money out of blogging? Blogging is a popular pastime, and why wouldnt it be? It allows its participants to share their thoughts with the world, reaching an audience thats as wide as you want it to be, and generally very receptive and enthusiastic. But with so many people taking advantages of the benefits of blogging there comes the question of how you can still manage to take advantage of the financial benefits of blogging. The good news is that you can, and the better news is that its easier than you think.

The most obvious way to make money online is to get advertisers for your page. Programs like Googles Adsense allow advertisers and bloggers to connect easily. Youre unlikely to make big amounts of money in this way, but theres nothing wrong with a little extra income for doing what you love. This will be even easier if your blog is related to a hobby or field of interest of yours. If, for instance, you blog about baking, then your blog will be an ideal place for advertisers of baking products or cookbooks. It makes sense that the more popular your blog is, the more companies will want to advertise on it.

You and your advertisers can make blog advertising even more lucrative when it turns into blog sponsorship. If an advertiser really likes your site – and perhaps if theyve placed an ad on your site and got good results – they may want to enter into a sponsorship deal with you. Some sponsors pay their bloggers per post, and this means that youd be able to make money more regularly with your blog. If you want to keep your moneymaking blog separate from the blog you have for fun, keep in mind that many companies need someone to write posts for their own blogs.

Once youve built up a large and loyal following, youll be able to make money from them. A “tip jar” is a great way for your readers to help you to make money with blogs, to keep your blog up and running – and, if youre lucky, to allow you to spend less time working at a “day job” and more time writing for your blog. This isnt the kind of option thatll see you making a lot of money from your blog, so if youre blogging to make money, this isnt a good idea. But if youre blogging for the love of it, this might be for you.

If you have a real talent for blogging, and you want to really make big money from it, you might want to try blog flipping. This is when you buy a blog from one person or company and sell it to another… But youll find that what you do with it in the time in between is what makes all the difference. If you can increase a blogs readership and following dramatically between buying and selling it, you can make a great profit on the sale. Of course, youll do even better if you do your research on where to buy and sell.

The internet creates a vast array of ways to make money online, and blogging is one of the most appealing of them. There are more ways of making money with blogs that arent mentioned here, and these include consulting and speaking (making money from your established online reputation), merchandising (selling interesting blog-related goods) and getting involved with blog networks. If none of these appeal to you, look around and see what you can find. The better your blog is, the more readers youll have, and the easier itll be to make money from the blog. The important thing to remember is that the more work you put into your blog, the better itll be.

Start Blogging For Profit Today!

Who hasn’t imagined blogging for profit as a way to bring in extra money? This goal is definitely possible for even an average writer, or someone who is not a computer pro. The only qualities you need are determination, patience and time to learn blogging basics. Of course, many people who begin blogging will drop out when the going gets tough. So be forewarned, blogging for profit takes time and lots of patience to see your profits begin to come in. The most important ingredient for success is a good plan – so spend the time to get organized, and follow your plan to success.

A successful blog requires a large and consistent readership. With more traffic, you are more likely to get advertisers, and to earn income from ads. Building this visitor base can be hard, with the millions of blogs out there and more coming online each day. Beyond having just a good idea, you need to learn how to effectively market your blog and get the word out.

Many bloggers will also have poor results because they focus on writing posts for their blog, but not on marketing it. Posting often can help bring traffic to your site by keeping your blog ranked high in search engines. yet getting traffic is more important. Spend more time on marketing than on writing, by exchanging links with other bloggers, posting on blogs, writing articles and other proven traffic methods.

As with anything valuable, success will probably not come overnight. To see profit from your blog, you will need patience to keep on with your posting and working to get traffic, even when you aren’t seeing results. Building your readership takes time, to reach the number of visitors that will make a difference to your bottom line. Keep following your plan, remind yourself of your goals, and eventually you’ll find the profits start to trickle in.

An Introduction to SEO For Blogs

Some people think that SEO is something that can just be ‘done later’ but SEO goes into the way your blog is setup and into everything that you write so it’s a good idea to get an idea about it right at the very beginning so that you don’t have to go back and correct mistakes later on which can be very difficult if not impossible in some cases.

Why is SEO Important?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and it is a great way to get traffic because it’s completely free and once the traffic begins to flow it can continue to pour in for months or even years. However it can take a while to get to this stage which is a good reason to bear it in mind from the start.

To do SEO you need content that ranks in the search engines and of course with blogs being so content-rich they make excellent candidates. However if you don’t consider your SEO from the outset all those posts may not be at all optimised and your efforts go to waste and hordes of potential traffic could be lost.

Making Sure Your Posts Are Optimised

The first step is to know what keywords you want to rank for. Keyword research is a large topic of its own and there is not room to cover it here so if you are not familar with that do a little research first. However, don’t obsess over this because of a blog has to primarily appeal to humans and not just search engines.

However if your blog is more specialised then it might be obvious what keywords to pick. For example if you had some kind of photography blog and you were reviewing a particular camera then it would make sense to optimise the post for the brand and model of the camera as that it what people would search for. There are several places in the post when you need to place your keyword:

1) The title – the title is the single most important factor and you want your keyword as close to the start as possible.

2) The post content – you need to make sure you are writing about what you want to target! Don’t overdo it but make sure it appears a handful of times throughout the post.

3) Tags – WordPress and other blogging platforms allow you to add tags to posts and this is a great way to add keywords to any post.

4) The URL – it is preferable for your keywords to be embedded in the actual URL rather than having something like www.myblog.com/?p=123

What If You Have Already Written Lots of Posts?

If you already have some earlier posts that you wrote before you learned about SEO there are still some changes you can make retrospectively. One thing that is very important is to ensure that you do not change your URL as this will cause broken links to appear in search engines.

However you can change the text within your posts. You can tweak the titles, the text within the post itself and you can add and modify the post tags. Probably the most important change would be to alter your titles to make sure your keywords are as early as possible. For example, which one of these two is better if you want to rank for “make money online”? :

- 10 Great Ways to Make Money Blogging Today! – Make Money Blogging – 10 Killer Ideas!

The second one is better as far as SEO goes because the target phrase comes first in the title. Have a read through your article and make sure your keyword is liberally sprinkled throughout the copy text and don’t forget to add a tag if possible.

Once you make changes it can take a while for Google to pick it up and act on it so don’t expect results overnight!

What Is Blogging? – Apart From Exciting

Today the Internet plays a major role in our lives. It is not only the world’s biggest library and the best source of current information on almost everything. It is also the fastest way to communicate with friends wherever they live on earth.

The hottest trend and probably the most successful way of expressing yourself on the Internet is the blog.

What does blogging actually mean?

The whole concept revolves around the personal need to express feelings or thoughts, share opinions, spread news or simply have fun. A blog is actually a small individual web page more like a diary that you keep online. It receives regular updates and allows the use of links, photos, videos and extended documents.

What attracts many people to the blogging phenomenon is the great opportunity of making themselves heard. If you want to reach a particular audience, odds are that you can do it via a blog. No wonder they’re popular.

The goal and scope of your blog entirely depends on what you the blogger want to achieve. When you’ve got great pieces of news, funny links or a hobby to talk about, a blog may be just the right way to open up to an international community.

Most often, blogs attract more attention than large and well-designed web pages. How is it possible for blogging to have reached such a status?

First of all, blogs are current — they provide fresh and rich informational content, and links to other sites or blogs on the topic. Equally important is focus — blogs zero in on a single issue that is of interest to their regular blog readers.

Why do blogs receive more traffic than other web pages, in many cases today? Ah, I’m glad you asked. It’s all a matter of how the search engines work. What a search engine values most is content that fresh and high quality. Blogs tend to provide this, especially the freshness dimension. Fresh meaty interesting blog content pretty much explains blog traffic levels.

As the concept and the technologies of blogging have matured, the idea of an online diary is accompanied now by many commercial blogs. Yes, Virginia, you can make money blogging. In fact, I know of one young man who has bought a house with the money he has made from his blogs. More on that later…

Let’s say you like gardening, and you’ve also started your own home based business of growing plants. A blog on flowers and plants where you share your ideas and experience (and yes, throw in some photos for sure) would illustrate the commercial possibilities of a blog. How? Because you could also write about gardening books or e-books along with telling people where they can buy their gardening supplies. In other words, you not only talk about the joys and challenges of gardening… you also use your blog as a great promotional tool to sell gardening stuff.

Internet marketing and blogging have come together because blogging is such an easy way to share ideas and information. The blog is also an ideal tool for online marketing so the chance to “make extra bucks” is now wide open. The barriers to entry are low. Anybody who can use a computer can learn to run their own blog – and even make money from blogging.