Blog About Your Blog » Wordpress

The Power of Blogging

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:06:33 +0000

Not only is blogging easy, but it is also powerful. One person with a blog can really do anything. Whether it’s promoting a great product, but also (maybe more importantly) criticize a product or company.

I first realized this when I had a dispute with Neverblue. I had commissions removed without any notification or explanation. After several phone calls and no ground covered I blogged about it. After blogging it if you search the term “neverblueads” my posts ranks really well.

Not too long after I received a call from a head affiliate manager from Neverblue. The end result was a full refund of the missing commissions.

Yesterday I saw another example of the power of blogging.

StudioPress

Kim from Accidental Mommies wrote a great blog post titled Are Premium Wordpress Themes Worth It? In the post she did mini interviews with other bloggers about what they expect from themes, the benefits, and support.

I’ve personally never paid for a Wordpress theme. I think with so many great free themes out there that you can simply customize it the way you want. If the theme doesn’t work with your website you can simply find another one, no need to worry about.

Some bloggers who are new to Wordpress do prefer to go with the premium themes because they usually do offer the support with installation and set-up.

In the article Kim wrote about Miss Blondie who had recently done just that. On her switch from Blogger to Wordpress she purchased the Allure Wordpress theme from StudioPress at $59.99. To make a long story short the support was really bad and the “unlimited” theme support ended up costing an additional $60. There are also comments of other problems with StudioPress not being what they promised.

The Result

After the article was published Brian Gardner (SEO of Studio Press) commented on the blog post apologizing. The comment did seem sincere as he was obviously making the effort to right anything that went wrong, which is great in my opinion. Why do business with any company with bad customer service?

Brian did in fact refund Miss Blondie the full amount (and then some). She was also giving a free upgrade giving her access to use all of the StudioPress themes instead of just the one she paid for. I can’t imagine a better result for this problem.

I think it was great of Brian to act quickly, and hopefully showed what type of business he is running and that he does care about his customers.

If you’ve got a problem, blog it!

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Adsense Ready Wordpress Themes

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:16:01 +0000

Some of my websites are strictly for money making, others for fun, and some are just projects. I’ve made a lot of my free samples blogs into money makers.

Lately I’ve had quite a bit of success with Google Adsense, getting payments almost every month now. This month I am expecting to receive $200 in payments. One site has had nice increase in earnings, simply due to the Wordpress theme.

ProSense Wordpress Theme

Dosh Dosh put together a great list of 18 adsense ready Wordpress themes. At the top of the list (and rightfully so) is Prosense. Dosh Dosh co-designed this theme and it has been great for me.

The theme comes preloaded with Adsense codes, all you need to do is simply change a few numbers to make it ready for you. It’s full of a lot of great features and Adsense is integrated perfectly.

Prosense comes in three different colors. The header is also easy to change and make custom (some themes can be tricky).

The only downside of this theme for me has been using images with it. When you see the images on the main page, it looks good, but with the heavy Adsense on post pages, the images can break up the page.

Earnings Increase

Running the Prosense theme on Its All Free Online has already doubled my earnings. Last month IAFO made $17 on Adsense. Being only halfway through October I’ve already been able to double that ($35) with 100 less visitors, and about 400 less impressions. If traffic and clicks hold the same, I can expect to quadruple my earnings.

So with almost the same amount of traffic, my earnings has doubled due to the Prosense Wordpress theme.

Do you use an Adsense ready wordpress theme?

Download Prosense Here

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Using WPAds With A Widget

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:08:43 +0000

WPAds is a great alternative to OIOPublisher, but it can be limiting. You can read our review of the WPAds Wordpress Plugin to get some basic information about it. It’s not as good as OIOPublisher but I just received a tip to make it a bit better.

WPAds in Widgets

Adam Fulford recently asked me a question on how to use WPAds in widget sidebars. I recently had tried to do this on another blog and failed. Instead I had to add the code directly to the sidebar.php file. It didn’t look as good the sidebar was off a bit.

Responding to Adam I had to say I didn’t know. Well he managed to figure it out himself and let me know how.

By installing and activating the Exec-PHP Wordpress Plugin you can add WPAds to widgets. Exec-PHP executes code in your posts, pages and text widgets. The plugin is really easy to install and I had WPAds in my sidebar in just a minute or two.

Thanks Adam for this great tip!

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Arthemia Magazine Wordpress Theme

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:54:43 +0000

Although I think magazine wordpress theme’s are pretty cool and a nice addition to certain blogs, I’ve never had much use of them until now. After launching my online portfolio site, Matthew Henrickson, I went in search of magazine themes. After I tried out Mimbo and didn’t like it, I found Arthemia, and had to look no further.

Arthemia Theme

Arthemia lets you have a headline post as well as featured posts along the right side. Under that is where you can put categories then a three column blog.

It does however take a lot of customization, patience and time to get it looking the way it is supposed to.

To get the headline and featured categories to work you need to name two categories headline and featured, then specify it in the theme editor. The other categories also take some work to have them display after your featured posts

Custom Thumbnails

This part of the process was especially difficult for me. The theme has a built in image resizer, which comes in very handy with this theme, since there should be a designated image for each post.

There is a folder in the theme called scripts which you need to edit the folder attributes to 777 using your FTP client (you also need to change the folder “cache”). Please note that if you have Bluehost or Hostmonster that you can not edit these folders to 777, it won’t work. Knowing this ahead of time will save you a lot of time.

Make sure to read the authors release page which also includes a FAQ, some tips as well as 500+ comments to sort through.

Arthemia Premium Theme

I use the free theme, because I can’t shell out $70 for a theme, so I got a lot of the headache of trying to make the free one work. The Premium Arthemia is mostly on auto-pilot doing a lot of the hard work for you. There is about 20+ features that is listed on the purchase page that sounds great and definitely well worth the money. If I had some extra cash laying around I would of definitely gone with the premium theme, and recommend buying it, I’ve seen many Wordpress users get frustrated with the free version. You can buy the premium version at Color Labs Project.

You can see the comparisons between the free and premium versions.

Download Arthemia | View Demo

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Importing and Exporting on Wordpress

Matthew Henrickson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:59:36 +0000

A successful blogger is usually an authority in their niche. I wrote about using Yahoo Answers for more website traffic by responding to questions. Forums are the same way, so I always like to make my rounds and try to answer a few questions. The latest one was about combining two blogs into one. A great way to do that is to import your posts and comments.

Importing to Wordpress

We had to import our blog from blogspot to our own hosted Wordpress account, over a year ago. It wasn’t as easy it is now. We lost our comments and some posts didn’t transfer right. All is different now!

Importing is the easiest way to transfer content from one blog to another. It takes the posts and/or comments from another source, like RSS, Blogger, or Typepad. You can basically ‘combine’ blogs or simply move off of your Blogger host.

To get started login to your Wordpress dashboard and select manage. You will see import. From there choose where you want to import from. If you chose to import from Blogger, you must login to your Blogger account to “authorize” the import. Then simply find the blog you wish to import and click.

Important Note Remember to delete or edit the posts from the source or that you imported. You don’t want to be penalized for a bunch of duplicate content.

Exporting from Wordpress

If you want to export, maybe you want to move domains or just simply move what certain authors have written. You can do that by going to manage, then export.

Wordpress Help

If you are considering moving from blogger (or any other platform) to a hosted Wordpress and need help make sure to contact me. For a rate, I could either walk you through an installation or easily set one up myself. Stay tuned for more Wordpress tips and tools coming soon!

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WPAds Wordpress Plugin

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:00:31 +0000

We’ve been letting you know about quite a few plugins lately. We wrote about 5 Wordpress Plugins That Will Make Your Blogging Easier. That included Wordpress plugins like No Self Pings and others. We didn’t mention however WPAds.

WPAds vs OIOPublisher

OIOPublisher is like a souped up WPAds. However, it does cost money, and some bloggers aren’t willing to pay for it. I only bought it using our Blogging Best Buys coupon code and saved money on the purchase.

If you can’t buy OIOPublisher than WPAds is a great alternative.

WPAds Features

WPAds basically allows you to easily rotate banners, text links or really whatever you want to do. Simply enter in the code of the banner or link that you wish to run. Then give it a zone. If you wish for your ads to rotate, simply put several banners in the same zone.

Then enter the code wherever you want whether it is in a post or in the template itself. It will look something like this:

<’?php wpads(’Test Zone’); ?’>

You can also choose to have one banner show more times than the other. This is a plus over OIOPublisher which doesn’t have this feature (as far as I know). This allows me to advertise different things and helps me find out which really work.

WPAds is a great monetization tool for new bloggers not looking to spend the money for OIOPublisher. Even using OIOPublisher, you may still find a need for WPAds.

Download this plugin.

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5 Wordpress Plugins To Make Your Blogging Easier

Matthew Henrickson — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:13:32 +0000

Lately I have been installing Wordpress Plugins like crazy. Probably about 10 in the last few days. I wanted to share a few ‘new’ ones that I have found from other bloggers. After reading the 15 Most Under-Utilized Plugins for SEO I installed many of them.

Askimet

This is the #1 Wordpress Plugin to make life easier as a blogger. This particular blog gets at least 100 spam comments per day. Not sure why it’s so high, but imagine trying to moderate that yourself everyday. Waste of time!

I recently just upgraded this plugin, which is sporting a new feature. You can now automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month. Check!

Download the Askimet plugin

TagMahal – Automatic Tag Suggestion

This plugin will simply find suggested keywords you can tag your post with. I am a bit lazy and would like to see more from this plugin. After generating these suggested keywords, I’d like to then click and add them, instead of copy and pasting them in. Still a time saver.

Download TagMahal.

Technorati Incoming Links

I hated upgrading Wordpress after finding out my Technorati links would be replaced with some Google garbage. Well if you miss Technorati you can have it back. Simply install the plugin and you will have your incoming Technorati links back in the dashboard where they belong.

Download Technorati.

Broken Link Checker

We have posts dated all the way back to Nov 2006. We’ve done a lot of linking to try and share our traffic and really promote other bloggers. As we know, many come and go. This has left us with tons of broken links, way more than I had ever thought.

At the time of this post, the plugin has found 183 broken links. That’s after I’ve already cleaned some! How many broken links do you have?

Download Broken Links.

No Self Pings

I already blogged about No Self Pings Please, but I had to mention this again. Ever since installing I haven’t had to deal with any annoying self pings.

Which Wordpress plugins make blogging easier for you?

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No Self Pings Please

Matthew Henrickson — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:38:45 +0000

Wordpress users know how annoying self pings can be. Almost every post that I write, I generally like to link to another relevant post. This creates a “Self Ping”. It’s not really a problem, except that it generally looks bad if you are displaying recent comments.

Self Pings really don’t have a purpose either. They don’t do anything, so I try to delete them after each post. This takes time, it’s another thing to do when preparing and publishing posts.

Now you can turn self pings off with the Wordpress Plugin No Self Pings by Michael D. Adams. All you have to do is upload it and activate it, the plugin will take care of the rest.

You can download the plugin at BlogWaffe.

What Wordpress Plugins have been helpful to you?

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Blog about your Blog Theme Change

Matthew Henrickson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:14:15 +0000

We’ve finally been able to make the jump and change our theme. I’m pretty excited about it, I think it looks good. We still have some kinks and other things to work out. Internet Explorer viewers please be patient, it’s a little off.

Any suggestions on our theme please let us know. If you haven’t seen it yet (and are looking in your RSS reader etc) make sure to stop by and visit us.

What Theme Are You Using?

I’ve been looking for a long time for a theme I want to us. This theme is actually a free Wordpress theme that is made by Unique Blog Designs. I really like their work, so when I saw them offering this theme I definitely jumped at the chance to use it.

You can read more about the theme at the UBD blog.

Ad Rates

Now of course would be the perfect time to mention our advertising rates. You can buy a 125×125 banner ad directly from us at the top. The price is only $20 per month. You can also register to get stat tracking on your ad!

You can also buy a text link from us directly for only $10 per month. Just contact me.

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Top Comments Plugin – Good or Bad?

Matthew Henrickson — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:24:32 +0000

I’ve received several comments and criticism about not having the top comments plugin. Many bloggers like the plugin, but I like doing things my own way.

Positives for Top Comment Plugin

The top comment plugin can be essential for new blogs to establish a base and start interacting with their readers.

Installing the plugin is great incentive for bloggers to leave comments. Not only do they get a backlink, but the possibility of traffic as well.

By using the top comment plugin, comments for that blog should increase.

Negatives for Top Comment Plugin

Although you are rewarding comments, you may not get “quality” comments. I could assume we might get more comments with the plugin, but they may be even more junk comments than we already get.

Another factor is which websites you are linking to with what keywords. You want to reward your comments, but what if its a blog that is offensive or you just don’t feel good about promoting?

While searching for the top comment website, I found Andy Beard’s article, Multiple Reasons Why I Loathe the Top Commenter Plugin. He sums up his negatives for this plugin, he’s always worth a quick read.

Alternatives for Top Comments

When people ask why we don’t have it, or that we should, I just point them to Comment Friday. This not only gives me the choice of who I link to, but how I do it. I can choose if I want it to be from a quality comment, interesting, sad, funny, or just because I want to.

Another alternatives to a top comment is doing a round-up of top commenters. Pure Blogging used to use this method, but looking through a few pages they don’t seem to do it anymore.

Some blogs run contests for their top commenters of the month. Zac Johnson was (is?) doing this for a while. I won 2-3 times, however I only received one prize . Bloggers reward their top commenters with prizes like cash, advertising or other similar prizes.

Do you use the top comment plugin? If not, how to you “reward” your commenters.

Random Posts

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Blog About Your Blog » Wordpress

The Power of Blogging

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Adsense Ready Wordpress Themes

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Using WPAds With A Widget

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Arthemia Magazine Wordpress Theme

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Importing and Exporting on Wordpress

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WPAds Wordpress Plugin

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5 Wordpress Plugins To Make Your Blogging Easier

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No Self Pings Please

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