If there is one thing you need to do before getting into making money online, especially with a blog, is to automate the method of letting advertisers buy advertising from you.

The leading software on the market right now, for self hosted WordPress blogs, is OIO Publisher and I’ve finally gone ahead and automated all the advertising options I’ve wanted to add to this blog. The plugin seemed daunting at first with all the options available with it, so I just dove right in and played around. I’m glad I did.

I think I’ll go ahead and add this to all my blogs, even the ones that are currently in the works. If you haven’t bought OIO yet I suggest you do. The plugin is well worth every dollar you invest into it.

Do you have a success story of using this plugin? Has it helped you monetize your blog better than you have been able to do manually? If so then let me know by commenting and I’ll feature you here in a post later on.

Of course, if you want to let people battle for your advertising slots then WP Auctions does the trick perfectly

After registering he provides you access to all the videos that he has shot himself.

All together you will find -

• Video #1: Choosing A Camera - In this video, he takes you on a trip to his local Best Buy electronics store to show you about the camera he uses, and to talk about other options for cameras you can use.
• Video #2: Buying Lights - In this video Jim takes you into the Home Depot store to show you the inexpensive lighting options you can buy.
• Video #3: Sets & Lighting - In this video, he takes you on a tour of his office and shows you exactly how he uses his Home Depot light kit to light his “set”.
• Video #4: Natural Lighting Tips - In this video, he shows you how natural sunlight can be used instead of artificial lights.
• And 6 more videos which I’ll leave you to explore by yourself on his site.

Registration is free and video is definitely something that you should look at getting into. I just posted my first video yesterday and plan on doing more.

—————-
1. Visit the ultimate geek girl for tech tips and tricks!
2. Your Link Here
3. Your Link Here
4. Your Link Here
5. Save Time & Money on Travel

Advertise Your Site Here For $5 A Month! Only 3 spots available, get in touch with me at contact [at] everybodygoto [dot] com for more details.

45n5 posted a message on his twitter followed up by Jim Kukral here I wonder who else is on their “list”. Jim Kukral asked for some $$$ to use them, which is the smart thing to do as I believe the conversion rate with using them for a regular blog audience is probably zilch.

Shoemoney also wrote sometime back about how he saw a gazillion things loading when he visited John Chow’s blog. Who is probably the most vocal partner of Kontera. Hey, for a flat fee of $1000 a month I wouldn’t mind talking about them as well.

Have they written to you yet?

—————-
1. Visit the ultimate geek girl for tech tips and tricks!
2. Your Link Here
3. Your Link Here
4. Your Link Here
5. Save Time & Money on Travel

Advertise Your Site Here For $5 A Month! Only 3 spots available, get in touch with me at contact [at] everybodygoto [dot] com for more details.

Anyway, here goes -

Text overview -

Instead of searching for hot topics to blog about on the internet pick your own topic and work on making that “hot“. You can easily build your own niché and authority for your topic this way. Watch the video for more…

You can also subscribe to my revver channel. That’s where I’ll be posting all my videos, so the best way to stay up to date is to subscribe.

—————-
1. Visit the ultimate geek girl for tech tips and tricks!
2. Your Link Here
3. Your Link Here
4. Your Link Here
5. Save Time & Money on Travel

Advertise Your Site Here For $5 A Month! Only 3 spots available, get in touch with me at contact [at] everybodygoto [dot] com for more details.

At first, when I started blogging, I thought this was what I wanted to do for a long time to come. I loved it in it’s infancy and watched it grow to what it is now, a big money making machine. Then somewhere down the line I think it all started getting a bit too tedious.  I didn’t like the ugly side of it that you see quite a lot around the blogosphere today.

I was always a design person and even while blogging I maintained my freelance career. Only after getting into blogging and backtracking “competitively” out of it did I realize that I’m truly passionate about design, so I went back full swing to it.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy blogging {Weborithm has a blog, not hugely updated- but it does}, and I still plan on continuing to write. I’m just not all about the “make money online” and beat the other guy with a bigger list of “Top 10 Ways to…”. I’m way past that, it’s ridiculous nonsense if you ask me.

So how did my passion develop back onto web development? Here are the four most important points I could think about -

• I figured that’s what I wanted to do - I only realized it after doing something else for a period of time. Sometimes you need to take a sidestep to see if you like that path. You can always come back and go forward again.
• I took the time to learn more about my passion - I took on as many challenging jobs as possible to better my skills. It’s quite a feeling to know what a page will look like by just typing it out in code instead of code, refresh, code, refresh, delete, look up reference, code, refresh. Now it’s just code it out and I know exactly how it’ll look {90% of the time, the 10% is IE 6}.
• I got rid of stuff I couldn’t spend at least one day in a week working on - If you cannot spend at the minimum one day a week looking over your own projects then you better not start any. Even if it’s just for a few hours to look over things. There’s no such thing as “Set it and forget it” on the internet.
• Most importantly, I had fun doing it - It’s not work anymore, sure it pays the bills and I’d have a hard time paying them if I didn’t do this. But at least I’m not complaining about what I’m doing.

Blogging will always be an extension of me. It’s something that I’ll probably always do, as long as the internet is around, and I thank it for helping me find my passion.

Has blogging helped you find what you are passionate about doing yet?

—————-
1. Visit the ultimate geek girl for tech tips and tricks!
2. Your Link Here
3. Your Link Here
4. Your Link Here
5. Save Time & Money on Travel

Advertise Your Site Here For $5 A Month! Only 3 spots available, get in touch with me at contact [at] everybodygoto [dot] com for more details.

So far, I’ve noticed that there has been very low volume in searches. This is mostly to blame on my careful selection of keywords. In total I’m using only 13 keywords, as I’m going for specific targeting rather than everyone searching for “auctions” and “WordPress“, which would probably give me more traffic but not necessarily convert.

So what can I do from here on to gain more “converting” traffic?

• Use more Ad Variations and Keywords- So far I’ve only used one text ad. My next step is to use come up with 5 different Ad Groups, each having around 10 - 20 keywords, with each Ad Group having at least 2 different Ad Variations. Then I’ll delete the keywords per Ad Groups that have low to little volume and take it from there.
• Go for expensive keywords - This might get costly but I’m willing to give it a shot just to see the amount and kind of traffic that would come by bidding on a keyword like “auctions” and other long tail variations.

I’ve even thought about doing some Image based ads, but I don’t have the time to design them and making text ad variations is much more time effective right now.

I’ve some more content to read up on how to properly scale my campaigns, as I read up and implement them I’ll report back to you here.

P.S - Don’t forget to enter for prizes in my blog anniversary celebrations!

—————-
1. Visit the ultimate geek girl for tech tips and tricks!
2. Your Link Here
3. Your Link Here
4. Your Link Here
5. Save Time & Money on Travel

Advertise Your Site Here For $5 A Month! Only 3 spots available, get in touch with me at contact [at] everybodygoto [dot] com for more details.

What started out as a small review site for me, in an experiment to try and make some money online, has turned into 1000 posts, this is post 1001 btw, covering a large variety of topics.

Here are some points to provide a little synopsis of what 2 years of blogging looks like -

1 - Times my blog has crashed due to the “digg effect”

120,000 - Visitors in my best traffic month {Oct 2007}

4 - Theme changes

69,000 - Spam comments blocked

4.7 months - It would have taken me to delete all those spam comments, @ 3 seconds per comment, if I did not have Akismet.

3 - Number of personal projects that I’ve launched as a result of starting this blog

Priceless - The number of new connections I’ve made via this blog

To celebrate I’m having a little giveaway. Before we get into the rules here’s what’s up for grabs -

• 2 Copies of OIO Publisher: If you’re serious about monetizing your blog you should use this fabulous plugin. Now 2 lucky readers will have the chance to win it. {Value: $74}
• 2 Copies of Killer Domains ebook from DailyBlogTips.com - If you tried to find some good domain names lately you know how disappointing the experience can be. Use this ebook to find the perfect domian name for your new venture. {Value: $34}
• 2 Copies of WP Auctions Gold - Use this plugin to set up auctions on your blog and keep 100% of your profits! {Value $50}
• 2 Copies of FreshPress Premium - My first premium theme is in production and will be released in around a week-ish. {Value: TBD}

To enter to win simply leave a comment here which will give you one chance in the drawing.

If you would like more chances at winning then -

• Write a blog post with a link back to the blog and this blog post. A linkback will give you five extra chances in the drawing.
• Sign up for email updates to this blog, each new email subscriber will receive another two chances.

Sign up by email here -

The winners will be chosen on the 23rd of May. Good luck to all and thank you for two wonderful years, here’s to a lot more ahead!

—————-
1. Visit the ultimate geek girl for tech tips and tricks!
2. Your Link Here
3. Your Link Here
4. Your Link Here
5. Save Time & Money on Travel

Advertise Your Site Here For $5 A Month! Only 3 spots available, get in touch with me at contact [at] everybodygoto [dot] com for more details.

Naturally, it’s all meant to be in good fun and if you really think the dollar will be worth anything in the next 10 years than you’re going to need much more than what this site defines as rich.

16,671,658

Great viral marketing technique by the makers of this site. Right, time to go off to make my millions - hopefully by the end of this year!

—————-
1. Visit the ultimate geek girl for tech tips and tricks!
2. Your Link Here
3. Your Link Here
4. Your Link Here
5. Save Time & Money on Travel

Advertise Your Site Here For $5 A Month! Only 3 spots available, get in touch with me at contact [at] everybodygoto [dot] com for more details.

Screenshot:

As you can see there are 3 creative units as part of their campaign to try and lure you into signing up for them. I like the 2nd one the best “Want to do great things in your world?” - yeah like watching rockets blast away from miles off at sea and not knowing who they are going to kill in another “shock and awe” campaign.

I did not approve them to run on my blogs feed and I hope other bloggers who were solicited with this “recruitment drive” didn’t either.

—————-
1. Visit the ultimate geek girl for tech tips and tricks!
2. Your Link Here
3. Your Link Here
4. Your Link Here
5. Save Time & Money on Travel

Advertise Your Site Here For $5 A Month! Only 3 spots available, get in touch with me at contact [at] everybodygoto [dot] com for more details.

Some plugins are pretty much mandatory like Akismet and the Feedburner plugin. As your blogging increases you soon realize that you would like to add more, especially since it’s so easy to do so. Upload, activate and personalize - who can argue with that.

I’m pretty plugged myself, I started with just Akismet and then went up from there. I’ve also deactivated quite some plugins from my blog as frankly they ended up taking space and being of no benefit. So how do you exactly figure out which plugins you should use and which ones to avoid? No matter how strong the urge. Here’s a short checklist that could help you out.

Checklist: Use The Right Plugins For Your Blog

1. Do You Really, Really Need It - Most of the time you will not ask yourself this, but you should seriously do so - at least twice. Don’t get bought into if it’s being offered for free. It was nice in 2006 to have your blog with the latest widgets, but today the name of the game is to have your blog load as fast as possible. Sending multiple server plugin requests will just slow it down. Do you still need that plugin?

2. Is It Compatible With Your Version of WordPress - Let’s face it, not everyone likes to update their WP install as much as Matt Mullenweg would like us to. Before you decide to download the plugin check from the developers notes if it’s compatible with the version of WordPress you are running.

3. Does The Plugin Compliment Your Blog - Many a times a plugin will have a feature that you need yet it somehow does not fit in with the natural scheme of things. For instance, I’ve used AdSense Deluxe on this blog before but it didn’t give me the flexibility that the WhyDoWork plugin does. So I ended up using that instead. Both plugins fill the need, but the WhyDoWork one compliments my blogs needs better.

4. Use Plugins To Offer A Better Experience - Your ultimate blogging goal should be to offer a relaxed reading atmosphere. Any serious user of WordPress will tell you that you need to do quite some tweaking to get your blog at that level. Using plugins can help get you there faster. Plugins like Share This and Related Posts will help your blog become more social and keep readers around longer. Remember, people like to click on the web so give them as many opportunities as possible within your blog. Hopefully keeping them on your blog longer.

5. Automation - If you are blogging then you are also exploring the opportunity at making some money on the side. Plugins like OIO Publisher can help you automate this process, once you’ve set it up to do so. Also, technically this is not an exclusive WordPress plugin, but ScribeFire is a great way to blog faster and efficiently. The less time you spend thinking about how to get things done, the more time you can spend on blogging. Always keep that in mind when looking at installing a new plugin.

6. Will The Plugin Help You Do A Task Better - Everyone needs help with something, at some point of time. So ask yourself, Is this specific plugin going to help me get this task done better? You may need the All In One SEO plugin to better optimize your blog for search engines, the Google Sitemaps Plugin can help in a better indexed blog and the Photo Dropper plugin will help you in getting creative commons images for your blog posts without leaving your admin area. These are all tasks that if you decided to do by yourself would cost time and money.

In conclusion, using WordPress plugins to enhance your blog is probably the most wise thing that you can do for it. Just make sure you end up using the right ones.

Speaking of which, please raise your hand if you use the “Hello Dolly” plugin that WordPress includes by default. If you do, then please drop your URL in the comments as I’ve never seen it in use anywhere…at all!

Also Read -

Top 16 WordPress Plugins

Make Money With Your Blog

photo credit: Matt From London

—————-
1. Visit the ultimate geek girl for tech tips and tricks!
2. Your Link Here
3. Your Link Here
4. Your Link Here
5. Save Time & Money on Travel

Advertise Your Site Here For $5 A Month! Only 3 spots available, get in touch with me at contact [at] everybodygoto [dot] com for more details.

So in the spirit of everyone, and their mom, offering up tips and tricks on how to rake it in online. Here’s -

5 ways that you can use the web to plan an early retirement

• Get Social Online & Offline - You do not need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on traffic, SEO, a custom made CMS or glitzy graphics, even though a good web design can help you down the road, to get started on the web. You just need to have a sense of humor and good social skills. Then let social media do the work for you. Use linkbait content that people just cannot resist seeing. Learn everything you can about social media marketing, slowly but surely, and remember to market yourself offline too. People still read t-shirt slogans no matter how silly it may look to them. Social media marketing is where the new rich hang out, you need to get started today before it’s too late!
• Write To Retire - People are getting book deals because of their daily ramblings. BOOK DEALS!!! Was that possible 10 years ago if you kept giving advice, or telling funny stories, to people from your cubicle? Nope, but today you can. If you are good with words, and are not abusive of using tags, then by all means get started on your A-list status. You never know what could happen.
• Affiliate Today, Super Affiliate Tomorrow - This takes some work, but once you get started there is seriously nothing that can stop you. I’m getting a little bit of the taste myself and I’m loving it. Starting in affiliate marketing can be a little intimidating at first, but mark my words the key here is perseverance. If you can persevere in your job, just so you can retire after 40 years, then spending a few months on this cannot be that hard.
• Freelance Today, Vacation Tomorrow - Seriously it’s not that hard as it sounds. I’ve been doing it for years now, even though my pace is slower than most, I can very arguably say that going freelance is probably the best choice I made. I started slow and steady before I went in full swing. Word of advice, if you have a family - get a separate office space where they cannot see you for said amount of hours, unless it’s an emergency.
• Use The Web, I Mean That Literally. USE It! - If there is one thing you should know about the web, it will not care about you tomorrow. It probably doesn’t even care about you right now. Don’t try and be friends with search engines, algorithms, traffic rankings, “buzz” indicators, linkbacks etc… they can stop caring about you in a heartbeat. Use each and every single aspect of the web for what’s it worth.

Now that you are on your way to planning an early retirement there is one other thing you should know.

Stop reading this and take action. You’re not getting any younger.

I turn 29 this year and one year closer to my own personal date of achieving financial independence, i.e by the time I’m 30. Which is shaping up pretty good so far, but I still have some ways to go. I owe most of that drive to this blog as I’ve used it to launch most of my web products, not to mention it has helped me “think outside the box”.

So, what do I have planned for this birthday bash of mine? Well, to be honest, I just discovered yesterday that the blog will be having its anniversary so I haven’t planned anything as yet. I just couldn’t hold myself back from writing about it.

Anyway, I’ll be offering something up for sure. So watch out for that post.

I’m a blogger, so the above question is directed towards me as well. We pick topics to write on our blogs about something we like and are passionate about. Most of us tend to steer clear of stuff we just want to block out from the online version of our lives. Stuff like politics, war, (in) justice, life, death, education, the world as it is {which is pretty messed up right now} and so on… Some use those very topics to garner more attention towards it, which is great.

Do you use blogging to get away from it all? Is it a release for you, a parallel life only shared with online viewers, do you use it as a medium to feel normal? Or is it just a neat new hobby that you decided to pick up one day, instead of collecting stamps, and are pretty happy just writing what you feel.

Family And Your Blog

I share my blog with my wife, my kids are too young to know about this stuff. But once they grow up I plan on showing them everything I’ve done.

My parents don’t use the net, my brothers and sister work full time jobs which leaves them very little time to go online, let alone read my blog. They don’t know about all my online activities, like I don’t know everything about their jobs. They keep asking me how I make money, I keep saying well…it’s complicated. I’ve shown them my blog in the past, and they basically don’t get it, which is OK. I didn’t get it myself for like 6 months.

Using Blogs To Reach Out

In the past I’ve used my blog to block out stuff like “online unemployment” {LOL, if there is such a thing}, that’s when I didn’t have any freelance jobs. Somewhere down the line my online and offline life merged together and are now at a comfortable balance.  In the beginning I hardly wrote posts that used any inspiration from my real life.

I’ve accepted the fact that this is all part of one and the other, and if I am to hold any normalcy in it there should be no separation. Of course I’ll keep private matters off.

A lot of bloggers don’t mind showing their personal lives via their blogs. It all depends on you and how far you are ready to let strangers on the web look into it.

Sometimes I feel like getting all political, theological, controversial even - but I usually end up deleting the drafts. In the end you could try to maintain two personas, but I think it’s just easier to maintain one and limit information online just as you would limit information about you between people in real life.

So, Do you use blogging as a “Second Life” or Do you maintain a healthy balance between both?

—————-
1. Visit the ultimate geek girl for tech tips and tricks!
2. Your Link Here
3. Your Link Here
4. Your Link Here
5. Save Time & Money on Travel

Advertise Your Site Here For $5 A Month! Only 3 spots available, get in touch with me at contact [at] everybodygoto [dot] com for more details.

Since I already have a product, i.e WP Auctions, I’m going to be using that as a case study. I know that most people will not have something like this to promote but I hope that it will provide you, and me, a ton of information as I learn everything I can about keywords, PPC and landing pages along the way. Most of it is already available from other affiliates who have written extensively about this way of making money online.

I’m just finally going to use their advice. The case study will last one month.

Last month the plugin generated over $500 in sales. Which is not that great and not that bad either, considering I’ve spent $0 in marketing. It was also featured on dealdotcom, it might be featured again this month.

I’ve already bookmarked a ton of information from around the web and I’m also taking part in The Black Ink Project from Jeremy Palmer. It should be a fun month overall.

Right, lets get on with it.

WP Auctions already has a landing page, linked above, and to me it looks good enough. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best. The conversions have been satisfactory in relation to the amount of traffic I’ve been getting on the site. Again, I’ve spent $0 in marketing.

You can sign up for the affiliate program here if you would like to promote the plugin on your blog.

Choosing a platform to market from

For this case study I’m going to be using Google Adwords as I’m most comfortable with them, even though I know almost everyone says to start on Yahoo and MSN first. I just feel like I know Adwords better, even though I’ve barely scratched the surface.

That, and MSN and Yahoo don’t give free credits to non-U.S advertisers. Boo!

Stay tuned to the blog and subscribe to my RSS feed to stay updated on the latest developments of this case study.

—————-
1. Visit the ultimate geek girl for tech tips and tricks!
2. Your Link Here
3. Your Link Here
4. Your Link Here
5. Save Time & Money on Travel

Advertise Your Site Here For $5 A Month! Only 3 spots available, get in touch with me at contact [at] everybodygoto [dot] com for more details.