It seems like the Google Panda updates are never-ending and we all need to review our SEO strategies to stay in the game. Many Webmasters depend on their rankings in the search engines and it is very important to stay near the top of those results. All Google seems to want to do is reward high quality websites and get rid of the junk plaguing our search engines.

When the first Google panda update hit, one of my websites was severely affected. It was not because of duplicate content, because there wasn’t any. The main reason was bad HTML, broken links, and poor SEO. This happened because the website was so large that I got lazy. My traffic dropped dramatically and so did my income for that website. Then I realized that I better get my act together and get on with implementing my usual SEO strategies that I had recently been neglecting.

I wrote a guest post article about how to fight back after that Google Panda update and received a fair amount of interest in the subject. This is why I am continuing on the same line as the Google Panda updates have not stopped coming and therefore we all need to be prepared.

The recent updates have seen big link building networks like Build My Rank simply shut their doors as Google de-indexed every site in their network. I wonder which link building network is next? I personally used UAW and they are still going at the moment, but how for how long, I don’t know. I guess they are setup a bit different.

In the light of all these changes I have had to review my SEO strategies. This does not mean any drastic changes, it just means that I have left a few SEO steps to gather dust.

Did the Google Panda Updates Change my SEO Strategies?

I would be lying if I said that the Google panda updates did not affect my SEO strategies. In the old days we could build any old link and get ranking in the search engines easily. You did not have to have great content or do anything special to get to the top of the search engines.

As Google rolled out these unexpected changes, every Webmaster had to adjust their SEO strategies, according to what Google required. SEO strategies that were used for years became worthless over night and disappeared from existence.

I know it must sound a bit one sided mentioning only Google and ignoring the other search engines. However there is really no point mentioning any other search engines as Google is the one with the traffic.

SEO Strategies I am Not Using

• Mass link building

Not saying you cannot do this, as some systems are still working, but for how long? I believe this is one of those methods that will be caught up with. Much like the blog networks that have been shutting down, Google will catch up with the rest, and destroy them too.

• Mass article marketing

Same as the mass link building, not a good idea for a serious future. Also mass article marketing usually involves spun or maybe duplicate content. This is a dead give away.

• Link Exchange

Exchanging a link went out years ago as far as I am concerned. Back in the old days that’s all we did, exchange links. Later it went onto to three way linking and more variations. Now all that is a huge waste of time and practically worthless.

• Buying links

Buying links has always been frowned upon. I really cannot say how this impacts on your SEO efforts as I have never bought a link. I have sold links though. I like to think of this as selling advertising space.

• Repeated Anchor text

I never have recommended using repeated anchor text. I always use a variety of keywords to have links pointing to content. Even when I wrote this article about how to dominate Google, I varied the anchor text using related keywords. There are no tricks to ranking well. I simply used keyword anchor text, varied and related, in amongst original content.

SEO Strategies I am Using

Of course you have to implement some SEO strategies to get your website ranking in the search engines, and I am not sure if I have picked my favourite techniques or simply the ones that worked for me. Either way, these strategies are working for me and have been for many years.

• Guest Blogging

I am one of the biggest fans of guest blogging and I cannot tell you how fantastic it is, unless you get off your bum, and do it yourself. The links you are able to place in these guest posts are amazing and do work their magic. I built up this website on the backbone of guest posting alone.

• Article marketing

Although guest posting is my favorite way of link building, I still do article marketing, but manually of course. Ezine Article and Articlebase still work a treat for me. They obviously do not work like they used to, in the good old days, but they still count as a valuable link and help with my SEO strategies. After all, this is original content with an in content link.

• Social Media

There is more emphasis on social media attention. Not that the actual links count for SEO, it counts more for a vote in your favour from a huge variety of users.

• Better content on my blogs (SEOed)

Even though I think that content is not the only king when it comes to building websites, I do make sure I create killer content to please my website visitors. To me it is all about pleasing the humans and writing SEO content at the same time. Yes I still do SEO as people need to know what your information is about, and without keywords, your message can be blurred.

Also I believe that 500 word articles are a dime a dozen and will not be classed as top content. Hey lets face it, that’s what most people publish and in reality, can you really convey your message or important information in 500 words?

• Be a Natural Authority

If you have to do sneaky things to get your website ranking and crush your competitors at the same time, you must not be a true authority. I do not have any competitors as I simply strive to supply the best content and experience for my readers. If someone does better then they deserve their top spot.

Choose your niche and own it. Never go into something you are not 100% into. Having a passion for your topic is the bare minimum you need to succeed and keep you going.

• Natural Linkbuilding

When building any link, if it is contained in amongst original content and is linking to a related topic then it seems natural. It also seems like it belongs.

Recently I wrote a long tutorial on link building and it mentions building links to look natural. This includes varied anchor link text on varied domains, hopefully in content links.

Google is now looking for anything that looks like link spam so you should never overdo any link building promotions.

• Onpage SEO

Is SEO dead?

Hell no! Google has said on their blog, “Effective search engine optimization can make a site more crawlable and make individual pages more accessible and easier to find. Search engine optimization includes things as simple as keyword research to ensure that the right words are on the page, not just industry jargon that normal people will never type.”

There has never been any real secrets to SEO as Google even has their SEO starters guide that lists every detail you need for SEO.

What is dead is devious ways to get links in order to rank well in the search engines. There is absolutely no doubt, you still need to use SEO techniques appropriately, as these strategies have not changed.

Image credit: http://www.searchlaboratory.com/

The Moral of SEO Strategies in 2012

I guess the moral of the story is if you are doing your SEO by hand you are bound to be safe from further updates. Also if your create fantastic content and SEO to match you will not have a problem. Getting links the easy way just makes them less valuable in my book. So put the real effort in and you will be rewarded. Take shortcuts and might get caught out.

Considering the recent Google updates, what are some of the SEO strategies your are sticking with in 2012?

Your recent blog statistics showed that the number of readers is dwindling. Those who visited do not stay long. Why doesn’t anyone read your blog, you ask?

Especially after you spent so much time and effort, not to mention funds on building a website. Well, chances are it’s the same reason why students fall asleep during lectures. Or someone trying to avoid long queues (did you know that in some parts of the world, people get paid to queue for others?). I think you got the message!

Yes, your blog is probably B-O-R-I-N-G to others. No offense but not everyone is interested in what you had for lunch today. Or to read a 2,000 words posting on quantum physics. But having a boring blog is only one of the few reasons why some blogs have no readers. There are many other reasons.

But don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world. I’ve list down 5 main reasons why no one reads your blog except perhaps your family and your best friend. I have also included ways to overcome them.

1. Boring Blogs

A few years ago, you could get away with a not-so-interesting blog. Back then, blogging was still a fairly new concept and there were not that many around.

Fast forward to today, there are countless of awesome blogs and in order to stand out, you need to create an edge. People need a reason to want to come to your blog. So if your blog has:

• all text with no or few images
• monotonous writing or academic sounding posts
• a sitting-on-the-fence approach to a topic

… then you are sending your readers a boring message. And eventually, even the most enthusiastic reader too will tune out.

How to overcome:

In today’s blogging world, just like most things in life, the laws of attraction works. Give your readers what they want to read, or benefits to visit your blog. It could be reviews of the latest technology or the hottest gossip in town or even controversies, depending on your blog type! On my web hosting blog, I always share great web hosting deals – for example a huge discount on Bluehost hosting plan at $3.95/month (instead of the standard $6.95/month)! Satisfy those what’s-in-it-for-me needs.

A blog is a two-way communication unlike traditional print. Write your posts as if you are talking to your readers. Let them know that there’s a person behind that blog of yours. Engage them by fielding questions and asking for feedback. Also, response to the answers you get.

Img credit: http://heartifb.com/

2. Not Posting Often And Consistently

How often do you post? Everyday? Once a week? Once a month? No specific time? Well, if you are not posting often enough, your readers would eventually grow out of the habit of clicking on your blog URL. Even those frequent visitors who had been visiting your blogs previously, they would over time, forget about your blog too!

How to overcome:

Easy. Post regularly. Make sure you consistently publish fresh and quality contents. Give your readers a good read every time they check back at your blog. You would find that the more you publish, they more readers you get.

If you don’t have enough ideas on what to post, just hop over to some of your buddy’s blogs or blogs of similar topics for inspiration. But, if you found that you don’t have the time to write, do check out our 5 Productivity Tips.

3. Too Many Advertisements

Ever been to those blogs that has tons of advertisements that shout at you? How did you feel? Having some advertisements is alright but crowding your blog with banners and links would turn off your readers.

Moreover, blogs with lots of advertisements usually take a long time to load, which I’m sure you know, is not good for SEO purposes.

How to overcome:

While I am not against having advertisements on your blog, there should be a limit to these. If you do put up advertisements, it pays to ensure that your blog is optimized to ensure speedy loading and also that your hosting provider has enough bandwidth to support them.

If you decide to write “promotional posts”, then do draft them out in such a way that your readers would benefit from them too e.g. providing valuable information within that post.

4. Your Blog Design Leaves Much To Desire

I’ll be honest here. Blog design does play a crucial part in drawing new readers and persuading them to stay. Take a step back and review your bog design. How does it fare? You can also ask your readers whether they think you need a makeover. That’s an engaging post there!

How to overcome:

Select themes that go well with your blog topic. For example, if you have a photography blog, choose a theme that offers a lovely gallery and a home page that allows you to showcase your works. If you have no clue where to get such a great WordPress, you can start your search at Elegant Themes.

Other design features to take into consideration include typeface (whether it’s legible) and choice of colors (striking or easy on the eye combinations). Your choices would depend on your target audiences.

5. Lack Of Exposure

On the other hand, you may have developed the best looking blog and publishing great posts every other day and yet still experience low readership and traffic. What could be wrong? Well, it takes more than design and good writing to draw readers. You need to market your blog. People need to know that it exists!

Poor promotion leads to poor SEO and poor traffic. If your URL is buried deep in the 7th page of a search, chances are no one will find you.

How to overcome:

Learn how to SEO your blog and raise its ranking e.g. inserting proper keywords, building backlinks, installing WordPress SEO plugins and fine-tuning Permalinks. You can look for more tips at our SEO articles.

Another effective way to promote your blog is to guest post. This way, you build a relationship with other bloggers. In blogging, it’s about being part of a community. They come to visit your blog and you drop by theirs. They comment on your posts and you leave your thoughts at theirs. The more blogs you visit and leave comments, the more people are aware of you and would return the visit.

When your readership increases, so would your pagerank and traffic. The higher your pagerank, the more new readers you will attract. The cycle goes on.

Other than that, you could also develop an email marketing list or make use of social media. Just drop an email or tweet or update Facebook status to let your friends know about your new post.

A lack of readers is quite demotivating to a blogger, especially after all the hard work poured in. But the good news is that you can certainly do something about it, as shown in the above. Hopefully, you will be able to boost your blog readership through implementing these suggestions.

Do you have any other tips to add? Feel free to share them below.

Moving a website is a big job and as you might now be aware of, I recently moved my website to another domain name. This one you are on now! I had a pumping website with 20,000 Alexa and Page 4, but I decided that the move was the best idea for my business to move forward. You can see my reasons in this article about this website being ready for a change.

The process of actually moving to another domain was not as hard as I thought but it did require a lot of detailed jobs to be completed.

How to Move a Website to a New Domain

This is just a guideline and is not set down in stone. As every website is different, they require different tasks to be completed in order to accommodate the move.

There are options to clone a WordPress website using WPTwin but in this case I have manually moved my website to a new domain.

WARNING: This is a detailed list, but not as long as others I have made.

#1. Write a List of Links You Can Change

This is something I have thought about long and hard and I am sure I have missed some possible link changes. Make sure you do this before you go moving the website because you will need to start changing the links as soon as possible.

• Contact websites that you have guest posted on
• Change profiles on guest posting sites
• Change links on article websites
• Request author access
• Change forum signatures

#2. Write a List a Urls to Redirect

This is kind of silly as I wanted to redirect every post and page on my old site to my new domain. Please note that I have done this before so I know how it works.. Google catches on and indexes the new page instead. I just have to wait a bit for this take affect.

#3. Buy Your Domain Name

Well I bought the domain name purely based on the fact that I like it, not really for SEO. This one has come from my gut feeling and I am running with it.

I thought “WordPress website builder” was a bit constricting and also boring, whereas “Lets build websites” is screaming action!!!

#4. Install WordPress on Your New Domain

I have made so many tutorials showing how easy it is to install WordPress and build a website from scratch. It probably took me a minute to do this and all the hard work was in the tweaking and importing settings.

#5. Block the Search Engines

I used the WordPress settings to block search engine access so I could create the website with my existing content without being penalized for duplicate content. I simply went to the privacy settings in my dashboard and chose the option not to open my blog to the search engines.

#6. Configure WordPress

As I mentioned, all of the hard work was in the details and configuring WordPress was one of these details. I guess you can also call it WordPress website setup, making sure all of the settings are just right. After all, I did not want any of my website visitors to really get hit with any major changes.. I aimed to have everything look and feel the same.

One thing I must stress is to change your permalinks when moving a website as this is the key to everything! In my case I had /%postname%/

#7. Install Your Favourite Plugins

You never realize how much you rely on your favourite WordPress Plugins until they are gone. Because I manually exported and imported my website, the plugins then had to be installed. The reason I did this is because I have left the unwanted, space wasting plugins behind.

Ok these are the plugins I have installed so far. Basically I could not live without them!

Commentluv Premium

I had to install Commentluv Premium for my website visitors, not so much for me. A website is not cool without it!

Keyword Winner

This plugin is one I really cannot do without. I dropped Scribe for this plugin and could not be happier. Of course I am saving loads of money, (keyword winner is a one off payment and Scribe costs monthly) but that’s not why I need this plugin. This plugin is doing a job that I used to do manually. I have even made videos about how I did this manually in my article about how to dominate Google rankings.

SEOPressor

Yes my old friend SEOPressor. I am still using this plugin to tell me my keyword density and keep me in line. Basically I get the kewyords I need from Keyword winner and then I optimized for them using SEOPressor.

WordPress SEO byYoast

Yes Yoast’s plugin is very cool and I needed it. I wanted to start with the right plugins from the beginning so my SEO would be up to scratch.

Clean Archives Reloaded

This is the tiny little plugin I use to create a sitemap on my WordPress websites. It is very simple but does the job.

Fast Secure Contact Form

I love this plugin and it is free! It has loads of options and is very easy to use. One thing it is good for is installing detailed forms into your website without having to do all the difficult code.

Sharebar

Sharebar is one social media plugin that makes your website look professional and is very easy to use. The only thing I do to make this plugin perfect is to add the google plus button to sharebar.

Tweet old post

Tweet old posts is a secret of mine that is not really a secret!! LOL Well a lot of people ask me how I find time to tweet all the time, but it’s not me, it’s this plugin working for me. As if anyone has time to hang out on twitter?

WordPress Popular Posts

I like this plugin, which is also free, as it is just simple and does what I want. Of course other people might have other more fancy popular post plugins, but I like to keep it simple.

Author hReview

This is a free plugin from my friend Hesham Zebida from Famousbloggers.net. (What a cool name..) This is a review plugin that is definitely bringing me more sales and it’s looks great too! Check it out in the sidebar.

If you want to find any of the free plugins I have mentioned you simply go to your plugins menu in the wp dashboard and choose to add new. Then search for the plugin I have mentioned.

#8. Copy Your Theme Layout

I am using Thesis WordPress theme with a custom design by me. It is very simple but works well for me. Therefore I simply exported the Thesis settings and imported them into the new domain. I also tweaked the CSS a bit and presto…my theme was back! This was important to me, to have the website look almost exactly the same and thesis made this very easy for me.

#9. Export Your Website

All you have to do is (in your old website) go to the WordPress Dashboard Tools menu and Press the export link to export a website. Then you will be prompted to install a plugin. Then you can export a file to your computer and use this to import to the new domain.

#10. Import Your Website

Basically you do the same thing you did when you did the export. Just make sure you choose to import all users and all files and pictures. After that there is some editing to do. For example all user accounts are reset to subscriber status. Also Thesis post or thumbnail image urls will be set to the old domain. There might be other tweaks needed depending on your theme, but generally everything is imported and ready to run.

#11. Organize Your Sidebar

I recently wrote an article about Sidebar etiquette so I definitely did not want to break my own rules!!  I had to make sure my sidebar was not overcrowded with junk and that it also resembled the layout of my old site.

#12. Install Google Analytics

I have started websites before without installing some kind of analytics and it was definitely a mistake. You really need to keep any eye on what is going on with your website and how it is progressing. I also use basic Google analytics tracking to find problems or errors with my websites. It is really amazing what you can learn from these stats.

#13. Change Links in Ebooks

This is easy and is just a matter of using the search and replace feature to take one domain out and replace it with another. Also most of my links are redirected so I think I am pretty much covered, but the branding of the books will need to change..

#14. Change Social Media Profiles

You should go to all the major Social media sites to change your profile details. For example you can change your website URL for Twitter. You can even change your Twitter username if you like.

#15. Redirect Your RSS Feed

I went to Feedburner and put my new URL in the existing feed I had already set up. But the main thing I did here was left the feed URL for Feedburner the same. Therefore if it is submitted anywhere it will still be the same feed URL but the site URL will be different.

#16. Start Redirecting URLS

This is the worst part because I wanted to make sure it was working for most of my top content and money earners.

To redirect the individual urls I have simply used Thesis, my WordPress theme I was using on the site, to do a 301 redirect. See the screenshot below. Like I said, Google will catch on.

Google itself recommends that you redirect each and every page for a better user experience. This is what I have done. If I do a plain domain redirect the user does not get sent to the individual pages.

You also need to verify the new domain in Google webmaster tools and let Google know of the change of address.See the screenshot below.

#17. Move Your Affiliate Cloaks

I have PHP redirects set up for my affiliate links. This means that I created a file telling my links to look pretty. for example an affiliate link can look ugly but my Thesis affiliate link simply looks like this “http://letsbuildwebsites.com/go/thesis”. I created a folder called GO in my root directory, then I created a folder called Thesis. In that folder I placed a file called index.php with the redirect code on it. Thats it!

So when it came to moving these links all I had to do was copy the folders to the new domain. Presto! The affiliate were back in business and it was so easy. The other redirects also exist on the old server just in case…

#18. Send A Message to Your List

I haven’t done this yet but it is on the list!! The thing is, I wanted to give something away like a cool freebie. That might take a few more days but I will do it.. People love my freebies and I love making them!

#19. Change Auto Emails

I have a series of auto emails running on my list but they are only linking back to my old site which is redirected. Therefore any links clicked on will end up on this new site anyway… Well hopefully!!

#20. Open Your New Domain and Close the Old

This is important. There is no real rule to this but I have redirected my old posts to this website, then I have let the search engines in to index the site in the privacy settings. (remember I blocked the search engines while working)  BUT I have not shut the other website off yet to the search engines. I do not want it to drop out of the rankings before Google realizes that the page exists somewhere else. When I feel that there is the slightest bit of traffic to any of my older posts (now on my new domain)  from the search engines, then I will shut the doors on the old site.

At this point I will be happy that Google knows where the real content is.

#21. Redirect Through Your Domain Name Servers

I bought the old name from Namecheap and also this new one.. All I had to do was go there and setup a 301 redirect from the old name to the new name. Bang! It took a day to take affect but that was it! The job was done and Google snapped all this up quickly and started to index my new location.

The other sneaky thing I did to get indexed fast is to submit a sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools ASAP!

Oh No.. What Else?

Did I say that moving a website was easy? When writing this article I relized a few more things I had not done. I guess I will be finding and fixing problems for a while, but I know it will be worth it in the end.

Thanks for everyones support!! I really appreciate you all visiting the new domain. Hopefully if you ever decide to move a website, this list will help.

This website is ready for a change! Yes I am taking a different plunge, moving to this domain name and setting the old WordPress Website Builder business in concrete.

I realized that all the sales from this website are coming from the same path. From people who want to build a website and make money online. These people do not know WordPress exists at this point, they just want to build a website.

I have also taken a different path in the way I like to share my information. At first I thought this would be a HOW TO website with WordPress tutorials, however I have now realized I do not like fiddling with WordPress, I just like using it to build websites and make money.

People Get The Wrong Idea

As my website is really about building websites to make money money online, when people arrive here they presume it is only for WordPress users. Even though I use WordPress and love it, you can make money building websites using other content management systems if you wish to do so.

Many people showed this in their comments when they stated “hey this article can apply to any website, not just WordPress.” Yes that is the case and I have felt a bit boxed in. I thought a small niche would suit me but it does not. I want to go big and broad. (This is a long term plan)

Things like SEO, website traffic, building a community, making money on-line, and more, all apply to any website you like. I can use most of my own tips on a handmade html website or a WordPress website. Either way, the intention is the same, to make money from my website.

WordPress Foundation Trademark Breach

Yes I have the word WordPress in my domain name and to tell you the truth, I did not plan this website at all, but this is just another factor to convince me to move.

Not that the WordPress foundation has bothered me, but I do not feel like I own this name. Unfortunately this website was setup as an experiment that took off, totally by accident. Obviously that is not a bad thing though. I had no idea that I would enjoy showing people how to build websites and make money. In fact I had no idea that people were even interested in what I do as I was always too busy doing what I do.

Therefore I would like a domain name that says something about building websites to make money… or even just building websites and here it is Lets Build Websites.  You are already on the site so no need to fear.

Money is The Root

I want this website to be a success by bringing in huge amounts of money and by becoming a go to place for building websites or blogs to make money. I have decided that honesty is the best policy and making money is a big part of the success for me. I am not a pushy affiliate marketer but I do make great money from this website and others.

Most think that blatantly trying to make money is not the right thing to do, whereas I believe that anyone who says they do not want money is lying. We need it to survive. It’s like saying “Shhhh..Don’t tell anyone we eat food, we will just eat it secretly.” It is just something we need in life to get by. (But not if you are a hippy living off the land)

What About My Rankings

Not to worry too much. I have overhauled a bigger website than this one before and it turned out for the better. This is probably one of the reasons I can see that this is the right move. I know people think I will never get the great Page Rank and Alexa ranking back, but I will. No problem. I just have to be patient, and that I am.

Some links I have built can be changed, others will be redirected and some I will lose, these are the facts. I am happy with that.. If you can spare me a mention on your website, that would really help.

My Categories Are Wrong

As I have stated before, this website used to be an auto blog. Oh no shock horror!  The categories were pretty much setup to accommodate the articles and that’s it. Next time around I will make categories the right way, according to my SEO strategies. As the keywords are Lets Build Websites, there are plenty of cool related keywords to use for the categories.

What Will The Future Hold

Well when I am finished with the idea and then the move, this website will be exactly what I want it. I will not be half happy with it any longer. I am very confident that this is the right thing to do!

The future will be all about building websites to make money. It is as simple as that!

The Appearance

The website will look the same initially but the categories and resources will be different. There will be more focused information about building websites, getting traffic, SEO, and so on.. I don’t really do many actual WordPress tutorials as this is too boring for me and there are so many other websites that are far more qualified for this area.

How Can You Keep in Touch?

I know I will lose a lot of traffic at first, but no fear, you will see my guest posts around the internet and end up on my new website again. If you are really worried though, you can hook up with my RSS feed, get the Rss emailed to you, or get on my list.

You will also see me around the internet as I guest post on the usual websites to rebuild the links I need.

I guess you all think I am crazy but this is not a risk for me, it is just the next step in my business. But do you think I am crazy?

Well for starters, in this internet marketing business you will find that you buy a lot of products to see if they can help your business or not? Unfortunately not all of them turn out to be useful, but I can say with clear confidence that my Elegant themes membership is a bargain! I have written articles about buying internet marketing products but I rarely seriously recommend many products on this blog.

As you know, there are just so many fantastic plugins and themes you can get, but for those who own a WordPress blog, you will need no introduction to Nick Roach – the man behind Elegantthemes.com. Nick designs his own themes for his users and the basic intention of these themes is to create an elegant, simple and clean pack of uniqueness and style.

These themes intend to give beginners a chance to know the full functionality of their blog without having major website designing knowledge. His innovative designs have definitely made him popular and he is considered one of the best in creating awesome, yet user-friendly themes for WordPress blogs.

I am probably their biggest fan and I practise what I preach by using Elegant themes on many of my blogs. Here is one example http://wordpresswebsitehost.com/. I have tweaked this theme a bit to make it my own, but I am extremely happy and it converts too! Here is a screenshot just in case you are too lazy to click the link.. If you scroll down the home page it gets more interesting.

Why I Will Never Cancel This Premium Themes Membership

Easy functionality

One of the biggest advantages of Elegant themes is its user friendliness that allows users to manage their own website in terms of design and programming without much knowledge in it. Users can use their preferences on their blogs and tweak it the way they want their blog to look and feel. The options page in the E. panel allows any user to customize their site with the help of numerous widgets on the sidebar, custom images, gravatar, search bar and numerous other features. A slider for recent post, automatic resizing of images and a drop-down menu are some of the best easy-to-use options.

Excellent graphics

The themes that come from the site have excellent high resolution graphics and most of them come with numerous color option schemes. They offer an excellent contrast ratio and yet do not distract the viewer while reading text. The background offers soothing effects to make viewers more comfortable when they read and stay on a site. The site today offers more than 60 different themes to choose from and if you have several websites you can totally make each one unique. Elegantthemes by far, offers some of the most beautifully designed graphics.

Customer support

The customer support for installation and resolving problems on these themes is excellent. The support forum offers consistent support where one can post their queries and questions or search through previously solved threads. So, if you have some compatibility issues while installing your theme, customer support is always ready for you. Each theme has its own forum so it is not hard to find where to ask your questions.

Pricing

Compared to various other theme providers like Woothemes and Studiopress, Elegantthemes offers some of the most economical plans that charge you less than $40. This is not all, with $40 you can use unlimited number of times all the themes developed by Nick. However, once you unsubscribe to the plan, you will no longer gain access to your membership and its corresponding benefits. You will also not gain any access to any future releases. I could not possibly give up my membership as there are too many cool, innovative themes being added to the site.

Makes You Look Like a Pro

This is the biggest advantage to the Elegant themes membership, the fact that these themes will no doubt make you look good. You do not need to be a pro web designer or spend big dollars on web design to have a website that looks like it has been professionally designed. Thanks to Elegant Themes, we can all have a directory website, an Ecommerce store, a real-estate website, and more..

Saves Me Time

My time is precious and it took me years to realize, that YES you need a professional looking theme, but you do not have to spend too much time on developing this yourself. In fact web design for me is a complete waste of time. I am far better off to get straight into blogging and earning money, and with Elegant Themes I can do that! I can install a WordPress theme in minutes and get straight to work on building the blog.

Considering the excellent graphics, awesome pricing, unbeatable customer support and user-friendly options, Elegantthemes is considered to be one of the best in the designing business. The package offered on the site is best for those who have multiple sites and need to make each site look unique as well as professional. There is also a developers license available so you can use the themes for your clients websites which is also a great price for a years membership.

You tell me, why would I ever cancel this premium themes membership?

Can you imagine building a million-dollar business from a mere $100 investment? I definitely never thought that this could even be remotely possible. I mean $100 does not buy you much in 2012.

But hey, guess what? Turning a $100 investment into a million-dollar business is becoming a common occurrence on the Internet. Normal everyday people are building websites, with no great technical skills needed, and making atrocious amounts of money online.

The earnings may not always be directly attributed to blogging either, as most Internet entrepreneurs delve in creating their own products, creating membership sites, supplying services to other bloggers and many more ways.

I am one of those people that made that hundred dollar investment. (Possibly less) I could have easily just spent that hundred dollars by going to a fancy restaurant with my family, but I didn’t. Instead I purchased Web hosting and started my first website.

This was the major turning point in my life. I took the plunge!

This article is for those people that are sitting on the fence, truly wondering if all of this is true.

What exactly was the hundred dollar investment?

My only investment was Web hosting and a domain name. Even though I started building my first website many years ago, believe it or not, the prices have not increased. You can still buy decent Web hosting for around $7.95 a month and you can also still buy a .com domain name for around $10 a year. So these are the only two things that you will need to start your million-dollar business. The other things you will need are time and blood, sweat and tears.

You might have your own Web hosting and have started building a website, but you might not be able to see the million-dollar business potential. Don’t worry, because I did not see this million-dollar business either.

How do people turn $100 investment into a million-dollar business?

Lets get something straight right now. A million-dollar business does not happen overnight and involves a crazy amount of work. People used to roll their eyes at me when, in the early days, I told them that I was only making $1000 a month from all the work I was doing. (This was only my hobby then) They basically told me that I was wasting my time. Lucky I did not listen to these people!

Now I do not tell people how much I make (exactly) as they might not believe me.

What did I do?

I built one really good website! That’s it!

When I say really good, I mean really good. Every day I tried to improve my website and move forward, even if I could only work on it for a few minutes, it did not matter because in the end it all added up. It started with an idea and one or two articles, and just grew from there.

I did this for a few years until I decided to sell my other real world businesses and do blogging full time. This made my online income explode.

Five things that you have to be to build an Internet million-dollar business:

1. You need to work hard and believe that you will be rewarded in the end.
2. You need to take failure and use it as a valuable experience and move on.
3. You need to ignore negative people and also ignore the hype about making money on the Internet at the same time.
4. You need to see your goal ahead and go and get it!
5. You need to be patient while you build your virtual real estate.

Where to start?

Like I said, this big business does not happen overnight. But I can summarize some steps to get you started. Of course there are details that I cannot go into in just one article. For example, buying a domain name involves choosing a niche or topic to build your website around.

1. Buy your web hosting and domain name
2. Install WordPress on your new hosting account
3. Customize your WordPress website
4. Create necessary pages such as site map, privacy policy, about us, and so on
5. Create your WordPress categories using related keywords
6. Start adding related content and make it interesting

Here is a free report explaining all of these steps in detail. (No signup required)

Your first website might fail, but if you have the right attributes for this business, you will definitely see that failure as a good experience and move on. Most Internet marketing millionaires have many interesting stories to tell about their failures they have experienced, before making it big. There are many ups and downs but always look at the down times and know that the up times ARE coming.

How to make your website standout?

We all know that there is a huge amount of competition on the Internet but do not let that scare you. My first website was built for passion as I love working with computers and anything techie. Little did I know that my main competition would be some of the biggest websites on the Internet. Sites like Computerhope.com and Bleepingcomputer.com. But eventually I found my way in to the race. The real key was to develop your own website without copying your competition. The website had to have its own personality and just because one website is successful does not mean a copy of it will be as well.

Don’t get me wrong, I would study my competition, but I would always try to do something better or something different. It is as simple as that.

A timeline for a million-dollar business

Sorry guys I cannot give you a timeline to create a billion-dollar business online because you might be a slacker or you might be an extremely hard worker, so obviously the creation of this business depends entirely on you.

The website you are looking at right now started making money only after a few months of its existence. However by this time I had experience with building other websites and also new how to tell people how to do this themselves. If I had started a website about building websites back in the early days, my content would have been rubbish.

For a newbie, of course it takes longer to build up a successful business. For an experienced person like me, it can take as little as a month or even a week, depending on the resources available to me.

How am I building a million-dollar business?

I am building a million dollar business by building authority websites. Of course, as I mentioned above, there are many other ways.

Now people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I build houses, one brick at a time.

• I buy land in a good suburb for my house to be built on. (Web hosting)
• I create a house plan. (Website business plan)
• I lay the foundations for my house and make sure they are solid enough to build a big house. (WordPress, easily expandable)
• I create the rooms. Like a lounge room is for lounging and the kitchen is the cooking. (categories)
• I add in the structure and the walls of the house so people can browse through the rooms easily. (Navigation)
• I make sure I finish the house with a nice design so it attracts people and makes them comfortable enough to stay. (Web design)
• I add furniture to the rooms that makes people want to stay and see more. (great content)
• I position pretty trinkets and gifts on the furniture so people are tempted. (clear goals)
• I give my house the personal touch so people know that it is my house. (branding)
• I keep my house clean. No one wants to enter a dirty house. (Spam free)
• My house is constantly changing. (Blogging never stops)
• My door is always open. (Ready for visitors 24/7)

I could go on, but I’m sure you get the picture. Previously I also related my blogging career to growing a tree in this article about building a successful WordPress website. I like to add a bit of flare to my articles just to see if anyone is reading them! LOL

The reason I am writing this article is to tell you that blogging can be a million-dollar business. It is not just for the blogging gurus that are famous as this can happen to you as well. You just have to work hard, be patient and stick at it.

Now its your turn..

How about you tell me how you are going to build your billion-dollar business online?

There are most likely many reasons why people click the “like” button on a Facebook page (some I’ll never understand). It could be the topic, the page could be interesting, there could be a competition running, or it may offer a free service. Either way the more “likes” you get on a Facebook page the more popular the page will become. Listed below are the main reasons people ‘like’ a Facebook page.

Free stuff

No matter who you are or what your circumstances may be, no one I know will refuse a freebie! Kids, University students and adults the world over will step all over you to get something for nothing. Whether that something is information, a witty joke or a personalized item with a brand name on it, if you give away something free of charge then you can be guaranteed to get people’s attention.

Competitions

Whilst this overlaps slightly with the free stuff category, the competitive streak in most people will get the better of them here. A great example of a powerful Facebook marketing campaign was when ‘Skittles’ launched the ‘Win the Rainbow’ competition on Facebook. They now have an astounding 20,863,887 ‘likes’ on their page! They asked what people would do for a Skittles vending machine. Easy as that. They are currently running another campaign ‘the greatest fan in the world’ where a new winner is chosen weekly.

Games

Kids and big kids alike seem to be partial to a bit of gaming. McDonalds have a few mental games on their Facebook page. From market research, the guys at McDonalds say that this has helped to grow their number of ‘likes’ significantly.

Environmental or social causes

If you are truly passionate about a cause; whether that be the environment, poverty, animal care or something else, there are people worldwide that will empathize with you and help to share your campaign. Sharing is caring as they say and certainly equates to a lot of likes on Facebook!

Make a stance

There is nothing more frustrating than someone who constantly sits on the fence. Stand your ground on an issue and publicly talk about it on Facebook. Encourage others to do the same and get involved in discussions. This will garner you genuine ‘likes’ from those who truly want to hear what you have to say.

Show your personality

People like to get to know the real you. Politicians and celebrities generally see an increase in Facebook likes when they upload photos of themselves celebrating the birth of a new child, appearing without makeup or generally being normal. Put up too much information though, and you may find that you have a stalker!

Humor

Pages that are light-hearted and funny generally garner more likes. So the best advice is to enjoy what you do and interact in a light hearted and funny way. Remember, the best comedy is only funny if you have a sense of humor. Don’t try too hard though, it may backfire!

Challenges

Set yourself a challenge and document your progress on Facebook. The challenge could involve losing weight, running a marathon; it could be writing 100 articles or reading 100 books. Whatever it is, by publicizing it on a Facebook page you should find yourself with a steady army of followers in no time.

Be yourself

No one likes a know-it-all or an imposter. Be yourself and let people like you for who you are.

Now go get yourself some LIKES folks!

Matt Beswick runs an SEO agency in London, among his clients his lists the company responsible for airport lounges in Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted.

The answer: Yes, it is.

You have in your possession thousands of contacts, possibly obtained through sign-up forms provided by Aweber or even your own acquaintances. There is definitely someone among those thousands who would be interested in what you have to offer them. ‘Someone’ is just a humble figure; you are going to get tonnes more if your email marketing list consists of those who willingly signed up to receive more information from you.

So why is email marketing worth your time?

1. Building relationships

   There are so many businesses out there that it is quite likely your targeted customers have not heard of you, unless you are Honda, McDonalds or Seiko, of course. Email marketing serves not only to promote a product or service but also to create brand awareness.

   Those who did not know you previously will now do after receiving your emails. Take the opportunity to introduce your business in a light and informal way. Use interesting contents in your email capture the attention of the recipient and give an overview of what your business is about.

2. Share latest news and happenings

   After building relationships, it is time to nurture them. It is really pointless if you stop being in touch with your potential customers after gaining their interest and attention. Stay in touch with them regularly by sending updates of your business, calendar of events related to your industry or a newsletter with promotions or freebies.

   After all, your database of addresses would consist of those who are interested to know about your business or else they would have opted out of the mailing list.

3. Keep you in customers’ minds

   “Out of sight, out of mind” – this saying has been proven true in business.

   It is easy to forget about a brand if there isn’t any marketing or promotion. That is why businesses spend on various advertising methods to constantly remind potential customers of their presence. So use email marketing, one of the lowest cost marketing methods, to subtly remind your customers of your business or remind your readers of your awesome blog!

4. Makes it easy for people to purchase

   How does sending an email make it easy for my customers to purchase (or to action on something you want them to), you may ask? Insert “Buy now” buttons (the call to action) in your emails which customers can click on to be directed to a page finalizing the deal.

   Common examples of such emails are from Groupon, that fastest growing company. They send newsletters to subscribers each day notifying them of the daily deals, which customers can click on the image in the email to be directed to a payment page immediately. Very clever, eh?

5. Get feedback

   Email marketing isn’t just for promoting your products or website all the time. If your email database is built of potential and existing customers, get to know what they think of your business or website. There is always room for improvement and it would certainly be helpful to know the opinions of the core of your business!

There are so many perks to gain from email marketing. Never be afraid to communicate with your subscribers; after all they have opted to receive communication from you and would have removed themselves from the mailing list had they found your emails useless.

But remember not to overdo the frequency of the emails and also, always make it easy for subscribers to opt out as well as to indicate their preferred types of alerts and frequency. Good luck with your email marketing, it’s definitely worth your time!

I am not even sure if there is any such thing as WordPress Sidebar Etiquette but I know that the WordPress sidebar on your website is very important. The thing is, I see people abusing their sidebars and cramming them with irrelevant junk.

WordPress makes it really easy to drag and drop widgets into your sidebar and this can be both a blessing or a curse. It is a blessing when you stick to WordPress sidebar etiquette, but it is a curse when you break all the rules that I am about to show you. Hopefully if you are a sinner then you will be able to brush up on your WordPress sidebar etiquette and reform yourself.

I was reading this article about blog design that gave me the idea to write this post about WordPress sidebar etiquette. As you know I like to ramble on and cover the absolute details so you better get comfortable!

How Important is Your WordPress Website Sidebar?

I would say that your WordPress sidebar is one of the most important aspects on your blog or website. We all know that the sidebar usually shows up on every page and post of your WordPress theme. Of course this depends on which WordPress theme you use. Some premium WordPress themes let you choose which pages and posts your sidebar shows up on, but nevertheless it is an important part of your website.

Controlling Yourself

Here are a few WordPress sidebar etiquette tips that I have made up myself. There is no obligation to follow these tips as every website is different. All I want to do is make you aware that WordPress sidebar etiquette does exist. Hopefully you can develop your own rules for your own website.

Advertising in Your Sidebar in WordPress

Both new and experienced WordPress website builders often fill up their WordPress sidebar with far too much advertising. We know we all hate this and yet we all still do it. I have to be truthful here and let you know that I do not have much success with banners in the sidebars all headers of my website. ( This is different for AdSense websites though)

Most of my affiliate sales come from in text links and sometimes a highly targeted 300 x 250 banner in amongst the content. The WordPress sidebar is not a major moneymaker and you shouldn’t be plastering your blog with too much advertising there.

Links to Everything

People often try to help their website visitors navigate through their website. This should not be done by placing 1 million links in the sidebar. You should have a navigation menu at the top of your website, where a website visitor can easily access different categories all sections of your website. Everything you have should come under these categories.

Webmasters who place too many links in their sidebar are really confusing their website visitor and not helping them navigate through the website at all. Not only that, you are leaking good PR juice to pages and posts that may not need or deserve it. Take a good look at the pages that link from your homepage. They usually have a page rank of one below the home page because that page is passing on authority. For example this website has PR 4 and links from this page get a PR 3.

Irrelevant Stuff

I often visit peoples websites and notice that they have irrelevant advertising or information in their sidebars. For example, I went to a local news website which showcased local news and community events for a particular town. In the sidebar I saw links to affiliate programs for making money online. These people have come to read the community News and have no idea about making money online. If these links were on a website that was in the niche for making money online, then this would be passable for WordPress sidebar etiquette.

Widget Happy

WordPress widgets are the easiest things to use as most of them are drag and drop. This is great but not when you are WordPress widget happy. All you have to do is basically choose a widget and drag it into your chosen sidebar. You can see the screenshot below showing how easy it is.

Because this process is so easy, you will need to control yourself in this area. Take a good look at your WordPress website and see if you are using WordPress sidebar etiquette.

Too Much Social Networking

Social networking is huge but do we really need all of those social networking buttons. Should they really be taking up all of our valuable website real estate? I think not.

This will stir up some conversation as it seems to be the normal procedure to put social networking buttons at the top of your WordPress websites sidebar. Of course I am guilty of this on some of my websites, however I have been testing this and I do not believe it is necessary to have all of these buttons in such a prime position.

I used to have links to my Facebook page, my Twitter, my Google plus account, the RSS feed, and maybe a few more. Did anyone click on these? Not really…

How do I know this? I went to Google Analytics and used the In-page Analytics feature. You can find this option under the content menu in Google Analytics. This is one of many basic Google Analytics tracking tips that I use often.

The screenshot below shows my in page Analytics which shows a percentage of clicks that a link will get. As you can see in the sidebar, some of the links do not get clicks at all. This is how I know that my social networking links were not worth putting in the sidebar.

If you look around my blog now you will see a simple Facebook like button in the sidebar and an RSS subscription box in the footer. When you actually go into each individual article, I have various social media buttons to enable people to share my content. This method is working for me. I still get followed on twitter and re-tweeted, but this is through my content.

 Too Many Sidebars

If you have read through all of these points mentioned above, then you might realize that you do not need too many WordPress website sidebars on your website. I am a great believer in the K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid) method and having too many sidebars, or too much in your sidebars is just overkill.

I do have websites that have two sidebars but I always make sure they do not have too many items in them. These have been made for design purposes only. I still stick to my WordPress sidebar etiquette rules when feeling my sidebars with information.

WordPress Sidebar Etiquette – What you Should Have?

I am not here to tell you what you should or shouldn’t have in your WordPress sidebar. Of course the final decision will rest with you and you will need to see what suits your website. I like to keep it simple though, and let my content shine through.

About Me

When people visit a website or blog, they want to know the person behind the scenes or in charge. Even massive websites made by big companies have showcased their employees who run the blog to make sure they have a personal touch.

You need to connect with your website visitor and having an about me section in the top half of your website is a great way for them to get to know you. I will be doing this but I haven’t got around to taking a nice photo as yet. A great example of an About me in the top of the sidebar is at Ileane’s blog called Basic Blog Tips. This is a perfect example as people immediately feel a connection with Ileane.

Every time I see Ileane’s smiling face it makes me smile too!

Optin Box

We can look at the screenshot above again. You can see that Ileane has an optin box as the next most important item in her sidebar. I agree with this, even though I did post this article titled “Do you really want to be on my list?”.

I agree that an optin box is important but I also think that you need to engage your subscribers quickly and work out what they want. There are a number of factors that cause a website visitor to sign up or subscribe to your list. If you have fantastic content they will probably search around your blog just so they can subscribe. That’s actually the kind of person I want on my list, however having a sign up box in the top of your sidebar has definitely proven to gain more subscribers.

Popular Posts

I have noticed, when investigating my in page Google Analytics, that my popular posts do actually get clicked on. Of course they are popular for a reason and obviously the titles can attract more clicks.

If I compare the clicks I get on a recent posts widget, the popular posts wins hands down. I think this is because the recent posts are available on the homepage anyway. As you can see I only have my popular posts showing on this website, whereas on others, I might have the recent posts showing as well. You need to test what is best for your website.

One Ad

I like to have one banner and possibly a few links in the sidebar. As I have stated before, when making money online, most of my sales come from in content advertising. Therefore I am only adding a banner to the sidebar for design purposes.

I would really love to hear everyone’s opinion about my WordPress sidebar etiquette article. Do you agree with me when I say that we should “keep it simple” and not clog up our WordPress website sidebars with junk?